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Navigating Product Management vs. Product Marketing

Welcome to our Product Newsletter, a biweekly email highlighting top discussions, and learning resources for product managers.

What We Will Cover In This Edition:-

Top Discussions: 

1)  Product Management versus Product Marketing.

2) Should you target the broad market or a particular smaller one?

3) What are the best practices in product management compared to the sobering realities?

Top Learning Resources:

1. Product management is not about solving user problems

2. What is a product management maturity model?

3. How to use product metrics to drive growth

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Top Discussions

Question 1Product Management versus Product Marketing

I know they both have some overlaps and quite diverse roles in principle, but what about in practice for a small tech (hardware) company with about 30 employees?

Does it make sense for one individual to manage the product initiatives and marketing with a small team of two or three, while simultaneously serving as the “product lead”?

When it comes to customer insights and engineering guidance, how do product management and product marketing differ from one another?

What worries me the most is how a product marketing manager can avoid being entangled in the Mar-Com weeds.

– Arnie Silverss

Discussion

A] Product marketing managers conducted client interviews, assessed product market fit, and conducted all pre-development research in one of my former companies. Product Marketing Managers would generate all the support materials and message for the product while the Product Managers were working with engineering to deploy the product. When Product Managers thought their workload was too much for them to handle, we Product Marketing Managers would take over.

I proudly do both because I can. I know plenty of PMs who say that’s not ‘pure’ product management, though. Whatever.

– Fergus Xavier

B] In a small tech company of around 30 people, it’s not uncommon for one person to hold both the roles of Product Lead and Marketing Manager. In fact, it can make a lot of sense for the person responsible for the product to also be responsible for marketing it.

However, it’s important to note that Product Management and Product Marketing are two distinct roles, and it can be challenging for one person to excel in both. As you mentioned, Product Management focuses on understanding customer needs, defining product requirements, and working with engineering to build the product. On the other hand, Product Marketing focuses on creating a compelling message, positioning the product in the market, and enabling the sales team to sell it effectively.

If one person is handling both roles, they need to be able to switch between the two mindsets effectively. It can be helpful to have a small team of 2 or 3 people to support them in executing marketing initiatives, such as creating marketing collateral, running campaigns, and managing social media.

To avoid getting caught up in the Mar-Com weeds, the Product Marketing Manager should focus on strategic initiatives that align with the company’s overall goals. They should work closely with the Product Lead to ensure that the product is meeting customer needs and that the messaging is consistent with the product’s value proposition. They should also collaborate with the sales team to understand customer objections and refine the messaging accordingly.

In summary, while it’s possible for one person to hold both the roles of Product Lead and Marketing Manager in a small tech company, it’s important to recognize that they are two distinct roles that require different skill sets. If one person is handling both roles, they should have a small team to support them in executing marketing initiatives, and they should focus on strategic initiatives that align with the company’s overall goals.

– Michael Yoffe

C]  I like to think of PM vs PMM this way:

  • Product Marketing owns communication from company to customer.
  • Product Management owns communication from customer to company.

what about in practice for a small tech (hardware) company with about 30 employees?
Does it make sense for one individual to manage the product initiatives and marketing with a small team of two or three, while simultaneously serving as the “product lead”?

Company size is a factor, but so is industry. At a B2C start up, I could see it making sense for PM and PMM to be the same person. But at a B2B startup, Marketing and/or Sales should be owning traditional PMM duties IMO

– Pankaj Jain

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Question 2) Should you target the broad market or a particular smaller one?

I am in charge of a product in a new area where it has never been before (Europe). I am testing in several market categories and find that a small segment in Europe has an excellent product-market fit. I am only working with users from this segment of the market, however. How would you respond? Focus on that little expert segment where we are able to adequately address their problems, or find out more about the larger sector where it is now inapplicable? I should mention that I have goals to achieve for my region’s user base and revenue.

TIA

– Dave Kim

Discussion

A] Geoffrey Moore’s book Inside the Tornado advises starting your product’s growth in specialised segments, capturing them fully, expanding to other specialised segments that make sense for your product, and (once established and known as a provider of a variety of specialised services), then developing your product into a generalist solution that captures the larger market.

Specialized->Good Reputation->More specializations->…->General Solution.

In the end, you unavoidably start weakening your solution to satisfy the largest user story.

– Hannah Borges

B] Having a long-term plan is crucial for making informed short-term decisions that align with your overall business objectives. Here are some things to consider when developing a long-term plan:

Define your business objectives: Start by defining your business objectives, such as revenue targets, customer acquisition goals, or market share. This will help you create a roadmap for achieving your goals.

