Product Marketing is still a relatively new marketing discipline but increasing in popularity as more businesses realize the enormous potential good product marketing has to deliver growth.
Product Marketing is technically a marketing discipline although it also has a lot in common with Product Management. As a Product Marketer you are primarily responsible for driving growth by creating a go-to-market strategy that is informed by extensive audience research, market intelligence and product knowledge.
A Product Marketer should focus on identifying the most attractive market for a product, understanding what buyers in the market care about, and explaining what the product does in a way that will motivate buyers to purchase it. They are also commonly responsible for ensuring your whole organization can communicate the core value of your product effectively to the market.
There is a relatively common misunderstanding that Product Marketing's only focus should be on supporting GTM activities for net new business. However, effective Product Marketing should drive demand much more holistically, identifying opportunities to drive growth across the customer lifecycle. This is one of the reasons why I am not much of a fan of the traditional marketing funnel and much prefer HubSpot's Flywheel model. Where you apply effort in the flywheel as a Product Marketer will depend on your role, product, business and market but it is important to think about where you can have the most impact across the whole customer lifecycle.
There is more than one way to drive growth as a Product Marketer.
As may already be apparent, Product Marketing is a very broad discipline and although the core focus is similar, day-to-day responsibilities in Product Marketing can vary dramatically company to company. However, there are some accepted core responsibilities that most Product Marketing roles will have involvement in to differing degrees.
Key Responsibilities of Product Marketing
Understanding the Market: Product Marketers embark on a thorough journey of market research. They identify target customer segments, delve into their pain points, analyze the competitive landscape, and stay informed about industry trends.
Product Positioning: Armed with an in-depth market understanding, Product Marketers shape the product's positioning to accentuate its unique value proposition. They strive to differentiate the product from competitors and resonate with the intended audience.
Go-to-Market Strategy: As the product nears its launch, Product Marketing takes charge of formulating a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. This entails setting pricing, nailing the message, establishing channels, and devising marketing campaign strategy to ensure the product lands in front of the right customers at the right time.
Messaging and Content: Effective communication is the linchpin of Product Marketing. Product Marketers create compelling messages and content that unequivocally convey the product's value and advantages. This encompasses website content, blog posts, social media assets, sales collateral and more.
Sales Enablement: Empowering the sales team is paramount, and Product Marketing equips them with the essential tools and knowledge. This includes comprehensive sales training, competitive analysis, and the creation of sales materials that enable representatives to articulate the product's value convincingly.
Product Adoption: This may seem a little out of place, but often times Product Marketing can and should play a role in driving customer adoption of your product. Whether this is through release marketing or slick onboarding processes getting customers to use and love your product is key to success and a big growth driver.
Why is Product Marketing Important?
Product Marketing holds a pivotal role in a company's success for several compelling reasons:
Customer-Centric Approach: By thoroughly understanding the market and target customers, Product Marketing ensures the product is finely tuned to address genuine pain points and meet customer requirements.
Effective Communication: Product Marketing ensures that the product's value and benefits are communicated convincingly, allowing it to shine amid intense market competition.
Team Alignment: It bridges the divide between product development, sales, and marketing, ensuring everyone shares a common objective and works harmoniously toward it.
Optimizing ROI: Through meticulous tracking and analysis of metrics, Product Marketing empowers companies to make informed decisions, optimizing their marketing investments and product development efforts.
Product Marketing really does play a critical role in tying your business together. It connects the market to the product and the product to the business. From market understanding and effective product positioning to crafting compelling messages and empowering the sales team, this multifaceted role is indispensable. In an era of cutthroat competition and soaring customer expectations, Product Marketing is becoming a critical function for companies aspiring to excel in their respective markets.
What's the difference between traditional Marketing functions and Product Marketing?
