What Product Marketing Does, By The Numbers
“What does it take to get into product marketing?”
That’s a question many of us in product marketing have heard plenty of times. In fact, when Product Marketing Masters hosted its first ever Ask Me Anything with PlanGrid vice president of product marketing Stuart Frederich-Smith, this exact question was among the most upvoted.
Why does this question crop up so often? One reason is growth in the number of roles available. According to LinkedIn, product marketing is one of the most promising roles in 2019, with 30% year-over-year growth in the number of postings for “Product Marketing Manager” (PMM). In other words, lots of applicants want to know how to get a foot in the door. Which often requires showing that you’ve done the job.
The challenge is that there’s so much variation in what it means to be a product marketer. In many companies, the title might manage end-to-end content production, lead sales enablement, own pricing and packaging, or oversee full go-to-market strategy. In addition to the datasheets and demo scripts you probably assume a product marketer creates, there are a dozen functions that can roll up under their domain.
This is probably why product marketing “greatness” is often described in a set of characteristics, rather than a specific skill set, metric, or list of tasks. When Stuart answered this question, his preferred characteristics included analytical, creative, empathetic, and able to make decisions. I happen to agree with that list.
But it made me wonder: is there actually a consistent list of stuff that a PMM does? And can that list help PMM applicants plan accordingly?
What We Do, According To Our Job Posts
To answer your next question: yes, I’ve probably seen [insert framework here] that states what a PMM should do. But the real world can be messy. Instead, to answer this question, it seemed like a more interesting idea to look at what companies were actually recruiting their PMMs to do. And luckily, January is a hot month for recruiting.
Looking at over 50 “[Senior] Product Marketing Manager” posts (excluding those with a focused function), the most recent for the Bay Area across companies as diverse as WhatsApp, Handshake, and SurveyMonkey, here are a PMM’s likely responsibilities:
Go-To-Market Leadership
If you’ve looked at a PMM job posting lately, you’ve probably seen the phrase “go-to-market” or corresponding acronym, GTM (side note: we love acronyms in PMM, don’t we?) For those looking for a definition, fear not: Wikipedia is here for you.
In all seriousness, most organizations describe the PMM role as a sort of GTM quarterback for a product or products. SurveyMonkey describes this situation succinctly as defining and managing processes for: “targeting, positioning, messaging, pricing, and rollout sequence.” Basically, deciding (1) who are we marketing to and (2) how do we do it?
Critical to that process is orchestrating stakeholders. Product marketing is a team sport, and most open roles tie the notions of “alignment,” “process management,” or “cross-functional” to the GTM responsibility — often in the same bullet point.
(To learn more about GTM, watch a live stream of our event How to Create a Winning GTM Strategy.)
Market Intelligence
How do we define who and how? By heeding the first commandment of PMM: know thy customer. Almost every organization recruiting a PMM wants that person to be the epicenter of customer knowledge. “Qualitative and quantitative” customer insight are the cornerstones of just about every PMM job post you’ll find.
But there’s more to market intelligence than stand-alone customer knowledge. Organizations like Salesforce and Anaplan call out a specific desire for competitive analysis. Others, like InTapp ask for “target market, buyers, influencers, and territories, including penetration and whitespace analysis.” These analytical efforts inform the basis of a solid GTM strategy.
Messaging and Positioning / Storytelling
Wondering what a company means when they ask for a PMM storyteller? Typically, they want a rock-solid positioning and messaging professional. Someone who can take in market intelligence and distill it down to the right value props, marketecture, or campaign. As Stitch Fix says, the PMM they’re hiring will “own all product positioning and messaging; test and use data and insights to get it right.”
Along these lines, many organizations look for PMMs with well-honed communication skills — and typically, there’s a desire for these skills to be on full display during the interview process. When I hire, I always ask applicants for writing samples and/or a presentation before I move forward. So if you’re trying to get into PMM, you’ve been warned.
Launch
Ah, launch. Every PMM’s favorite GTM microcosm. Many organizations call out launch planning and execution as areas of particular focus in their role descriptions. Bombora, for example, wants a PMM to “partner with product management and sales to run beta programs, gather customer feedback, and plan for new product launches.”
Often, the main differences between launch experience and GTM experience are that launches have a more extreme timing component, more alignment with product and services functions (sometimes literally to help them be launch-ready or run pre-launch programs like betas) and may include additional training and corporate communication cycles. If you’re applying without direct launch experience, it can help to highlight cross-functional, time sensitive projects you may have led instead.
Content Creation
A few years ago, those familiar with PMM would likely list content creation as the role’s number one function. As PMM has become more strategic, so too has its involvement in content creation. Many position postings don’t even list content creation as a responsibility; others detail content that goes far deeper than the datasheets of the old school PMM and expect more of an ideation and/or process management approach.
For example, Yelp wants a PMM to: “manage creative briefs and workflow for new marketing content and collateral.”
Bonus Round: B2B or B2C PMM Responsibilities
While the responsibilities above transcend target audience, there are some components of a PMM’s day-to-day that are unique to the go-to-market structure they inhabit. These include:
Sales Enablement
Be aware that if you work in B2B (that is, selling to businesses), you’ll likely encounter a sales team and need to prepare them to speak to your product. At Urban Airship, one of the main duties the PMM hired will handle is, “work[ing] closely with sales, understanding and supporting their sales cycles.” That includes developing specific content for sales, “including sales trainings, product demos, sales plays, and cheat sheets.”
Influencer and Analyst Relations
While influencer relations may play into the role of a B2B or B2C PMM, the types of relationships you’ll be asked to foster change depending on whether you sell to businesses or consumers. For example, many B2B roles require work with analysts (eg: Forrester, Gartner) who watch the industry space. Meanwhile, B2C influencer strategy may be one step removed from the PMM’s day-to-day, but informed and driven by the market intelligence the team produces.
Quantitative Insight
Instagram isn’t alone in asking for someone with experience with tools like R to conduct statistically significant data analysis. B2C roles often include more heavy-duty quantitative ability to underpin buyer understanding. This makes sense, as they typically deal with much larger and more complex datasets than B2B organizations. In high volume situations, small adjustments can result in significant GTM impact and may require more conclusive data. Meanwhile, in a B2B context you may only have to show mastery over Excel, Salesforce reporting, and Tableau.
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Ultimately, these are all things the right person can learn to do. Which is why I go back to Stuart’s call for the right set of intrinsic characteristics. Be analytical, empathetic, creative, and motivated, and I’ll add one more: be resourceful. Those “it” factors can earn you exposure you need to learn more about the core PMM responsibilities shared above.
For more on the characteristics of a great Product Marketer, check out this interview with Product Marketing Masters founder Shyna Zhang in CareerSchooled.
