Avoid confusing the roles of product managers and product marketing managers. Understanding how these roles differ and who is responsible for what dramatically enhances an organization’s ability to successfully bring its best products to market.

clashgraphics.com gathered the following information about the differences between a product manager and a product marketing manager, what they do, and how they interact.

Product and Product Marketing Managers

In a well-structured organization, product managers and product marketing managers collaborate closely. However, things go horribly wrong when the two managers and their teams get out of sync and are derailed by inconsistent messaging, botched launch dates, and confusion about the product’s function and its real value to potential customers.

Success, however, can be achieved by working together and understanding how these two roles differ:

What Is a Product Manager?

A product manager holds the ultimate and final responsibility for a product’s success or failure. A product manager’s role often includes;

• Owning and guiding the product’s strategy
• Curating the product’s roadmap
• Conveying that roadmap to the product development team to guide them as they build the product according to plan.

What Is a Product Marketing Manager?

A product marketing manager’s primary responsibility is communicating a product’s specific or overall value to its market. A product marketing manager’s responsibilities typically involve:

• Educating a company’s sales force on the value of the product and how to sell it
• Creating marketing materials and strategies that clearly convey product features
• Developing the marketing tools and campaigns to generate new interest and consumers.

Note: If your competitor has a remarkably similar product to yours, it’s your product manager that develops a desired trait or feature and your product marketing manager that creates the storytelling and differentiating value your customers seek.

Product Management vs. Product Marketing Management

A product manager could be considered the voice of a product within the company(often asking: Does this product solve our customer’s problem?), and a Product Marketing Manager would be considered the product’s voice to the world outside the company (often asking: How can we communicate to customers that it solves their problem?).

To further understand these differences, consider the following:

Strategy

The product manager establishes the company’s vision for the product and defines the goals, milestones, initiatives, and targets that will help achieve that vision.

The product marketing manager uses the vision and strategy to develop a “go-to-market” strategy. This strategy details the work that needs to be done to launch a product or expand into a new market.

Roadmap

The product manager develops the product’s roadmap, a visual representation of the direction, plan, milestones, and dates for executing the work.

The product marketing manager assembles the “go-to-market” roadmap, capturing and coordinating the timing of interdepartmental activities needed to successfully release a new or improved customer experience.

Consumer

The product manager focuses on the end-user, developing an understanding of what people want to achieve by acquiring and using the product. This requires collecting feedback from customers about their experiences and suggestions.

The product marketing manager is focused on the consumer’s spending/buying characteristics, gaining a deeper understanding of what people need to know about the product and how it solves their problem to finally make a purchase.

Team Efforts

The product manager is an advocate for the user and the final product. This requires a combination of strategic and tactical effort across engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.

The product marketing manager ensures that all teams know how to best represent the benefits of the product to the customer. This can involve collaborating with marketing to better define messaging, providing advanced training to sales and support teams, and aligning the website to follow the product’s “go-to-market.”

Note: Both managers want to please the customers and grow the business. And through Frequent communication, regular meetings, and planning sessions, departments can stay in sync to achieve both objectives.

Product and Product Marketing Department Collaboration

In this article, you discovered information about the often confused roles of product managers and product marketing managers and how they perform different tasks to mutually ensure a product’s success.

Knowing the differences between a project manager’s role and that of a project marketing manager will help you address product issues with the correct department.

Your failure to recognize how the duties of your project manager differ from your project marketing manager can lead to miscommunications and failure to meet milestones and product launch dates.

Sources:

blogs.haas.berkeley.edu/the-berkeley-mba/product-management-vs.-product-marketing
wgu.edu/blog/understanding-product-manager-role2003.html
business.vanderbilt.edu/news/2019/10/25/what-is-product-management-top-5-skills-for-success/

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