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Product Marketing Manager (PMM)

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A Product Marketing Manager (PMM) is responsible for taking a company’s product(s) to market. What does this mean? In essence, PMMs act as the “storytellers” for their firm; How might they do this?

 

  1. Identify their target audience, aka the type of people who are most likely to use their product 
  2. Figure out how the company’s product(s) can solve their target audiences’ problem(s) and/or meet their desire(s) 
  3. Be able to tell a story to their target audience in an effective and captivating way.  

Keep on reading below to understand Product Marketing Management within minutes.

 

PMMs often time work at tech companies (however, not always). So, below is a diagram (inspired by rocketblocks) to help you visualize how the different roles at a tech company might fit in and work together:

Product Managers (PMs) decide what product to make, & work closely with Software Engineers who actually make the product. Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) decide how to market/sell the product. Then, they work closely with Sales or Business Development teams, who execute that vision. Often is a lot of overlap between PM & PMM.

What is the goal of a Product Marketing Manager?

To create demand for your company’s product(s) through effective marketing and messaging to your target audience. What does this mean?

 

Marketing is what a company does to sell/advertise themselves. Some examples of marketing are

  • Billboards you see on the road
  • Advertisements on top of taxi cabs
  • Advertisements you see online, etc.

Through a very brief storytelling process, the company wishes to attract potential customers or users. However, this can be a very difficult task, and PMMs are in charge of the strategy behind these processes/tactics.

 

Types of Marketing goals

A PMM typically has three different (broad) marketing goals, with respect to getting more people to use their product/service. Marketing with the intention of:

  1. Getting new users who never used the product before (aka Customer/User Acquisition)
  2. Keeping the current users loyal to you, and preventing them from stopping using your product/service (aka Retention)
  3. Attracting users back to your product/service after they already know about you and/or stopped using your product/service (aka Retargeting/Remarketing). 

How is Product Marketing Management different than regular Marketing?

While they are not technically “different”, a PMM at a tech company can have a rather different experience than someone in Marketing at a non-tech company. The short answer is, Product Marketing Management can be thought of as a subset of Marketing. The difference is, a PMM must have a more in depth understanding of the product/service they market compared to a typical “marketing” role. They need to not only understand how it works, but why it is different/better than its competitors. One way to think about it is this:

 

A tech product (such as a smartphone) is like a building that is always under construction. Meaning, it is never really complete and it is always constantly improving, upgrading, and developing. So a PMM will constantly be coming back to the same products after the initial launch/release of the product. Having an understanding of each product and how they have grown to address the customers’ needs can be pivotal to the success of a product marketing strategy.

 

PMMs work closely with both the sales team, to make sure the sales team is equipped with proper marketing strategy, and with the product teams (those that develop the product). This middle-man experience gives PMMs a bit more responsibility and exposure to other areas of the business.

 

PMM Project Example

Here is an extended hypothetical example of work a PMM might do throughout the life of a product. Here we decide to split it into 3 “life-cycles”. (1)Pre-Launch (2)Growth (3) Mature Product Marketing:

Pre-Launch 

A brand-new product is created by the product team (Product Managers and Software/Hardware Engineers). Since it is brand-new, it has not been released to the public yet.

  1. PMMs work closely with the product team to understand the product, who the target audience for that product is, and how to explain its value through an effective marketing strategy.
  2. Once PMMs are ready to market their product, they will plan how to best do that and relay the plan/information to the Sales team. It is the PMMs job to equip the Sales team with the strongest marketing strategy possible, to help sell the product.
  3. What are some things the PMMs might decide when trying to “bring the product to market”? They’ll work closely with engineers and Public Relations (PR)/Sales teams to decide on the pricing, the target audience, the product placement (aka where/how they will advertise the product), and how they will convey that the product is valuable to potential customers.
  4. PMMs will constantly be getting/analyzing feedback from customers/users (from their research and from collaboration with the Sales team who works directly with customers) on the product, and will relay that information to the Product team along the way.
  5. PMMs will closely follow the popularity of the particular service/product and will track the response from the press/its customers to determine the success of a given product.

Growth Phase  

After the product is launched, the goal is to continue to grow the user base.

  1. Much like the pre-launch (and every other phase) PMMs will work closely with both the sales and product teams.
  2. The product team might go to the PMM with a development they made, or an additional feature/functionality their product now has. It is the PMM’s job to translate this new development into increased customer adoption/acquisition (gain more customers/users).
  3. Alternatively, the Sales team might relay the feedback they received from customers. It is the PMMs job to take the feedback from “the market” (or the target audience plus those that use the product). Ultimately, the goal is to convey the pros/cons of the existing product to the product team, so that they make necessary changes.
  4. Again, once these processes happen, it is the PMMs job to design the marketing strategy. This marketing strategy might look slightly different than the pre-launch one because the product has already been around for a little bit. Now it is about selling the story of how the product is improved and can address the target audiences’ needs even better than before.

