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Product Marketing vs Product Management
Product Marketing vs Product Management
7 answers
Director of Pricing and Packaging, Twilio Flex at Twilio | Formerly Narvar, Medallia, Helpshift, Feedzai, Reputation.com
Short answer. When you are more deep than broad. When you like things more than
people.
Long answer.
There are no rules to this. Skills evolve and change over time. You may want to
pursue an option longer term even if the fit is weak today. That being said, PMs
tend to be more detail-oriented than PMMs. They have to be, writing a 6 page PRD
that accounts for all edge cases is something that takes a lot of depth and
intellectual rigor. PMMs have a different challenge, they need to look at the
forest from the trees, and map out strategy. PMMs need to change their focus
constantly, PMs...more
Group Product Manager at Zendesk
It comes down to which aspects of the role excite you the most. Depending on the
company you are working at, Product Marketing and Product Management can have a
lot of overlap. I’ll first discuss some of the similarities and differences in
the roles before summarizing how you should think about making the choice.
Early in my career I found this Medium article instructive in deciding which
path to pursue. Product Marketing really has two sets of functions, “outbound”
activities and “inbound” activities. Put simply, “outbound” Product Marketing
focuses on activities like developing marketi...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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 pro...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force
A few questions to ask yourself:
Do you want to be the mini-CEO of the product?
Do you have enough experience to appreciate how engineering operates to build a product?
Are you comfortable making major tradeoffs between direct customer requests and company strategic priorities?
Are you savvy enough to navigate tough decisions when requirements or quality are cut to meet deadlines?
Are you excited about documenting product strategy, epics, users stories and low level requirements?
If you answered yes to a majority of these, by all means seek out a role in PM.
Product Marketing Director, AR/VR at Meta | Formerly Mozilla, LeapFrog
Starting in CPG brand management I had the good fortune to wear both of these
hats (and many more!) early in my career. This ignited a love for both
disciplines and started me down a path where I'd jump back and forth between
them for about a decade (thanks to all my incredible managers who never forced
me to choose a lane!). There are similarities in the roles - which sometimes
creates confusion and tension - in the ways they focus on the end user,
influence through storytelling, sweat positioning and facilitate within complex
xfn environments, so it's natural for talented individuals to b...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
Interests: What kind of questions do you want to answer?
This is just my personal take, and probably oversimplified, but if you're driven
by optimization questions like "Who is getting the most value out of this?" "How
do we better articulate what this thing does?" "How do we increase close rates
at the enterprise?" then you're more likely to want to stay in PMM.
If you're driven by value creation questions like, "What would make this product
really exciting and engaging?" "How do we stay ahead of the competition?" "How
do we build world class experiences?" AND you're incredibly comfortab...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This question hits home for me. In a previous role, I explored the opportunity
to move to the PM org, so I did a bunch of research.
First, at a high level, I love the book "Designing Your Life." If you're into
self-reflection and personal growth books, this one's for you. It'll help you
zero in on the type of work that gives you energy vs drains your energy.
Then, I would do some candid interviews with PMs to understand what a day in the
life is like, because sometimes from the PMM perspective we're only seeing half
of the story.
My own personal takeaway was that a PM's process is ...more
3 answers
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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.
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
Customer segmentation—who cares the MOST, why are they using us, what are their
alternatives, why would they stay, why would they leave. Both qualitative
(interviews), and quantitative( (product usage and sales cycle data).
I think getting incredibly clear on user profiles, habits and motivations is a
critical input for every other area of the business. Things like posiitoning and
messaging fall out of user understanding, and the very downstream activities
many PMMs attach themselves to—things like enablement, demos, content creation,
pricing and packaging, etc can all actually be split...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This really depends on your business model, the org structure, and company
norms, but I can share the mission we developed for the PMM team here at Gong.
PMM deeply understands our customers, products, and market in order to deliver
the right product, to the right audience, with the right message.
This is the #1 objective, and the way you accomplish this is through a variety
of intiatives. Our top ones are:
1. Develop GTM strategy
2. Inform product strategy
3. Prioritize customer segments
4. Serve as subject matter experts for enabling the field
5. Evangelize our category, cust...more
6 answers
Group Manager, Engagement & Retention Campaigns at Adobe
The more context the better. PMMs should help to fill in the gaps, but a product brief should include:
- What problem this product / feature solves
- Who it solves for and insights about this audience
- Why we solve it differently (different > better)
- Timeline with milestones to get there
- Risks to timeline
- Broader context/ how this fits in with other things you're doing (or if it's brand new, why / how)
Others?
