The Future of Product Marketing

© 2011

www.SolutionMarketingStrategies.com

The Future of Product

Marketing

ProductCamp Boston

Steve Robins

April 9, 2016

© 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies

Discussion Notes Thanks Saeed Khan!


Introduction

Not a lot of marketing sessions at ProductCamp - but this year there have been sessions all day

Held session last year on Marketing 3.0 – But session was disappointing. People are stuck where they are

Recent trends in product marketing – Ratio to PM/PMM has been going up

– Orgs have fewer and fewer people doing product marketing

– Lack of discipline

– Content marketing encroaches on PMM


Discussion Challenges of Product Marketing Today, 1

What are challenges that you see in PMM and where should it go in the future?

– Neil Baron – we all want to get close to customer

Yet virtually everyone in org works against that?

So if you want to talk to customers -- sales has reservation

• Can they get customer lined up

• How do you have time to do this?

It’s easy to say but not to do… lots of barriers

PMM is the stepchild of PM and of rest of Marketing

Organizations focus on activities and not outcomes – Social etc. You’ve done the work but what is the message that should get

out


Challenges 2

Many orgs don’t want to do things unless it CAN be measured

– Need to have both measurable and non-measurable events

– People focus on content vs lead gen

– Why are they not together. Creating silos, barriers etc.

It’s political; big picture is getting lost

What is the issue? Are people hung up on measurement? – KPIs were big 10 years ago. If you can’t measure it, but don’t do it.

– What is being measured but what should you do? Not using 95% of data. Don’t know what it means

– Went from one extreme to the other

PMM is heavily focused on content, value props vs running demand gen and getting email responses etc

– How do you connect to do


Challenges 3

Jeffrey Vocell – Ratio at HubSpot is low as well PMM/PM – Have a separate group called customer demands who drive demand gen

campaigns

– Separate group does sales enablement

– PMM enables customer demands and sales enablement teams

PMM at HubSpot is between marketing and demand team

– Create a lot of content, but focused on specific products

Coming from a large org, PMM is not prioritized – Other teams must help to get the content out

Must put it through other teams to “get it out there”


Challenges 4

Balance immediate with strategic – PMM gets too hands on to cover for marketing or fill gaps that are not

covered by Corp marketing.

In companies with regulatory or compliance issues, it’s difficult to get anything done – burden is increasing – pharma, medical etc.

Working tactically in silos. Focus on our own needs – e.g. what’s our marketing activity list? Who cares? How does that make an impact, generate value?


Looking to the Future 1

Creating a vision together… – What will product marketing look like in the future? What does it look like?

How is it better? What is your vision?

Be better bridge builders between PMM, Sales, Marketing. Keep their goals in mind as we’re building the bridges.

– See PMM as a resource and not as a barrier

Does the company understand the value of product marketing?

– Is PMM making selling easier?

– Challenge from Steve Robins – what if there are no sales people? E.g. all ecommerce etc.

Make the process, regardless of how, easier.


Future 2

Focus less around sales, and more around GTM – There’s a lot within GTM

– E.g. at HubSpot – PMM doesn’t own pricing/packaging

A perfect PMM org would have a seat at the table and have influence there

– In a way PMM is a PMM’s worst nightmare --- 4 PMMs and 30 PMs

PMM has been sliced down into many different roles

What are you trying to achieve by bringing various teams into Agile groups for PMM

– In finance – people do vendor related marketing but they are in silo

– Have all these groups come up with projects etc. to work together to push back on lots of tactical work that takes up time.


Future 3

PM owns product. PMM doesn’t own the marketing of it. But PMM should OWN IT. Should Own the marketing of the Product.

– Need to partner with other groups like Dev to work together to succeed

– Should PMM be a service organization?

PMM owns positioning messaging etc, but also needs to support sales – i.e. create battle cards

We are small team, can be collaborative etc.

In other companies PMM has aligned more with Product than with Marketing

At Hubspot sits with Product team – helps communication and information flow

An another company, PMM sits with Product but is part of Marketing

• Have way more PMs than PRODUCT MARKETING

PMM should be strategic, delivering value though a common message across the company etc.

– PMM and Product Strategy jointly own GTM (2 in a box)


Thanks Jeffrey Vocell


Thanks to everyone who participated today!

The Future of Product Marketing

Marketing

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