Mature Product Marketing 

Product Marketing for a mature product refers to trying to sell a product that has been around for a while. At this point, there might be increased competition, and the goal is to try to keep the product fresh, cutting edge, and remind users/customers that your product is still the best.

  1. This process is essentially the same as the growth phase. However, the main difference is that the marketing strategy is more geared toward retaining customers, and working with the product team to keep the product in the best form possible.
  2. At this stage, there might be many competitors, who have a virtually similar product. The distinguishing factor comes down to which company tells the most captivating story, and listens the most closely to the customers’ needs; the winner of this will be the one with the most customer loyalty and will end up on top.
Besides frequent communication with various teams, PMMs always have weekly calls to monitor the products they are in charge of. Additionally they have various tools to track various metrics they need to analyze to measure the success of any product launch, etc.

What are some metrics a Product Marketing Manager might analyze?

Some examples might include:
  • Web traffic – the number of people that visit a website
  • Email clicks – the amount of people that clicked links within the body of an email.
  • Bounce Rate – the percentage of visitors who navigate away after viewing only one page of your site.
  • Conversion Rate – number of conversions aka the number of people that pay for your product or service divided by the number of visitors to your site.
  • Retention Rate – Percentage of customers that return to do business with your company
  • Churn Rate – Percentage of customers that do NOT return to do business with your company
  • Views/Downloads  – number of people that see your content

What is the difference between a Product Marketing Manager and a Product Manager (PM)?

Simply put, PM’s are responsible for the creation and development of the product and PMMs are responsible for the customer. It is the job of the PMM to understand the customers’ needs and to make sure the product is appropriately addressing those needs. While their main focuses differ, PMMs and PMs work very closely together to make sure each area of the business is functioning in the best way possible.

 

What types of Product Marketing Manager Jobs are out there?

Some specific areas a PMM might work in might include:
  • Digital – Tech-focused PMM, might spend a bit more time with the product teams than other PMMs to thoroughly understand how it works and how to best market it.
  • Adoption – Focused on getting customers to adopt a NEW product for the first time.
  • Engagement – Focused on how to increase customer usage or engagement with your product or service
  • Advocacy – Focused on getting your current customers to talk highly of your products/brand (think product reviews on Amazon. These can highly influence how your product/service sells).

Some general examples of tools/methodologies a Product Marketing Manager might use

  • Spreadsheets – to track progress/success of various products
  • Documents – to detail progress/success of product and design Marketing strategy
  • Powerpoint – to communicate with Sales and Product teams how the Marketing Strategy might look.
  • Office tools – in constant communication with various teams to help craft proper strategy. Email, office messaging (google hangouts, slack, etc.)

What types of skills, mentality, etc. are necessary to be a successful Product Marketing Manager?

  • Economics, Marketing, Social Science majors (not required but similar skillsets needed)
  • Passion for tech and helping customers through the buying journey
  • Creativity, to help design and develop a winning marketing strategy
  • Analytical – need to be able to tie a product to how it will directly generate revenue for the company
  • Multi-task & strategic manager, important to be able to juggle many tasks because you will often be asked to work with people from different teams constantly. If both someone on the tech team and someone on the sales team needs your time, you need to prioritize appropriately and ultimately get everything done well.

What are some challenges of being a Product Marketing Manager?

One main challenge of being a PMM is, oftentimes, your work experience can be dependent on the Product Manager of a specific product/service you are trying to Market. If the PM is a poor communicator and/or is not a great team member, it can make your ability to appropriately take the product/development to market much more difficult.

 

What are some benefits of being a Product Marketing Manager?

There are many benefits to being a PMM. Some include:

  • Have a great work-life balance – ~50 hours/week on average.
  • Get exposure to many areas of the business – work closely with both product teams and sales teams.
  • Well compensated.

Additionally, for someone that might not have a particularly tech-focused background, a PMM role allows one to have direct access to some very important processes in the tech world.

 

Typical Salary?

While salaries vary based on your experience and your company a typical entry-level PMM base salary on average is between 80k-140k and an additional stock bonus ~50k. Total yearly compensation, on average can be around 100-160k.

 

According PayScale, the average PMM makes around $105k.

 

Should I become a Product Marketing Manager?

Being a PMM can be a very exciting career path. It pays well, and provides a very comfortable work-life balance. It is a great way for those without extremely tech-y backgrounds to be exposed to very important parts of the “technology” production process. By collaborating with product teams and sales teams, PMMs get very broad exposure to many parts of the tech business. If you think solving marketing problems are interesting and/or want to be part of the exciting, continuously growing tech industry, you should consider looking more deeply into PMM opportunities.

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