AMA: Zendesk Former Group Product Manager, Abhiroop Basu on Product Management vs Product Marketing

Pricing and packaging is typically a PMM function. P&P is typically a business decision. In general, PMMs own business and go-to-market decisions, while PMs own the user experience and the product roadmap. And P&P falls into the former.  Product should have a perspective on which features to build. Pricing and packaging refreshes typically happen because the composition of your existing product has changed materially (i.e. a lot of new features have been launched, new acquisitions, etc). ...Read More

I love this question since I recently made the PMM to PM transition! Focus on transferrable skills. Three of the most important PM skills include: communication, leading through influence, and problem solving. PMMs looking to transfer into a PM role should ensure they are strong in all three. Leverage institutional knowledge. It's much easier to transition from PMM to PM in your current company than applying to a new position in a different company. In your existing PMM role you are likely to kn ...Read More

Usually Marketing, but in some smaller companies Product. PMs and PMMs will almost always have very close relationships (and if you don't then that's a problem). So, it usually doesn't matter which organization PMM reports into. However, at larger companies there can be some misalignment of priorities if PMMs report into the product management team. PMM teams that report into product become too narrowly focused on launches. PMMs typically cover a wide range of responsibilities, beyond just featu ...Read More

Both roles are quite tough to get into without experience, but PM is marginally easier. Companies will typically have more PMs than PMMs. The PMM to PM ratio is roughly 1:4. Even if the company prioritizes PMM roles, it's rare that the ratio will get higher than 1:2. There are fewer PMM roles in the industry. Just doing a quick search on LinkedIn shows that there are about ~100k open PMM roles, while there are about ~280k open PM roles.  PMs typically get hired first. Most companies will start w ...Read More

PMM and PM roles vary greatly across companies, but there are some common differences: PMMs are the market and competitor experts. Unless the company is very small, a PM who is an individual contributor typically "owns" a narrower segment of the overall product. In contrast, a PMM typically looks across a wider range of the product and market. So, the PMM should bring that knowledge and experience to bear in the relationship  PMs are the product experts. Unsurprinsgly, PMs know more about their ...Read More

Trust is the most important factor in a PM / PMM relationship. When I was a PMM, I worked with many Product Managers who did not understand the role of a PMM. They believed that the PMMs only role was to communicate the launch of a feature. This misconception often stems from the fact that in some teams PMs doesn't see value beyond the feature launch and PMMs do little to dispel the notion.  So, how do PMMs and PMs build trust and work more effectively? PMMs need to clarify their role. This some ...Read More