Over the last few years, Product Marketing Management (PMM) has become a hot field for MBA students, While MBA students have traditionally gone into marketing in large quantities, with the increase of MBAs interest in the Tech Sector so too has grown the interest in Product Marketing roles, as PMMs play a critical role to launching technology products to market and ensuring customer feedback and needs are understood by design, product and engineering teams. But what is product marketing?
There are many definitions of Product Marketing, but a common one as defined by Hubspot is:
“Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to market. This includes deciding the products positioning and messaging, launching the product and ensuring salespeople and customers understand it. Product marketing aims to drive the demand and usage of the product.”
Another good one, from longtime PMM Ada Chen is:
“The role of the product marketer is to accelerate product growth by championing the customer, communicating product value, and driving distribution.”
What Responsibilities do Product Marketers have?
Lots! But to succinctly sum it up, Ada Chen says, “The role of the product marketer is to accelerate product growth by championing the customer, communicating product value, and driving distribution.”
- Communicating Product Value – Product marketers are focused on conveying the product’s value to the customer to engage, convert and retain them
- Championing the Customer – Product marketers work closely with their product teams to define the target customer and champion them throughout the product development process.
- To drive product distribution: product marketing teams adopt shared goals with the extended team to drive the adoption and engagement of their product areas. Product marketers play a key role in making sure these products reach their intended customers.
How does an MBA prepare you for a career in product marketing?
- Cross Functional Expertise – Product Marketing is a cross functional role, one where you are working with lots of different teams. An MBA, and it’s broad exposure to the functions and disciplines across an organization is helpful to understanding each of these teams/functions, and how they fit into the bigger picture of what the team is trying to accomplish. This knowledge is helpful, especially when you have to work with many diverse stakeholders.
- Analytical Thinking – Product marketers have to flex their analytical chops to analyze data to drive decisions, such as what features to launch, what customers to target, or how to effectively allocate budget to the right marketing channels. This requires an analytical skillset, with an ability for key tasks/skills you learn in business school (ex: market sizing, cohort analysis, business case/ROI creation.)
- Collaboration – PMM’s collaborate with everyone, whether that’s inside the organization, with partners, or with customers. As an MBA student, you are constantly working on collaborative projects, which can serve you well in a future career in product marketing.
- Strategic Thinking – Product Marketing is one of the more strategic aspects of marketing, since MBAs often want (and study) strategy, a strategic mindset that can be quickly translated to execution is a critical aspect of an MBA degree
- Soft Skills – The soft skill development that you get from an MBA program is a valuable skill to have as a Product Marketer. Whether it’s using your negotiation and influence skills to execute a cross-functional project, or having the ability to navigate an organization, these are all things you learn in business school.
What should you focus on to set yourself up for a product marketing career?
While you’re an MBA student, if you are considering a career in Product Marketing, consider focus on building the following skills:
– Cross Functional Expertise – Product marketing works at the intersection of sales, marketing and product. In this position, having the ability to work with diverse functions and departments to execute a goal such as a product launch is vital to success. An MBA curriculum should give you a well-rounded view of the various functions and disciplines of a company, but in addition to your classes, identify as many cross functional projects as you can to build up your experience working on diverse teams.
– Communication – Great products with great features are awesome, but only if the customer understands them. Being able to communicate in a compelling and succinct manner, whether that’s through an email, blogpost, product release note, or keynote presentation is a critical skill for any Product Marketer. If you are can, find as many opportunities generate content (ex: blogposts, presentations) and get feedback on it.
– Empathy – The role of a product marketer is to champion a customer and their needs. To do this, you must have empathy. While empathy may feel like a trait that one is either born with or does not have at all, it is also something that can be developed and nurtured over time. Furthermore, frameworks like design-thinking can be helpful to ensuring you are listening to your customers and building products or features that actually address their pain points and challenges.
– Organizational Acumen – Oftentimes, Product Marketers will have to lead projects or initiatives when they don’t have formal management control or influence. This can be challenging, as it can be difficult to motivate individuals without formal control. To be successful in these situations, Product Marketers must have strong organizational awareness and saviness, and use that to influence the direction of a project. This often amounts to strong negotiation, influence, and other soft skills that are needed to champion and motivate individuals to achieve a goal. Business school provides lots of leadership opportunities to lead and manage your peers, so if you are considering a PMM role, make sure to sign up for some of these opportunities.