What the Heck Do Growth PMs Actually Do? 🤔
Product Pill # 7
If I look back on my journey into product, at the time of applying for product roles, I had no idea there were different types of Product Managers 🤷🏽♂️.
I happened to fall into a Growth PM role straight out of university. It was only at this point I realised there were different types of PMs 💡, which was news to me.
I recently connected with a Core Feature PM and a Platform PM and the differences in our roles really became apparent from my conversations with them.
I’ve found the experience of being a Growth PM extremely rewarding so far, so I thought I would shed some light on what Growth PMs actually do in order to help aspiring and current PMs determine if being a Growth PM would be something that excites them, so sit back and enjoy the read 🍿.
What does a typical week look like? 🗓
There’s a lot going on as a Growth PM in a typical week since you sit between the Growth and Product teams.
The growth funnel typically breaks down the growth function of the business. If you’re unfamiliar with the growth funnel, you can refer to the AARRR Pirate Metric Framework (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue).
As a Growth PM, my team is responsible for owning the activation stage of the growth funnel. The primary goal of activation is to get a registered user to the ‘aha moment,’ 💡 where they begin to realise the product’s value.
Think back to products you use daily and when you realised how awesome they were. E.g., when you created your first page in Notion when you followed your first few accounts on Twitter and saw your personalised feed etc.
As a Growth PM, I’m ultimately responsible for increasing the adoption of existing features. This could be done in one of two ways:
Running experiments such as A/B tests to optimise existing features: our team recently ran an A/B test which optimised the call to action for an embedded page link buried by the content on one of our pages in hopes of increasing discoverability and unlocking value for new users.
Building a new feature that helps increase the adoption of our core product features: we recently launched an onboarding checklist feature. This new product feature enabled users to understand the value of our core features and discover where they were located on the platform.
I also wrote an article about how I spend my time as a PM, which goes into depth on what a typical week looks like from the perspective of a Growth PM at a scale-up. You can read more if you’re interested here.
What’s the most challenging thing about being a Growth PM? 😬
One of the most challenging things about being a Growth PM is staying on top of the different metrics across the growth funnel.
This is because there are so many inputs that contribute to activation (e.g., registration rates, engagement metrics, etc.) that must be constantly monitored to ensure the growth funnel is healthy.
Sometimes you see unexpected movements in the data, and it can be a real challenge to isolate the cause of these adverse movements.
Especially if you don’t have a data background, it can be hard to make sense of all the data at first and can be overwhelming. However, if you stick through the challenges, you become good at accurately interpreting data over time, which is an invaluable skill to develop.
What’s the most enjoyable about the role? 😍
What I love about being a Growth PM is how involved I am across the entire product journey.
You don’t own a specific part of the product as a Growth PM, so it’s not like you build domain expertise and become comfortable with working within that particular product area.
You always have to learn how different parts of the product work because there are multiple areas that contribute to the growth of a product.
I’ve learned a great deal from being exposed to the end-to-end growth funnel. I’ve had the opportunity to learn how we create and distribute messaging campaigns, how we think about SEO to acquire more new users, how we work with affiliates to grow our product, and much more.
So who’s it for? 🙋🏽♂️
You’ll enjoy being a Growth PM if you:
Have great attention to detail - sometimes the smallest optimisations can lead to the biggest gains
You’re constantly looking for ways to improve things (i.e., you have a growth mindset)
Enjoy diving deep into the data - this one’s a given
Like jumping too and from different problem domains - if you enjoy working on the same problem domains then Growth PM probably isn’t the best for you
Top tips for becoming a Growth PM 🎯
Become well versed with the growth funnel by understanding the Pirate Metric Framework (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue). Apply this framework to different products you are familiar with to try and understand what drives their growth.
Build some basic data analysis skills. What’s important here isn’t the tool; rather, it’s your ability to take raw data and draw conclusions.
Look to work for a company that embodies a product-led growth mindset. Your impact will be much more profound in these types of environments as a Growth PM.
That’s it for this week’s edition!
Hope that was helpful for folks curious about Growth PM.
If you want to learn more about the other types of PM I mentioned previously (Core Feature PM and Platform PM), check out an article I wrote with some of my PM friends in the U.S here.
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