Marketing, in its broadest sense, comprises a wide range of activities aimed at promoting a brand, company, or its offerings. It involves the creation and execution of strategies to build brand awareness, drive customer engagement, and foster customer loyalty. In essence, marketing focuses on shaping the overall perception of a company, managing its reputation, and generating demand for its products or services.
Having read the previous section this may well sound pretty close to the description of Product Marketing, and it is. However, the level of cross-over between Marketing and Product Marketing varies dependent on business stage and whether you are a single product company or a company with a portfolio of products.
In single Product companies Product Marketing will be very deeply engaged in driving overall business positioning. Similarly, most marketing campaign activity in these cases will be Product focused and so again, Product Marketing will be the main driver. It's also highly likely that most customer focused communication is directly product related and so should be aligned with Product Marketing's overall strategy.
In multiple product companies and in very large companies it can be a lot more complicated. Product Marketing can get very, very niche and focused in these kind of scenarios. They may have a specific market vertical, a specific product, or even a combination of both. In these cases Product Marketing will still work closely with the marketing team but they are probably more regularly engaged at a specific campaign level rather than in overall company positioning and brand building.
Regardless, a Product Marketer will collaborate extremely closely with most functions within a marketing team at some point. They will work with digital marketers to help them turn the go-to-market strategy into a targeted SEO strategy or PPC campaign. They will help the campaign manager pick the right channels for their campaign and provide the messaging framework they can use to build content.
Ultimately, Product Marketing and other Marketing disciplines all must work together to create a comprehensive marketing strategy that promotes the company and its offerings effectively. Product Marketing cannot deliver on it's objectives without the help of a great marketing team. Similarly, Product Marketing can be a super power for a Marketing team, helping them be more efficient, more targeted and ultimately more effective.
What is the difference between Product Marketing and Product Management?
Product Management is probably the discipline the most often gets conflated with Product Marketing, and for good reason, these two roles share a lot of very similar objectives. Both roles want to help build a great product that delights customers and delivers value people will pay for. As a Product Marketer it's absolutely essential that you maintain a good relationship with Product Management as you can't function effectively without one.
But what are the differences? And where are the similarities?
What is Product Management
Product Management involves defining the product's vision, strategy, and features. Product Managers are responsible for understanding customer needs, creating a roadmap, and ensuring the product aligns with the company's strategic goals. They act as the bridge between the development team and other stakeholders, ensuring the product is built efficiently and effectively.
Product Marketing in a lot of ways plays a similar role to Product as a bridge, but Product Marketers are the bridge between Product and the rest of the GTM organization. Whilst both Product Management and Product Marketing will work with Sales, Marketing, Customer Success etc. Product Marketing is the one tasked with equipping these teams with the tools they need to do their job. Product Management is responsible for ensuring these teams have a great product to sell, and that any feedback from customers is collected and routed through into the Product Development process.
Product Management is responsible for defining and building the product, while Product Marketing takes charge of positioning and promoting it effectively in the market. Obviously both roles are essential for a product's success, but they serve distinct functions within the product lifecycle.
Product Management decides what gets built into a product based on a whole range of inputs, Product Marketing is one of these inputs. Product Management then manages the process flow between what we are going to build and what get's built when. This is where they work with development teams to deliver all the grand plans as manageable projects.
Product Marketing provides input into the "what we should build" part of the process and then jumps back in at the conclusion of that process to communicate to the business and the market "what we have built". They don't really get involved in the middle bit of how and when are we going to build it.
Hopefully that clears up any confusion, really the differences are pretty simple despite the similar sounding role names. The place where there is the most overlap is in priorities, but that's a very good thing and should be encouraged. If your Product Managers and Product Marketers are on completely different pages it's going to cause problems.
How to get started as in Product Marketing?
After you have read all this you might think that Product Marketing sounds pretty interesting - it is!!!
Product Marketing is an exceptionally exciting, varied and challenging role that gets you working broadly across a business. If you want a little help landing your first Product Marketing job we can help, check out our Product Marketing Interview Prep course.
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