Marketing has always been a function the tech industry loves to shit on — a cost center and something to throw extra money at during good times, for posturing or ego. And for product marketing (“PMM”), it seem s the stench wafts even more so. Often looked over as the middle step-child of product and marketing parent functions, many organizations disregard the essential value of product marketing. As of late, the function seems to be roaring back, alongside new tools, growth and enablement trends. And yet, an unspoken observation amongst product marketing leaders I’ve been talking shop with — is that most companies do not have a foundation to cultivate product marketing success. Newly-hired product marketing leaders are left rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and in extreme cases, get pushed off the driftwood by their own leaders.
Since I’ve taken time off, I started offering my time to half a dozen product marketers via the Product Marketing Alliance, a vibrant community of global product marketers that I’ve enjoyed membership in for some time, but never had the time to engage in. With my newfound downtime, it was much easier to make time for junior marketers to share their ideas and challenges, and we discussed approaches on how to best work through them. It’s been an incredibly fun and rewarding experience to connect with such bright and driven marketers. While the “mentorship” has been more rewarding for me, what’s become apparent — and sad — is more and more product marketers are quitting their jobs due to burnout.
I noticed this pattern of product marketing burnout earlier in 2021, when, at the time, I was hiring for my own product marketing team. A key question I ask in interviews is: “what are you seeking in the next role that you don’t have in your current one?” The resounding response — from nearly every product marketer — wasn’t a pay raise, increased responsibility and ownership, learning, or career growth, but the opportunity to work on a well-resourced and strategic, product marketing team.
What’s happening?
What exactly is pushing droves of brilliant marketers to the brink — or to outright leave their post due to burnout? As I’m closing in on a 16-year career as a product marketer, I reflect on the different challenges I’ve faced and distill them into one universal problem — product marketing is different at every organization.
WTF is Product Marketing Anyways?
#1 Challenge: Inability to Define Product Marketing
According to The State of Product Marketing 2020 Report published by the Product Marketing Alliance, only 5% of 2,000 global product marketers surveyed felt their role was fully understood by key stakeholders in their organization.
Every company defines product marketing differently. Even at companies as large as Microsoft, where “product marketing areas can often become blurred with other roles, depending on the business unit and its goals” says Floor Drees, former Senior Developer Relations Program Manager at Microsoft. She mentions, “product marketers were tucked away in such a bizarre spot, having to deliver on metrics that were difficult to prove impact.” Floor eventually left the product marketing team to rejoin developer relations.
Understandably, what makes product marketing a challenging role is the expansive and strategic nature of the role, sitting at the intersection of product development and go-to-market execution — not to mention how much an organization’s stage, maturity, business model, team/s structure, product development cycles, sales methodology, cross-functional sales-marketing operations, and GTM motions all influence the complexities of the product marketing function.
While this map perfectly visualizes product marketing as a strategic hub, it also shows why it is the function most prone to burnout.
In its most comprehensive definition, product marketing core domains can be as much as:
- Marketing Strategy, Research & Intelligence: Market Research; Competitive Research, Intelligence & Analysis; Customer Decisioning Journey (Buyer Journey); ICP & Persona Development; Platform, Product & Solutions Narrative Development, Product Positioning & Messaging
- Go-to-Market Planning & Product Launches: Go-to-Market Strategy and Planning Management; Pricing Analysis, Product-line Revenue Forecasting; Packaging/Bundling Analysis and Development; Marketing Enablement; Product Management Enablement
- Sales Enablement: GTM Sales Readiness; Sales Collateral (Whitepapers, ROI Calculators, Sell Sheets, One Sheets, Brochures, Demo Videos, Tutorials, etc.), Product-based Sales Demos; Internal Customer Education; Internal Product Education; Sales Team Product Trainings; QBR Training & Readiness
- Customer Marketing: Voice of Customer Management; Executive Customer Advisory Board Management; Product Pilot Programs & Customer Focus Groups Development; Customer Education & Certification Programs
For high-growth tech companies, there’s no shortage of initiatives and programs for product marketing to do. Jam Khan, SVP Product Marketing at 6Sense, admits, “ it’s easy to get sucked into a million different areas because [product marketing is] the nexus of product and market.” And when technology companies have reached a mature, Pre-IPO and later growth stage, product marketing may also be responsible for Community Development, Partner Marketing, Enterprise Marketing, Analyst Relations… amongst others! For a more comprehensive visualization of product marketing domains, you can also check out content by Product Marketing Alliance, Sirius Decisions, or Demand Metric.
The aforementioned exhaustive list of core product marketing responsibilities, initiatives, and skills are all extremely time-intensive activities; where needs and demands far outweigh what any one person or lean team can feasibly deliver at a high level. Product marketing must communicate across the board which high-impact initiatives the team will prioritize, measure, and optimize — not all of the things, all together at once.
