Product marketing isn’t for the weary.
The team running go-to-market and launches is tired.
Dynamic and “fast-moving environments” aside (because who wants to work in a snail’s paced environment, anyway?!) this team is exhausted. This is especially true for teams in B2B SaaS and tech who’ve endured unstable work environments and layoffs over the last couple of years while continuing to deal with under-resourcing that’s traditionally affected the role.
This isn't about addressing company mismanagement, operational failures, or coping with economic uncertainties. Instead, it's about investing in a crucial, albeit often misunderstood, GTM role that has, in many instances, been relegated to a secondary position within the marketing department and the overall organizational structure.
I’m advocating we change that.
How did we get here?
Product marketing is perhaps the most misunderstood functional area on the marketing team.
Most commonly, this role is viewed as a product expert and master of positioning and solutions alignment, but not as important as a growth marketing role. (Not my words, but widely shared views of C-suite folks.) This role also simultaneously carries the onus of multiple cross-functional initiatives and change management responsibilities outside of day-to-day product or features launches. And often times, without proper support including budgetary considerations, tech, and headcount.
Outside of product promotion and ongoing commercial strategy, product marketing sub-functional areas include:
Sales enablement
Pricing and packaging
Partnerships, affiliate relations, and driving adoption
TAM analysis, market research, competitive intelligence
Commercial education, collateral production, and content curation
Customer advocacy and interviews
Product feedback, beta testing, roadmap contribution and epic writing
Product marketers are also expected to be:
Subject matter experts on industry, tech, competitors, solutions, and brand
Crafters of multi-channel product promotion
Collateral creators
Feeders of Demand Gen and Content teams
Experts at messaging and positioning, and
Connectors, collaborators, and multi-faceted teamplayers
At all times.
The above list can be quite exhaustive and overwhelming, especially when the team is traditionally understaffed and undervalued. Outside of the ongoing critical inputs, these considerations in the overarching go-to-market strategy generally (and unfortunately) fall on one role in particular—the product marketer.
Let’s talk money, titles, and job duties.
To begin with, dismissing the importance of job titles is not advisable. Sidenote: any leader, mentor, or person of influence that tells you this does not have your best interest in mind. Keep reading why it matters.
Job titles do hold significance, and here's why: Anything that cannot be directly quantified in terms of KPIs or OKRs often faces challenges in securing a meaningful budget. This often happens to product marketing teams when they lack data, attribution tracking, and solid operational support. In many organizations, product marketing is understaffed and underfunded because it's challenging to show how “productive” they are, or measure success, without proper tracking and data in the systems of which they do not control.
Simply put: No data = no measurement = no monies.
And this critical role is quite literally the connector—the essential hub of all things go-to-market—expected to drive revenue quarter over quarter.
Another viewpoint is that the position itself is misunderstood and is defined differently across companies with newly furbished titles that aim to consolidate various marketing functions. The latest trend seems to be an unreasonable and overwhelming combo of product, growth (demand gen), and content marketing roles frankensteined together with campaign management and digital expertise thrown in for good measure.
Nonetheless, these creative job titles and overwhelming sets of disparate responsibilities illustrate an ongoing misalignement with the function that can be attributed to potential mismanagement at the organizational level and/or a lack of understanding across the organization as to the importance of the role.
Some recent titles I’ve come across:
“Growth Product Marketer” (a nice combo of a demand gen marketer and product marketer)
“Product and Programs Marketer” (campaign manager and product marketer combo)
“Product Solutions Segment Marketer” (some hybrid between a product and persona/segment aligned role)
“Principal Technical Product Segment Marketing Manager” (wow, just wow.)
… and countless derivatives of the above.
These franken-titles not only cause confusion for the organization at large in terms of responsibilities and swimlanes, but create an unnecessary over-subscription for the product marketer to tackle.
The glaring issue here is that the role is subjective, misunderstood, and therefore under-funded, resulting in a delightful combo of ad-hoc responsibilities across different marketing functional areas thrown together that more closely resembles that of “multiple hat wearer”, “cleanup crew”, or “fixer”.
As a final point, product marketing is also a somewhat fluid position, akin to a game of musical chairs. Depending on the company, product marketing might fall under the purview of sales, product, marketing, or growth, and this can alter the primary focus of the role based on the objectives of the C-suite leader in charge.
Lack of clarity equals a fumbled GTM strategy.
Unfortunately, what can’t be clearly articulated is up for debate and thus creates disparity and unnecessary friction across functional areas, GTM swimlanes, and most importantly, compensation leveling for the role. More often than not, the product marketing manager, or PMM, is quite literally, a Jack of All Trades, an Ace of Spades—the purple unicorn that does it all—and yet finds themselves accountable and at the center of any fumbles in the GTM delivery. This is an unfortunate reality and I suppose the opportunity cost of trying to do too many things at once.
