There’s so much variation in what product marketers do across different types of companies and industries, which makes it difficult to define the role of the product marketer. But product marketers can’t live up to their true potential and help a company grow if there isn’t a clear vision for the role and a clear definition of their responsibilities and goals.

In the hope of creating a consensus and better understanding of the product marketer role, we surveyed the product marketing community to learn more about the product marketer’s responsibilities, influence, goals, organizational structure, career path, career satisfaction, and more.

We also interviewed ten influential product marketing leaders from companies including: HubSpot, Intercom, Twitter, Typeform, Spotify, Unbounce, Uber, Olivine Marketing, InVision and airSlate to get their recommendations on what the product marketer role should look like today and in the future.

This report contains the most important survey and interview insights we discovered from talking directly to product marketers of all levels of experience. We hope that this report will help product marketers, the teams they work closely with and C-level executives better understand the true power of the product marketer role, so they can unlock its true (hint: strategic) potential. Enjoy... 🔥

Here's what's to come:

A snapshot of who we talked to

609 product marketers from across the globe completed the survey. Survey participants are primarily from North America and Europe, mainly market SaaS products, work at companies at varying levels of growth and have varying levels of experience—from Directors and VPs of Product Marketing to Product Marketing Managers, Associate Product Marketing Managers, and more.

We discovered some interesting findings

If you’re tight on time, here are a few of the most interesting results we found:

  1. Most product marketers we surveyed are responsible for marketing 5+ products (32.8%). This could indicate that the product marketer role may be under-resourced, which is also a key frustration reported in the survey.
  2. Three of the top frustrations product marketers reported were: 1. lack of understanding around the product marketer role and responsibilities 2. lack of resources/limited bandwidth/too much work and 3. Not enough influence in the company.
  3. Bottom-line KPIs are a top priority for product marketers. 58.1% are responsible for generating revenue, 44.8% are responsible for increasing marketing qualified leads, and 42% are responsible for retaining customers.
  4. On a scale of 1 to 10, product marketers feel they have a 6.5 influence on company goals and strategy and a 6.2 influence on the product roadmap. Lack of influence was also one of the top frustrations reported in the survey.
  5. The top three pieces of advice for decision-makers to improve the role of product marketing in the future are: 1. get clear on defining the role of the product marketer (the role should be more strategic and less tactical), 2. give product marketing a seat at the leadership table and 3. invest in product marketing early as it’s a key foundational role that drives business growth.

Profile of product marketers we surveyed

609 product marketers from across the globe responded to the survey. Survey participants work for a variety of companies, including Oracle, Estée Lauder, LinkedIn, Thrive Global, Atlassian, Adobe, and many more. Let’s take a deeper look at the key characteristics of the individuals we surveyed and the companies they work for:

Location


Product marketers who participated in the survey are primarily from North America (73.6%) and Europe (19.4%), but some are also from Asia (3.8%), Australia (2.1%), and South America (1.1%).

Experience and current role

Amongst the product marketers who completed the survey, there’s a nice mix of experience levels and different types of roles—from director and VP level to individual contributors and interns.

Most product marketers who responded to the survey are Product Marketing Managers  (37.1%) or Directors of Product Marketing (23.5%), but some are also Senior Product Marketing Managers (19.5%), People Managers of Product Marketing (4.8%) or VPs of Product Marketing (3.6%).

Note: Some of the ‘Other’ job titles people hold include: Associate Product Marketing Manager, Product Marketing Intern, and Chief Marketing Officer.

Years of experience

Years of product marketing experience also varied amongst survey participants. 33.4% of survey participants have 1-3 years experience, 26.4% have 5-10 years, 23.2% have 3-5 years, and 17.1% have 10+ years experience.

Company type

Types of customers they serve

Most participants work at companies that solely serve B2B customers (71.1%), but some also serve both B2B and B2C customers (21.7%) and a select few solely serve B2C customers (7.2%).

Type of products they market

Most participants market a SaaS product (71.4%), but some also market both a SaaS and physical product (12.3%) and a select few also solely market a physical product (7.2%).

Note: Some of the participants who responded with ‘Other’ market services (like product development and financial services), mobile apps and enterprise products.

Stage of growth

Participants work at a wide variety of different company types at various stages of growth.

