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 re ...Read More

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 reas ...Read More

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, ...Read More

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 s ...Read More

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/f ...Read More

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 - LaunchThe 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 ...Read More

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 to ...Read More

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 ...Read More