7 minute read
Product marketing managers play a strategic role by bringing a finished product to the market, positioning it effectively to the markets that want to buy it, and communicating its unique value.
Product marketing managers have a challenging job. Not only are they responsible for positioning, messaging, and promoting a product, but they are often confused with other roles! These versatile professionals walk a fine line between product and marketing. While their responsibilities might vary from company to company, fundamentally, product marketers deploy strategic marketing plans to promote products and support business goals.
In this article, we’ll define what a typical product marketing manager does. Then, we’ll outline common responsibilities, define necessary skills, and define their role within an organization. Keep reading to learn more, or use the links below to dive in.
- What does a product marketing manager do?
- What are the responsibilities of a product marketing manager?
- What are important skills for product marketing managers?
- What is product marketing’s role within an organization?
What does a product marketing manager do?
Product marketing managers create marketing launch plans to ensure new products reach potential customers. But their work doesn’t stop there! They are also responsible for marketing products through every stage of the product life cycle. Their work includes setting marketing strategies, selecting channel tactics, and establishing messaging for new and existing products. Product marketing managers may also adapt marketing strategies to fit changing markets. Beyond marketing, product marketing managers often support sales and customer experience teams to new or retain existing customers. So, product marketing managers fulfill an essential and ever-evolving need.
What are the goals of product marketing?
In their daily work, product marketing managers focus on marketing goals like growing brand and product awareness, generating engagement, and driving exposure to marketing messages. Not only are they responsible for delivering effective marketing campaigns, they are also responsible for driving business success. Product marketing supports product goals, which in turn support overarching company goals such as driving sales, growing revenue, and acquiring or retaining customers. While they shouldn’t lose sight of standard marketing metrics, product marketing managers should ensure that their work ladders up to those primary goals.
What are the responsibilities of a product marketing manager?
Product marketing managers have a few primary responsibilities that all their other work orbits around. First and foremost, they should understand the market, its problems, and how the product they are promoting solves those problems. That knowledge shapes product positioning statements, product messaging strategies, marketing channels, and communication tactics.
With that in mind, here are some key responsibilities for product marketing managers.
Responsibility #1: Product Positioning and Messaging
Product positioning and messaging help companies communicate about their products and to their target markets in ways that will resonate. Strong positioning and messaging strategies differentiate products from competitors’ products in a crowded market.
Product messaging strategy documents outline critical information reinforcing the product’s value proposition for the buyer. Furthermore, it can refute any possible concerns or pushback that a market might have against a product. Positioning strategy documents critical information about the product’s target market, including competitive advantages and expected outcomes for customers.
Proper product positioning sets product marketing teams up for successful product messaging. These documents are guidelines with need-to-know information for any teams tasked with promoting or supporting the product.
Responsibility #2: Product Marketing Strategy
Close behind product messaging and product positioning strategy comes the product marketing strategy. Product marketing strategy outlines a product marketing campaign’s broad goals. That might include debuting a new product, promoting upgrades or new features, or supporting a product through its life cycle.
Product marketing strategy allows product and marketing teams to brainstorm, build, and deploy campaigns supporting business goals. Specifically, it helps product marketing teams communicate key product messaging and connect with target audiences defined by the product positioning statement.
The Product Marketing Strategy often outlines the channels (such as digital, out-of-home, or direct sales) through which marketing messages will reach the world, as well as the tactics (such as social media thought leadership, or retail demo) the campaign will use.
Responsibility #3: Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy
Crafting go-to-market (GTM) strategies, or product launch strategies, is a high-visibility and high-impact responsibility. A GTM strategy outlines precisely how a company will debut and promote a brand-new product. It begins by documenting the market and competitive research that informed product development. Then, it outlines product messaging, positioning, and marketing strategies. The GTM strategy includes the nitty-gritty details of exactly how, when, and why the product marketing team will promote a product. It also gets into details of product pricing and distribution channel strategy. Fundamentally, the GTM strategy should include everything a team needs to know about how the company plans to make a splash with its new product. If a product has been built using product management best practices, then the GTM strategy’s quality can make or break the product’s success.
Responsibility #4: Sales Enablement
Product marketing teams often equip sales teams with important information about the product, its target buyers and users, and key points from the product messaging and positioning strategy. In addition, they may create sales enablement assets that demonstrate the product’s value and real-world applications, such as case studies, presentation decks and one-pagers. These assets help sales teams communicate with prospects and close deals.