Conduct market research: Conduct thorough market research to understand your target customers, their needs, and the competition. This will help you identify potential opportunities and challenges.

Develop a product roadmap: Develop a product roadmap that outlines the features and functionalities you plan to add to your product over time. This will help you prioritize your short-term decisions based on your long-term goals.

Create a marketing strategy:Develop a marketing strategy that aligns with your long-term objectives. This includes identifying the target audience, developing messaging and branding, and identifying the most effective channels to reach your customers.

Monitor progress and adjust the plan: Regularly monitor your progress towards your long-term goals and make adjustments as needed. This will ensure that you stay on track and can adjust your short-term decisions accordingly.

By developing a long-term plan that aligns with your business objectives and market research, you can make informed short-term decisions that support your overall goals. This will help you build a successful business over time.

– Eva Richardson

C] Absolutely agree. Geoffrey Moore’s “Inside the Tornado” is a well-known book that describes a framework for product growth called the “Technology Adoption Life Cycle.” The framework suggests that successful products start by targeting a specialized niche market and then gradually expanding their reach to larger markets.

This approach allows a company to gain a strong foothold in a specific market segment and develop a good reputation for delivering value to customers. As the company expands into other specialized segments, they can leverage their existing expertise and customer base to capture more market share.

Eventually, the company may develop a more general solution that appeals to a broader market. However, as you pointed out, this may require diluting the product to appeal to a wider audience. This is why it’s essential to have a clear long-term plan and product roadmap that balances the need for growth with the need to maintain a strong value proposition for customers.

Therefore, starting in specialized segments and gradually expanding into other specialized segments is a proven approach to product growth. However, it’s important to balance short-term growth with long-term sustainability and value for customers.

– Dhiraj Mehta

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Question 3) What are the best practices in product management compared to the sobering realities?

What has become painfully clear is that there are goals we pursue as PMs and dismal realities of the job. Hence, I’m curious in what you’ve learned from your experiences and how you handle these contradictions.

– Angela Blue

Discussion

A] Here’s a few of mine

  • We often make decisions based on intuition or product sense. You can get better at using your instincts over time, but it usually involves making a lot of awful mistakes.
  • Frameworks are helpful to learn, but actually using them is borderline impossible the way most businesses are run. Knowing them will help with the product sense, not as helpful as experience.
  • “Playing the game” is more important than it should be. As in, getting certain people – stakeholders, senior leaders, etc. – to like you and be on your side is an important part of this job. Without it, influencing people enough to buy in to your roadmap is impossible and you’ll always be micromanaged.
  • You can’t do anything by yourself. In fact, you are usually the only person in the room who doesn’t have a tangible skill. I can’t just go on Upwork and start doing product work for someone. Building usable, functioning software without engineers or designers is incredibly difficult. We only succeed if they do. Our job is to make these talents of theirs come together in a way that helps everyone succeed.

– Kane Morgan

B] Its generally a catch 22. Because Scrum is a framework but it’s also prescriptive. it inherently is NOT scrum to follow scrum. Its also an idealist framework and very few organizations can actually allow it to thrive. The teams can rarely be self-managed because they have different managers outside of the Scrum team that have influence on the work the Scrum team does and I’m not talking about them as stakeholders

– Herbert Warnick

C] Here’s my take:

  • Startups aren’t all outcome based. Some are just top down driven feature factories.
  • You can’t change the product culture at the company bottom up. The company leadership needs to be on board.
  • As much as everyone talks about idea validation, most companies want teams to start building right away and aren’t comfortable with PMs spending time validating before anything is built.

– Whitney Chard

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Top Learning Resources

Product management is not about solving user problems

A common mistake early product managers make is solving user problems just to solve them. It’s all about solving problems, or it’s about creating value for users, they say. If we just chased problem after problem just because our users asked us to, perhaps we would end up with a fantastic product. But if that product didn’t drive business outcomes, we would quickly take it out of the market.

What is a product management maturity model?

In this article, I will be talking about product management at a higher level. Something that won’t be in your short-term agenda (except in some specific cases), but something every aspiring product organisation will aim to achieve in the long run. That’s the maturity of the product development processes.

How to use product metrics to drive growth

As a product manager, your ultimate goal is to ensure that your product continuously advances. Utilizing the right product metrics plays an integral role in achieving this ambition. These metrics give you insights into how well your product is doing and allow you to spot potential areas of growth, assign achievable objectives, and refine existing strategies for success. Here’s exactly what you need to do if you want to usemetrics as fuel for expansion!

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