Director of Product Marketing at PandaDoc
I’ll probably need to write a blog post about it one day. :) For now, here is a brief summary of what we aligned on with the product team in terms of the categories of inputs we need to prepare a successful launch:
Earlier in the process:
1. Feature Description
2. Target Audience
3. Use Case and Customer Benefits
4. Timeline
Later in the process:
5. Business Objective
6. Availability (plans the feature will be available under – might not be relevant in your case)
7. Support Needed from Marketing
8. Linked to Product Assets
9. Additional Resources
Hope it's helpful. I'm happy to chat more!
CEO at Product School
This is a tricky question! I’d argue that there is more to the collaboration
between Product Management and Product Marketing than the effectiveness of the
Project Brief. However, you can read more about the relationship between PMMs
and PMs here .
As for what to include in the project (or Product) brief, it should outline (at
least) the following:
1. Product name and release date
2. Who the product is targeted to
3. Product description
4. Summary of the customer needs the product will meet
5. Customer value proposition
6. The impact the product will have on the customer
7. ...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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.
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
oh mylanta I love this question. I think a lot of this can be an interative
process with the PMM, but I think the things I see most often left out of these
documents that could completely change the way a new feature is positioned
includes:
- Not just what problem this solves, but how was the problem solved before this
feature existed? (Was there a workaround in our product, or did users lean on
external solutions?)
- Not just who will use the solution, but who, downstream, benefits from its
use?
- Not just the business value, but the value for an individual that will prompt
them t...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
There are different levels of information PMM needs from their PM partners
throughout the development process. Depending on how your product documentation
works, this information could entirely live in a product/feature brief or be
split up between the brief and the product spec.
At a high level, here's a deck we've used internally to build collaboration
between PM and PMM. To be honest, we don't always get the answers to these
questions in document format (or early enough), so sometimes this information is
shared in meetings.
Of course the size of the feature is a consideration as ...more
6 answers
Head of Marketing at Instacart
In my experience, the most powerful tool for influencing the Product Roadmap as
a PMM is customer insights. If you can clearly demonstrate customer pain points
and inspire empathy, that tees up the opportunity to be part of the discussion
around how you might meet those needs through product solutions. From a timeline
standpoint, I find aligning on prioritization to be the most effective lever.
One way to approach this is to look at the roadmap, estimate the business impact
of all key initiatives, and assess whether delivery dates should be re-stacked
to address the most impactful projects ...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at BlueVine
It’s really important to understand your product’s team development process. How is the Product team structured and why? What and when are their sprint cycles. How do new tasks get on the backlog and how is the backlog prioritized. If possible, attend backlog prioritization meetings so you can understand what information PMs look at when making decisions.
This will help you be much more strategic in how, when, and why you add on the backlog. Also it’s key to develop a close relationship with a few PMs so they can champion for you during the prioritization process.
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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...more
Global Head of Product Marketing at Grammarly | Formerly at: GOOG, MSFT, AMZN, SFDC + startups
I have always loved this quote by Robert Johnson (notably a musician, not a
product marketer!):
“Leadership is the ability to influence people and motivate them to do what
needs to be done to accomplish a goal, vision or mission.”
Those last three parts: goal, vision, and mission, are the keys to influence.
Know what you are trying to accomplish (the goal), the vision of where that
accomplishment will take you, and the why (the mission).
I always like to have a stack-ranked list of requested features/needs from
customers for priorities. Stack-ranked by impact. For timeline, I find th...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
As noted in a similar question above—DATA. But I don't think the word
"influence" is quite right. I really don't think PMMs should have an agenda when
it comes to roadmapping. I think our role is to represent the needs of users,
and bring data to PMs to help them navigate that decision making process.
We can provide:
* NPS score trends
* Customer interview themes
* Data on win/loss rates
* Insight into competitive investments
* Product feature usage by differnet personas
* Data on where folks get stuck in using the product
* Top questions asked in online forums and in support ticke...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
One area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is with market
and competitive insights. By bringing insights from the market, competitive
landscape, buyers, and/or analysts, PMM can ensure that product has considered
all inputs when they narrow down on their target user, pain points, and finally
solutioning.
Here is a deck we've used internally to help build collaboration between PM &
PMM. If you're still struggling with being brought in too late, my advice is to
focus on 1-2 deliverables that could really drive value for your product org.
Pilot that with a product group ...more
10 answers
VP, Product at Barracuda Networks
IME this should sit in engineering, but it's generally not a bad idea for the copy writer to solicit PMM feedback. PMM needs to be hyper focused on strategic tasks. This is a good example of a tactical distraction.