39.6% are from mid-market companies with established go-to-market teams, 31.5% are from late growth companies, 19.5% are from early post product-market fit companies, and 5.1% are from early pre-product market fit companies.

Note: Some of the participants who responded with ‘Other’ work for publicly traded companies with stable growth and companies that have been acquired multiple times.

Company culture

Most product marketers work at product-first companies (54%), but some also work for sales-first (34%) and marketing-first (5.1%) companies.

Note: Some of the participants who responded with ‘Other’ work for companies who are customer-first (we should have included this as an option in the survey as quite a few people responded with this 😀), engineering-first, mission-first, and values-first.

Function/team in company

The majority of survey participants are part of their company’s marketing function (72.1%), but some are also part of the product function (20%) and a select few are part of business development (2.6%).

Note: Some of the participants who responded with ‘Other’ report into functions like the Executive C-Suite, growth, data science, and some participants report into multiple functions.

Interview with Jasmine Jaume, Group Product Marketing Manager at Intercom

“In an ideal world product marketing should bookend the product process”

About Jasmine:

Jasmine Jaume is currently a Group Product Marketing Manager at Intercom, a messaging platform that helps businesses accelerate their growth across the customer lifecycle.

Jasmine leads the Intercom platform product marketing team and manages the go-to-market strategy for Intercom’s platform and core technologies, including the company’s app ecosystem, messenger, and data platform. The main goals her team works towards are new and expansion revenue and product adoption. Before Intercom, Jasmine led product marketing at Brandwatch.

Q: What are the most important skills for product marketers to master to see success in their role?

A: “Communication is key to success. You need to be able to influence people internally and that comes from getting clear on their goals and what’s in it for them.”

“Understand customer needs. You need to be able to translate product features into benefits, but also figure out what your customers' pain points are and how the product you’re building can help solve those pain points. A lot of that comes from doing customer research and getting intel from sales.

“Staying organized will help everything run smoother, especially in a fast-moving environment where you’re running big cross-functional launches.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “In an ideal world product marketing should bookend the product process. Product marketers should be involved from the start helping to define the audience you’re selling to, what their pain points are, and what the product team needs to build to better serve that audience.

“Then, after the product team is finished building, product marketers should take that product or feature to market. That earlier phase is something that lots of product marketers find challenging, as it's often difficult to get yourself into the process of defining the product roadmap, and to be able to influence it.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Get product marketing involved in product decisions early. A lot of companies just treat product marketers as ‘launch machines.’ But product marketing is key to finding product-market fit and helping translate the product to the market to position and sell it.

“From talking to customers and people in the company, product marketers have so many valuable insights that can help influence the product roadmap. So, value those insights and leverage them for growth; get clear on what you want from product marketing in your company and communicate your vision for the role across the entire company.

“In the future, I’d love to see more standardization around team structure and more open dialogue around how others organize their product marketing teams, what works and doesn’t work for them—especially as companies scale and grow larger.”

Jasmine has written about how product marketers can evolve product launches as a company grows here.

Role, responsibilities, and KPIs

Key finding 1: Most product marketers (32.9%) are responsible for 5+ products, which may indicate a stretched bandwidth/lack of resources.

Lack of bandwidth/too much work/lack of resources was also one of the top frustrations survey respondents reported experiencing in their roles. In particular, product marketers wanted more time to work on strategic initiatives and less time working on ‘deep in the weeds’ tactical tasks.

Key finding 2: Product marketers’ core responsibilities are tied closely to the product. Their top two responsibilities are product messaging and positioning (91.5%) and managing product launches (82.8%).

Key finding 3: Interestingly, creating sales collateral is also one of the top three responsibilities for product marketers (75.5%).

The fact that a large percentage of product marketers are responsible for creating sales collateral could indicate that product marketing is instrumental for driving new sales and sign-ups. It also highlights how important it is for product marketers to develop a tight-knit relationship with sales.

Key finding 4: Bottom-line goals and KPIs are a top priority for product marketers. The top three KPIs/goals are: generating new revenue (58.1%), increasing marketing qualified leads (44.8%), and retaining customers (42%).

Note: Some of the participants who responded with ‘Other’ are measured on: contributing to the sales pipeline, gross sales, product adoption, increasing customer satisfaction (NPS), customer engagement, etc.

