Product Marketing / Demand Gen Alignment

At Bill.com, we work extremely close to our growth marketing teams. They are a critical partner as we launch and scale-up our growth. Both groups have their strengths. For the PMM, we have the deep knowledge about the customer needs to clearly articulate the value prop that will resonate most with this segment. For the growth marketer, they have the expertise on how to reach this segment and what is the best way to do so. It feels like a 50/50 partnership with co-owned KPIs and regardless of who "owns" the campaign, it requires tight partnership to be successful.

First, I try real hard to let go of my ego and temporarily forget about the past (e.g., how I worked with demand gen in another company). Every company’s marketing department is structured differently, and it’s important to quickly adapt.

Then, I try to be human and have a conversation with each demand gen person, asking how can we help them achieve their goals. Sign up for some activities to help them with some shared KPIs. Once you get some shared wins, other departments tend to start trusting you more. Then, they might allow you to weigh in on their strategy too. 

Addressed a similar question related to Campaign teams earlier. Please refer to that response. 

In short, Product marketing is the vital work of developing a customer lifecycle journey, pricing, sales support materials, analyst relations, and press. Demand generation consumes the outputs from product marketing and injects them into marketing machinery that delivers content to prospects at scale consistently.

My answer is predicated on product marketing owning the launch and deman gen having a component of the launch. Product marketing provides the target buyers, the target market segments, the value proposition, and translates launch goals into lead gen objectives. Lead gen has what they need to plan and execute.

We have partnered with our integrated campaigns team to formalize roles and responsibilites and then we actually aim to share KPIs. I think it makes us stronger to feel like we are succeeding and failing together vs being able to say Product Marketing "succeeded" in a quarter where we didn't hit our pipeline target if that makes sense.

In general for launches, the PMM is the QB. PMM owns the overall metrics around a launch, which can drill down into Product (adoption or engagement), PR/Comms (coverage), Social (likes, new followers, engagement), Web (traffic, demo requests, form submits), Demand Gen (will detail below) KPIs. 

Demand Gen KPIs are:

Email engagement

MQLs

SQLs and/or SALs

Influenced or generated pipeline

In terms of responsibilities, this can obviously depend on the size of your organization, but if you have a built out demand gen team, respons

In general for launches, the PMM is the QB. PMM owns the overall metrics around a launch, which can drill down into Product (adoption or engagement), PR/Comms (coverage), Social (likes, new followers, engagement), Web (traffic, demo requests, form submits), Demand Gen (will detail below) KPIs. 

Demand Gen KPIs are:

Email engagement

MQLs

SQLs and/or SALs

Influenced or generated pipeline

In terms of responsibilities, this can obviously depend on the size of your organization, but if you have a built out demand gen team, respons

Thoughtful answers, Feng! In my experience, resource-wise its best to be with the marketing team & budget. Tech-wise, product. If you want to pull your hair out all the time, sales :)

This reminds me of the classic "SDR team in sales or marketing" debate. The answer is that it can work in either place and really doesn't matter as long as PMM and the rest of marketing are communicating and working together effectively. If that's not happening, you have a much bigger issue that no org chart can fix. 

It can work in many places, but I find it to be the most effective if it is either within Marketing or on its own entirely so that marketing is properly on message. I often draw a venn diagram of product marketing. Product marketing has changed dramatically since the days when the Pragmatic framework was the be-all and end-all of a product organization. At the end of the day, product marketing inspires marketing, enables sales and influences product. 

This is related to the question above with regards to marketing's ability to influence the roadmap. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's a matter of the role a CEO wants marketing to play within the organization. When a product is nascent or acting as a challenger within the market, I firmly believe marketing should have a big seat at the table and really shape the vision, voice, and brand at a company. 

There are good arguments for either. My team is in the marketing org so I have a bias towards that structure :)

Ultimately it comes down to people and where you think PMM can have the most impact and benefit from a resourcing and influence standpoint. I don't think there's a dogmatic answer or a simple framework to decide though.

A Product Marketing Manager’s position varies depending on the company. However, you will find yourself from time to time working very closely together with the PM and count yourselves as part of the team. So depending on the situation, company organization, and phase you are at it will be advisable to report to the PM, the CMO, or Head of Marketing.