AMA: Snow Software Vice President Product Marketing, Becky Trevino on Product Marketing vs Product Management

I recently had a member of my team leave Product Marketing to become a Product Manager. We spent a few months talking through and planning this transition. During this process, what I learned is that the decision to be a PM or PMM comes down to where you enjoy spending your time. PM and PMM are both focused on solving customer problems. They just go about it in different ways. The PM works to build a product that solves the problem whereas the PMM focuses on building the go-to-market strategy required for that customer to know that a product exists in market that can solve their problem. Both roles are important but different people thrive in the role. A good product manager needs to feel comfortable not only understanding a customer but also will need to hold their own when working with engineering and design. While part of a dedicated team, neither design nor engineering report into PM. A good PM works closely with her extended team and this means a lot of time in Jira understanding user stories and understanding the product backlog. If working at the user versus buyer persona feels best to you and you enjoy the idea of partnering closer to design and engineering, then Product Management may be a good next step for you.

This answer really depends on the partnership between PM and PMM at your organization. Are you the type of company where PM and PMM are partners? Or are you the type of organization where both groups operate in different silos? If there is a strong partnership, then the PMM should be just as valuable a team member to the PM as their Designer or Engineer. Strong PMMs bring the voice of the market – the positioning, messaging, insights from win/loss, voice of the field, and insights from winning/failed marketing plans – into the product development lifecycle. At the end of the day, “what to build” should always fall to Product Management. However, PMM should be one of the strong inputs (including your take on market opportunity and customer feedback) the PM listens to when making the final decision on what should and should not be prioritized.

When looking at the product lifecycle, I typically refer to a framework like Product School’s 7 Phases of Product Development: • Phase 1 – Discovery • Phase 2 – Define • Phase 3 – Design • Phase 4 – Implementation • Phase 5 – Marketing • Phase 6 – Training • Phase 7 - Launch The critical points for collaboration occur in phases 5 – 7 described above. In these stages, the PM and PMM work together on messaging & positioning, value proposition, train the sales teams, and build a go-to-market that will lead to the official release of this new product and feature. While these final 3 phases are the most critical, I would argue that the best run PM and PMM organizations bring PMMs into the product development process much earlier than Phase 5. My preference is that PMMs be brought in at Phase 1 – Discovery. If you are brought in at the onset, you will have a better understanding of the customer and the market enabling you to have an improved perspective on how the narrative may need to adapt. A clear line that can be drawn in ownership involves groups you support in getting a product to market. PMM teams I have led typically own any part of the launch plan involving Sales, Sales Enablement, Partner Enablement, and Marketing. PM’s often own training Sales Engineers, Technical Support, Professional Services, and ensuring the demo environment has been updated with new features. If PM and PMM have done a good job at collaboration, key deliverables such as value prop, messaging hierarchies, use case updates have been completed before Phase 5 of the product development process. Link 7 Phases - https://productschool.com/blog/product-management-2/career-path/7-phases-of-product-development/

My biggest advice is be customer-focused. I am a big believer in PMM being a strategic partner to Product Management. Beyond this simply being my belief, it is hard to build a strong PMM organization unless the business sees the function as strategic. One of the ways in which I've helped Product Marketing to be viewed as an important and strategic function of the business is by influencing the product roadmap. Each PMM on my team - including myself - is involved at Product Discovery. The reason we're involved is that we come into the discussion with a strong understanding of the market, our customer (in particular the buyer persona), the competitive landscape, win-loss data within sales, campaign performance, and with data on how our products are performing (e.g. pipeline/bookings) by region/customer/by channel. At Snow, we subscribe to the notion that Product Marketing is measurable. The PM role is simply too large to own all of what I just described in the last paragraph. If you are known as someone who understands the customer and you are in possession of data than can help support product in prioritization, then you can get that set at the Product table that you are seeking.

There is no one-size-fits-all response to this answer. At Snow Software, where I lead Product Marketing and Operations, pricing falls under me. Prior to my arrival, pricing fell under Product Management. I had an interest in owning pricing and the Product Management lead did not, so it was a quite simple decision. We recently hired a Pricing Manager who works closely with Sales Operations and partners with PM and PMM on pricing strategy. When Product Management owns pricing, I would see the role of the PMM as providing feedback on pricing via Win-Loss Analysis. Pricing is one of the 4Ps of Marketing and can be a very important lever in your GTM. It is wise to have a pulse on Average Deal Size, Average Discount, and whether your price is causing you to win/lose deals. Another area where PMM can partner on Pricing if it does not fall under PMM is packaging. Based on your research into win-loss, you may be able to see patterns where a different bundle or package is better suited to solving the customer problem. Note: Many large organizations have specialized pricing departments that report into a Head of Pricing that reports into Finance, Market Intelligence, or another group. In this case, neither PM nor PMM own the function.

When the transfer of information between PM and PMM occurs via a Project Brief, it is essential that the PM include a good description of the market problem this feature/product is intended to solve, why is this problem worth pursuing, who cares about it, why is our solution different than anything else the target customer could have purchased in market, and key use cases. The use case information should be broken down into feature and benefits.

The job of Product Management should be to focus on solving customers problems not simply shipping new features no one is going to use. If this behavior is isolated to one Product Manager, then I would work closely with that PM to understand the key metrics of success for that feature which should relate back to some form of product adoption. If this behavior is broad – meaning the entire PM organization cares more about shipping features than solving customer problems – then this is a very tough problem. You can’t solve this yourself. Only the Head of Product can solve this problem and if he/she doesn’t see this as a problem, then that is the problem itself.

In-app copy typically falls under Product Marketing. If it is something you do not own today, my advice would be to work with the Design/PM team who is currently owning this to understand how you can contribute/collaborate. For technical products, I often find PM/Engineering actually choose to own the copy. There may be some bias that they understand the customer better than you do. There is no rule for ownership but if it is something you want to do then I would talk to your extended team and show them why PMM owning in-app copy is the best plan for your business. Ensure you understand their concerns.

One of the pillars of Product Marketing at Snow Software – where I work – is that we should “Be the glue between Marketing, Product, and Sales Enablement”. While this sounds great, it is hard. A rock star PMM serves the needs of these three customers equally. However, for most of us it’s really hard to have an A+ relationship with these three groups at the same time. For most of us, if we have an A+ with Marketing, then we’re usually managing a B+ with both Product and Enablement. In my view, it’s helpful to focus on getting everything right with one group and understanding that while you’re doing that some gaps may occur in one of the other two. My frustration with this is that I want to be an A+ for everyone all the time. It's just not possible and that frankly frustrates me endlessly.

The most important business objective for Product Marketing is to help the business achieve its sales targets – for some businesses this will be measured in MRR or ACV. However you measure this number, ensure you understand PMMs role in helping the organization meet it. This is the most important thing PMM can do and everything we prioritize needs to tie back to it. If it does not, then we should not be working on it.