That should be how product management and product marketing teams work together, right? Their missions are tied to a singular north star, so their intertwining responsibilities should feel like a relay race, where the baton is handed back and forth with streamlined efficiency. Ok, basics first. In theory, what we have here are two roles with equal footing \u2013 neither product marketing managers nor product managers have any real authority over the other. Instead, they should work alongside each other to unilaterally influence each other\u2019s strategies. Product management<\/a> is about putting the product itself at the heart of everything. Whether it\u2019s a digital service or a physical object, product managers beaver away with the sole purpose of refining that asset. As the head of a team, their responsibilities include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the product is new, the product manager might be involved right from its inception, helping to find the product’s reason for being, direction, features, and use case. Otherwise, the product manager will take ownership of an existing product and champion its ongoing development within the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The product manager is ultimately responsible for getting the product out the door \u2013 at its initial launch and during any future updates. That means managing the team that handles testing, quality assurance, and on-time delivery. Linked to the above is product management\u2019s role in designing the product\u2019s future. In software, that means feature rollouts, bug fixes, and ongoing improvements. The roadmap is based heavily on the customer experience and any identified areas for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the marketing<\/em> manager will package up and articulate the product\u2019s USP for your target audience, the product manager does that internally \u2013 which helps define marketing\u2019s direction of travel. This sometimes includes writing use case and case study documentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Product marketing takes what\u2019s great about the project and figures out how to explain that to people in a way that they find irresistible. Their general responsibilities include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The go-to-market strategy is the summation of how marketing is going to proposition the value of the product to the people most likely to buy it. It\u2019s the result of competitor analysis, market research, and clearly-defined documentation on how you\u2019ll talk about the product externally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product marketing management provides sales teams with crystal clear comms around the value of the product, shaping how it\u2019s talked about with prospective leads. Your marketing manager may also be closely involved in shaping price and pricing tiers, based on market research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product marketing managers design campaigns that drum up interest for your project. They\u2019re in charge of running demos and presentations, designing social media and content marketing strategies, as well as securing print, TV, and digital ads \u2013 all based on a strategy that clearly demonstrates the product\u2019s benefits to your target audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we\u2019ve discussed, product marketing is, in essence, the process of bringing your wares to market by drumming up customer interest. It differs from marketing in a more general sense because marketing writ large<\/em> also includes brand marketing, digital attrition through tactics like SEO, and more generalized lead generation. Product marketing begins with understanding the product\u2019s place in the wider landscape. That means conducting research to learn what competitors are offering, how they communicate their proposition, and \u2013 importantly \u2013 how that\u2019s landing with consumers. Done effectively, this market research will highlight a gap or opportunity that can form the center of the ongoing marketing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Positioning is all about taking that gap your market research identifies and running with it. It\u2019s about telling a story that answers questions about why your product exists, what problem it solves, who it\u2019s for, and what makes it stand out. Telling that story effectively and concisely is what provides your product with a clear, rock-solid position within your industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of your product marketing efforts, you\u2019ll create collateral and assets that help sales, customer success, and partner teams drive growth. That might be video content that clearly demonstrates the product\u2019s features, it might be a script that sales teams can use, or it might be brochures that sales team members can send to qualified leads. Product marketing and product sales teams are close allies, where insight and material from either one can help the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product management is all about ensuring that the product at the heart of your business lives up to customer and stakeholder expectations. This role is even more important in product-led growth (PLG) companies<\/a>, where the product is the star of the show, above and beyond the brand. Here\u2019s what the product manager handles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The product is planned as a solution to a problem that you know your potential customer faces. It\u2019s then designed, built, tested and shipped, with the product management team overseeing all areas of the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Does customer feedback paint a positive picture of how the product is performing? Or, with fewer Ps: how are things running? Product analysis is the art of learning what\u2019s working, what\u2019s not, and finding experience gaps that can be closed in future iterations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With you analysis done, you can improve the product. If it\u2019s software, that\u2019ll be version updates with new features and bug fixes. If it\u2019s a physical item, for example a running shoe with a big swoosh on the side, you\u2019ll replace last year\u2019s model with something even better. This is a cyclical journey, where analysis feeds iterative updates, and repeat analysis helps you discover further changes and improvements for the product roadmap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In smaller companies especially, it can seem tempting to have one person operate as both the product manager and the product marketing manager. After all, they\u2019re both roles fixated on building packages that drive revenue. We get it, there are some obvious points of friction here. Companies in which these two titanic roles aren\u2019t clearly defined, for instance, will run into problems with managers not understanding where responsibilities start and stop. Product and Marketing managers also usually have differing KPIs. Product managers live for great user or industry reviews and technical metrics like service up-time, while product marketing managers are geared towards things like share of voice and lead generation. But there are a few key ways companies can help settle the \u2018product marketing vs product management\u2019 battle, and help the product itself flourish:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t just mean collaboration between product managers and product marketing managers. Heads of every department should be involved in regular planning and update sessions, and this sharing of ideas should be baked into the fundamental DNA of the company. Product and marketing managers can give the product in question the best chance of success by working together on a roadmap that\u2019s informed by what they both know. Working on the long-term future of the product together will help identify clearer priorities based on both technical and<\/em> market insight \u2013 rather than one or the other in alternate spurts. First up, ensure that the purpose and boundaries of each role are clearly defined and understood. Who\u2019s in charge of gathering specific insights or creating certain assets, and where does the buck stops on any given problem? Most importantly, what are each of you trying to achieve? Your goals don\u2019t have to be the same, but they need to be mutually understood at the very least.