The top KPIs that product marketers are responsible for are very closely aligned with boosting the company’s bottom-line. This signals how important product marketing is as a strategic, foundational role for driving growth, sales, and revenue.

Later in the survey, we also discovered that the most prominent tool type product marketers use are for analytics and measurement. The main tools product marketers use for measuring impact include: Tableau, Looker, and Google Analytics.

Key finding 5: As a company scales, the number of product marketers in that company grows too. Early pre-product market fit companies have an average of 2.3 product marketers, post-product market fit companies have an average of 3.8 product marketers, mid-growth companies have an average of 7.4 product marketers, and late-growth companies have an average of 21 product marketers.

Interview with Francis Larkin, VP of Product Marketing at InVision

“Driving alignment and influencing stakeholders across marketing and sales is core to the product marketing role. You need to be able to communicate, you need to be crisp, you need to be compelling.”

About Francis:

Francis Larkin is currently a VP of Product Marketing at InVision—a digital product design platform that powers the world’s best user experiences.

At InVision, his team works on three main goals: 1. building and launching new products and driving reach and awareness for those products, 2. driving adoption for strategic products, and 3. market validation and product strategy. Before InVision, Francis worked at a variety of product marketing lead roles at companies including Pinterest, Airtable, and Facebook.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Strong product orientation and communication. We need product marketers who can deeply understand products and be subject matter experts on the product internally.

“Communication skills. Driving alignment across and influencing stakeholders across marketing and sales is core to the product marketing role. You need to be able to communicate, you need to be crisp, you need to be compelling.

“Understand the basics of marketing and how to execute a successful campaign. Product marketers need to be able to effectively convey value propositions to customers, etc.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

“There needs to be a really strong relationship between product management and product marketing for both teams to be successful. Product marketers should be responsible for launching new products and driving adoption for those products and market validation and strategy. The one area where there is potential overlap is the market strategy piece.

“I think it’s important that there’s some overlap because product marketers ideally spend a lot of time talking with customers and developing a perspective on what those customers need. The product team also takes other inputs into account in building their product roadmap and strategy. Having a product marketing group that has a point of view on strategy is only additive to the business and not combative.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Given the level of investment that companies put into new product development it’s critical for every CEO to be involved in product marketing to some degree—whether that's approving the launch plan, or making sure that teams are staffed appropriately.

“It's critical for C-level executives to realize that product marketing is the market realization of all the resources that their companies are putting into new products. They need to understand how critical it is to make sure that there's a payoff for the company and these new products.”

Cross-functional nature of the product marketer role

Key finding 6: Most product marketers work most closely with the product team (90.8%).

From the interviews we conducted with product marketing leaders, they all said that building and nurturing a mutually beneficial relationship with product managers is essential for flourishing in a product marketer role.

Key finding 7: Product marketing is an extremely cross-functional role. The majority of respondents also work closely with marketing (83.3%) and sales teams (76.4%).

The fact that the role of the product marketer is extremely cross-functional probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone. But this finding does reiterate the importance of building and nurturing internal relationships with various teams. It also highlights the wealth of internal insights product marketers have for driving strategic change within an organization and their potential impact for aligning go-to-market teams on product messaging, customer needs, etc. Again, this is something that almost all product marketing leaders highlighted in their interviews.

Interview with Tamara Grominsky, Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce

“Product marketing is the linchpin to sustainable business growth.”

About Tamara:

Tamara is currently the Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce, the landing page platform for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).

Here, she leads the product marketing and customer marketing teams. Some of the goals her team works towards include customer growth rate, revenue growth, and product adoption. Before Unbounce, Tamara led product marketing teams at other world-class companies, like Freshbooks and Yellow Pages Canada.

Q: What are the most important skills for product marketers to master to see success in their role?

A: “Relationship building and the ability to influence and persuade others.

“Exceptional communication skills. As a product marketer, you need to lead with the customer-facing benefits to make a complex feature easy to understand and compelling for customers. And for internal stakeholders, you need to be able to explain the technical side of a product, what the value is, and how to market it.”

“Data-informed with a real curiosity to dig under the surface of data to identify and understand trends and what’s really happening with customers.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “At Unbounce, product marketers and product managers have very distinct roles, but there are also areas of collaboration. The product marketing team is included from the very beginning of product ideation. We work with product managers to identify the ideal customer, the market problem, and the impact on the business.