Naturally, a product marketer is assumed to excel in all their product-marketing responsibilities. However, there's also an underlying expectation that this individual must act as a catalytic link, possessing valuable skills that include:
Expert project management competencies
Exemplary stakeholder management and executive communication skills
Influential strategic and execution abilities
Powerful and persuasive writing skills
And let’s not forget the obligatory “must be able to juggle multiple projects in ever-changing and fast-paced environments” at all times capacity for work
And lastly, this person should be able to quickly pivot a launch plan in the eleventh hour if needed, pending product [un]readiness
Pre-existing GTM fumbles: “Let product marketing solve it.”
If it’s not painstakingly obvious, the role is technical, comprehensive, and niche. Additionally, it's susceptible to burnout, as mentioned earlier, because many of a company's go-to-market deficiencies (including more substantial change management endeavors) can be readily delegated to this function to solve.
From my own experience as a product marketer, I've come across the following blunders and have been asked to turn them into "successes" or areas of impact and influence:
The product isn’t ready or viable. Asking product marketing to play spindoctor and whip up value propositions and align falsehoods to personas will not solve a product viability or product-market fit issue.
Absence of a general sales strategy and playbook. This is 100% on sales leadership to curate and distribute to the commercial functions - not for product marketing to “make pretty”, develop, or institute.
Undefined target audience and personas. Either there is a product fit and a problem to be solved or there is not. Retro-fitting products to undefined user personas points to lack of sound product strategy.
No product demos. Huge red flag - the product is awful. Run.
Unclear, or unknown, competitive landscape. The work remains incomplete, and competitors are neither clearly identified nor consistently monitored. Additionally, the company might hold unrealistic notions about its peer group. There hasn't been a Total Addressable Market (TAM) assessment conducted, and leadership appears uncertain about the industry in which the company operates.
Leadership cannot differentiate between product, feature, capability, or workflows. No further comment.
The roadmap is not shared, transparent, or accessible to the organization at large. No further comment.
There are constant rebrands with website overhauls and logo changes quarterly. Changing a logo won't resolve issues with a subpar product or improve brand awareness. Resorting to rebranding as a distraction is generally an unfavorable indicator.
Pricing and packaging work hasn’t been done. This is basic commercial strategy, and if the company's approach to constructing solution packages for revenue generation isn't well-documented or widely understood, run.
Lack of customer advisory boards, beta testing groups, and documented feedback shared in centralized repositories. Think about the difficulty of crafting effective messaging and positioning for specific Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) when there is no documented user feedback or data to guide the development of marketing materials.
Lack of partnership with sales for enablement purposes. Lacking a sales partner, enablement efforts are unlikely to succeed, placing an undue burden on the product marketer during the launch cycle and when evaluating commercial readiness.
These are significant and long-standing systemic issues that take several years to create and can’t usually be resolved quickly without adequate resources and in-depth analysis. Yet, it's common for companies to expect product marketing leadership and their teams to tackle these issues immediately.
All this to say, the product marketing team juggles multiple—and often highly visible and highly strategic motions—while trying to balance the day-to-day responsibilities managing product and features launches, release cycles, and ongoing product engagement and adoption with limited overall support.
Who are these purple unicorns?
While the role can be demanding, it can also be extremely gratifying in the right environment and for the right person. There is a distinct, inherent duality that comes with the role because one must possess the following characteristics:
Strategic, yet can execute and balance tasks with big picture initiatives and project management
Collaborative and cross-functional, yet works independently with little-to-no managerial input or direction
Comfortable with ambiguity but can drive and uphold processes, frameworks, and deliverables as part of sound GTM strategy
Not afraid to ask questions or speak up, but stay in [your] lane and not overstep with the roadmap, CX, or sales
Highly organized with exemplary project management abilities and commitment to timelines, but agile enough and able to pivot quickly to changing product timelines
Macro-thinkers who are able to plan a year ahead for commercial purposes,. and yet focus on the reality of now as it pertains product readiness
Technically astute, well-versed in agile methodology and processes, and adept at translating complex concepts for the rest of the organization, yet approachable and personable
Given the uniqueness and often challenging-to-find nature of these skillsets, especially in a competitive and ever-changing marketplace, it's essential not to underestimate the value of investing in the product marketing function and its various sub-functions.
It would greatly benefit companies focused on growth and retention to invest highly in product marketing expertise and these exceptional and gritty individuals. *Note: the terms “rockstar”, “ninja”, or “wizard” will never be used here.
If it’s not abundantly clear, we must invest in product marketing.
In my experience, high-performing marketing teams are often led by leadership teams that highly value the product marketing team.
Leadership provided them with the necessary resources, tools, and staffing for success, and the company was fully aligned across all product and commercial functions to support launches with a unified and enthusiastic approach.
In addition to having leadership backing, product marketers can take ownership and advocate for themselves. This includes:
Clearly defining their titles and job responsibilities in relation to salary, understanding expectations, team capacity, staffing, and management priorities.
Educating leadership about the role of product marketing and consistently demonstrating its value, even in situations where measurement can be challenging.
Requesting budget allocations for both the overall product marketing function and its sub-functions.
Let's elevate our marketing teams and enable our product marketing managers to thrive. When the go-to-market strategy is led by capable product marketers and we invest in these exceptional individuals, we gain a competitive advantage with well-positioned offerings and a solid strategy.
And when that happens, we all win.
