Where does Product Ops end and Product Marketing begin?
1 Answer
Casey Flinn
Realtor.com Sr. Director, Product Operations • February 23
I’m going to sound like a broken record, but we should really be looking at Product Ops as a way to force multiply the work of our teams vs. carving out responsibilities from other roles and giving them to Product Ops. If you don’t have any Product Marketing Managers (PMM), maybe you would ask Product Ops to take on some PMM functions (like GTM), but you should be asking why we aren’t hiring PMMs if that’s the case :)
Ok so then what does PMM "generally" do:
- Go-to-market (GTM) / Sales Enablement: You need to be binary here: Product Ops owns GTM 100% or Product Marketing does. And I mean end-to end ownership of GTM. Don’t cut in half. Its already complex enough to manage GTM activities between a PM and PMM, so if you insert a 3rd role/person in that relationship you are just going to set up Product Ops to be the "runner" of probably the least glamourous parts of GTM, and create a lot of waste and frustration.
- Competitive Research: I think that if you have a lot of PMMs doing this you could make this a force multiplier, but it can’t just be doing the research and saying "here are my notes from the earnings call." The bar should be higher and Product Ops should be briefing "everyone" on what this means, and delivering actionable insights in the context of your work/roadmaps to help PMMs, PMs, etc. move faster.
- Market Strategies and Monetization: This is a huge value that great PMMs bring and they spend years learning and mastering these aspects of the PMM role. Product Ops should not touch this IMHO
I love this question because it speaks to an anti-pattern, I see with Product Ops where some orgs see it as a way to scale by splitting a role to create more capacity / put 2-3 people in the "same box." Might sound great on paper, probably not so much for the people in those roles.
1108 Views
Related Ask Me Anything Sessions
Google Group Product Manager, Google Assistant, Neel Joshion Consumer Product Management
ServiceNow Director of Product Management, Rosa Gonzalez Weltonon Consumer Product Management
Twilio Sr. Dir, Product - Carrier Relations, Katie Cubillason Product Operations and GTM
Top Product Management Mentors
Paresh Vakhariya
Atlassian Director of Product Management (Confluence)
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning
Kellet Atkinson
Triple Whale 🐳 Director of Product Management
Nicolas Liatti
Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category
Clara Lee
PayPal VP, Product
Sheila Hara
Barracuda Sr. Director, Product Management
Rupali Jain
Optimizely Chief Product Officer
Trisha Price
Pendo Chief Product Officer
Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management
Orit Golowinski
Anima Chief Product Officer
Related Questions
What does the career path for a product operations manager look like?How is Product Operations organized at Oscar Health? Where do you see the product operations field evolving over the next 5 years?What's a typical career path for a consumer product manager?What trends and shifts is consumer product management experiencing?What does a product operations manager need to be exceptional at compared to a product manager?