Responsibility #5: Product Lifecycle Marketing
A product marketer’s work doesn’t end after the product launches. Most of the work a product marketing manager does occurs after completing the GTM strategy. That’s because the product life cycle extends beyond launch to the product’s growth, maturity, and eventual decline and end. Product marketing managers are tasked with successfully marketing the product to drive sales, grow revenue, and satisfy customers, even especially after the product’s launch.
Additional Responsibilities for Product Marketing Managers
Beyond their core responsibilities, product marketing managers are responsible for a variety of other important tasks that support many teams.
Customer Retention and Onboarding
Making the sale and acquiring the customer is one thing – onboarding and product adoption can be a challenge, too. In particular, SaaS product buyers and users may require extra support integrating data or learning how to use products. While customer retention and onboarding aren’t specifically within product marketing’s scope, marketing managers may need to support customer success teams. This is especially true in small organizations.
Market Research
Every product organization should be market-driven, relying on market research to inform product decisions. In larger organizations, conducting customer interviews, collecting market research, and analyzing data typically fall to the product manager or product operations manager. However, product marketing can play an essential supporting role in these initiatives or even lead them entirely.
Project Management
Launching a project or promoting new features requires product marketing to be aware of many moving pieces and changing priorities, all of which have downstream effects on audience targeting, marketing strategy, channel selection, and launch dates. Monitoring for these changes, accounting for all contingencies, and communicating changing priorities to larger teams are essential tasks.
Communication and Stakeholder Management
Communication and stakeholder management go hand-in-hand with project management. Product marketing managers should have excellent written and oral communication skills. They often distill and distribute information to different internal and external audiences. That might include sending project updates via email, verbally communicating high-level goals and strategies in leadership meetings, or distributing marketing briefs. Indeed, strong communication skills intersect with stakeholder management, ensuring that critical stakeholders like executive leadership or customer advisory boards receive the necessary updates or that their feedback is incorporated whenever appropriate.
What are important skills for product marketing managers?
Beyond their day-to-day responsibilities, product marketing managers need diverse skills to succeed in their roles. Here are some of the hard and soft skills that support daily work as a product marketing manager.
Hard Skills for Product Marketing Managers
- Market research: Knowledge of the product’s market, target markets, desirable audiences, and competitors.
- Product positioning: Thorough understanding of the product, the market problems it solves, and how it might appeal to its target audience.
- Marketing strategy and channel knowledge: Understanding how to leverage different marketing channels and tactics to promote the product.
- Data analysis: Ability to analyze marketing campaign and performance data to gather insights about the impact of product marketing campaigns.
Soft Skills for Product Marketing Managers
- Project management: Monitor and update messaging strategies, channel selections, and bidding tactics.
- Budget allocation: Manage marketing budgets based on product priorities.
- Communication: Proactively share updates with internal and external audiences.
- Collaboration: Work with cross-functional teams to ensure campaigns launch on time and with the latest and greatest messaging while securing stakeholder support for major initiatives.
What is a product marketing manager’s role within an organization?
As you’ve probably learned, product marketing managers are essential to promoting products to their intended target audience in a way that drives the product’s and business’s goals. So, where does product marketing fit within an organization?
Product marketing managers work in the gray area between product management, marketing, sales, and customer experience. They often work closely with product managers to understand a product’s target market, features, and capabilities well before launch. Conversely, they may collaborate with or oversee marketers who deploy product marketing campaigns. Product managers are responsible for using market data to create products, and product marketing managers are responsible for promoting those products to their target markets.
Career Paths for Product Marketing Managers
Some Product Marketing Managers may manage teams of direct reports or may be individual contributors within their organizations. Depending on the structure of the organization they work in, product marketing managers might report to higher-up product or marketing team members. As such, the titles that go along with career advancement largely depend on the organization’s structure. Product marketers might advance into Director or Vice President (VP) of Marketing roles and eventually take on Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or VP of Marketing roles. Consequently, marketing managers who are passionate about product might advance into Director or VP of Product roles.
How to Become a Product Marketing Manager
If the aims and responsibilities outlined above appeal to you, you might be a good fit for a product marketing manager role. While some professionals may begin their careers in product marketing roles, it’s also common for people to change careers from product management, marketing, or communications into product marketing. Product Marketing Manager roles typically require a few years of professional experience in product or a related field. Whether you have direct product marketing experience or are hoping to break into product marketing, pursuing certifications and courses can help you in your job search and help you perform more effectively in your roles.
