Product Marketing Management

Product marketing management entails full responsibility for a product. It includes owning the product roadmap and strategy, conveying the roadmap to the development team. This responsibility of ensuring the development of a product is for the Product Marketing Manager to take.

What does a Product Marketing Manager do?

The Product marketing manager collaborates with creative departments and engineers to build a product from initial concept to final commercialization. They are involved in all aspects of market analysis, branding, pricing, strategy, and branding.

The Product marketing manager is capable of wearing many hats or taking on roles in various industries. Some industries will need assistance to lead the development of a product’s branding in messaging creation. For other products, it is the product marketing manager’s task to ensure the product reaches the company’s profitability targets. For other industries, the product marketing manager may be responsible for pitching retailers about placement, shelf space, and presence.

Product Marketing Models

Most companies harness two different models of product marketing. The first model has the product marketer as a subcontractor who turns into an expert in understanding the customer and communicates a differentiated value to the correct customer. The product marketer gives support to the product manager in selecting where to place the product based on customer data strategically.

In the second model, the product marketer communicates actively with the customer but does not actively participate in forming the product strategy. With both models, product marketers deal with a variety of people daily, from customers to engineers to data scientists.

Once product marketers collect data on customer behavior, they work with the production management team to share these data and strategize priorities on how to meet customer needs.

Product Marketing vs. Product Management

Here are the three significant factors product marketing and product management have in common:
1.The customer is the primary actor. The best products cater to the needs of the customer
2.Their roles are limitless; they can wear a variety of hats because of their responsibilities.
3. Product marketers and product managers are integral to the success of marketing and sales efforts.

The product marketing manager’s task is to help define and create a new product — from formulation to the product getting to shelves (or digital storefronts). They oversee products through the whole development process, giving designers and engineers guidance daily on tasks. Product marketing managers define what product offers and convey critical data to internal and external stakeholders.

A product marketer is responsible for bringing the product to the market. They both focus on marketing to customers. The product marketer’s responsibility is to ensure that the company has a full understanding of customer needs and builds products to cater to those needs.

The product marketing manager is responsible for the product’s failure or success in the market.

Why the Roles are Separate

Combining the roles of Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager is not recommended because each role demands a heavy workload, including the following:

Product Marketing Management Responsibilities

The product marketing manager’s primary responsibility is to create a product that is a solution to a customer problem. These responsibilities involve identifying your customer demographics, discovering the root of their problem, and deciding solutions around it.

The responsibilities in understanding the customer are where product management and product marketing overlap. Both work on conducting market sizing, analysis research, and ethnographic research on their customers. Deciding on what product to build and how to build it commonly falls on product management.

Product marketing management involves brainstorming various ways to solve a problem in the most optimal manner. This task may entail making a trade-off on a product that is faster, more efficient, or assessing market risk and determine how to mitigate risks.

Product Marketing Management Skills

Essential Behavior in Product Marketing Managers

For product marketing managers to succeed in their role, they should be able to: