How do product managers and product marketers share the voice of the customer responsibilities?

Good question. I view product management and product marketing as close partners since we co-own the strategy and business outcome. Cannot say I have best practices, rather some guiding principles of how I would like to see us work together. 1. Involve each other early. I hate the model where the product team does a hard handoff to product marketing only when the product/ feature is ready to launch. PM, PMM, as well as other disciplines like Design, Engineering, and Data Science all bring unique perspectives to problem solving. You are much better off involving each other ...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? 1. PMMs need to clarify their role. This sometimes depends on the leader's ability to communicate their team's functions, however i...more

Think of a restaurant with front and back of the house. Back of house is prepping, cooking and organizing the food for front of the house to position, serve and engage the customers. Another way to look at this is front of the house understands what the customers want, thier expecations, reactions and provides feedback to back of the house to prioritze what food is being prepared. This symboitic relationship is anlogous to PMM (front of house), PM (liason between front and back of house) and engineer (back of house). PMM needs to understand the customer persona, market and positioning. PM s...more