“Once development is complete, we come back together to drive the go-to-market launch. In an ideal world, product marketers and product managers should be completely aligned. So, there will be a few areas of overlap, but that also needs to be balanced with making sure each function is running and owning their own side of the business—whether that’s product or revenue.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

“The old product marketing world was very execution and go-to-market driven. The new world of product marketing should be very strategic. Product marketing is the linchpin to sustainable business growth. But to have this strategic growth, you need to ensure that product marketing doesn’t get stuck in the executional weeds.

“The role needs to be elevated to a strategic function that enables, aligns and empowers the other execution teams. I've seen this happen, and I've seen the benefits of this. I've also seen the flip side of it. I truly believe that in the future, product marketers are going to be the next Chief Growth Officers.”

Tools and budget at product marketers’ disposal

Key finding 8: Product marketers use a range of different tools—the tools they use most are for analytics and measurement (70.8%).

Examples of analytics and measurement tools product marketers use most include: Tableau, Looker, and Google Analytics.

When we interviewed the product marketing leaders, we asked them how they go about influencing internal stakeholders and getting them aligned on a single goal when they’re about to launch a product. The majority of the leaders said that bringing the right data to the table is key for influencing stakeholders. It’s also possible that product marketers use data to prove the impact of their role.

Another thing we learned from our interviews is that product marketers dig deep into data to uncover insights to make improvements to the product and marketing strategy. This, again, highlights the important strategic nature of the product marketer role.

Key finding 9: Email marketing (69.3%) and project management (59.1%) are the second most prominent tools product marketers use.

Here are examples of some of the specific tools product marketers report using most:

  • Email marketing software: HubSpot, Intercom, Marketo
  • Project management: Asana, Trello, Google Drive (Google Slides, Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc.)

Key finding 10: Most product marketers have a budget (89.8%). Top spending items include: software and tools (58%), video creation/editing (52.2%) and conferences/professional development (51.2%).

Note: We didn’t ask product marketers how much of a budget they have to work with or if they’re satisfied with their budget. This is something we’ll dig deeper into in future surveys.

Interview with Marcus Andrews, Principal Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot

“Product marketing should be an early foundational role for companies as it’s key for driving growth.”

About Marcus:

Marcus Andrews is currently a Principal Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot—a growth platform that comprises Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub and a powerful CRM. He creates the positioning and go-to-market strategy for a number of HubSpot’s key products.

Marcus’ core responsibilities include high-level strategic planning, product messaging, product launches, positioning research and development, and product communications. The goals his team work toward are very product-focused and include revenue and product adoption. Before HubSpot, Marcus worked at Google, where he helped bring Google AdWords and YouTube products to market.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Creativity. Product marketers should be able to create and have a passion for creating great stories and for crafting new compelling narratives.

“Cross-functional. Product marketers should be great at working with others. For example, they should enjoy answering questions in Slack, having lots of meetings, etc. You need to enjoy the collaborative aspect, even if you’re an introvert.

“Product fascination. Product marketers should be naturally curious. Learning about products should give them fuel.”

Hint: if you’re interviewing at HubSpot these are the skills Marcus looks for in new hires. 😉

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “It’s important that product marketers have a healthy, close relationship with product managers. Having a healthy relationship focused on advancing and growing the product is the most important first step towards building a product-driven company.

“So, there definitely needs to be alignment. But in terms of which responsibilities each role should own, product managers should own the problem and the technical ins and outs of that problem. They should own gathering customer feedback and have the final say on the product roadmap.

“Product marketers should own the product story. It’s their job to be expert storytellers and to create effective positioning, a compelling vision for the product, value propositions, etc.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “All marketing should be product-driven. Companies should invest more in product marketing.

“Product marketing is/should be an early foundational role for companies as it’s key for driving growth. Today, I see more companies hiring product marketers as one of their first hires and I think that’s great.”

Marcus predicted narrative design would replace product positioning in 2020. Check out his contribution from the start of the year.

Influence in company

Key finding 11: Product marketers feel they have above average influence within a company, in defining the product roadmap and business goals, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

On a scale of 1 to 10, product marketers feel they have a 6.5 influence on company goals and strategy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, product marketers feel they have a 6.2 influence on the product roadmap.

On a scale of 1 to 10, product marketers feel the role of product marketing has a 6.9 influence within their company.