Only, sometimes that relay race can feel more like a competitive 100m dash. And that\u2019s because product marketing and product management\u2019s roles, despite having differing KPIs and roles, can overlap to the point where only a blurry line separates the two \u2013 and to where shoulders can get pretty bruised as they rub up against one another.
And that\u2019s not to mention that company and product objectives can really differ<\/a>.
So it\u2019s probably worth exploring what\u2019s what. What, for instance, should be in a product manager\u2019s wheelhouse, and where should a product marketing manager prioritize? And, most importantly, how can they work together to meet those three company-wide aims?
Let\u2019s take a deep dive into one of the business world\u2019s most confusing battles: product management vs. product marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this article we\u2019ll cover the following topics:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Product marketing vs. product management: What’s the difference?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The really (probably too) simple way to look at the distinction between the two is to say that product managers think about things<\/strong>, and product marketing managers think about people<\/strong>.
That is to say that, whereas product managers focus their efforts on designing and improving physical or digital products<\/a>, product marketers look at that product and think about how to convey what it does to the people making up their target audience.
The go-to-market strategy of the latter is based on what humans find engaging, whilst the former takes a more nuts-and-bolts approach with its roots in development and\/or manufacturing.
If we were putting it into \u2018college science major\u2019 terms: product is about engineering, and marketing is about psychology. If you\u2019d like an even more tortured analogy, please Tweet us @ProdPad<\/a>.
Need more clarity? No problem; let\u2019s break each one down and take a look at their main responsibilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\nProduct management responsibilities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
1. Designing and developing the product<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Managing QA and product shipping<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Futher reading: How does this compare to a product owner?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n3. Managing the product roadmap<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Clarifying the product\u2019s value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Product marketing management responsibilities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
1. Building a marketing strategy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Empowering your sales team<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Making noise about the product<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Product marketing: the basics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The core tenets of great product marketing combine to define your overall go-to-market strategy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. Market insights <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Product positioning <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Sales, customer success & partner enablement <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Product management: The basics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Product design and development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Product analysis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Product innovation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
In practice: Separating the two roles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
And there are some overlapping skills between the two, as well. Both roles tend to attract people who have a customer-first focus that defines their work. They\u2019ll both know how to turn feedback into change, and they\u2019ll often both like to move with agility to close gaps and make changes that have a clear impact.
But there\u2019s a lot to do for one person. More importantly, any one person trying to fill both roles will always have an inherent bias towards one of the two disciplines, and that can lead to an unbalanced approach.
Product managers are often so laser-focused on improving the efficiency of the product that they can lose sight of what its actual customers are clamoring for, or miss vital commercial opportunities. Natural product marketers, on the other hand, can see commercial opportunities in what others might deem trend-chasing, and that can dilute what makes the product such a strong proposition in the first place.
In practice, product managers and product marketers should be seen as complementary roles \u2013 people that can help each other out. Here\u2019s how\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\nProduct marketing vs product management: how can they work together?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
And to top it all off, everyone has their own day-to-day work to be getting on with, which can make collaboration and unified thinking tough.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Product](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/conflict-resolution-1-1024x295.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nBuild a culture of collaboration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Building collaboration into a culture means regular check-ins with clear actions that are assigned to each department. Software that knocks down walls<\/a> and makes the roadmap more egalitarian will dramatically reduce the chance of mixed messages and overlapping workloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPlan your roadmap together<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s customer use and<\/em> customer trends working together to build a roadmap for the product that both stakeholders are happy with. No surprises, maximum teamwork<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSet shared goals and KPIs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
With those things aligned, product managers<\/a> and product marketers should share the KPIs that matter to each, talk about how and why they differ and then move forwards by treating the improvement of every<\/em> metric as a shared goal.\u00a0
That way, marketing metrics become product metrics and vice versa. Having dual ownership of these KPIs ensures that nothing gets wrongly prioritized or ignored \u2013\u00a0and it keeps everyone driving the product in the right direction for the business as a whole, rather than for a single department.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"Free](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/OKR-banner_Blogs-1280x300-1-1024x240.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"