Why Every Product Team Needs a Marketing Manager

Product Marketing Managers are little different from the other members of the product team. This is not because they are any less important, but because the Product Marketing Manager is usually not a full-time, dedicated member of each product team. Product marketing is most typically organized by customer-facing product, by target market, or sometimes by go-to-market channel, especially for more established companies (e.g. enterprise, vertical, mid-market). There are typically fewer product marketers than product teams. Therefore Product marketing is a subset of the product management field.

The reason why companies exist is to make profit. A company is successful in making profit only if it can deliver products which add value in people’s daily life. To do this the company must continuously innovate and bring successful products on the market. The more often the company does this, the longer it stays in business. Hence, Product marketing sits at the heart of any company that wants to have a long term successful business.

As a discipline, The Product Marketing describes the strategies, tactics, and action plans used put in motion to bring products to their respective markets and contribute to their success. Product marketing is the driving force behind a product’s ability to remain relevant to its target audience throughout the different stages of its life cycle, because of its nature product marketing values. The thoughts, feelings and attitudes of product users along with the specific business and overarching goals of the product shareholders to craft a marketing strategy that helps to propel sales, build product awareness and lay the foundation for business success.

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF A PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER?

If you start your own Start-Up business, for a while until you have a stable market for your products, you can try different approaches to put your first product on the market, it’s ok to let your Product Manager to take case of marketing tasks too. But once your business starts to gets traction the product marketing will play an essential role in discovery, , delivery, and, ultimately, go-to-market strategies, then you will absolutely need a Product Marketing Manager to work with your product development team.

Product marketing managers work at the intersection of product development, marketing, and sales. Their broad responsibility is to develop and implement a marketing strategy roadmap for a specific product.

A Product Marketing Manager is not the supervisor of the product design team, that’s rather the responsability of Product Owner or Product Manager.

However, in order to successfully reach their goal, product marketing managers typically work with colleagues across many departments throughout the product’s life cycle including product design team, marketing managers and sales team. As their title suggests, product marketing managers focus heavily on marketing, so they often coordinate efforts with strategists across various marketing disciplines, including digital, social media, brand, and market research. Hence in the best tech product companies, product marketing plays an essential role in discovery, delivery and ultimately, go-to-market which is why they are important members of the product team.

WHAT A PRODUCT MANAGER DOES?

Product Marketing Managers are the central figure for all marketing related initiatives and activities for the product. They are the go-to person within the organization for stakeholders and shareholders alike for details, information, suggestions or concerns, related to the marketing of the product, consequently here they play a significant role in product advertisements such as press releases. They also take charge of products launches, go to market strategies, marketing campaigns, brand marketing and other product related aspects and are usually the ones who have the final say in all of these areas. PMMs are the relationship builders sitting at the intersection of product sales and marketing, forging ties with account executives, data scientists, product designers, data engineers, engineering managers, senior software engineers, and even technical writers to ensure that their marketing strategies has the necessary support to be a success.

Coming up with winning products is never easy. We need a product that our customers love, yet also works for our business.However, a very large component of what is meant by works for our business is that there is a real market there (large enough to sustain a business), we can successfully differentiate from the many competitors out there, we can cost-effectively acquire and engage new customers, and we have the go-to-market channels and capabilities required to get our product into the hands of our customers. Product Marketing Managers is our critical partner in this.

Modern product marketing managers represent the market to the product team-the positioning, the messaging, and a winning go-to-market plan. They are deeply engaged with the sales channel and know their capabilities, limitations, and current competitive issues.

The nature of product marketing is a bit different, depending on the type of business you have and how your product gets to market. When you make products for businesses that are sold through either a direct sales force or a channel sales organization, it is a very significant and critical job to declare the positioning – by that I mean the market position the product must occupy, in addition to the messaging – digital content assets, sales tools, and training that enable sales to effectively sell.

On one hand If your company has a sales organization, and you don’t have a product marketing partner, then this responsibility likely falls on you as Product Manager. This can easily become a full-time job. And given the cost of the sales organization, it’s really not an option to ignore them. But, of course, if you’re spending your day helping the sales organization, who is figuring out the product for these people to sell?

Yet, on the other hand, If your company sells directly to consumers, it becomes easy for the marketing teams to focus on clicks and brand at the expense of ensuring all the product work adds up to a successfully differentiated market position. This is important to the long-term prospects of any company but also brings more meaning into all the work the product team does.It is very much in your best interest to make sure you have a Product Marketing Manager to work with, and it’s absolutely worth your time to make sure you understand the market – and your product marketing colleague understands the product – well enough for each of you to be successful. There are many important interactions throughout discovery and delivery, so it’s worth making a special effort to develop and maintain a strong working relationship with your product marketing colleague.

For example, ensuring the product team is getting good signal from a broad enough representation of the market. It also becomes important in the messaging and deciding on the go-to-market plan based on these early product signals.

Note here that I am talking about the modern definition of the product marketing role. I am not describing the old model wherein product marketing was responsible for defining the product, and product management was primarily responsible for working with engineering to deliver that product. Having a strong product marketing partner does not diminish in any sense the product manager’s responsibility for delivering a successful product. The best product marketing manager and product manager relationships understand their respective roles but realize they are essential to each other’s success.

Differences between PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGERS and PRODUCT MANAGERS.

A PMM is not the same role with PM. This is often a point of contention even among product team members despite the fact that there are clear distinctions between the two.

A Product Marketing Manager is a marketing role that falls under the broad umbrella of product management and entails handling all the marketing related activities that help distill the message and communication of the product value to the end customers. For example the PMM communicates the value of a specific product or products to people outside of the organization, such as potential buyers, clients, or investors.

A Product Manager on the other hand oversees the complete product roadmap from setting the vision to bringing it to market. You can think of a Product Manager as a jack of all trades whereas a Product Marketer has a more focused role.

As far as accountability and reporting structures are concerned it all depends on the unique organizational structure of your company. Traditionally product managers and product marketing managers work together on the same level and the hierarchy with the latter reporting to the former and other key stakeholders. In short, The Product Manager (PM) oversees strategy as a product moves through the design and build process, while A Product Marketing Manager (PMM) oversees the public-facing communication strategy for a product.