Product Marketing / Demand Gen Alignment

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

I’ve not personally sat on a product team (so I’m admittedly biased.) But I would vote for it to live in marketing. Here’s why - the essential functions of these teams are different: Product Team - e

50 Saves

Savita Kini

Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • March 11

I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If PM team is strong enough to own end-t

45 Saves

Pulkit Agrawal

Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • July 4

Based on some research we did (admittendly small sample size), we found that 2/3 report to CMO / VP Marketing and only ~10% to Product. Source: A New Definition of Product Marketing At this stage

25 Saves

Devang Sachdev

Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI • July 9

Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin. Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I have had product marketers on my team, and as a

84 Saves

Alexa Scordato

PMO at TikTok • August 13

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 wi

34 Saves

Dan Laufer

CEO at PipeDreams Ventures • January 14

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

48 Saves

Teresa Haun

Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk • February 4

I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk an

120 Saves

Jon Rooney

Vice President Product Marketing at Unity | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • February 9

I firmly believe that Product Marketing should report into the Marketing org for one central reason: PMM is a communications-driven role requiring the ability to effectively craft and convey messages

48 Saves

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The

51 Saves

Julian Dunn

Senior Director of Product Management at GitHub • June 13

I've reported into both in my career and the best I can come up with is "it depends". As an overall philosophy, I would generally prefer to report into marketing, because it creates the right level of

31 Saves

Carlos González de Villaumbrosia

CEO at Product School • July 15

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

19 Saves

Nayab Nazir

Product Marketing Manager at Metric • March 10

I believe it should always report to Marketing as the role directly links with messaging, personas, and understanding customers and all these things come into marketing. This is exactly how we are des

1 Save

How is the PMM team structured by product line, segment, function or by objective (ie. revenue retention, product engagement, etc)?

2 answers

Loren Elia

Global Head Of Product Marketing at Xero • January 23

I think that depends on your company goals. At HoneyBook we've identified a specific segment that has the best product-market fit, so we're solely focusing on that segment. Therefore it makes more sen

37 Saves

Jarod Greene

Vice President Product and Customer Marketing at Highspot • August 10

I've seen organizational structures of all types over the last 10 years and have grown to appreciate a function with clear roles and responsibilities. The most common configuration (and the one I've h

11 Saves

How have your product marketing teams traditionally worked with your demand generation / growth marketing team?

At our company, demand gen is a much bigger function than product marketing so they drive all of the campaigns with our input, but I came from an organization where we lead the campaign strategy a bit more since we had more numbers. Anyone have a good solid process they use with their demand gen team?

12 answers

Feng Hong

Global Product Marketing Manager at TikTok • July 18

Always an interesting question. What's the leadership structure of the marketing team? Is there a director of product marketingand what does the demand gen team expect from the PMM team?To me, those s

68 Saves

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

In my experience, product marketing is the nucleus of the marketing team - driving and informing strategy for demand generation, sales enablement, and other channel owners (field, content, etc). Go

120 Saves

Elizabeth Brigham

Director, The Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Davidson College • January 30

Hi everyone! Great to be here with you today! Thanks for sending me so many thoughtful questions...digging in now! This is a tricky one as I've seen 3 different models in my recent career history: M

116 Saves

Savita Kini

Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • February 4

Love your above answer. Even campaign plans have to be defined together because demand gen team will need guidance on - who to target - type of customers - segments, size, revenue, etc - what typ

76 Saves

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

As a PMM I’ve always had a close relationship with demand gen, from startups to public companies.Here’s what we do together and what we each own separately:Together we discuss themes and ideas but dem

109 Saves

2 Replies

Akshay Kerkar

Head of Product Marketing, Platform & Commerce at Atlassian • December 22

Great question! Demand Gen team tend to be bigger than PMM teams, and also have access to a lot more budget :) Modern PMM teams should consider pipeline (and ultimately revenue) to be their primary su

107 Saves

Kevin Au

Vice President Of Product Management at BILL • February 23

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

67 Saves

Chris Glanzman

Director of Product Marketing & Demand Generation at ESO | Formerly Fortive • August 5

At smaller companies, DG/Growth and Product Marketing are typically the same team (or person!), and the two functions should try to work just as closely together as companies grow. The hub of this col

39 Saves

Jeff Hardison

Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • August 10

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

68 Saves

April Rassa

Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • January 18

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

53 Saves

Kacy Boone

Head of Growth Marketing at Clockwise • May 25

This is such a great example about how you can’t necessarily take a standard playbook and apply it to every company. The dynamics of team size, resourcing, stage of company, all factor in to how you a

25 Saves

Tracy Montour

Head of Product Marketing at HiredScore • August 2

A solid DACI will create the R+R boundaries you need for your organization. No matter what R+R you align on, a close relationship beween demand gen and PMM is essential for growth. I recommend align

7 Saves

What does your product marketing team do differently when executing on an account based marketing strategy compared to traditional marketing?

