Well we’re into our first very interesting weeks of 2021 so far and it’s time to get a start on all of that change we wanted to see this year. Hopefully, your 2020 was manageable and you’re ready to begin a fresh new chapter of product marketing with your team.
Whether you’re launching a new product, in the middle of growing a product, or need to revamp your product marketing ideas for reaching a new level this year with your company, it’s always good to get inspiration.
Stories give us vision and stories keep us going. Stories give us a blueprint and scenarios to pull from in our own paths.
There are so many sources of valuable stories and information from experts, founders and product teams who have been there, and other companies out there: blogs, articles, guides, eBooks, etc.
We like Podcasts because they give you concise information, access to top experts and interesting characters in the space, and the personal touch of hearing stories and advice from their own voice. It’s also nice to be able to simply put in headphones and listen while you do other things.
To get your year off right, we’ve compiled our top 10 Product Marketing podcasts for 2021:
1. Getting to Market
What we like about “Getting to Market” is that it’s very specific in what kind of stories and advice you’re going to get: How to get to market. A note on the host really quick: Cody Bernard is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Drift – a SaaS darling you’ve likely heard of.
Getting To Market brings on product marketing managers, founders, etc. from successful SaaS startups, gets their story and covers some of their toughest moments and the trips and tricks their team used to move past them for growth.
It’s incredibly practical with a storytelling element that helps to put things into context. It’s like having a conversation with one of these founders and getting their war stories so you can go and apply it to your own. This is great for new product marketers or founders who just launched and are experiencing the bumpy road and need to hear from those who got through it.
2. The Art of Product
The Art of Product is less interviews and stories and more individual lessons and talks on specific areas of building a product and SaaS company. It’s hosted by Ben Orenstein who has been a part of several successful product launches and Derrick Reimer from Drip and Codetree. The episodes cover areas like networking, growing teams, rebranding, hiring optimally, etc.
But what we like is they also cover some of the more abstract and personal areas building a company. For example, there is a recent episode on the value of coaching and building habits. For this reason, it’s a great listen for founders because you are typically bearing the brunt of the stress and uncertainty as well as big decision making in building your SaaS product.
3. The Product Marketing Experts
This podcast is hosted by two product marketing superstars whose work you will recognize: Marcus Andrews who is head of Product Marketing at Hubspot and Alex Lopes from Sharebired.com. Each week, the duo interviews a product marketing expert from the world’s fastest growing SaaS companies to talk about the specifics of their work and learn specific lessons like: building a product marketing team, pricing, market research, etc. You get both the personal stories and practical lessons to take away on product marketing. It’s also an easy listen with each one under 40 minutes usually.
Listen to The Product Marketing Experts
4. Product Marketing Life
Product Marketing Life is put on by Product Marketing Alliance, an online community and education platform for product marketing. Each week, they bring on different product marketing managers from products you use every week to talk about their experiences, latest work, and what is coming up next that you need to know. Leaders come on from huge companies like Uber Eats, Google, Workday, and more. This is a perfect podcast for product marketing managers who need to stay on top of what’s going on in the industry.
Listen to Product Marketing Life
5. Intercom on Product
Intercom on Product is a podcast hosted by Intercom’s co-founder Des Traynor and SVP of Product Paul Adams. On the podcast, they discuss their latest thoughts, reactions to changes in the industry and market, and give you actionable deep dives on specific concepts.
Unlike other podcasts, this one doesn’t interview others but really captures the insights of the successful team at Intercom which is nice because you really get to know them throughout their own journey. Each episode is under 40 minutes so they’re easy to listen to and fit into your schedule.
6. Churn.fm
Churn is really interesting because it’s essentially focused on the different ways companies and product marketers have found to reduce churn and scale. Andrew Michael hosts product marketers from different SaaS products at all different stages and discusses how they’ve overcome issues for scaled success.
You can listen to episodes from product marketers at Hotjar, Facebook, Drift, Envato, Later, and more. There is a huge bank of episodes covering specific issues to explore and jump into. Learn more from our team on how to reduce churn.
7. Better Product
Better Product is awesome because it’s really a mix of actionable product concepts and solutions as well as really the team and personal aspect of building and managing products. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in trying to get the right combination of things right to get the right stats back that we forget that our product is our team interacting with people.
Better Product really focuses on the leadership and personal elements as well. The hosts, Christian and Anna, speak with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and managers on how they inspire the best teams and best work.
8. The Sales Engagement Podcast
The Sales Engagement Podcast is put on and hosted by the Outreach.io team. It’s interesting to listen to a podcast produced by an actual SaaS team because they really tend to deliver content tailored to the path and all the different stages SaaS companies go through.
This one is really cool because they cover little tricks and tips that you wouldn’t even think of at first but are important like “How to be funny and authentic on LinkedIn” and personal topics as well to help your team as leaders. They also cover more practical areas like the SaaS sales and marketing process and in reasonable time – typically 20-30 minutes.
Listen to The Sales Engagement Podcast
9. Rocketship.fm
This is one of the more popular, highly rated podcasts in the tech space and, though its focus is more broad, still touches quite a bit on SaaS. It’s produced in partnership with Product Collective, the top newsletter for software product managers.
The show covers a company or product in each episode as a “product journey” where they dissect the journey of a product’s launch and growth. They also cover product failures and why they failed which is interesting and not something we see all the time. It’s definitely worth checking out for some broader perspectives on product and tech.
10. Build with Maggie Crowley
Build with Maggie Crowley is yet another product-focused podcast put on by the Drift team. Maggie, who is head of product management at Drift, sits down each episode with the best in product management, design, and engineering for perspectives and experiences from across the various parts of building a successful SaaS company.
The biggest seller for this one is the guests. They get some of the hands-on roles from top products like VMware, Box, Basecamp, etc. It’s also nice to hear these people interviewed by a product manager so you get the right questions answered. Beyond this, there are also episodes that kind of flow like blogs from the Drift team on general SaaS questions and problems like “growing and managing technical teams”. It’s a good mix.
Listen to Build with Maggie Crowley
Hopefully, your 2021 is already off to a better start and you and your team are hopeful about the progress of your product. The podcasts listed here are what’s giving us the inspiration as product marketers in a space that is always changing. It’s all a part of our stories! And it’s always nice to hear others to keep us going. For an easy way to connect with your users and boost engagement while announcing new updates, try Beamer today.
