AI Vaporware, Elite Habits & the ChatGPT Product Marketing Coach You Didn’t Know You Needed [Product Marketing Digest #37]
Check out this week's PMM insights, open job listings, exclusive content, & other goodies!
Welcome to the thirty-seventh issue of the Product Marketing Digest.
Here’s your weekly dose of insights, job listings, and resources to uplevel your product marketing craft.
You will receive an issue delivered to your inbox every week containing content from across the web!
Insights for Product Marketers
Gabe Rogol, CEO of Demandbase, warns that we’ve entered an era of “AI vaporware”—overhyped AI tools with weak infrastructure, opaque data, and little long-term value. He cautions B2B buyers against rushing into $50K+/year AI investments without due diligence, drawing a parallel to the sudden shutdown of Xandr despite its functionality.
To avoid being burned by flashy but fragile AI solutions, Rogol shares a checklist for evaluating AI vendors, covering six critical areas:
Model & Intelligence – Understand how the model works, what data it’s trained on, and how it evolves.
Infrastructure & Ownership – Know who controls hosting, cloud dependencies, and future changes.
Security & Compliance – Ensure proper data handling, encryption, and compliance certifications.
Integration & Extensibility – Assess whether it connects with your existing tools and supports APIs.
UX & Governance – Check for user-friendly interfaces, safety guardrails, and access controls.
Business Impact – Demand evidence of real business outcomes—cost savings, speed, or revenue gains.
His bottom line: “AI-first” must be more than branding. Without strong systems, even the smartest AI will fail.
Kieran Flanagan shares a powerful prompt designed to turn ChatGPT into a brutally honest marketing coach—one that cuts through fluff to reveal what’s really holding you back from becoming an elite marketer.
The prompt:
Analyzes your ChatGPT usage to identify behavioral patterns, gaps, and blockers.
Diagnoses weaknesses in strategy, execution, learning, and communication.
Compares your habits to elite operators in areas like decision-making, positioning, and team leadership.
Exposes invisible “anchors” like fear of failure, over-polishing, or hiding behind productivity.
Prescribes actionable mental models and uncomfortable skill areas you’re avoiding.
Why it matters:
Unlike a manager, this coach is direct and unfiltered. It helps marketers confront their real limits—and offers a clear, tough-love roadmap to go from a solid B-player to top 1%.
Flanagan’s takeaway: Run the prompt with memory on, and let ChatGPT show you where you’re stuck and what the elite would do differently.
Product Marketing Jobs
📍Product Marketing Director at Eightfold (Santa Clara, CA)
💰 $140.2K/yr - $210K/yr | Hybrid | Full-time
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📍Senior Product Marketing Manager (USA Only - 100% Remote) at Close (United States)
💰 Remote | Full Time
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📍 Product Marketing Manager at Modern Campus (United States)
💰 $80K/yr - $95K/yr | Remote | Full-time
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📍 Product Marketing Manager at Navan (New York, NY)
💰 $105K/yr - $198K/yr | Hybrid | Full-time
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📍Product Marketing Manager at Finch (New York, NY)
💰 $125K/yr - $145K/yr | Hybrid | Full-time
Episode 142: How Product Marketers Can Own Pricing Strategy and Earn Their Seat at the Table
In this episode of #TheGTMPack podcast, we sit down with Meenal Relekar, Career Coach & PMM Consultant, based in San Francisco, CA.
In this conversation with Meenal, a seasoned product marketer with 16+ years of experience across CPG giants like Unilever and tech companies including Adobe, Dropbox, and DoorDash, we explore how product marketers can transform from tactical order-takers into strategic powerhouses.
Drawing from her unique background and real-world pricing overhauls that generated hundreds of thousands in additional monthly revenue, Meenal reveals why pricing is one of the most overlooked yet powerful levers for PMM strategic impact. Her perspective challenges the conventional wisdom about who should own pricing decisions and provides a roadmap for product marketers to earn their seat at the executive table through data-driven customer insights and strategic thinking.
A few key takeaways:
💡 Product Marketers Should Own Pricing Strategy: Most companies fail at pricing because no one truly owns it - it floats between PMs, finance, and executives without clear accountability. PMMs are uniquely positioned to lead pricing decisions because they understand the three critical elements: dollar amount, packaging/configuration, and perceived value. Success requires proper research methodologies (conjoint analysis for tiers, Van Westendorp for price ranges, MaxDiff for feature preferences) rather than just copying competitors or guessing.
💡 Elevate from Tactical to Strategic Impact: Too many product marketers get stuck creating launch checklists and sales decks instead of driving strategy. To earn a seat at the table, PMMs must: get involved early in product development (not just launches), own the company narrative about value and differentiation, and bring data-driven insights from customer research and competitive analysis. Real strategic impact comes from connecting customer pain points to business decisions and closing the loop on insights with end-to-end execution.
💡 AI Changes Pricing Expectations: AI features have evolved from nice-to-have to expected in SaaS products, but customers will only pay premium for AI that genuinely saves time and improves workflows. Pricing models are shifting from technical usage-based pricing (tokens/API calls) to bundled approaches - AI included in premium tiers or as add-ons. The key is focusing on the value AI delivers rather than promoting AI for its own sake, with successful examples like Notion and Canva bundling AI into higher subscription tiers.
#productmarketing #pmm #sales #gtm #salesenablement #pricing #ai