Updated: November 29, 2024- 11 min read
Marketing is an old business. From traditional village markets to digital marketplaces, strategies for promoting, launching, and delivering products to customers have fascinated marketers. While data has always been important in marketing, it was limited to established techniques like focus groups or surveys.
With the digital revolution, information about customers multiplied exponentially. A deeper understanding of customers and their buying proclivities led to user-first strategies and customer-centered products.
Building campaigns today is a complex art. Website design, messaging, videos, product personas, etc. And who does these tasks? What’s the purview of the Product Marketing Manager, and what does a Product Manager do to stay ahead of the game and identify the next new trends before competitors do?
In this article, we’ll discuss the difference between Product Management and Product Marketing. We’ll also break down the skills unique to each and where they overlap. If you’re wondering which profession is right for you, you’re in luck because we’ve covered the pros and cons of both professions and tips to help you choose the right path.
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Product Management vs. Product Marketing
Product Managers (PMs) focus on defining the product vision, prioritizing features, and delivering a solution that solves customer problems. Product Marketing Managers (PMMs), on the other hand, focus on positioning the product, launching it, and monitoring the success of the go-to-market strategy. Let’s go into more detail according to the product management process and lifecyle.
Product Strategy
Product strategy involves defining the long-term vision and goals for the product, ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer needs. Product Management takes the lead, with contributions from Product Marketing for market insights and positioning.
Defining the Product Vision: Product Managers work closely with executive stakeholders to outline the "north star" for the product.
Setting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): PMs lead the process of setting measurable goals that align with the product’s vision.
Conducting Market Research: Both PMs and PMMs contribute by identifying target markets, competitors, and customer pain points to inform the strategy.
Prioritizing Opportunities: PMs analyze business needs, technical feasibility, and user value to prioritize focus areas.
Stakeholder Buy-In: Both PMs and PMMs collaborate to present the strategy, ensuring alignment across leadership, design, and engineering teams.
Product Discovery
Product discovery is about deeply understanding customer problems, identifying opportunities, and testing potential solutions. Once again, Product Management is the leader, with strong collaboration from Product Marketing to ensure alignment with market needs and customer insights.
Product discovery is made up of:
Identifying Customer Pain Points: PMs conduct interviews, surveys, and data analysis to uncover user problems and unmet needs.
Gathering Market Insights: PMMs contribute competitive analysis and audience research to ensure the product fits the market landscape.
Testing Solutions: PMs lead prototyping and early testing with users to validate ideas and refine them based on feedback.
Prioritizing Opportunities: PMs evaluate which customer problems are worth solving based on impact and feasibility, with input from PMMs on market relevance.
Product Development
Product development focuses on turning validated ideas into a tangible product through effective collaboration and execution. Product Management is at the helm, with Product Marketing supporting on positioning and go-to-market readiness.
Creating a Roadmap: PMs prioritize features and align timelines with engineering and design teams to build a clear execution plan.
Defining Requirements: PMs translate user needs into detailed specifications that guide the development process.
Managing Cross-Functional Collaboration: PMs ensure design, engineering, and other teams work efficiently toward shared goals.
Positioning the Product: PMMs begin preparing key messaging and value propositions for future launch efforts.
Tracking Progress: PMs oversee development milestones, addressing blockers and adjusting priorities as needed.
Product Launch
Product launch is the culmination of efforts to introduce the product to the market, driving awareness and adoption. Product Marketing slides over into the driver’s seat, with support from Product Management on product functionality and delivery timelines.
Product launches require:
Crafting Messaging: PMMs create compelling positioning, value propositions, and marketing materials tailored to target audiences.
Planning marketing campaigns: PMMs promote the launch across marketing channels, including email, social media, and events.
Training Sales and Support Teams: PMMs equip internal teams with the knowledge and resources to communicate the product’s value effectively.
Coordinating Timing: PMs ensure that development aligns with the launch schedule to avoid delays.
Measuring Initial Adoption: Both PMs and PMMs track key product adoption metrics, like downloads, sign-ups, or sales, to evaluate launch performance.