One of the key frustrations product marketers reported in the survey was lack of influence in the company, which indicates that this is a key area decision makers need to work on. Given that the product marketer role should be a strategic, leadership role, results should ideally be closer to the top of the influence scale.

Interview with Samantha Yeh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Spotify

“Bring in product marketing sooner to help build a strategic business plan to understand what the true value is for users.”

About Samantha:

Samantha Yeh is currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Spotify, where she helps build and market tools to Spotify’s Creator audience, which is made up of artists, labels, music publishers, podcasters, and more.

The main goals she works towards include product adoption and user sentiment (how users feel about the product and company). Before Spotify, Samantha worked as a product marketer at Etsy, a handmade marketplace and Bitly, a link management company.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Empathy. Not just empathy for the users, but also empathy for the teams that you work with. By building great internal relationships and developing a deeper understanding of what different teams care about in their day to day you’ll be able to elevate your level of influence. For example, by better understanding what support is thinking about, you'll be able to represent those needs in your conversations with the product.

“Good organization and project management is key for success. A great product marketer can balance multiple internal stakeholders and work streams to help everyone achieve their goals.

“Really strong written and verbal communication skills. You need to understand what information is relevant for each audience—whether that’s your customers or internal stakeholders in your company. You also need to be able to identify value, explain value and advocate for value.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

“An ideal relationship is where product managers and product marketers understand the value of their partnership. Product marketers can take all of the cross-functional, stakeholder relationship management, internal training, and creative executions off the product manager’s plate, so the product manager can focus on building the product itself. In an ideal relationship, both people know that they’re part of the same team and they work together to help each other succeed.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Include product marketing as a strategic partner. Bring in product marketing sooner to help build a strategic business plan to understand what the value is for users. For example, the product marketer can share user insights with decision makers to help them understand the value of a new idea or solution, and why your company is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution to your audience.

“Measuring impact. There’s a really big opportunity to better staff your product marketing team with people who can help measure incrementality. If you do this, you’ll be able to see who becomes a user as a direct result of your product marketing efforts, not just who adopted the feature. This can really help elevate your marketing. And it can help change the conversation internally, from marketing being a team you hand things off to to becoming key stakeholders who help define the strategy from the start.

“Know when to hire a product marketer. When you reach a level of complexity, either with your product or with your organization, or both—that's really the sweet spot to hire a product marketer because product marketers help teams internally stay aligned on the value you're providing. This makes it easier for users to understand the value you’re providing across all your marketing efforts and touchpoints.”

Feelings about the product marketing role

Key finding 12: There’s a lot to love about being a product marketer. Respondents favorite things included: creativity, the cross-functional nature of the role, working with customers, the dynamic nature of the role, the variety of tasks and projects, etc.

Key finding 13: Issues and struggles are universal regardless of role, company size and type. Common issues that came up were: lack of understanding around the product marketer role and responsibilities, lack of influence, lack of resources/limited bandwidth/too many tasks, lack of alignment with other teams and lack of buy-in from the company.

These frustrations signal that companies need to invest in understanding and defining the product marketer role and prioritizing its significance within the company. Once decision-makers understand the true power and potential of the product marketing role, this will help them view product marketing as a more strategic and foundational role and they’ll be able to allocate budget and resources accordingly.

Interview with Bozena Pieniazek, Head of Product Marketing at Typeform

“C-level executives need to empower product marketing to have a strategic voice and to be a strategic contributor, not just a coordinator.”

About Bozena:

Bozena Pieniazek is currently Head of Product Marketing at Typeform, a product that allows users to create beautifully designed, professional-looking forms, surveys, quizzes and more.

At Typeform, the product marketing team looks after go-to-market planning for product updates and launches, including market research, positioning and messaging, and launch planning.

Before her product marketing role at Typeform, Bozena worked as a Social Media & Outreach Manager and held a variety of other impressive marketing positions.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Strategic thinking. Product marketing sits at the intersection of different departments and being able to see the bigger picture, understand how everything fits together and how to create the biggest impact is key. It’s like solving a puzzle with many moving parts.

“Project and stakeholder management. As a product marketer, you need to know how to work with a diverse group of people across the company. It’s critical to understand how to influence stakeholders and bring the right information and data to the table to help inform decision making.

