Define it for me? 26 Product Managers on product marketing, as they see it.
By: Rebecca Geraghty
Tags: Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing

How do product teams define product marketing, and how can it help us think differently about the role? Here’s what 26 had to say.

Everyone’s busy defining product marketing right now — what it is, and what it should be. But while that conversation is taking place among ourselves, I thought:

Let’s ask the product teams. Why not put the question to them, hearing how they define the role and how that can impact our thinking too?

With the help of Product Marketing Alliance, I’ve polled a set of product managers for their take. We’ve heard from people at Canon, LinkedIn, TriNet, Otter.ai, early-stage startups, and more that manage products ranging from hardware, software, and services in a cross-section of industries.

This is the first in a series of articles where I’ll dig into the responses, focusing here on Question #1: “How do you define product marketing?” Let’s take a look at the top 26 answers, and takeaways of what they reveal.

PS: The poll is open and still accepting responses HERE, so feel free to pass to your product teams to have their say!

First, why?

Before we get into the results, a quick note on the “why” behind this.

This poll came out of my belief that as we flesh out the vision for what product marketing is and what we stand for, hearing from those on the other side of the product equation is key.

As others commented recently at the San Francisco Product Marketing World Summit, we’re in a “golden era” of product marketing. We’ve seen the release of the first-ever State of Product Marketing report, and all this asking and answering is helping us discover viewpoints that we didn’t have access to before. It’s critical that we move through this golden era developing a deeper understanding of our craft that’s informed by more viewpoints than just our own.

We’re yin and yang functions with product — they’re our biggest stakeholders and managing this relationship is often the reason we’re hired in the first place. If we’re going to define ourselves, knowing how the other side perceives us can help us better see the gaps and holes we’re able to fill, and think bigger picture about the contribution we make.

For this article, I’ve deliberately anonymized the definitions in order to look at a snapshot of each side by side. Factors of industry, company culture, lifecycle stage of the product and more all undoubtedly impact each perspective — but I wanted to strip back the framing factors and look at what each put forward as their most essential, basic definition of what the role is.

So now, what did they say? Flip through to read each one:

Analysis & Key Takeaways

My first pass reading these had a lot of nodding in agreement, a few chuckles, and a couple raised eyebrows of piqued interest.

The definitions are wonderfully individualized, each a window into that person’s unique take. I smiled as I read the terse #4 “content n presentation” vs lengthy, in-depth descriptions. Many align with how most PMMs would define the role too, but the color comes through in the variations across each.

Here’s a closer look at a few aspects including:

Top words used

Missing & less-used words

Thought provokers, outliers & notables

Top Words Used

Loud and clear, based on the most-used keywords, our product managers rely on us for:

Customers / Personas

How many times these appeared: 8.

When it comes to customers, whether it’s listening to, interacting with, researching, understanding, communicating with them or being their advocate, product seems to see this as the #1 focus of what we do. The fact that these words showed up even more than messaging is telling. If there’s a gap they want us to step in an fill, this is it.

Messaging

How many times it appeared: 7 direct, + many more indirect.

Appearing in about two-thirds of the responses and alluded to in many more, messaging is (not surprisingly) our key domain in the eyes of product teams. The consensus is that product marketers maintain this “outbound” and external focus of how the product is represented to the outside world. Where the answers started to vary, AKA where things get interesting, is how many placed it fully in the product marketer’s hands vs a shared responsibility owned jointly between them and us. The variance shows how the process for messaging creation will differ by organization as its claimed by both groups.

Positioning, GTM, Competitor Research

How many times it appeared: 3–4 each.

These weaved through most responses of core product marketing to do’s — consistent with our own understanding. Now contrast that with what words you might have expected to see that were in short supply…

Missing or Less-Used Words

I scanned for keywords that might reveal where our definitions diverge from theirs. A few interesting things I noticed:

Sales / Sales Enablement

How many times it appeared: Sales: 2. Enablement: 1.

This was the biggest omission to me. While the answers focused squarely on PMM’s role in interfacing with customers, they didn’t place that same emphasis on our interaction with sales. #16's answer did make me smile with its addendum in parenthesis: “(And of course, also does stuff to help Sales be effective).” But if you ask most product marketers supporting sales is way more than an afterthought, and actually a fundamental pillar of what we do. I’m intrigued that product leaders didn’t prioritize the PMM-sales interface in their basic definitions, especially when contrasted against the unanimity of the PMM-customer one.

