How do you define product marketing differently in a product-led growth company vs. a traditional company with a normal sales and marketing funnel?

One of the biggest changes is that I find the relationship with the product team to be different in a product-led growth company. It’s a much closer partnership, focused on more than just launch moments but ongoing work, and shared metrics. When it comes specifically to the sales and marketing funnel, I’d say the big difference is that we’re less focused on traditional demandgen work and we have a much heavier hand in monetization than we do in a sales-assisted business. Our work is tied more to ...Read More

This is one of my favorite topics, and I write more extensively about product-led marketing versus sales-led marketing on the Product-Led Growth Collective site: https://www.productled.org/blog/marketers-prepare-product-led-growth The tl;dr, though: In many product-led growth (PLG) companies non-salespeople (e.g., product managers, designers, engineers, founders, etc.) helping to create the actual product have the initial greatest influence on what product marketing does. In many PLG companies, ...Read More

I believe it's important to start out with how product marketing is the same across a self-serve/product-led motion and a sales-led motion. In my opinion, the core pillars of the product marketing responsibilities remain: Target audience and buyer definition Positioning and messaging Pricing and packaging Product narrative and storytelling Product and feature launches and so on... With either motion, you have to be an expert in your product, customer, and market. Where the function starts to dif ...Read More

I would argue that the definition of product marketing remains the same regardless of go-to-market motion. At it's core, product marketing is about identifying the right customer and markets that find your product valuable, positioning and packaging that value in a compelling way, and then driving go-to-market strategy to capture that market. What changes across go-to-market motions are channel strategies and areas of focus.  For example, if you're at a company with a sales-led go-to-market moti ...Read More

There are product-led companies that also have sales and marketing funnels. I would say marketing and sales funnels are key to the success of many product-led companies.  To answer your question, the biggest difference is that in a self-serve company you will be focused on product marketing at scale. Much like in a sales org, you’ll still be focused on funnel optimization. However, instead of driving leads to the sales team, you’ll be driving sign-up and activation rate growth. And instead of us ...Read More

I think the core definition is still the same but in pure B2B you’re going to have a much stronger emphasis on sales enablement and think of sales as one of your core channels for communicating with customers. In PLG or B2C, you’re going to have a stronger emphasis on communicating directly to users via marketing channels. In PLG, you’ll still have sales enablement as a core part of your responsibilities, but there’s more of a balance of your time spent on direct-to-user communication and sales ...Read More

At its core, product marketing remains focused on the same goals and outcomes in both cases. It is mostly the available tools and surfaces that differ. Things like segmentation, messaging frameworks, persona building etc. are applicable everywhere. They could be deployed in building out the right PLG experience or flow OR they could be used in building out sales enablement OR a marketing campaign. In a PLG environment, there is also a GTM component of the craft that is often required. PMM also c ...Read More

My experience in PMM has often been defined more by organizational structure and openness more than a type of product. The three biggest factors I’ve seen that impact product marketing’s role in an organization are the following: Reporting structure: Where does PMM report to? To the CEO, the CMO, or the CPO? Depending on who Product Marketing reports to, the goals will likely be different. When you report to the CMO, you may focus on driving GTM. When reporting to the CPO, you may spend more tim ...Read More

PLG product marketing is focused on the individual user, whereas sales-led product marketing is focused more on the buyer.  However, I will say that most PLG companies mature into utilizing both product led growth and sales led growth together.  For PLG, the messaging is more focused on solving the individual user's pain point, ultimately helping them to do their job better/faster. These users are going to be using your product often and are looking for a specific solution.  However, sales-led p ...Read More