“Research skills. If you're starting out as a product marketer in a smaller team, you might need to do research. At bigger companies, you might have a research team. But, regardless, you need to know what questions to ask and what information you need to influence strategic decisions.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

“Product marketing and product management is done differently at every company. For example, in some companies product managers actually do product marketing and in others product marketing sits in product. So, in terms of where the lines should be for different responsibilities I think it really depends on the organization. In general, product managers and product marketers should work side-by-side along the product development process to ensure the biggest impact possible.

Product marketers can help ensure that the product is being built with the customer, market and channel in mind and then communicate the product to the right people. In my opinion, product marketing is not really about driving adoption within the current user base but taking a product to market and ultimately driving user acquisition. I think that's where product marketing can really shine because this is all about the market.

Product management, on the other hand, is all about defining a technical solution to an identified customer or market problem.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

“C-level executives need to empower product marketing to have a strategic voice and to be a strategic contributor, not just a coordinator. In my opinion, product marketing is the most valuable when it serves as a strong strategic function.

“Product marketing sits at the intersection of several departments and product marketers have a solid understanding of the product, market and customers. This means product marketing is a hub of valuable insights that should help inform strategic decision making, e.g the product roadmap.”

Career aspirations for product marketers

Finding 14: Most respondents want to take the next step on the product marketing career ladder (66.7%) and 17.9% are happy where they are.


Since most respondents either want to take the next step on the product marketing career ladder or stay where they are, this could indicate a high overall level of satisfaction with the product marketer role. Despite the challenges of the product marketer role, this is definitely a silver lining.

Note: We didn’t specify what ‘entrepreneur’ meant in this context, so it’s possible that some respondents who chose ‘Entrepreneur’ may want to offer product marketing services as freelancers, contractors, or agencies.

Interview with Raechel Lambert, Director of Product Marketing at Olivine Marketing

“Understand and clarify for everyone in the company what the product marketer is trying to do, what their goals are and what their role in the company is.”

About Raechel:

Raechel Lamber leads product marketing strategy for Olivine Marketing, a boutique collective of product marketers, filmmakers and designers who help SaaS companies grow their revenue and brand through strategic product marketing services.

With a career that started in finance, Raechel brings a unique analytical mindset with a focus on business goals to her creative product marketing work. Prior to joining Olivine, Raechel worked as a product marketer at Intercom where she brought Articles and Operator—two of Intercom's largest product releases—to market.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Internal project management/cross-functional collaboration. Being able to work well with lots of teams and understand the customer insights they discover will help you develop great messaging and positioning. For example, a lot of times sales and support are the face of the company and they interact with customers every day, so they’ll have valuable first-hand insights to share.

“Working with numbers/data. There’s a ton of information that you can learn in Google Analytics or by working with a data engineering team. Data engineering teams will have all of these dashboards that you can dig into to uncover insights and improve your strategy. For example, if you're not afraid of the numbers, you can see where conversions are dropping off and then come up with a plan for how to improve your conversion rate.

“Influencing people in the organization. You need to be able to effectively communicate to other people in the organization what you’re trying to accomplish. When people know what you’re working on and what your goals are and they like you because you’ve been helpful to them, they’ll send amazingly insightful tidbits your way. For example, the sales team might come to you and let you know they’ve just had a juicy conversation with a customer they think you should meet.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

“There’s this analogy that a lot of people use that product managers get products on the shelf and product marketers get products off the shelf. I really disagree with this. I've been asked at companies to announce a product after that product is built and that always falls flat. That’s because the story I want to tell just isn’t there because I wasn’t involved in helping to define the features ahead of time.

“The only way to create a consistent experience from first touch to last touch, where the landing page, blog post, product education, the words inside the product, the onboarding experience, etc. has a consistent message and flow is for the product marketer and product manager to work together from the start, defining the product together.

“That said, there are differences between what product and product marketing focuses on. For example, a product marketer will concern themselves with what competitors are out there, what basic features they offer, how they’re positioning their product and pricing it, etc. They’re also concerned with crafting a compelling story. The product manager cares about a lot of those things, but they care more about the product’s features and how they work and the problem they’re solving for.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Understand and clarify for yourself, and everyone in the company, what the product marketer is trying to do, what their goals are and what their role in the company is. I've coached a few leaders who aren’t making any headway in the company after hiring a product marketer. It’s almost always because they hired a product marketer, but they wanted something else, like a content marketer. Get clear on the role by looking at other product marketing job descriptions at leading companies, like Google and Spotify. This report will help too.”

