Updated: October 2, 2024- 10 min read
What's the difference between a product manager vs product marketing manager? While these two terms look the same, there are some clear differences between the two roles. Let's take a look at the main differences in responsibilities.
The role of a Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager
Both Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers have things in common. For instance, they both use Agile methodologies and have an interest in stakeholder management. But, in substance, both disciplines have different origins and destinations.
In short, Product Management is a discipline involved with the conception, development and commercialization of a single “product” (an app, a piece of software, or other traditional physical examples).
Product Marketing, on the other hand, is a position which is focused exclusively on the commercialization phase. But that doesn't mean the job is any less complex.
The evolution of marketing
Marketing is an old business. From traditional village markets to the digital marketplaces of today, strategies for promoting, launching, and delivering products to customers have fascinated marketers.
Analog marketing was a very structured and functionalist endeavor. It was all about the use that the customer would make of the product. Ford famously said “any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”.
While a data-driven undercurrent always existed in marketing, it was limited to established techniques like focus groups or surveys. But, with the digital revolution, information about customers multiplied exponentially.
What had been a demanding task for marketing psychologists (the development of user personalities) became an almost automated process.
In fact, as everyone knows, this growth in personal data and advertising underpinned Google’s (and therefore, the Internet’s) early success.
Product Marketing in a digital world
This new stage opened the gates for a new market in digital innovation. The focus turned to providing solutions: customers and their wishes became king. The ideas of Ford were no more. This brought a new way of marketing products.
New communities like social media; lighter global logistics through freelancer platforms; and the supremacy of mobile; they all contributed to change the role of marketers.
Product expanded boundlessly. Early digital products were endearingly naive in their goals: they limited themselves to replicate existing analog systems, like libraries or universities.
However, once computing power and bandwidth expanded, a “product” really became anything that could profitably be offered by a virtual platform.
Today, moving smoothly around a city; finding your life partner; or learning a new language are all “digital products” that have to be marketed by these professionals. Focusing on features and having shorter change cycles has affected the way marketers think.
Their Price references went up in the air. Monetization has been an enduring challenge for marketers. Indeed, Product Managers have been able to come up with the most amazing solutions in the past decade.
However, making them profitable has been a challenge too. Subscription services, freemium models, one-time payments, long-term profit plans… All sorts of solutions have had to be advanced by Product Marketing Managers to align makers’ dreams with reality.
The tech bubble burst in the early 2000s because investors thought that everything associated with “the web” was going to revolutionize the economy. Rather, the most successful products have understood the intersection between physical and digital.
Physical-product marketers are trying to tie in virtual experiences. Equally, virtual product marketers are thinking more about real-world ways to promote their solutions.
Promotion has, in fact, changed forever. The invention of social media dwarfs any previous media models: no newspaper, no television or radio network has the sort of reach enjoyed by Facebook or Twitter.
Beyond this, building campaigns today is a complex art. Website design, messaging, videos, identities… All of these factors are involved in the mix: from commercial successes to political campaigns, a good marketer today is constantly seeking to stay ahead of the game and identify the next new trends before their competitors.
The role of Product Markers
Product Marketing is the result of all these transformations. A Product Marketer is responsible for conceiving a “winning” strategy for the stuff being sold. This includes, much more than it used to be in the past, being aware of development timelines and constraints.
In the digital world, it pays if you have some technical knowledge whatever you do. So these Marketing Managers will be way more used to wearing different hats: having good relationships with internal stakeholders, for example, is much more important.
Equally, everything now revolves around experience. A product must produce a feeling over its users; something that makes them come back again and again. But “felt” elements like packaging, design; even the checkout page… they all involve an acute knowledge of customer desires that goes beyond the remit of old-style marketers.
Product-involved work requires a change of focus, leaving “projects” aside and embracing the unfinished character of digital developments.
All in all, Product Marketing Management is a vital function within a company that extends beyond business acumen into the realms of design, stakeholder management, tech skills, development process awareness and more.
But what differentiates Product Marketing from Product Management?
Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager Roles
Associate Product Marketing and Product Management programs are offered by Google and this generates confusion. After all, they both use the PM acronym and both are in-demand in Silicon Valley. Google needs both to continue generating growth and expansion. So rest assured, if you manage to get into any of the programs, you are almost guaranteed a successful future.