6 answers

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

To put it simply, ABM is a more targeted approach to storytelling and demand generation. Instead of telling 1 or 2 broad stories to large groups of prospects and/or leads, ABM forces the PMM team to

52 Saves

Jena Donlin

Product Marketing Lead at Snowflake • January 30

Building on Jennifer's reply above, we have 4 tiers. We aim to do proactive work (meaning working with BDRs, sales, account managers, success team) to identify a way to engage, grow, or expand an acco

37 Saves

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

With traditional marketing we have a wider audience and are doing a marketing volume play and casting a wider net. With an ABM strategy we know exactly who we want to go after and it’s a targeted, sma

37 Saves

Mandy Schafer

Director of Product Marketing at Mastercard • June 15

ABM is near and dear to my heart as I was in the middle of the tornado that spun up the term ABM during my time at Demandbase. As the PMM there at the time, we not only defined what ABM was, but also

29 Saves

Alina Fu

Head of Marketing for Viva Goals and Learning (Director) at Microsoft • November 30

ABM is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as we just announced 7 new ABM integrations and hosted a webinar about ABM strategies. Data-driven marketing has extended beyond analytics, social, SE

16 Saves

April Rassa

Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • January 18

Traditional B2B marketing is often done through broad-reaching campaigns. Most marketers try to get their word out—as far and as wide as possible—by leveraging different marketing channels: owned, ear

18 Saves

How do you break down responsibilities and KPI's for product launches between demand generation and product marketing?

9 answers

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

I believe that the person ultimately responsible for the results, will most incentivized to succeed. So it comes down to ensuring incentives are aligned and expectations and responsibilities are clear

73 Saves

Dave Daniels

Founder at BrainKraft • April 2

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 propo

29 Saves

Katherine Kelly

Head of Product Marketing at Benchling | Formerly ExactTarget (Salesforce Marketing Cloud), Zendesk, Slack, Salesforce • July 30

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 fail

64 Saves

Mike Polner

Head of Marketing at Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 12

Great question. I would first caveat that this is something we're always working on, so if you haven't figured it out yet, don't worry, goal setting, responsibilities, and KPIs are always a work in pr

108 Saves

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

At two previous companies I worked at (Zuora and Hired) we have OKRs and each group creates their own and works with each other to define theirs. We can also view everyone's OKRs in our Workboard too

69 Saves

Priya Patel

Vice President, Product Marketing at TripActions • March 16

As the driver of the overall success of a launch, typically the PMM is responsible for the overall metrics around a launch. These can drill down into KPI categories like: Sales (ARR), Product (adoptio

67 Saves

Suyog Deshpande

Sr. Director | Head Of Product & Partner Marketing at Samsara • May 12

A simple answer to this is that as a PMM, you are responsible for product launches and the GTM strategy around those launches. So, you will ultimately own all launch metrics. However, things like Pipe

93 Saves

Chris Glanzman

Director of Product Marketing & Demand Generation at ESO | Formerly Fortive • August 23

This is really two questions with very different answers: KPI's: Especially for KPI's, drawing a solid line between Product Marketing and Demand Gen is unnecessary; it could even cause harm to collabo

10 Saves

Leah Brite

Head of Product Marketing, Core Product at Gusto • September 30

Upfront, I just want to call out something that you all likely already know - PMM’s strategic and interconnected role makes it difficult to pinpoint and measure impact. Strategic, foundational work

31 Saves

How do you figure out how to spend your time between doing product marketing as demand gen, engagement, retention, and sales?

3 answers

Ruturaj Patil

Product Manager at Google • October 10

I would recommend try to apply the common rule "80% of the business comes from 20% of the customers". We have our customers divided into 3 segments: New-New: Completely new to the organization Exist

16 Saves

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

Every PMM should answer this question based on 2 factors -- the needs of the business and the strength of the funnel. (1) Org & Biz Needs - If you have a strong sales team established with sky-h

66 Saves

Gregg Miller

VP of Product Marketing at Oyster® • September 24

I agree with the great points made by Jennifer and Ruturaj, but want to add that the stage of the company matters quite a bit as well. For young companies, it is often beneficial to get engagement a

35 Saves

Any suggestions on list building strategies for new startups?

1 answer