“Create space for the product marketer at the beginning. Lots of times everything’s on fire and you want the product marketer to come in and fill in the holes. For example, if you’re about to launch a feature you might think you need to do a webinar and to improve your product documentation, etc. But if the product marketer isn’t given the time early to do the foundational positioning, messaging, personas and Jobs-to-be-Done work, everything else is harder and your marketing won’t be consistent. By giving product marketers time to do the important groundwork, everything will happen faster later on.”

Most important skills for product marketers to master

Key finding 15: The most important skills that have helped product marketers succeed in their role include: creativity and problem solving (81.3%), collaborating with coworkers (79%) and strategic planning and business skills (69.9%).

This finding could help product marketing leaders and decision makers understand what core skills they should look out for when hiring product marketers in the future.

Interview with Kerensa Hogan, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Twitter

“Product marketing isn’t just about launching a product or marketing. Product marketing should be a strategic partner to product and business growth.”

About Kerensa

Kerensa Hogan is currently a Lead Product Marketing Manager at Twitter—a social media platform that keeps users up to date on what’s happening in the world. The product marketing team works very closely with the product management team to define the vision for the product and how to market it.

Kerensa says, “At every company I’ve worked at I probably spend more time with my product manager than I do with my boss.”

Kerensa has 20 years of marketing experience. Before Twitter, she worked at other world-class companies like DreamWorks, eBay, and Adobe.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Small group communication. Because product marketing is so responsible for cross-functional communication, the ability to understand the dynamics of small group communication and how to successfully lead a meeting is so important.

“Conflict resolution. If you can get comfortable with chaos, confrontation, and disagreement that’s a superpower. It will help you detect conflict and come up with a solution for dissolving it. You’ll also learn how to hear and give feedback better. All of this will help you become a better cross-functional communicator.

“Transform data and insights into actionable steps. I have been in so many meetings throughout my career where people use all these big fancy, impressive words. But it’s a real skill to consider how you can act on that phrase or insight.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “Product managers and product marketing managers care about the same thing. We care about what we're building, why we're building it, and how it's being built. The audiences that we have that conversation with in order to get this done are different.

“A product marketer needs to know the what, why and how, and translate that for engineering teams. The product marketer needs to know the what, why and how, and translate that for customers and go-to-market-teams. We need to be on the same page to define those answers. But, it’s the way that we translate those answers that’s different.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “I'm worried that the C-suite and the wider industry thinks that all product marketing does is go-to-market. But product marketing isn’t just about launching and marketing a product.

“In an ideal world product marketing is a strategic partner to product and business growth. What we’re ultimately responsible for is adoption and launching is just one step towards getting there.”

Interview with Aaron Brennan, Director of Product Marketing at airSlate

“The best product marketers I know have a full say in the product roadmap.”

About Aaron:

Aaron Brennan is currently the Director of Product Marketing at airSlate, a software company that’s building what’s next for workflows. Here his responsibilities include monitoring the health of the product, customer journey mapping, market analysis and crafting high level messaging.

The main goals he works towards include: product adoption and new registrations. Before airSlate, Aaron ran a team of product marketers at world-class companies like LogMeIn and Google. While at Google his team launched Google Glass.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Problem solving is key for success. Your job is to understand the customer and then help them solve their problem.

“Politicking. Because of the cross-functional nature of the role product marketers need to know how to help people accomplish their goals while hitting their goals in the first place.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “The product marketer is focused on the customer journey. The product manager is focused on how to execute on that customer journey. While the product is being built, you really need both roles.

“The product marketer will say what the market looks like and what the ideal user looks like and what their expectations are. Then the product manager takes that information and builds the requirements documents that go along with that—what needs to be built, how it needs to be designed, etc.

“Finally, the product marketer goes and writes the messaging to align with how the product is being built.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Product marketing is a strategic position and it should be a product lead position too. Oftentimes, people fall on the product manager as being the product lead. But the best product marketers I know have a full say in the product roadmap. I know some of my best friends are product managers, because we've had some knock-down, drag-out fights.”

