What are some ways product marketing can prove their value to product management?

As you establish a relationship with your Product Manager, it is important to align on expectations. You should understand their needs and pain points and share with them your vision for how PMM can add value to the team. From there, it is often helpful to draft a set of goals that reflect the output of that conversation and get your PM's buy-in. Once you have established those goals, they can help in your day-to-day prioritization of work, and enable you to prove impact against those benchmarks ...Read More

Analytics, Attribution and Awareness (of the consumer) AnalyticsProduct Managers are constantly looking at key metrics and data to inform roadmap and resource allocation decisions. To speak the quantitative language, I recommend creating and referencing a marketing dashboard to track not only core marketing KPIs but also products’s core metrics on a campaign level. Then, use those numbers and data to show effectiveness or learnings of your marketing strategy. AttributionI recently integrated Bra ...Read More

It’s a good question, but also a loaded one! Product management needs to prove their value to the company too, right?The dynamic you’re describing is common though, unfortunately. I’ve lived it many times. The best working relationship comes when both sides have shared goals. If that’s not reality, one thing I’ve advised PMMs on my team to do is figure out what the PMs they work with care about and are goaled on. What are their OKRs or objectives? Assuming it’s not something crazy and counterpro ...Read More

Remind them that in your title 'product' is first, you are a Product Marketer. You see yourself as part of their org and are an active participant in all their meetings. You are team members who always need to be aligned. Initially you rely on them for KT (knowledge transfer) of the product roadmap so you can help with GTM activities and launch the product. But over time, you are talking to customers and you need to collect feedback and bring it back to PM’s to help influence the roadmap. A circ ...Read More

I'd reframe the question a bit from proving value to adding value. Proving value is a little defensive, vs adding value puts the onus on PMM to show up every day with a task to be done. I think about adding value to PMs in two parts:  Trust: If I had to simplify it to a few key things, its a strong understanding of the customer and their problems and then a strong understanding of the competitive space and market. I think its also important to have a point of view. If you bring those insights to ...Read More

This is a great question - especially because I think this relationship between product and marketing (product marketing) is one that often takes time. Trust needs to be built and that often comes from being able to show value.  I think inately part of Product Marketing's role is to become a subject matter expert in your space. This means deeply understanding the market (trends, competitors, hot topics), prospects and ideal customer profiles - their pain points and how your product helps solve t ...Read More

In a word - results. Your product managers should have a goal defined for the product you're supporting. It may not be the most realistic goal, but there should be a goal you can anchor to. Take that goal and break it down into bite size pieces. Think about what it's going to take to get a buyer from Attention to Acquisition (assuming a new customer goal). Break a purchase into individual buying steps. Identify the buyers (on average) that influence a purchase and find out what they need. Then m ...Read More

Product Marketing Manager is kind of the role project management for marketing & internal communications.   the PM & PMM are the two core role of product-market/customer bi-directionel communication.  As PM, the direction is more of external(market/customer) to internal - to study the market needs & trends, to learn about what caters for the clients; whereas the PMM on the contrary - to translate the product info in marketer's way while keeping aligned with the market or customer nee ...Read More

Since Prodduct Marketing is in charge of messaging (internal / and guidance for external) has a really good value with Product Management for translating the usability, functionality and benefits of any product. Product Manager should be more focus on release products, and Product Marketing focus on translate that products into the correct message (how it works? or how that product should be used?).    Btw Product Marketing should understand users/consumers needs for transmitting them to Product ...Read More

One of the best ways Product Marketers can provide value is through market and consumer insights. Often times Product Management teams are laser-focused on understanding existing customers and developing features to meet their specific needs. Product Marketers can provide perspective on the broader market and the needs/use cases for segments that a company hasn’t yet targeted. Product Marketers are testing different messages and value-props in-market every day and those learnings can help guide ...Read More

Prove that the Product Strategy delivers what it promises. Some multinational companies build the Product Strategy on three elements: - Product technical performance, what the product does at work. When the performance is weak against competitors there is room for improvement (eg, like removing spots for heavy-duty detergents). - Product design, how the product looks and works. When the design is weak against competitors there is room for improvement (eg, like for the boxes of Baby Diapers to be ...Read More

Become an expert in a data set that's close to revenue. Knowing as much as you can about how market interest turns into revenue (i.e. your entire marketing & sales funnel) is the easiest way to make yourself indispensible to both product and company strategy.  When you know more than anyone else in the company about how leads turn into pipeline turn into closed business for your product line or area of ownership, product will start to seek you out for your insights.  Also, be a good editor. ...Read More

I think a good PMM should take the stance that "I'm going to know everything about the product, competitive landscape and our customers." If you do that well there are several ways to prove value to PMs, for example:  1. Provide competitive insights/positioning they may be missing.  2. Share a perspective or understanding of customers they may be lacking or not have exposure to.  3. And of course being skilled at bringing products to market and messaging in a way that's differentiated, clear and ...Read More