But these positions are not the same.
First of all, Product Management is much more inclusive. The transformations described above which have affected marketing and product; they have to be multiplied by three in the case of Product Managers.
These professionals not only cover the commercial side of business: they also take care of product conception, development and user knowledge. These three spheres involve their own challenges, which are sometimes but not always relevant for Product Marketing Managers (PMM).
For instance, marketing might not need so much detail regarding the methodologies involved to bring a product to its final destination. What do they care if Agile or Jobs-To-Be-Done are supporting product vision and roadmapping? It doesn't really affect their work in the way that other issues do.
The Product Manager (PM), on the other hand, must have marketing in mind when negotiating with other collectives. The way the product or feature will be released or sold to the public feeds back into its development process; and vice versa. Again, issues like social media promotions, landing pages, mailings, sponsorship partners… they all involve product teams because they highly determine the direction the product will take.
For instance, take a music streaming service. Will it work as a web-based app, or will it also have its own standalone app? Will it reach a targeted audience, or seek to attract the whole market? Will it make it a priority to connect bands with their audiences; or will it try to do other things, like selling you tickets to live shows or promote certain podcasts?
All of these questions have an answer that, on the surface, seems like a market decision; but they have so many ramifications into product that requires the skills of a PM to solve them.
This is because all of these choices determine the work of product developers, designers and marketers; while involving all of them. The only figure that can cross-communicate and maintain the coherence of a Product Vision is the Product Manager.
As a result, in many offices Product people are hierarchically above Product Marketing people. Whether this is the case, or even if they work side by side, the fact is that Product Managers are in control of many more processes than Product Marketing Managers.
And this is reflected on the paycheck:
According to Glassdoor, a Product Marketing Manager in LA makes on average $106,517 per year.
According to Glassdoor, a Product Manager in LA makes $114,036 per year.
This difference is significant enough, more so if we consider that these rates are only averages.
Product Marketing or Product Management: Customers Matter
Certainly, if PMs and PMMs have something in common it's their enhanced knowledge of user desires and experience. Both types of product people put users at the center of their work. Sometimes called “the empty chair”, this factor goes unnoticed for most digital teams that do not need to interact with the public.
Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers keep an eye on the industry to ensure that they remain aware of what the competition is doing to attract new users.
This is fundamental for both types of professionals for the following reasons:
In the digital world, users are almost internal stakeholders. Not many people remember the times when products were released with a final form. This meant that one version was released, with a large marketing campaign, and that was it. Now, products are often “unfinished”, released in parts to be tested by the community. Users are more than testers, because they tend to employ the features in ways never conceived within company silos. Using customers to drive growth is important for both Marketing and Product Managers.
User experience is not secondary. The typical case for this is piracy. Before the great successes of Spotify and Netflix, both music and films were illegally downloaded by many. It was a challenge to monetize streaming services; however, money was not the issue. It was access. Pirated media was felt to be easier to obtain than legal alternatives. The companies above took great care to design their platforms in order to make them not just useful; but an addictive (almost essential) part of their users’ free time. This is a story of intelligent design that takes users into account from the start; and it involved canny marketing and technical prowess to be delivered.
Users are your past and future market. In the past, product communities were only really significant in certain markets, such as cars or musical instruments. Most other products, like home appliances, were not really seen in the same way. But today, even an events ticketing service like Eventbrite seeks to delight its users at every step. This is because Product Managers and Marketing Managers are aware that their communities help with gathering precious intelligence, generate product evangelists and contribute to next development stages.
Product Marketing Managers do not have it easy
Product Marketing Managers do not have an easier time than Product Managers. What we mean by this is that their unique set of skills makes them perfect candidates for the Product Management transition.
This evolution of the marketing profession is very similar to what project people had to do: turn their perspective from closed processes and towards open products. Both Product Marketing and Management professionals are therefore connected to the digital revolution.
Surely, Marketing practitioners have a lot of user knowledge. But they need to learn more about stakeholder management, tech skills and tools and development processes. If they manage to complement these weak points, they are perfectly able to join the Product Managers community.
That is, if they really want to!
Are you a Product Marketing Manager? Have you worked with Product Managers? Tell us about your experience!
Updated: October 2, 2024