Recommendations for the future of product marketing (for decision-makers)

There were a few key recommendations that emerged from the survey results and from our interviews that C-level executives and other decision-makers should pay close attention to.

Here are the top three recommendations for improving the product marketing role and enhancing its influence:

Key recommendation 1: Get clearer on defining the role of product marketing.

A number of survey respondents said that the role of product marketing is often confused with other roles, like content marketing. By clearly defining the role, goals, and responsibilities of the product marketer, this will empower product marketers to have a far greater impact in driving growth in your organization. It will also prevent misaligned expectations. Another frustration survey respondents reported was that other teams in the company didn’t understand the true value of their role. So, once you’ve defined the product marketer role, make sure to communicate its value across your entire organization.

Key recommendation 2: Give product marketing a seat at the leadership table.

A key theme that emerged from both the survey and interviews was that product marketing needs to be seen as a more strategic, leadership role and a less tactical role. Product marketing wants and deserves a seat at the leadership table. Since the role of the product marketer is so cross-collaborative in nature, product marketers have a wealth of insights from all different areas of the company to share. Plus, product marketers pay close attention to important data, like product adoption and user behavior. All of this can help you unlock valuable insights that can accelerate your company’s growth.

Key recommendation 3: Involve product marketing early.

Finally, to drive growth and ensure overall product success, product marketing should be one of the first hires in a company. This is especially important in product-first companies.

Interview with Laura Jones, Director of Product Marketing at Uber

“My prediction for the future is that more products will become platforms. And product marketing will uncover the insights and drive the experimentation that shape how those platforms come to life.”

About Laura:

Laura Jones is currently Director of Product Marketing at Uber, a ride-hailing company that ignites opportunity by setting the world in motion. Here she leads the global product marketing function.

The main goals her team works towards include product adoption and helping customers engage more deeply across the entire Uber platform. Before Uber, Laura was a Product Marketing Manager at Google, where she led brand and marketing communications for the Google Express launch.

Q: What are the most important skills product marketers should master to see success in their role?

A: “Understanding how to uncover great user insights through quantitative and qualitative data.

“Value proposition development and positioning. As a product marketer you need to understand how the product works and how to simplify that for customers. Being great at positioning products will set you up for success, because you can get to the fundamental value of a product in a way that's understandable for users.

“Growth marketing. Being a growth marketer is not the same as being a product marketer, but a great product marketer will have a good understanding of what growth marketing looks like. Because, ultimately, owning adoption OKRs (objectives and key results) means you need to understand how to activate all of the channels to drive engagement and adoption. Having that kind of growth hacking mentality of iteration and experimentation is incredibly important.”

Q: Where should the role of product marketer and product marketing manager begin and end?

A: “It’s important to remember that you’re partners. And you're coming together as a team to build something and get people to use that thing to drive business results. I think there must be clear roles and responsibilities—these will differ by company and may evolve over time as the organization matures. Typically the product manager directs all product activities across functions and the product marketer owns the marketing component, including influencing the product roadmap to ensure that what gets built is aligned with user needs.

“One area that everyone should feel ownership over is user insights—not just the product manager and product marketer, but also data scientists and UX designers. In particular the product development phase needs to be truly cross-functional. All of these roles should have an equal voice at the table to surface user needs, backed by data so that everyone can feel ownership over creating the best customer experience possible.

“Ultimately, what gets built is the product manager’s decision. But I think that this fluidity is best at the beginning of the product development lifecycle. And then, as you move into execution, that's where it's important that everyone stays in their lane.”

Q: How can decision-makers improve the product marketing role in the future?

A: “Give product marketing a strong voice at the product table. My prediction for the future is that more products will become platforms. And product marketing will uncover the insights and drive the experimentation that shape how those platforms come to life.

“Product marketing is a discipline and it should be seen as a craft that one develops over time through varied experiences. It should be treated like other functional areas of expertise and have a specific career ladder, etc.”

This isn’t a closed report, it’s an open conversation 😀

This is by no means a closed and definitive insight into product marketing. Instead, we hope this provides a starting point to empower you to have more meaningful and data-backed discussions about the product marketing role within your company and within the wider product marketing community.

We hope our insights collected whilst writing the State of Product Marketing Report 2019 will help you have more influence within your organization and your overall career.

If you have anything more to say on the topic we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the Slack community or on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook to share your thoughts.