Product Growth
Product growth focuses on expanding the product’s reach, increasing engagement, and driving revenue. Both disciplines share responsibility at this phase, with PMs leading feature enhancements and PMMs driving awareness and usage.
Improving Features: PMs identify ways to enhance usability, fix issues, and add functionality based on user feedback.
Driving Adoption: PMMs execute campaigns to attract new users and re-engage existing ones through targeted marketing efforts.
Optimizing Monetization: Both PMs and PMMs collaborate to refine pricing models, introduce upsell opportunities, and explore new revenue streams such as subscriptions or premium features.
Experimenting for Optimization: Both PMs and PMMs run experiments, such as A/B tests, to refine user experiences and messaging.
Monitoring Growth Metrics: PMs focus on product usage data, while PMMs track acquisition and conversion trends.
Collaborating on Growth Loops: Both roles design and execute strategies, such as referrals or freemium upgrades, that naturally scale user growth.
Product Maturity and Sunsetting
This final phase of the product lifecycle focuses on maintaining relevance, managing profitability, and planning for potential transitions. Product Management takes over once again, with Product Marketing supporting strategic decisions and customer communications.
Maximizing Profitability: PMs work on optimizing costs and feature sets to ensure the product remains financially viable.
Exploring New Opportunities: PMs assess whether to refresh the product, pivot to new markets, or retire it entirely.
Retaining Existing Users: PMMs develop campaigns to maintain loyalty and keep engagement high.
Managing Sunsetting: PMMs lead customer communications and PMs oversee technical processes when retiring a product.
Evaluating Learnings: Both roles analyze the product’s lifecycle to inform strategies for future products.
Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager: Skills and Core Competencies
While Product Managers (PMs) and Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) collaborate closely, they bring distinct strengths that are critical for product success. Understanding these differences helps teams leverage the unique contributions of each role.
Focus Areas: Internally focused on the product, business, and user.
Key Competencies:
Defining product vision and strategy.
Prioritizing and developing requirements.
Coordinating cross-functional product development.
Goal: Build and deliver solutions that solve customer problems and meet business objectives.
Product Marketing Manager skills:
Focus Areas: Externally focused on market positioning and customer communication.
Key Competencies:
Crafting messaging and positioning.
Planning and executing product launches.
Driving customer advocacy and revenue growth.
Goal: Ensure the product resonates with its audience and achieves market success.
PMs and PMMs share key skills such as customer advocacy, KPI-driven decision-making, and collaboration across the product lifecycle, making their partnership essential for achieving both user and business goals.
A Day in the Life of a Product Manager (PM)
9:00 AM: Reviewing JIRA boards and prioritizing tasks for the development team’s sprint planning session.
11:30 AM: Meeting with the design team to provide feedback on a new feature prototype and ensure it aligns with the overall product strategy.
1:00 PM: Analyzing product analytics data to identify trends and evaluate the performance of a recently launched feature.
2:30 PM: Hosting a cross-functional meeting to align engineering, design, and support teams on upcoming product milestones and address any blockers.
4:00 PM: Drafting a product requirements document (PRD) for the next high-priority feature, detailing user stories and acceptance criteria.
A Day in the Life of a Product Marketing Manager (PMM)
9:00 AM: Reviewing performance metrics from the previous week’s marketing campaign to evaluate effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement.
11:30 AM: Meeting with the sales team to present a new product feature, providing messaging guidelines and customer use case examples.
1:00 PM: Collaborating with the content team to finalize a blog post announcing an upcoming product update and tailoring the messaging to the target audience.
2:30 PM: Joining a go-to-market strategy session with leadership to plan the next product launch timeline and promotional efforts.
4:00 PM: Preparing a presentation for a customer webinar, highlighting the value of the product and answering common questions from the market.
Career Path of Each Role
Product Manager:
A Product Manager’s career typically begins in an entry-level role, such as Associate Product Manager, where they learn the fundamentals of product development, user research, and cross-functional collaboration. With experience, they advance to Product Manager and Senior Product Manager positions, taking on more responsibility for strategy, decision-making, and leadership.
