What does your product marketing team org structure look like?

Product Marketing org structures can vary by organization. Previously at Attentive, our PMM organization is comprised of the following teams: Product Marketing Core (focused on our product offering, more to come here), Sales Enablement & Competitve, Technical Writers, and Training. Our PMM Core team is split by our products with a 2-3 PMMs managing a single product offering usually comprised of several features. Collectively we all report into a VP of PMM who reports into our CPO. Yes, Atten ...Read More

Organization structures for the PMM team vary depending on your companies’ stage, customer base, and product suite. There are 4 basic approaches for designing PMM teams: 1) functional (i.e. sales enablement, monetization, GTM, product strategy), 2) product lines (i.e. subscriptions, retail), 3) customer segments (i.e. enterprise, small business, consumer), or 4) Lifecycle (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention.) When determining a new PMM team org structure, I think about these 3 questions: 1) ...Read More

There’s two main drivers I think about with respect to org structure. Important caveat on the below being I primarily have worked at smaller organizations where org structures across the company are often highly nimble. How established the function is - When the PMM function is new, oftentimes you might be the only Product Marketer or have just one report. In that scenario I think it’s important to keep yourself and your report as generalists and prioritize the most important projects across the ...Read More

This is a question I get a LOT. Everyone wants to know whats the idea PMM team structure. The short answer is there isn't one. Firstly, the role of a PMM looks different in every company. Secondly, the role of a PMM is not static. The role should evolve based on business priorities. So while you may structure the team a particular way today, know that you might need to change that structure a year from now if your priorities shift, especially at a start-up where things change quickly. Here are a ...Read More

I go back to ensuring that the team structure is aligned to business objectives and associated KPIs. My company does have aggressive sales, customer satisfaction, and product adoption metrics (spans across the board) so I like to structure the team accordingly.  I'll use a buyer journey framework to illustrate my ideal state team structure given these objectives (moving from top to bottom of funnel): Content Marketer: Focuses on creating top of funnel assets to drive demand & support categor ...Read More

Our product marketing org strucuture is made up of 6 groups. Most of our groups are aligned directly to product, and how product strucutres their org. So each product group that is focused on building customer facing product - has a PMM group aligned to it. We refer to these PMMs as "full stack" PMMs partnering closely with product in defining roadmap and scope and GTM teams in bringing new products and features to market.  We also have a group focused on enablement - supporting our customer fac ...Read More

The PMM org structure is highly variable based on the company – and also shifts and changes through a company’s lifecycle to best meet company needs.  There are four primary structures Product lines (i.e. Software, service, etc) Customer segments (i.e., small business, mid-market, enterprise, accountant), Functional (i.e. insights, product strategy, GTM, monetization, sales enablement) - Not my favorite as I think PMMs do their best work when they are deep on the customer problem and product sol ...Read More

Great question and one that comes up all the time! The structure of the PMM team can vary depending on the size of the organization, the nature of the product, and other factors. I lead the Service Cloud PMM team, the largest cloud for Salesforce. So, it is a mature product with a billion+ annual revenue. So, my team is structured by the product portfolio, and I have one team that leads the strategic PMM initiatives like AR, PR, Launches, Website, etc. Each PMM on my team needs to be the product ...Read More

Product Marketing org structure varies depending on the size, stage of growth, and nature of your product (i.e multiple product, persona, ICP). Ultimately you want to make sure you have enough coverage and the right skillset to cover the key pillars of Product Marketing (product launches, pipe gen, sales enablement, competitive intel, pricing and packaging). Here's a model that I've seen work really well: 1. Core PMMs - These are product marketing managers who align very closely with Product Man ...Read More

In my experience, it varies based on your product portfolio/customer segments... When my company had only 1 product we were separated by function (i.e. pricing/packaging, sales enablement, product launches, market research, etc.), but in other companies we were focused on segment (enterprise vs SMB product marketing and then had teams that supported us). Other roles that i've seen in smaller companies - customer marketing, content, even PR/AR (bc product marketing is usually the keeper of the me ...Read More

I've seen it work in many different ways. It's usually dependent upon where the PMM org lives, and what the other organizations look like along side of it. If it's in Marketing, it's very dependent on who the leader of marketing is. If it's in Product Management, it's usually broken out by product or vertical. I'm currently building up the team at Socrata, so we're broken out more by strategy vs. execusion and a person who owns the website. We'll go to a more verticalized approach as we expand. ...Read More

Like many have said here, Product Marketing org structures can be vastly different. I believe the organizational structure starts with where Product Marketing sits in the org. Traditionally, there are three options for this: marketing, product, and reporting directly to the CEO. In my experience, PMM teams that report outside of marketing are more likely to be aligned to product strategy and the strategic roadmap planning and therefore might reflect a similar structure as the Product Management ...Read More

I've structured B2B product marketing teams/roles in a number of ways, depending on the needs of the business and characteristics of the market. There's no universal answer, but here are some common approaches and when they might be appropriate: By Product: This is the most common approach and works well when you have a platform plus add-on products, or a set of complementary products. By Market Segment: If the customer needs, personas, and/or sales motions are sufficiently different between seg ...Read More

We've changed our structure several times over the years as the business has grown and priorities have shifted, but because PMM at Intercom works very closely with product we have always largely mapped PMMs to specific solutions or product areas. Our current team structure roughly mirrors that of the product team. That means we have 1 or more PMMs mapped to each specific product group, which are either focused on a solution (for example our support solution) or a product area (for example, platf ...Read More

I’ve seen a few versions work, depending on company size and how complex the product and sales motion are. In most teams I’ve worked in, product marketers are aligned to a product area or portfolio. That keeps ownership clear and helps PMMs stay close to product managers and customer problems, rather than spreading too thin. Release and launch communications usually sit within product marketing, especially in small to mid-sized teams. As things scale, it can make sense to have more dedicated foc ...Read More