So… what should product marketers do?
As much as I’d enjoy pointing fingers at unqualified or inexperienced managers, defining product marketing is 100% the responsibility of marketing leadership: to educate, inform and teach the value of marketing and all of its functions — especially product marketing.
Create a Product Marketing Charter
One of the first exercises a product marketing leader should do once they’ve gone through their First 60–90 Days, is to begin crafting a framework for a Product Marketing Charter with insights and support from the entire product marketing team.
To get started, Jam suggests using the V2MOM framework:
V2MOMs are a great discipline to create focus and visibility as well as avoid burnout. You can use them to ladder up to company objectives and decide collectively what to do and what not to do. As long as people view Product Marketers as a black box, they will keep getting pulled in every direction.
Regardless of the framework, it’s important to use this exercise as an opportunity for team building and developing an operational strategy that the existing team believes in. Do this sooner rather than later. This will set the tone for managing product marketing expectations as the team and business grows.
In addition to the V2MOM framework, consider adding these elements to your Product Marketing Charter:
- Create team leadership principles and expectations by seniority. Define clear growth paths for both people manager and IC roles.
- Define product marketing domains, its area/s of ownership, and roles and responsibilities. Some teams use the RACI framework for this.
- Map out the team structure. Set expectations on how product marketing works within marketing (or product), as well as cross-functionally with other teams or within business units. Additionally, it’s helpful to define traits/behaviors and expected outcomes of cross-functional alliances and relationships.
- Create a Deliverables and Outcomes Matrix to identify initiatives, programs, and projects that product marketing owns, will do, and will NOT do. Prioritize the deliverables by business, revenue, or customer impact against development time/investment effort. By setting clear boundaries and saying no, product marketers are, by default, shaping the definition of product marketing at their company. This will help cross-functional stakeholders understand how initiatives and projects can be prioritized, and alleviate frustration when there are competing priorities.
- Most importantly — communicate! Develop a platform to communicate the Product Marketing Charter, that can amplify your team’s vision, purpose as well as annual strategic initiatives. Hosting an annual Product Marketing Roadshow is one such way to kick-off the year alongside your company’s Commercial Sales Kickoff or Revenue Kickoff. Additionally, work with your product marketing team leaders to host quarterly customer SME or product SME workshops as a way to reinforce the PMM Charter.
What should CMOs do?
As a CMO, you know what good marketing looks like. If product marketing is not in your background, be a cheerleader.
- Collaborate with your product marketing leader to define the product marketing domains of the highest business need and customer impact. This way, product marketing goals and initiatives ladder up to the marketing organization’s goals and the company’s business goals.
- Have backbone to remove roadblocks, and obtain resources/tools to ensure product marketing success. Product marketing needs CMOs with strong muscle to help alleviate process gaps to build a foundation that allows for operational scale, productivity, and workflow efficiency.
- Evangelize the value of product marketing and its outcomes across the C-Suite, to provide an additional layer of support in managing executive team expectations.
- Empower the product marketing team by establishing boundaries early. As the strategic hub of a company, Product Marketing has the highest tendency of any function to be over-extended. Product marketing should feel empowered to respectfully push back or mindfully say “no”, and feedback should be actioned with full support.
- Resource adequately — the breadth and area of ownership for product marketing is expansive and needs to be sufficiently resourced with people, tools, operational processes and systems to effectively keep up with business priorities. As a company grows and scales its product innovation, the volume of needs for product marketing and strategic GTM execution also increases. Build and hire accordingly.
Sitting at the intersection of the market, the company, its products, and customers, product marketing is a strategic function that holds the keys to unlocking revenue growth. As a startup scales with each new round of financing, product marketing teams must be adequately resourced and supported to keep pace with the expanded breadth and depth of go-to-market responsibilities. Moreover, avoiding product marketing burnout is more than the ability for the team captain to say “no”. Product marketing leaders must take charge in developing their team’s vision and strategy while continually communicating the value of product marketing up and across the organization. The CMO must act as the leading advocate for product marketing across the executive team, properly account for adequate resources, and ensure there is a foundation of goals, measurement, and accountability that enables product marketing to achieve its full potential.
When product marketing is fully supported, it just works — sales become easier, revenue grows, and customers are happier.
Special Thanks:
- Floor Drees, Developer Advocate — Aiven. You can follow Floor on Twitter here.
- Jam Khan, SVP Product Marketing — 6 Sense. You can follow Jam on Twitter here.
Insights & Editors: David Simutis, Dragos Ilinca
Special Mention: Product Marketing Alliance (“PMA”) — a global community for product marketing professionals. Learn more about PMA, and sign up to become a member here.