VP of Marketing at Spekit
If your company has the resources, I would advocate for there to be an in-app copy writer that sits under design. By putting them with design, they will have the shortest path to where the product is actually being made. That being said, they should be very aligned with both product management and product marketing.
In one of my past roles, it's been a combination of product management and product marketing who were responsible for it.
Director of Product Marketing at ClearVoice
We like keeping this with the PMM or a Product Manager/Owner, as the person writing this copy needs to be super familiar with the product and user experience. They need to be power users, IMO. Occasionally, I've leveraged Support or Customer Success Managers for this as well, becausr they are so familiar with the ins and outs of the user experience.
Another solution would be to have someone is design or engineering draft the basic copy and have a copywriter make it sound better.
Global Director, Business Strategy and Comms at TripActions
It depends on how big your company is! At large companies, there’s often a Content Strategy or Product Writing person or team that sits under Design. The PMM should ensure the in-product copy aligns with overall positioning, but is not the directly responsible person for that.
Absent a product writer, a PMM should work with a PM to deliver the right in-product copy.
Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Handshake
For my company, it's currently shared between product, product marketing and
design, but that's mostly a factor of being a startup and in the process of
building out each of those functions. I think about it in two ways:
1. Is the in-app copy descriptive of the product itself? Things like feature
names, onboarding wizard copy, CTAs make sense to cut across the three teams
I mentioned, with product and design having a heavy say in those decisions.
2. Is the in-app copy meant to drive conversion activity / sales conversations?
To me, this fits more with product marketing.
Ulti...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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 the...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force
In my opinion, PMM has a better vantage of customer needs and command of customer voice to produce best in app copy, product naming nomenclature and in-product guidance. This responsibility can be shared with UX and PM to ensure everyone is on the same page. Engineering and PM usually need a lot of help in this department as it is not their forte.
Senior Director Product Marketing at Fivetran
In-app copy does fit with Product Marketing - and Product! So technically, our
PM team owns the in-product experience but PMM has full access to the tool. We
have a slack channel for all in-app messaging and anyone who wants to do one
posts in there following a format that says the purpose, how long it will run,
to whom it will be shown, and a preview. Folks can ask questions, offer
suggestions, and then we give the approval to set live. The results of these go
into our quarterly retros.
If it is on our website itself - we use a Drift bot. That mostly lives with our
Demand Gen team but ...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
A few answers here, based on use case!
Naming inside the product (like features, tabs, or experiences) would be handled
by PMM during the launch process. PM is likely to have ideated an
internally-referenced name early on, but as we get past the beta and understand
what value users actually derive from the feature, PMM adjusts to better match
what the user would expect to see, for the task they want to complete.
Other copy in the product UI that describes what a function is, or does, in the
shortest and sharpest way, is handled by our design team (which sits inside our
product org).
...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This is always a gray area :)
At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product writing team, except for naming
"Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we established a list of criteria
that qualifies features or products as "Tier 1;" such as, the feature/product
changes core product pillar messaging, or requires customer change management,
or changes how we sell or demo the product. These are really dependent on your
business.
For in-app cues (like announcement banners/modals, etc), we've established a
RASCI model based on the objectives of the copy / in-app cue. I highly recommend
s...more
7 answers
Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI
tl:dr: Both and then some.
It is as important for product marketers to be involve in the inception stage as
it is when taking new feature/product to market. Features that are built in
vacuum seldom stick or give your product a market advantage. Product marketers
input is key to how roadmap is prioritized based on customer need, value
delivered, competitive advantage gained or $$$ unblocked in deals, or $$$
unlocked in TAM. Being involved in the inception stage also gives the product
marketer a deep understanding of the challenges the feature/product attempt to
solve, what approach is th...more
Head Of Marketing at Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft
Bringing in information about trends in the market, what competitors are doing,
and the most important thing - USER FEEDBACK! I have learned over the years that
the best way to get any sort of buy-in for roadmap planning is to come armed
with real evidence. This includes existing user anecdotes but it also definitely
includes higher-level trends you are seeing in the market. I think PMMs should
be utilized as more than just marketers, we should be experts on our users,
their needs, and the climate they are working within. Of course, things like
naming, positioning, targeting are very import...more
VP Product Marketing at OnPlan
I have seen it go both ways. It really depends on the relative strength of the
product and product marketing teams. Product marketing, though, is probably the
best positioned part of the business to be a voice for segments of the market
and the future customers that don't already have a voice in your business. It's
the customers who aren't prospects yet, the markets you haven't entered.
In my experience there are plenty of voices speaking for bug fixes and feature
enhancements for existing products at existing customers -- Customer success is
usually the loudest voice for this.
