How important are brand marketing skills for product marketers compared to analytical skills?

It's funny, I've been working on a deck looking at exactly this question. It's fascinating how much it varies from company to company. We're moving to a place where the distinctions between product marketing and brand marketing are becoming increasingly blurry. Think of it as simply different problems to solve, that map to different parts of the funnel.   Some product launches need broad awareness and call for high-funnel, or what we often call brand marketing. Whereas some launches are updates ...Read More

First, you can not decouple analytical skills from brand marketing skills. They are not mutually exclusive. You are right that there is more emphasis on analytical skills in job description for product marketers. Primarily because analytical skills are easier to evaluate. They are also critical because analytical mindset helps you have a solid foundation for your marketing strategy (including brand marketing). However, these strategies come to life with creativity. You can not undermine creative ...Read More

Analytical skills tend to be the preferred skill set of a product marketer because they are "running the business". Product Marketers own a product's P&L and must have the business acumen to drive revenue. Important the ones trying to size and segment the marketplace. Additionally, they'll probably be on the front lines trying to determine what segment, region, or geo to invest their budget.  Brand marketing's closest overlap is with the Marketing Programs PMM function. They will ensure that ...Read More

You've hit upon one of the reasons why marketing in tech is a neverending challenge (and the fun part IMO). I think the best marketers have both strong analytical skills and grasp how to build long-lasting brands based on an emotional connection with their customer. If your goal is to one day lead marketing more broadly, you absolutely need to demonstrate that you can build a brand beyond the product marketing itself.  I think a strong brand requires a consistent identity and tone that emphasize ...Read More

A strong product marketer should have skills across both the inbound and outbound components of the role. Inbound = inputs into product to define the roadmap and build the right features to achieve product market fit for customers. Outbound = owning the product message, positioning, and GTM strategy outwards to the market and customers. I believe that product marketers are at their best when they're influencing and helping to build the right product from the onset. Branding and marketing the pro ...Read More

Of all the skill sets I think are important for a product marketer, brand marketing isn't on the top of the list. In fact, it's probably the opposite - particularly in smaller tech companies where brand = product - where I think a brand marketer could benefit from experience as a product marketer. The relationship between brand and product marketer is important to ensure that products being built deliver on the brand values (like Volvo and safety or Staples and easy) but you don't have to be a b ...Read More

In my opinion, a big part of Product Marketing is storytelling - connecting the customers' and prospects' desires and pain points to the capabilities of your products and solutions.  Brand Marketing is not dissimilar. Just that brand is not limited to a single product; in this case, the entire company is the "product." Understanding your company's " story, "your reason for existence (or point of view), and your unique differentiation in the market are essential elements of the brand. These are i ...Read More

Understanding how Brand Marketing works is critical to succeed in Product Marketing as these two teams work closely together to bring any Marketing and Product work to life. Brand Marketing thinks about creating a long-term, strategic plan to continuously boost a brand's recognition and reputation. It involves creating and maintaining brand-consumer OR brand-customer relationships and marketing brand attributes—the traits that people think of when they picture a particular brand. I see this as t ...Read More

Brand is more than just a logo or color palette or tag line. Brand is the combination of customer touchpoints that create meaning and belonging for that customer...Brand attracts the customer in the first place, for sure, but brand shows up in how the product delivers on its promise, how customer support handled your issues, how easy it was to purchase. Imagine if you had expectations of a Nordstrom experience, but then got Wal-Mart. It's not that Wal-Mart is bad, but the misalignm of expectatio ...Read More

This really depends on the business. I think both skills are incredibly valuable for Product Marketing. If you are new to PMM with a brand marketing background, you'll likely be stronger in the areas of messaging & positioning, campaigns, and TOFU/MOFU content. If you're new to PMM with strong analytical skills, you might be a great fit for pricing & packaging, win/loss analysis, competitive analysis, product strategy and launches. I've seen folks with both types of backgrounds be very s ...Read More

The role of product marketing looks different at every company so as such there is no hard and fast rule IMO. Overall, broader marketing experience is always helpful for product marketing because it gives you a better understanding of the channels and tactics used so you can support other marketing teams better. I think being analytical is core to product marketing and any role that requires developing strategy - i don’t think this should be a question of either, OR. Good PMMs should be analytic ...Read More

I've always said that marketing and brand strategy is a mix of art and science, meaning that both brand marketing and analytical skills are essential for product marketers. However, it's also true that the balance between them can shift depending on the specific role and company. On the one hand, analytical skills are needed to understand data, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions. In other words, these skills represent the intelligence behind your decision-making. On the other ha ...Read More

Just a feedback on the last comment, as I reacquaint myself to the "new" bay area. I have noticed more emphasis on demand gen skills amongst many startups. If there are stakeholders in the company already like product management and technical marketing who are also good at writing, messaging, positioning - then this might work. However, a good product marketer who has enough knowledge of demand gen mechanism is probably a better fit versus demand gen being forced into product marketing. Easier t ...Read More

For companies of a certain DNA (Bay Area, technology), brand marketing is not a priority compared to being able to measure the performance of your own marketing, with a philosophy of investigating what works and what doesn't. That's because the company likely has a demand problem, not a brand problem. So if product marketing wants to support demand generation and growth, then the product marketer needs to have an analytical foundation or analytical acumen.   Brand marketing comes into play with ...Read More

I definitely appreciate this tension -- and in a perfect world you find the right mix of both on the team. Analytical skills will benefit our understanding of market sizing and opportunity, pricing and packaging decisions and so on. The "brand" or creative skillset would aid in storytelling around messaging, content efforts, etc.I think it depends on your role within the PMM org. A Head of PMM, ideally, would be able to balance both analytical and creative capability, and hire to his/her weaknes ...Read More