Product Marketing Managers are responsible for overseeing the marketing of a product. They are responsible for marketing strategy, branding, and product positioning.
Product marketers often work with other departments to develop and execute marketing campaigns.
Product marketers need to have strong communication skills as they work with many different departments and stakeholders to create successful campaigns.
They also need to be analytical to measure the success of their campaigns.
In a field as tremendous and various as Product Management, there are countless various kinds of Product Managers.
One of the most widely recognized, besides a standard Product Management is a Product Marketing Manager.
If you’ve been working chasing after some time, you’ve most likely seen this title spring up endlessly time once more.
In this guide, we will reveal to you not just the salary of product marketing managers but also other information you need to know about product management managers.
Also, we will elaborate on how Product Marketing fits into the development and other related info such as the functions of product marketing managers, the difference between Product Management and Product Marketing Management, etc.
What is Product Marketing?
Product marketing just like digital marketing and traditional marketing fully involves the act of getting a selling product, pushing the product to the market, and also ensuring that those products get to the right targeted audience.
Meanwhile, for a product marketer to effectively push a product to the market, there are certain skills and knowledge he needs to have to get the product across to the right audience.
In this era, when people hear of marketing, most things that come to their mind is some popular digital marketing platforms such as social media, blogging platforms, email campaign, etc.
Perhaps, we want to bring to your notice that the phrase Product Marketing is far more advanced than these few digital marketing platforms always comes to your mind whenever marketing is being mentioned.
The basis of product marketing lies in three stages which are the product that is to be marketed, the targeted marketing platform to be used, and sales; that is how you can convince people to buy those products.
You should know that when you hear of product marketing, the main emphasis there is “marketing.” Although, you must have a product at hand before you can start to market it.
Let’s take for instance, right now you are perusing with a Windows computer, but before you get your Windows computer, you have the intention to go for a Mac computer.
What just happened is that a good product marketer convinced you by showing you some vital merits of using Windows computer over Mac computer.
These are some of the functions of a product marketer. Moreover, this is why a product marketing manager’s salary is quite huge because of the work they do for companies when it comes to changing people’s minds and perspectives.
Hereunder, you should know that marketing is a means of describing what a product is all about. This in turn helps to communicate to people what a product brand stands for.
Most people purchase products just to share their personal stories about that product. This can be seen as a personal review of those products.
One of the easiest ways to outscore your competitors when it comes to product marketing is by telling people what makes your product different from that of your competitor.
Functions of a Product Marketing Manager
A Product Marketing Manager has control over positioning a product, creative enticing stories, and messages that will convince people to take action towards getting the product, as well as branding of those products.
In a nutshell, a product marketing manager collects all the customer’s report or feedback and sit down to know how he can use those feedback to engage customers after the launch of that product or during the marketing time of those products.
Moreover, these are just a few basic functions of a product marketing manager.
Perhaps, there are other core functions of a product marketing manager that are being taken into consideration daily.
When it comes to the digital marketing world, some of the core functions of a product marketing manager include moving customers through a funnel that converts them from a general audience, into loyal fans.
Moreover, there are three major levels of the funnel that a Product Marketing Manager will constantly work on while transiting people or audiences into noble customers.
These three major sales funnels are discussed below:
Acquisition: Here the product marketing manager focused on getting customers’ attention; this is done by creating awareness and making people know that your product exists, and also channeling their interest towards your product.
Some popular platforms that can be used in this funnel stage are social media platforms, email newsletters, blogs, copywriting, etc.
Engagement: This stage involves getting people involved in your community of fans.
Some notable platforms or means of achieving this include holding events, CTAs, lead scoring, and organizing special offers or campaigns just for your products.
Retention/Conversion: This is the final stage and here the product marketing manager is to harness all the results he has gotten from the two funnels above.
This involves keeping the customers you got through email marketing, events, social media platforms, etc., and keeping them around so that they will subscribe to your product models.
Also, this stage involves converting your customers into paying customers that will in turn patronize your products.
Perhaps, these sales funnel centers on building growth loops with the product you have at hand.
In a general sense, the goal of product marketing is to get people’s attention to take action towards purchasing your product or even recommending your product to their friends.
Moreover, when working with new customers, you must find a way as a product manager to retain them.
You should have in mind that as a product manager, one of your major jobs is to nurture customers throughout their journey with a product to keep active towards your products.
On the other hand, the term Product Marketing seems to have a general agreeable definition, in the sense that it varies from company to company.
Also, the definition of Product Marketing typically varies from one product to the other.
If we are to consider a little example, the Product Marketing for software will be quite different from that of a hardware product.
