Justify Product Marketing in Your Organization

Product Marketing is often stuck in the unenviable position of defending its value within the organization. Too often, time is spent justifying not only the headcount, but also the work products. When you do get a chance to defend your time, you spend it talking about why the market voice is necessary – the buyer personas.

Why is the product marketing team always under the microscope? When you look at the other organizational departments, it actually is easy to see:

• Sales – these teams have a very short memory. They only remember the last two or three sales calls. And they don’t inject the market voice. Non-buyers are lost to sales teams chasing the shiny object dangling in front of them. In the end, sales teams create revenue.
• MarComm  - a very creative group, but their focus is on writing and drawing. They look at the words that are engaging and the layout that is compelling and attractive, but don’t take into account the persona voice – those buyer needs. However, attractive marketing collateral and emails and web sites drive leads, and leads drive sales.
• Product development – we believe they care. After all, these teams often listen to the voice of the customer in their processes. But, they don’t like the other teams, especially sales and marketing bothering them, interfering with their processes to produce the product for release.
• Senior leadership – they are focused on the dollar as well. Yes, they set and lead us to a vision, but in the end, without the dollar results the product won’t exist.

So where does that leave product marketing? If all the other teams are focused on producing results that drive revenue, how can product marketing compete for attention?

Product marketing can, should and does exist to drive the same dollar. True, the team is often there to serve as “adult supervision” in the company; but, the real value provided is to inject the market voice in a balanced way in a method where the buyer can understand, relate and be motivated to take action. When the buyer language is used in a way to offer a position, a message, that will motivate a response, this will generate the action that produces the results.

Looking in from the outside, this may be a simplistic way to look at the value of product marketing, but we tend to over-engineer so many other elements too often. Sometimes, just explaining that product marketing exists to defend and uphold the buyer’s voice, is enough to justify value.