While we know that Product Management is a listening (or inbound communications) role and that Product Marketing is a talking (our outbound communications) role, it is not very surprising that some folks confuse Product Marketing with Marketing Communications.
In a B2B setting, Product Marketing talks about products – and does so in a strategic way, addressing five important, strategic questions:
These strategic answers plus product features and benefits must be handed over to marketing communications folks. The tactics of writing, graphic design, coordination with the printer and enforcement of the trademarks or usage of the logos all fall within the realm of the marketing communications people. They understand proper grammar, journalistic writing styles, color palettes and font choices.
If you are a product marketing manager with control issues, you will still want final review of all marketing communications creations to ensure they “get it” and that they properly address the information provided to them.
Looking from the outside in, since many product marketing managers cannot draw, spell or discern colors, some tasks are best left to the professionals.
Agreed. The PM’s job is to lead, rather than doing it themselves, rather than controlling, rather than busting silos and getting into things that they know very little about. The generalist executive needs to maintain their economic indifference to the details.
That said, a permission marketing campaign can include surveys that sort out the visitor/prospect, so that better cases can be made to each of these populations/stakeholders. When you audience is more focused your conversations will be more focused as well. Getting this done may be a long-term effort. You may have to influence up, down, and sideways to make this happen. Trying to control will kill support.
Moving from concept to terminology, rather than leaving the concept to UML will move marketing up in the timeframe, and give them more time to create more, richer, tightly-focused content.
Product management might exclude marcom if they have a product marketing manager, otherwise, product managers do have to lead across the full breadth of the offer.
Completely agree that marketing communications need to be left to the pros. However, at some companies the product group will not have direct oversight of communications.
It is up to the product management team to make sure that sales and communications are sold on the product positioning before your turn it over to them to put together a go to market campaign. You essentially, have to sell internally before your product heads out the door.
Thanks for the post.
Josh
I’ll 2nd Josh’s comment. My only caveat is that the product manager had *better* sign off on the messaging before it goes out.
I’m less concerned with the logistics of getting the message out than ensuring that my product’s key enablers are getting their time in the sun.
This is particularly true in highly technical product lines. You have to ensure that your comms teams and architects are able & willing to engage each other on a constructive basis.
[...] Product Marketing is NOT Marketing Communications [Outside InView] [...]
Agree with most of the post, but the How of Introduction is best left to Marcoms for the following reasons. First, in a bigger B2B environment, many products have to compete to get a share of the communications budget, and maximizing that spend has a lot to do with how the message gets out. Also, the What, Who, How and Price – all proper PM domains – suggest to a good Marcoms person the issue of Hows. PMs have a ton of issues to manage, Media and Mediums, should be left to Marcoms to develop and come back to PMs with a plan. Further, Marcoms needs to be able to align Product messaging with overall corporate messaging strategies, again to better synergize spending.
Marcoms can be a tactical exercise if not managed well. It should be a strategic discipline and add value to a PM’s efforts – and that’s not about fonts or colors. It’s about business and success.
Fonts, copy, and related creative should be managed by Marcoms and outsourced to an agency. This is about core and context. In house creative is an oxymoron. If your business is to innovate, develop, engineer, and market products in a B2B environment – then that’s what a Marcoms’ manager should understand and support. Building an internal agency is counterproductive.
From my experience, being a PM is one of the hardest jobs to do well. So Marcoms’ role needs to be strategic and supportive, collaborating with PMs to get the greatest value for the How for every product.