Product marketing looks different at every company. The fundamentals—positioning, messaging, enablement, competitive intelligence—stay the same, but how they’re executed depends on the organisation’s size, structure, and stage of growth.
At Procore, an $8 billion SaaS company in construction tech, product marketing operated at a scale that most PMMs never experience. It wasn’t just about launching features—it was about influencing an entire industry. That scale brought challenges, trade-offs, and a few hard-earned lessons that reshaped how I think about product marketing.
1. Positioning Isn’t Just About Product—It’s About Market Leadership
I remember the first time I sat in on a Procore customer event. It was packed with construction leaders from some of the biggest firms in the world, all talking about digital transformation like it was this enormous, inevitable shift. The reality? Many of them were still figuring out the basics—transitioning from paper to digital, dealing with fragmented workflows, and battling resistance to change.
That’s when it hit me: our job as product marketers wasn’t just to sell software. It was to help shape how an entire industry thought about its future.
At Procore, we weren’t just positioning features; we were shaping the industry conversation. That meant:
- Owning the problem space – Before selling a solution, we had to make sure the market understood the problem. That often meant creating demand for a category that didn’t fully exist yet.
- Tying product messaging to broader trends – The best positioning wasn’t just about product differentiation—it was about aligning with the massive shifts happening in construction tech.
- Thinking beyond immediate differentiation – In a space as competitive as SaaS, you can’t just talk about what you do better than the competition. You have to make customers believe in your vision of where the market is going.
2. Internal Enablement Is as Important as External Messaging
You can craft the perfect positioning, but if sales can’t deliver it effectively, it’s useless.
I learned this the hard way. We spent weeks refining the messaging for a new preconstruction tool, aligning on a beautifully crafted story that tied into broader industry trends. We launched it with a splash, got some great press, and… a month later, I sat in on a sales call where the rep pitched it as “just a better version of what you’re using now.”
That’s when I realised: messaging isn’t a one-time exercise—it’s an ongoing campaign inside the company, too.
- PMM is a communication role as much as a strategic one – A great PMM doesn’t just define messaging; they embed it into the company’s DNA.
- Sales enablement isn’t one-and-done – Training and materials need continuous iteration based on what’s working (or not) in the field.
- Buy-in is everything – If sales and CS don’t believe in the messaging, they won’t use it. Getting them involved early makes all the difference.
3. Product Marketing Has to Influence Roadmap Decisions
One of the most frustrating moments I had at Procore was when a major feature launched, and we realised—too late—that customers didn’t care about it. The feature worked. It was well-built. But the problem it solved wasn’t high on the priority list for our buyers.
That’s when I started pushing harder for PMM to have a seat at the roadmap table.
- Bringing market insights to the roadmap – PMM’s job isn’t just to communicate what’s being built—it’s to help shape what should be built based on customer and competitive insights.
- Defining what success looks like – A launch isn’t successful just because it happened. It’s successful when it drives adoption, revenue, or strategic positioning goals.
- Challenging feature-first thinking – Features don’t sell products; outcomes do. PMM has to ensure every roadmap decision is tied to a customer value story.
4. Competitive Intelligence Needs to Be More Than Just a Battlecard
At Procore, the competition was relentless. New players popped up all the time, and existing competitors were constantly repositioning themselves. Keeping up felt like a full-time job.
Early on, I made the mistake of treating competitive intelligence as something we “updated” periodically. The problem? By the time we updated a battlecard, it was already outdated.
So we changed our approach:
- Building always-on competitive programs – No more one-off battlecards that get stale in weeks. We built a system where competitive insights were continuously fed into sales and product teams.
- Training teams to sell against competitors effectively – A good battlecard doesn’t just list strengths and weaknesses. It equips sales teams with narratives that change the conversation.
- Tracking and countering messaging shifts in real-time – If a competitor starts positioning differently, PMMs need to respond fast—not in a quarterly review meeting.
5. Scale Exposes Weak Processes—So Build for the Future, Not Just Today
One of the biggest surprises I encountered was how quickly things break at scale. What worked when we were a smaller team—shared Google Docs, one-off enablement sessions, ad-hoc messaging updates—completely collapsed once we hit a certain size.
Scaling product marketing isn’t just about doing more—it’s about doing things differently. The processes that work for a 10-person PMM team might break down when that team scales to 50.
Some key mindset shifts:
- Build repeatable, scalable processes – If your success depends on a handful of people holding all the knowledge, it won’t scale.
- Invest in infrastructure early – The sooner you put systems in place for messaging, enablement, and CI, the easier growth becomes.
- Think like a business leader, not just a marketer – PMM isn’t just a marketing function; it’s a strategic growth function that impacts revenue, adoption, and market positioning.
The Bottom Line
Working at an $8B SaaS reinforced that product marketing is more than just messaging—it’s a key driver of business strategy. The most effective PMMs aren’t just executing tactics; they’re shaping the way companies go to market, influence buyers, and define entire categories.
If there’s one thing I took away from Procore, it’s that PMM works best when it operates with influence, alignment, and a long-term view of where the market is headed.
And the biggest lesson? Product marketing isn’t just about selling products—it’s about shaping industries.