Differences between Product Management and Product Marketing Management
To a layman, we can say that a Product Manager is quite the audible voice of a product within an organization.
While a Product Marketing Manager can be seen as an external voice that spreads a product throughout all the four corners of the world.
Perhaps, a Product Manager is majorly focused on ensuring that a product is properly built before it can be leashed out for proper marketing.
Over the years, we have seen how Product Managers directly work with engineers that are in charge of creating those products that are about to be marketed.
On the product manufacturing roadmap, Product Managers make decisions about what features get made and who will be the ones making them.
Also, Product Managers engage in diverse questions and answers to ensure the validity of that product and how customers are going to be engaged with those products when it gets across to them.
Some common questions that Product Managers usually ask is “does the product solve the problem?”
On the other hand, a Product Marketing Manager will ask “how will we tell people that this product solves the problem?”
Most times, both Product Marketing Manager and Product Manager works with sales to create a proper launch plan during the period of product launch.
During the launch period, some actions that product managers are to put into consideration include creating demos, social media content, email announcements, landing pages for the new products, etc.
In general terms, the launch period involves anything that will help to promote the product on the scene.
Regardless of how outstanding your product is, if people don’t know about it, there is no way they can get involved in purchasing it.
We can see that everywhere in this digital age. People use all the possible means to reach out to their targeted audience; either through the internet, newspaper, radio, TV stations, billboards, etc.
Studying the market and knowing all the possible strategy that works for your product marketing is quite a great tool that product marketers needs to master; as it is part of their functions.
How Product Management and Product Marketing Management work together
Although the functions of a Product Manager and that of a Product Marketing Manager are quite different, to ensure the effectiveness of Product Marketing, they tend to find themselves working together, just for a crucial purpose.
Moreover, both of them have a deep understanding of customers and how they can persuade customers to patronize their products.
When it comes to analyzing and sharing information on how to retain customers, both the Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager will be on the pane.
On the other hand, these two sets of marketers work together to describe in detail how people are going to react to their products and how they can improve people’s good response towards their products.
Furthermore, a Product Manager will collect feedback which will be used when making the product.
Also, how the product can solve people’s needs. On the other hand, a Product Marketing Manager will use the collected information to work out how best the products can reach the targeted users.
If your product is designed for young people, there is no need to advertise your products on platforms where over 80% of people there are all aged people that don’t even know what your product is all about.
What the job of a Product Manager and a Product Marketing Manager looks like
In this section, we will elucidate more on what the job description of both a Product Manager and a Product Marketing Manager looks like.
When it comes to the salary ranges, a Product Marketing Manager earns a similar salary when compared to that of a Product Manager, in the sense that their jobs are quite similar.
Also, they sometimes work together just for the effectiveness of product marketing.
In the world today, in almost all the regions of the world where technology has a voice, Product Marketing Manager jobs are quite an in need.
For instance, some places like San Francisco, London, Berlin, and Bangalore with high tech demands need a good number of Product Marketing Managers for proper product advertising.
Product Marketing Manager Salary
The average Product Marketing Manager’s salary in the United States as of 2020 is $114,000. Moreover, as the years keep moving the average salary for Product Marketing Managers is estimated to grow to about $181,000; although that is for bigger tech companies.
Meanwhile, if you are a Product Marketing Manager while preparing for a job interview, you should prepare the answers to some typical Product Marketing interview questions which we listed below:
- Tell me about some memorable marketing campaigns which you admire
- What was the marketing strategy like at your previous company?
- Which channels would you choose to market the launch of X?
- Do you think there are any untapped marketing resources out there?
Transitions in Product Marketing
Perhaps, if you are a Product Manager but you have the intention of adding more value to your job by gaining more useful knowledge, Product Marketing might be the right office for you.
One of the best ways to transit in your place as a Product Manager is to get involved in some extra tasks that are meant for Product Marketing Managers.
You can begin your journey by associating with the current Product Marketing Manager in your workplace and gaining some useful knowledge from him.
In some big companies today, some provisions entail rotating work schemes. This can be a great opportunity for you as a Product Manager.
Meanwhile, when you are applying for the role of a Product Marketing Manager, try to highlight any experiences you’ve had which correlate with the Product Marketing Manager’s responsibilities.
Also, if you have any previous experience in the field, ensure to unleash it.
Furthermore, Product Marketing can serve as a good stepping stone for marketing professionals, which they can utilize while breaking into products as well as working closely with the Product team.
Conclusion
Product Marketing Managers are responsible for overseeing the marketing of a product through some means which involve marketing strategy, branding, and product positioning.
READ ALSO:
