Best courses for PM and PMM

The only constant in a product professional’s life is the demand for your team to do more with less, faster. That makes investing in your professional development – cue the song 🎶Back to School🎶 – more than worth it. 

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We put together a list of the best courses for product managers (PMs) and product marketing managers (PMMs) that we’ve come across here at Ignition. Find the one that seems like the best fit for where you are in your career now and where you want to go – and see how it can help you level up in the coming year. 

The best courses for product managers 

Whether you’re brand new to product management or a seasoned professional, there’s a course out there that’s worth your time (and your employer’s professional development budget, if you’re lucky enough to have one). 

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We recommend checking these out. 

Reforge

Reforge offers several courses both on-demand and with live cohorts, from Product Management Foundations to Product Leadership. Live courses are only available to Reforge members; on-demand courses can sometimes be purchased separately from a membership. 

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Courses are taught by top tech industry product experts and run 4-6 weeks. They’re built to teach participants how to tackle the actual problems likely to pop up at work. Live courses offer the accountability and structure some participants need to finally make time for their professional development goals. (In other words, you’ll have homework and deadlines!) 

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Product Management Foundations covers: 

• Identifying opportunities that create value 
• How to design features
• How to develop product features 
• Launching products and learning from the process 

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PM Foundations is best for early career product professionals: Associate Product Managers (APMs), fresh PMs, or those in other roles - marketing, design, engineering - switching to a PM role. 

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Product Leadership covers:

• How to develop your product team successfully
• Skills for managing your product work 
• How to design your product team for best results 
• The key to accelerating your career 

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Product Leadership is best for Reforge members who are established product professionals on a leadership track: Group PMs, Product Leaders, or Director and above/Senior PMs who want to advance further in their careers. 

Product School

Product School offers two different certifications aimed at product managers: the Product Manager Certification (PMC)™ and the Product Leader Certification (PLC)™. 

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The PMC™ covers: 

• How you can land your first PM job
• The initial skills required to succeed 
• The hiring process and thriving in your new role 

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This certification is best for early career product professionals, or those looking to pivot into a product-focused role. 

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The PLC™ covers: 

• How you can get your next PM promotion
• Leveling up your leadership skills
• Taking ownership of product strategy

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This certification is best for those with established product careers who are looking to bolster their experience with more in-depth strategy and leadership skills to secure a promotion. 

Product Teacher

Product Teacher offers self-paced courses breaking down established strategies from experienced product professionals. The courses are backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee, so they’re a great option for those who don’t have a professional development budget to burn. Choose from a course on resumes, one on interviews, and another on onboarding. 

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Building a Winning PM Resume covers: 

• Learning what it is that hiring managers seek
• Product Teacher templates that can transform your resume 
• Resume writing, including clear expectations around product resumes 

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Solving the PM Interview covers: 

• Preparing for interviews realistically, with actual criteria you’ll be interviewed on  
• Diving into common interview questions beyond the surface level 
• Breaking down actionable and concise frameworks you can use 

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These two courses are perfect for early career product professionals who are looking to land their dream job, especially still in or recently out of school. They can also be helpful to more seasoned product professionals who need a boost in a competitive job market. 

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Succeeding as an Associate Product Manager covers: 

• A 90-day game plan
• Learning the fundamentals for smoother onboarding 
• And best of all, no previous PM knowledge is required! 

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This course is also perfect for early career product professionals or anyone who is pivoting to a product-focused role and will feel more confident going in with a solid foundation. It could also be extremely helpful to anyone working in a product-led company who wants a deeper understanding of the specific challenges faced by product teams, starting at the beginning. 

Pragmatic Marketing

Despite the name, Pragmatic Marketing offers certifications and training in both product marketing (more on those options in the next section) and product management. There’s even a short, interactive quiz available to figure out which is the right course for you. Choose from on-demand, live, or even in-person options. 

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For PMs, consider courses centered around Foundations, Focus, Design, and Build. 

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Product Marketing and Management Fundamentals (a prerequisite for their certifications) covers: 

• Understanding the market and its unique problems
• Using market knowledge to build and sell products people actually want to buy
• Mastering the Pragmatic Framework and what specifically is required to bring a successful product to market
• Learning to listen to the market, prioritize projects, and drive results

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This course is great for early career product professionals, those pivoting to a product role, and “everyone who has a stake in the product’s success in the market” according to Pragmatic themselves. 

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Strategic Product Planning covers: 

• Uncovering opportunities in your market’s problems, evaluating them objectively, and identifying where your organization’s strengths overlap with market values
• Building credibility with your work, including showing that a sizable market values the product, that it syncs with corporate strategy, and that it’s profitable 
• How to get internal buy-in 

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This course is great for mid-to-late career product professionals who are responsible for product direction and strategy – or who want to be. 

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The Product Design Course covers: 

• What it means to take a human-centered approach to market problems
• How you can best partner with designers to create intuitive products the market will respond to 
• Collaborating with designers to fully understand target users, reframe market problems to uncover new points of view, and use prototyping and market feedback to iterate on potential solutions

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This course is great for product professionals at any stage who work closely with a designer or design team (the freshest will want to cover Foundations first, of course) and want that collaboration to go as far as possible to ensure market adoption, improve customer satisfaction, and boost competitive advantage. 

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The Product Building Course covers: 

• Navigating the fine line between a robust feature set and a realistic timeframe for delivery with market-informed prioritizing and planning 
• Mastering a streamlined process for handing off market information to developers about who the product users are and what they’re trying to accomplish 
• Ensuring team alignment and focus on the features and products with the biggest impact 

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This course is great for all product professionals who write, prioritize, consume, use – or even dream – about requirements and user stories. 

