A Voice for Product Marketing

Products and markets are two sides of a coin that every organization attempts to match. The term “product-market fit” came about to try to describe solving this puzzle. Much has been said on this topic.

The Product Marketing function in an organization, usually abbreviated PMM, is an entirely different story. It is often overlooked, understaffed and subjugated to being a support role in many organizations. Yet in some of the most successful companies, particularly in tech, the function looks entirely different.

• PMM understands the product and the real value to customers more holistically than any other team. A good product marketer is joined at the hip with product management to understand the functionality, underlying technology, tradeoffs and roadmap. And, close to both sales and customer success, understanding the promise that compels a customer to purchase as well as the reality of the value that is delivered.
• Having a seat at both the product table and the GTM table uniquely positions product marketing to determine the best way to package and price the product. No other function in a company can have as much insight into both the product and into how it is sold day-to-day.
• PMM is the voice of the product and the company. They write the messaging, create key content and often carry the largest loudspeaker. They are the first to deliver a new message. The story that every sales rep tells customers, that propogates to channel partners, that PR and AR managers tell the press and analysts and that demand gen publishes to the world comes from PMM.
• PMM quantifies the value a product delivers. This is crucial to the sales process, for feedback to product managers, and to pricing and packaging.

All of this though has a major caveat. Product marketing teams must work to earn the right to have a foot in many different doors. They must earn the trust of many different teams, and be seen as a partner. Those who isolate themselves, will have their work also stay in isolation, not used or trusted by sales and ineffective at driving demand through marketing. These teams will be ignored and leadership will never see their value.

Other product marketers try to establish their control through authoritative power. Getting the C-level execs aligned to a product marketing initiative works temporarily, but in the long run this tactic will lead to an even more dramatic failure. The quality of work will still suffer due to isolation, however the negative impact will be amplified because sales and marketing will be required to use content, programs or pricing that don’t work.

Bringing Balance to an Organization

In highly successful technology companies, Product Marketing plays this critical role, connecting the product and engineering side of a company with sales and marketing. Aptly named, but often misunderstood, product marketing actually tries to fit products and markets on a daily basis. It sometimes sits under Product and sometimes under Marketing, but always feels only 50% of a fit in either.

When done right, product marketing can be an enormous propellant. When done poorly, organizations are left with sales and marketing unhinged from product. Sales and marketing have no memory, no way to see patterns and no true insight on how the message in the market could be made the most powerful. And, product teams can get caught in only incremental innovation, or optimizing well for customers that make the most noise, but lacking a broader market perspective. In particular, product marketing can help give product managers a sense for the commercial opportunities available.

Ultimately, you could say product marketing is about solving the multi-dimentional problem of how to bring a product to market, and then being the tip of the spear in executing on the solution. We hope this blog brings inspiration to other PMMs out there, and helps shine a light on what it is exactly we do for everyone else in the organizations we work with each day. It’s kind of hard to tell from the outside.