PMs with a track record of delivering impactful products often move into roles like Director of Product or Group Product Manager, overseeing multiple product lines or teams. At the pinnacle of the career path, PMs may become Chief Product Officers (CPOs), responsible for aligning product strategy with business goals across the entire organization. Alternatively, some PMs pursue entrepreneurship, using their skills to launch and manage their own startups.
Product Marketing Manager:
A Product Marketing Manager’s career typically begins in entry-level marketing roles, such as Marketing Associate or Product Marketing Specialist, where they gain experience in messaging, positioning, and campaign execution. As they develop expertise, they move into PMM roles and then Senior PMM positions, focusing on high-level go-to-market strategies and customer insights.
Experienced PMMs may advance to roles like Head of Product Marketing or Product Marketing Director, where they manage teams and drive market strategies for an entire portfolio. Those with broader strategic skills can transition into executive roles like VP of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), shaping the overall brand and market positioning of an organization. Some PMMs may also pivot into consulting or Product Management roles, leveraging their expertise to guide other organizations or individuals.
PM vs. PMM salaries
Product Managers tend to earn slightly more than Product marketing managers, although salaries for both roles vary depending on factors such as location, company size, and level of experience. Product Marketing managers and Product Managers alike have strong earning potential in industries with high market competition, such as SaaS, e-commerce, and B2B tech.
Average annual salary for Product Marketing Managers in the US, according to Indeed.com: $116,000
Average annual salary for Product Managers in the US, according to the same source: $121,000
Pros and Cons: How to Decide Which Role Is Right for You
Role | Pros | Cons |
Product Manager | - High level of ownership over the product vision and strategy. | - Requires balancing multiple stakeholders’ conflicting priorities. |
- Opportunity to collaborate with cross-functional teams and influence the entire product lifecycle. | - Can face significant pressure to deliver on tight deadlines. | |
- Builds critical problem-solving and leadership skills that can lead to executive roles or entrepreneurship. | - Involves frequent context-switching, which can be mentally taxing. | |
Product Marketing Manager | - Direct impact on how the product is perceived and adopted in the market. | - Relies heavily on collaboration with other teams, which can lead to dependency bottlenecks. |
- Combines creativity and strategy, making it ideal for those who enjoy varied work. | - Subject to market conditions and external factors that can limit the success of even the best-planned campaigns. | |
- Develops strong communication and messaging skills that are highly transferable to leadership roles. | - May lack influence over the product itself, leading to frustration if market needs are unmet. |
Profile for a Product Manager (PM)
The best PMs are natural problem-solvers who thrive on tackling challenges and organizing chaos into structure. They are highly analytical, detail-oriented, and have an innate ability to prioritize competing demands. With strong interpersonal skills, PMs are empathetic leaders who can rally cross-functional teams and make decisions confidently, even under pressure.
Profile for a Product Marketing Manager (PMM)
The ideal PMM is a persuasive communicator and big-picture thinker who instinctively understands what resonates with people. They are naturally curious, have their finger on the pulse, and are attuned to market trends and customer motivations. PMMs are storytellers at heart, skilled at translating technical concepts into relatable, compelling narratives that drive action and inspire loyalty.
PMs and PMMs Make for a Full-Field Powerhouse
We’ve talked a lot about PMs versus PMMs, when in reality, they work closely together; it’s only when they work together as a team do they have a chance to really thrive.
A skilled Product Manager is like a midfielder on a soccer team, orchestrating the game by connecting defense (engineering and design) with offense (marketing and sales). They set up the plays that move the product over the line. Meanwhile, the Product Marketing Manager is the forward, positioned to score the goals by crafting go-to-market strategies and executing campaigns that drive conversions (goals). While the PM ensures smooth coordination and creates opportunities, the PMM is there to make sure all their hard work gets up on the scoreboard. Together, they’re an unstoppable duo!
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Updated: November 29, 2024
