What is Product Marketing? (2025 Edition)
Less launching. More messaging, positioning and - most importantly - strategy.
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TL;DR
70 % of product marketers say their definition of the role has changed in the last 3 years.
“Strategic impact” is now the #1 expectation (cited by 42 % of our panel).
Commercial ownership (pricing, packaging, revenue targets) is a close second.
Read below for a new definition of Product Marketing for 2025 👇
What is Product Marketing in 2025?
Several years ago now, I wrote a post called What is Product Marketing?
It’s still my most read post. But since then, I've worked at a few more companies, and consulted many more, and I've had this nagging feeling that things have changed considerably - and that my previous definition is outdated.
I can sense it in the conversations I’m having, be it with fellow PMMs, founders or CMO/CPOs. The perception and expectation has shifted.
So I set about answering the question for 2025, helped a great deal by an expert panel of 60 product marketers from around the world (thanks so much to everyone who took part!)
What’s changed?
The most striking thing from the survey results was the consensus that Product Marketing has changed.
A staggering 70% of respondents felt that the function has changed over the past three years.
This trend was more pronounced outside of the US, which correlates with the broader theme of the States being further ahead than the rest of the world, as discussed in a recent post.
The lead answer for what has actually changed in the last 3 years was ‘Expectations of strategic impact’, cited as a top reason by 42% of the panel.
A close second was ‘Commercial responsibility (revenue, pricing, packaging)’, suggesting that companies are acknowledging the business-level impact a Product Marketing function can now have.
So… what actually is Product Marketing in 2025?
A few headline takeaways - with accompanying quotes - from the results:
Product Marketing is now seen as a strategic growth function that sits at the heart of product and commercial work.
"How companies define product marketing varies from company to company, but what seems to be a universal truth for any product marketing role is: PMMs sit at the intersection of business strategy, product, and marketing. We are the customer representative or voice inside the company, and we understand how to empathize and talk to our customers externally."
It’s the owner of the narrative and the commercial levers: positioning, pricing, packaging, and product launches.
“When product marketing is done well, it shapes how the product is positioned, how it goes to market, and how it supports growth. It means owning the narrative, understanding the market better than anyone else, influencing the roadmap, and making sure sales and customers get the value of what is being built."
PMM is less about coordination and more about translating between teams and finding common ground across the company - all grounded in a focus on the customer.
"Product Marketing is about connecting the dots and bridging the gaps between teams. It’s understanding the product deeply and translating that knowledge into clear, actionable messaging — both internally for sales, customer success, and product teams, and externally for customers and the market."
Product Marketers keep product teams honest about the real‑world value they’re actually delivering and help Marketing & Sales stay focused on the right message.
"(We’re) the support system for product teams to understand and interpret customer value, for marketing teams to communicate value and sales teams to know how to sell the value."
The 2025 definition
Reviewing all the different answers, a few words and phrases stood out.
Product Value: This came up a lot in the responses. In fact, in the open-text definitions, 72% of respondents talked about ‘value’. Product Marketing gets to the bottom of the true value of the product for customers, and then goes about delivering message clarity based on this insight.
Strategy: As we’ve established, the more strategic nature of a PMM’s roles was a standout theme from the survey, and more than two thirds of respondents used this word in their definition.
The Customer: As you would hope, nearly everyone mentioned the customer in their definition of product marketing.
Commercial Insights: The insight-focused part of the job is more important than ever. Producing commercial insights - spanning everything across market, customer and competitor research - is key.
Common Language: A need to speak to the unifying, collaborative component of product marketing came across in the answers, without suggesting a cat-herding, project management role.
Business Impact: From revenue to growth, the bulk of answers mentioned a business-level kind of impact.
So, based on 60 different responses and lots of stewing, here’s my definition of product marketing for 2025:
Product Marketing is the strategic engine that connects commercial insight with product value, building a common language across your company and delivering clarity to your customers, unlocking sustainable business growth.
Strategic ✅
Insight-focused ✅
Finding product value ✅
Translating, not coordinating ✅
Delivering clarity ✅ (important for great product marketing)
Business impact ✅
For me, this captures the core of what we’re about in 2025.
If this resonates, feel free to use it at your company to help explain the function to other teams.
Cheers! 👋
This is a perfect definition.
For a marketer doing this solo for his own/someones brand, this isn't a job description. It's just our to-do list for a Tuesday.
We read these beautifully defined roles and it feels like looking at a single, specialized character class in a video game, while we are over here playing the entire campaign solo, frantically switching between being the warrior, the mage, and the healer all at once.