The best courses for product marketing managers 

PMMs have their own unique set of challenges and skills they want to uplevel, so we put together a second list for those who want to forge the strongest bridge possible between the marketing and product sides of the river you’re constantly navigating. 

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Dive in with these. 

PMA

The Product Marketing Alliance offers a number of courses for PMMs at different price points. Some are combined into a Product Marketing Core certification on-demand or different bundles with a particular focus. 

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The PMM Core Certification covers everything you need to know from the ground up for product professionals at any stage of their career. It includes: 

• 11 modules 
• 101 chapters 
• 128 exam questions 
• 19+ hours
• Official certification 
• Optional coursework 
• Live weekly workshops
• And is 100% self-paced 

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They offer two bundles for those interested in pivoting to a PMM role: 

• Transitioning to PMM
• Breaking into PMM

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And several other bundle options if you’re a somewhat established product professional looking to expand your knowledge on certain aspects of your role:

• Understanding your customers for growth
• Science and art of developing a product story
• Customer research, market research, and CI 
• GTM and positioning
• Positioning and messaging for GTM success 

Pragmatic Marketing

Pragmatic Marketing offers certifications and training in product marketing and product management (see the previous section for those options). For PMMs, we recommend the Foundations course along with those focused on Market, Launch, Pricing, and Insights. 

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Product Marketing and Management Fundamentals (a prerequisite for their certifications) covers: 

• Understanding the market and its unique problems
• Using market knowledge to build and sell products people actually want to buy
• Mastering the Pragmatic Framework and what specifically is required to bring a successful product to market
• Learning to listen to the market, prioritize projects, and drive results

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This course is great for early career product professionals, those pivoting to a product role, and “everyone who has a stake in the product’s success in the market” according to Pragmatic themselves. 

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The Product Launch Course covers: 

• How to create a more strategic approach with launches to surpass your organization’s goals 
• Aligning your entire organization on strategies and goals to drive successful launches 
• Sales enablement, or empowering sales with the tools and training they need to succeed
• Syncing – and ideally harmonizing – the buying and selling processes

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This course is great for mid-to-later career professionals in product roles who are responsible for product launches or sales enablement, or early career professionals who want to better understand the launch process before they have to be in charge of it. 

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The Product Marketing Course covers: 

• How to develop a thorough understanding of your buyers and how they like to buy so you can build PMM strategies that deliver results
• Aligning across go-to-market (GTM) teams to prioritize the right PMM strategies by effectively sharing and leveraging that deep buyer knowledge 
• Measuring your strategies against the most impactful metrics for your organization, focusing on outcomes and impact, not vanity numbers 

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This course is best for anyone moving into a product marketing role, or anyone finding themselves responsible for setting GTM strategies. 

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The Product Pricing Strategy Course covers: 

• Approaching pricing in a proven way, incorporating what the market is willing to pay while still supporting your organization’s strategies 
• How to evaluate the competitive market environment and how it impacts pricing
• Creating strategies for price segmentation based on information around the product, customers, and transactions
• Implementing, tracking, and measuring pricing strategies, including total cost of ownership (TOC) 

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This course is great for mid-to-later career professionals who make or influence product pricing decisions, are responsible for packaging and segmentation, or determine which products to build. 

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The Product Marketing Insight Course covers: 

• Incorporating data into product practices and decisions in a grounded, actionable way 
• Uncovering and prioritizing the problems you should be solving by identifying patterns within your data
• Establishing a process that’s scalable and repeatable for successful data projects
• Using data to strengthen roadmaps, GTM plans, presentations, and more across your team and organization 

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This course is a good one for product professionals at any stage of their career who want to harness the potential of their data to drive strategy within their organization and make more informed decisions. 

Ready for Launch 

Maven offers a course on product launches that’s geared specifically toward PMMs and taught by Tamara Grominsky, Andrew McCotter-Bicknell, and Jason Oakley – all three established product marketing leaders. Grominsky is the Founder of PMM Camp and previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at Unbounce and VP of Product Marketing at Kajabi. McCotter-Bicknell is the Founder of Healthy Competition and has built competitive intel programs at Apollo.io, ClickUp, and ZoomInfo. Oakley is the Founder of Productive PMM and previously led Product Marketing teams at Klue, Chili Piper, and Uberflip. 

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The course is called Ready for Launch - The PMM's Guide to Product Launches and it’s designed for both early and growth-stage B2B Product Marketers.

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Ready for Launch covers: 

• Market and competitive research
• Segmentation, pricing, and positioning
• Launch execution and enablement 
• Post-launch measurement and strategy 

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Looking for coaching instead of a course? Grominsky also offers leadership coaching for product marketers who want to bring their all to their role, often battling against a boss who doesn’t understand product. 

Yi Lin Pei's course

Yi Lin Pei is another established product marketing leader who offers coaching to early career PMMs who are new to the field or looking to land their dream job in a competitive marketplace. She offers a free consultation and three different focuses. 

 

• Land: for those who want to land their dream PMM role
• Grow: for those who want to grow in their PMM role
• Thrive: for those who want to grow their career into leadership 

Back to school 

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your job, always thinking you’ll have more time in the future “when things finally slow down” to take a course or get to that other project you know can give your career a boost. 

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Unfortunately, the perfect time does not exist. So grab the time you have now, declare it good enough, and sharpen those metaphorical pencils as you head back to the product schooling of your choice. 

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Want more on team alignment so you can hit the ground running across PMs, PMMs, and more in the new year? Check out 5 Signs Your Product, Marketing, and Sales Teams Aren’t Aligned (and How to Fix It).