The sa...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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...more
Sr. Director Product Marketing at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force
Product marketers should leave there stamp outside and inside the product. What
I mean is that traditional marketing always takes place outside of the product
i.e. sales enablement, blogs, technical demos, tools etc . Now with the advent
of SaaS PMMs can market inside the product as well. By having a pulse on the
customers end to end journey PMM can shine a light on where the experience can
be improved by highlighting moments that matter. PMM should also co-own
consumption targets like MAU and DAU and help PM / engineering drive product
experience improvements to increase usage. There are t...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
I think both, though the latter (naming, branding, messaging, etc) seems to be
the default for most PMMs. If PMMs want to partake in the beginning of the
cycle—what's actually being built, they need to bring new data—not just personal
opinions.
Product managers have a product vision that aligns with the company mission,
incredibly deep market grounding, a keen understanding of what's actually
possible given engineering resource, and (hopefully) a clear understanding of
product usage. They have strong hypotheses about what to build.
So I think PMM's participation would look a little l...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
In terms of roadmap, one area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of
value is through market and competitive insights. By bringing insights from the
market, competitive landscape, buyers, and/or analysts, PMM can ensure that
product has considered all inputs when they build their roadmap.
Here is a deck we've used internally to help build collaboration between PM &
PMM. If you're still struggling with being brought in too late, my advice is to
focus on 1-2 deliverables that could really drive value for your product org.
Pilot that with a product group or PM, and then go from th...more
2 answers
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
Oh interesting! I've done both, but I truly believe PLG is the future for
everyone. Or, I should say the paths are likely to converge!
New organizational structures that are empowering end-users to make more
decisions for themselves, coupled with extremely efficient try>buy experiences
are reducing sales cycles and making the "executive buyer" persona less relevant
(not irrelevant, just less of a blocker than it used to be).
As hinted about, none of this means sales GTM motions are going away. Anywhere a
problem and solution isn't extremely well understood, a sales person can provid...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
Both are super valuable, and gaining experience in both will make you a
well-rounded PMM. Great for when you lead a team in the future :)
That being said, it also depends on what you enjoy. Having done both, PLG PMM
work feels more B2C to me, where most of my time was spent working with
campaigns, brand, and copy teams (other than product of course!). So if you
enjoy working on customer journeys, creative briefs, and marketing assets, then
that's a great fit for you.
Whereas with SLG motions, your primary stakeholders are enablement and the
field. In these roles, I've worked on messag...more
2 answers
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
Yes depending on the type of feedback sought we have different owners, but we
are trynig to move to a place where the Customer PMM owns tracking of outreach
(we don't want to ping the same account 7 times across different deparments).
In-product NPS is owned by customer success, but interviews off the back of low
or high scores are often handled jointly by CS and PMM.
Beta feedback is owned by the product team, but PMM might often tag along for
interviews so we can see from a customer's perspective how they would describe
the value they receive.
Product UX feedback is owned by desi...more
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
This depends on the company's norms and how different teams have been set up.
I've seen user research lead this entirely, and I've also seen a dedicated
"Voice of the Customer" program manager who wrangled all internal listening
channels.
One area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is with market
and competitive insights. Especially at Gong, given our product, Product
Managers have access to customer insights but oftentimes don't have visibility
into opportunities outside of the customer base.
Focusing specifically on customer feedback (or user feedback), PMs gener...more
3 answers
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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 a...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
I am also a huge fan of Amazon's "working backwards" framework where a press release is written at the onset of development. In organizations that use this methodology, it is a great time to bring in the PMM. It also begs the question, when should a press release be written? We typically write in in Phase 5 or 7. I'd argue we should be using this template or another much sooner in the process.
https://www.product-frameworks.com/Amazon-Product-Management.html
Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
Ideally, PMM comes in during the product roadmap process. One area where I've
seen PMM historically drive value is through market and competitive insights.
Especially at Gong, given our product, Product Managers have access to customer
insights but oftentimes don't have visibility into opportunities outside of the
customer base.
When it comes to the product lifecycle, PMM should proactively come in very
early on. For the same reasons as above, PMM brings a complementary perspective
to the decision-making process. By bringing insights from the market,
competitive landscape, buyers, and a...more
2 answers
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
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...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
I've always felt like this question felt a bit like, "who owns features,
engineering or product?" Both teams are responsible for different points in the
lifecycle.
In my ideal version of the world, pricing overhauls (a new pricing strategy like
moving from seats to usage), is managed by a project management team. It's a lot
of chasing folks for research, input, and decisions.
PMM should play the role of:
* Understanding market comparisons (how complementary and competitive solutions
price)
* Feature value ranking—to inform what value customers derive from the product
in ord...more