What is Product Marketing?

I’ve been heading up Product Marketing at my company for a whole year now and I still get asked to give clarity on the question of ‘What is product marketing?’ 

A lot of people have simply never worked with Product Marketing before. On top of that, the discipline has evolved substantially over the past decade, so there’s also a need to correct some of the traditional assumptions.

There’s an old school interpretation that we’re simply a mouthpiece for product news, but for most product marketers in 2022, our role is increasingly a strategic one, with many varying components to it - which, to be fair, probably doesn’t help other teams much with understanding what we do. 

So I’ve written as clear an answer as possible for any fellow PMMs out there in the same position. Forward it to your colleagues, or share in your slack channels, to help people get a better understanding of this mysterious role of ours. 

What is Product Marketing?

I think of Product Marketing as a bridge. We are the conduit between the commercial part of an organisation and the product part. And by commercial I don’t just mean marketing - I mean all of the customer-facing teams: sales, customer success, support, SDRs and revenue operations - you name it. for product, this is everybody involved in the product development process, from product managers and engineers to user research and product design. 

We’re there to be the product person in the room in commercial conversations and, vice-versa, we should be representing the commercial mindset in product conversations. Product Marketers need to ensure the company’s product and go-to-market strategies are aligned. That the story you’re telling to the outside world is the same one that your product teams are building for.

And at the centre of this metaphorical bridge stands the Voice of the Customer. Every good business should obsess over its customers, and it’s a PMMs role to give this substance. Representing the customer and instilling customer-driven insights into the work of every team in the business is core to our role.

But what do we actually do on a day-to-day basis? Well, product marketers tend to be generalists that can fill gaps in any business or team, meaning the work can differ wildly from week to week, but what we do can loosely be categorised into four groups.

Insights

My advice to any product marketer feeling stuck and confused about what their role at their company should be is always: go get some insights. 

It’s a sure fire way of making an impact and becoming a go-to person for other teams in the business. In your role of representing the Voice of the Customer, a key responsibility is driving research and insights that inform both the product roadmap and the commercial strategy. 

This covers a range of possible activities, from competitive intelligence and win-loss analysis to market research, segmentation and turning customer feedback into actionable initiatives. This can often be in partnership with a research team (if your company has one) but Product Marketing should always be pushing for these efforts to happen - and making sure the product and commercial parts of the business are actually acting on them.

Product Go-To-Market 

Bringing products to market - or ‘launches’ - is what we're famous for. And it’s the part of our role that comes closest to a conventional marketing function. But it’s a lot more than that…

Product Marketing is there at the point of conception, when a new product or feature is just a glint in a product manager’s imagination. We bring the insights that new ideas are sprung from, we research and road test products before a line of code is written. And we stay on that product development journey all the way to beta, public release and full-fat GTM launch. 

These days, Product Marketing isn’t just on the hook for ensuring quality marketing for a new product launch, nailing pitch perfect messaging and getting it front of the right audience. We also make sure sales, customer success and support teams have everything they need ahead of a go-live date, so it lands as a holistic GTM launch.

For many, it’s the most fun part of the job - but it’s usually the most chaotic too. 😅

Sales Enablement and Efficiency

If your company has a sales team, then enablement is a core part of the gig. Sales decks, one-pagers, battle cards, sales plays - you name it, we’re creating that content. We’re also there to ensure the right level of product knowledge for every commercial team, providing training and internal materials for sales, SDRs, marketing and customer success. 

Product Marketing’s relationship with Sales should be as important and strong as that with Marketing and Product. Partnering with Sales is often the most impactful thing you can do when building out a new PMM function - especially when it comes to gathering the freshest customer insights.

Messaging and Positioning

This is the mysterious part of the job. And also the least-tangible. Other than the topic of ‘What is it you actually do?’, the other question we’re often is asked is how to define success for Product Marketing - what are the KPIs we follow? And the biggest contributor to this ambiguity is the messaging and positioning part of our role, where it is often hard to show impact - and success is subjective. But somebody in a company has to drive this work - and it’s often a PMM.

I’ve written about the difference between messaging and positioning before in the Product Marketer so I won’t repeat myself too much. But a key part of our work is storytelling. Crafting a narrative for your product - and giving other teams what they need to tell this story too. You’ve got to convey the value of your product to your specific target audience, in a way that makes clear the unique reason they should choose you over their current solution - and all the competition. No small feat, right?

This is probably the hardest part of the job. It’s both a science and an art, and carries the weight of the entire company with it. But it’s also incredibly satisfying when done well and often ends up being one of our most creative work streams.

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Of course, all these parts of the Product Marketing job description contain an overlap with other teams, so it’s a very collaborative role by its nature. It’s essential that we embrace this part of the role. Working effectively and successfully with other people is the job.

No product marketer is an island. 🏝

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So that’s my take on the definition of Product Marketing. What did I miss? What did I get wrong? Let me know in the comments. 

Cheers! 👋