Roadmap

How many times it appeared: 0.

Roadmap wasn’t said outright by any respondents! (In fact, it only came up 1x in the entire poll, in response to a later question). While it’s alluded to in a few comments such as “what we should build” and “write the MRD”, the concept of PMMs impacting roadmap is thin here. Compare that to many PMM views and you’ll hear it cited often as a key contribution we aspire to make. Perhaps our product teams don’t see our contribution here through quite the same lens?

Story, Brand, and Content

How many times it appeared: 1 time each.

With product marketers often referred to as owners of the product story and master narrative I thought these concepts might come up more than they did. I was particularly struck by the sparsity of the word “content”, given our role in turning technical information into compelling assets — an urgent need in today’s content-driven world. I also scanned for “brand” simply out of curiosity (since this is owned by all groups in an organization) and that was again a solo reference here.

“Gap”

How many times it appeared: 0.

On a bit more of a conceptual level, I noticed nobody referred to product marketers in terms of a “gap.” This piqued my interest as I often hear PMMs thought of as “filling an organizational gap” in either communication or understanding. So it’s intriguing that no product managers framed their definition in these terms.

Thought provokers, outliers & notables

A few answers hinged on super-specifics that stood out. Here’s where the color comes through, worth considering if these are central to someone’s basic definition of the role — meaning PMM’s could run into expectations around these in future organizations they walk into.

PM by another name?

#6: “A product manager that spends a great deal of time talking to people outside the 4 walls.”

That’s fascinating — actually calling us by their title, but with an external orientation. This one made me take a step back for a second and try this on for size. While I would never refer to myself as a product manager, as that feels antithetical to my marketing make-up, maybe it’s a useful way to consider what we do?

Digital Marketer by another name?

#16: “…product marketing creates and runs programs to find qualified leads based on the segmentation and value prop.”

Certainly many of us do this work, but you could definitely swap in “Digital Marketing” or “Demand Generation” for this same definition — not necessarily a PMM. This underscores the need to be savvy in as many areas of marketing as possible to draw upon based on what our product needs at that exact moment in its journey.

Don’t be just a specialist.

#18: “The main value in product marketing manager not to be a specialist in some marketing style, but to choose wisely which way is the best fit for now.”

This hits on an important nerve of the product marketing anatomy — the generalist orientation often required by the role. I’ve heard many refer to the PMM role as actually being a type of “General Manager” for our business area, since we focus on many different aspects of the product extending outside of traditional marketing. As I’ve wrote about before, there are days when it can feel like we didn’t work on a single “marketing” activity instead focusing on whatever’s needed to make the product successful in that moment — whether that’s building a demo or digging into item codes. Of the various types of marketing roles, ours does seem to require a strong mix of generalist skills to tackle broader questions around the product journey — so it’s interesting to see that reflected here too.

Know the customer’s budget.

#19: “Be the expert in the budget the market has for purchasing.”

Not every PMM would necessarily have as granular knowledge of the customer budget as say sales to be considered an “expert” here. On the other hand, it’s an extremely valid point given our focus on customer/market research. Takeaway: add digging into budgets to tomorrow’s to do list…

Personal Favorite

#1: “To define simply, product management’s core responsibility is to define the product — and product marketing’s core responsibility is to tell the world about it.”

If I had to pick a favorite it would be #1, which also happens to be the 1st response I received. It’s “Inspired” by Marty Cagan’s work and resonates with me as a beautifully succinct framing of what not only our mission, but product’s too, is all about.

Share your thoughts…and the poll!

Skimming down the list feels like a listening tour through outside views of what we do — making for a great chance to step back and think.

And all this is only from Question #1, so there’s a lot more where that came from with more articles coming soon!

Want to help? The poll is still live and accepting answers — so please share with your product teams. We’d love to get critical mass of input to analyze further. (Aiming for 100 responses).

Which definitions stuck out to you? Find me on LinkedIn, and the PMA Slack channel, to continue the conversation.