After the great success of the first article on the subject on "What is a Product Marketing Manager?", let's continue this roundup on the Product Marketing.
The first thing is that we should never say "PMM vs PM". The two roles are not in competition: the Product Marketing Manager and the Product Manager must work hand in hand to ensure the success of their product. And they must do so at every stage of the product lifecycle. So in concrete terms, what happens at the 6 key moments of discovery, roadmap definition, development, pre-launch, launch and post-launch?
🔭 The Product Marketing Manager Focuses on Buyer Research, the Product Manager on User Research
During discovery, the Product Manager focuses (rightly so!) on the user by understanding what they want from the product being developed. Through the User Research phase, the PM must dig into their problems, pain points and expectations to develop a product that meets a usage need.
The Product Marketing Manager, on the other hand, will focus more on the elements that will motivate an act of purchase: making people understand what they need to know about the product (and what it does) to be able to buy it. The PMM is heavily involved in Buyer Research, a very important research phase, especially in B2B, where the user is rarely the buyer, even if he or she is regularly a prescriber of the solution.
They will lead the way in the development of new products and services.
In addition to that, the PMM will conduct his Market Research to gain precise knowledge of the environment, the sector and the competition.
These two research phases will feed the PMM to position his product optimally.
To excel in Product Discovery: sign up for our Discovery Discipline Training
🎯 The Product Marketing Manager Provides the Product Manager with Market Knowledge
During the definition of the roadmap, the Product Marketing Manager is in charge of providing the Product Manager with knowledge of the market and the competition.
This will help the Product Manager to build the product vision, alongside with the objectives and initiatives that will make it a reality. A clear strategy will enable the Product team to make the best decisions.
Because of his position and knowledge, the Product Marketing Manager influences the roadmap by giving it a business-oriented tone.
This ensures that each new feature delivered responds not only to a user problem, but also to a market need and positioning.
Finally, this roadmap helps PMM to build its marketing strategy and to anticipate and best prepare its product launches.
🏃During Development, the Product Manager Leads Product Conception.
During development, the PM has complete autonomy to drive product creation. The PMM supports the teams in writing internal content by aligning messages with the value proposition and the way of communicating (image, tone of voice).
Spoiler: we'll be talking to you very soon about how Product Marketing cooperates with Product Design and Brand to align these different topics.
The Product Manager acts as an intermediary between stakeholders and the teams in charge of designing; he aligns them with the Product strategy and roadmap.
The Product Marketing Manager, meanwhile, focuses on the offer and works on the product's future positioning, pricing and messaging strategy.
👩🚀 The Product Marketing Manager Takes the Reins of Go-To-Market
Before launch, as the PM finalizes his feature or product with the technical teams, the PMM takes over leadership and prepares his Go-To Market, the crucial phase of a Product launch.
They will define his launch strategy by drawing up a checklist of elements to be created and disseminated; as well as collaborating with the various stakeholders in order to train and coach them regarding the new product or feature:
- The sales or sales teams first: the PMM provides all the content that can help with the sale: presentation deck, product sheet, demo script, battle card and any positioning and differentiator regarding the competition;
- The customers success or customer support team: here again, the PMM must support them as much as possible by training them on new products, preparing FAQs and user guides to best assist them in getting to grips with the product;
- Marketing: the PMM sends them all the necessary material in terms of target (persona), segmentation (cohort) and message to be addressed in order to run the most impactful and effective communications campaigns possible.
Finally, the Product Marketing Manager will define metrics to measure the performance of their launch and the direct business impact:
- Revenue growth (Monthly Recurring Revenue, Average Revenue Per User, average basket) ;
- Increased usage (Monthly/Daily Active Users) ;
- Cost/benefit ratio of a user (Cost of Acquisition, Lifetime Value...).
The point of defining them before launch is to give yourself an ambitious but achievable goal. Post-launch measurement will enable you to assess whether it has had an impact or not.
🚀 The Product Marketing Manager Coordinates the Product Launch.
No matter how well prepared, this is a very intense phase for a PMM.
While the PM listens to early feedback or prioritizes certain bugfixes identified at the last minute (and yes, it happens!), the PMM is on all fronts to be the showcase for his Product.
They coordinate all communications actions carried out by the Operational Marketing teams and act as the spokesperson for the promotion of the Product through various events during which he can communicate: webinar, trade show, conference, any opportunity to participate in the success of the launch!
🌔 The roles of the Product Manager and PMM after the launch
After the launch, we rest.
Actually no, not really!
In line with the philosophy as Product Management, the PMM tracks its business metrics, communicates internally and externally on iterations and helps the PM collect and analyze feedback.
They must also be on constant watch of the market and the competition. After all, we often claim victory when we find our Product Market Fit, forgetting that the market is evolving.
You can have the best Product in the world on day 1 and have everything turned upside down with a market that changes overnight (Covid-19, we're talking about you 🙈).
This is true not only for a new product, but also for any evolution or new feature.
So obviously, this is a theory that can be applied differently from one company to another in terms of timing.
🌰 In a nutshell
The important thing to understand is that:
- PM as well as PMM work hand in hand throughout the sales cycle and bring value to each other;
- The 2 are involved from beginning to end of the Product cycle;
- There is no dead time in the 2 trades: at each phase there are things to build, to contribute, to enrich.
To conclude this article, I wanted to emphasize a recurring question about the Product Marketing Manager role that I hear all too often: why shouldn't I ask my PM already in place to take on the PMM role?
Philosophically speaking, it's not silly at all.
PM and PMM share an obsession with the user through research, feedback analysis and metrics tracking. They also have excellent communication skills, and are driven by creating the best impact for their product.
Finally, this is a good example of how PMM and PMM share an obsession with the user, through research, feedback analysis and metrics tracking.
Finally, these are the same methods applied to different contexts (for example, user research vs. buyer research).
And quite often, in early-stage companies, a single person performs all these roles to some extent (and for the best ones, they also perform the function of Product Designer).
However, unless you're a superhero or don't sleep, it's hardly manageable in real life to take care of everything.
Because each of these roles requires a pretty intense investment and workload.
I challenge you to manage properly:
- Market and competition research;
- Constructing the user persona and buyer persona ;
- Doing user and buyer research ;
- Synthesizing the stakeholders requests ;
- Building a product strategy;
- Developing an associated pricing structure;
- Prioritizing features and developments;
- Creating and maintaining a roadmap ;
- Cutting out your epics and writing user stories ;
- Managing your Product backlog ;
- Animating your scrum team ;
- Doing product testing;
- Implementing usage and business metrics;
- Creating the right message for each character;
- Training sales forces and customer success ;
- Animating the product launch;
- Participating in conferences, meet-ups or webinars to raise product awareness;
- Analyzing user feedback ;
- Monitoring business metrics and justifying return on investment...
*Non-exhaustive list. See conditions in store. Subject to stock availability. If symptoms persist, ask your pharmacist for advice.
While it remains true that each of these tasks is extremely interesting and that it's tempting to try and do everything, the result is, if one is pragmatic, that it's impossible for a single person to take on all these functions without neglecting one of these components, which are all nonetheless fundamental to the life of a product.
This is why you should avoid mixing roles as much as possible, and why a Product Marketing Manager can come and support your Product team in the various aspects that make up their job.
To go further, visit our Product Marketing expertise page.