The role your product marketing people play is essential to the success of your sales and marketing organization. They are a big part of the Continuous Improvement Process and you can’t optimize your revenue output without them. Product marketing people are the spokes in the product management wheel::
- Product management is “inbound” (listens to markets) and Product Marketing is “outbound” (speaks to markets).
- Product management focuses on engineering the product and product marketing focuses on selling the product.
- Product Management gets the product on the shelf and product marketing focuses on customers taking it off the shelf.
But really, it’s a lot more complicated and valuable than this. Product marketing people understand in today’s market you must break through the noise. But you can’t do that if you don’t understand the market and the buyer needs, and if you don’t know how to use this knowledge to ensure your company executes compelling marketing and sales strategies properly.
This is what product marketers do. They develop strategies and tactics, present value prop at its peak potential and make everyone around them more effective at revenue generation as a part of the continuous improvement process.
Product marketers are the best translators in the world. They ensure every stakeholder in your organization understands what is being said by your product organization by translating your value proposition properly into easily consumable messages for disbursement to your sales and marketing department and target market.
Product marketers create the “pop” in your message. They know how to utilize mediums properly. They’re great at designing and packaging up the presentation of your value prop so it stands out from the competition.
Product marketers are fantastic facilitators. Product marketers make sure product, sales, marketing and markets are always on the same page. They govern communications, facilitate teamwork to improve the offer and streamline mechanisms to ensure ease of purchase for the customer. Without reviews of revenue losses and wins, how do you know what to improve upon and what to repeat over and over again, if you do not stay on top of this as a part of the continuous improvement process. I guess I would say , you get what you put into it.
Here is a great article that expands on some of my points.
The Role of Product Marketing in Your Startup: Defining & Implementing Product Marketing
I have also made a short video on my take on the true value of a Product Marketer.
