How to move from Product Management to Product Marketing

Learn what the PMM role entails, links to helpful resources, resume tips & more.

Hey BPL fam,

We made it to Q4, folks - the phase of the year where you’ll start seeing a myriad of documents with titles prefixed or suffixed with “2024”.

While most Product Managers are getting busy preparing plans for next year, some folks are eyeing career transitions. One shift, in particular, that I’ve received a number of questions about is a move into product marketing.

I thought I’d break this topic down in this edition of Behind Product Lines. Here’s what we’ll unpack:

• My own transition story

• What does a product marketer do?

• Why should one shift to product marketing?

• A 4-step process on how to make the transition (resources, tools, etc.)

But, first, a quick word from today’s sponsor, Storylane - a demo creation tool that my PMM at vFairs and I have recently started using:

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Disclaimer: This is a LONG post and won’t fit in an email. You can read the rest on my newsletter page.

My transition story

I stumbled into product marketing by accident while working as a Product Manager at Bayt.com in 2014.

At the time, the company was taking a bet on building a virtual job fair platform (called vFairs) to connect employers and job seekers in real-time. The general manager of vFairs at the time (now, the CEO of my company) asked me if I could assist him in developing a marketing website as a side project. I complied and managed to get a couple of designers to stitch something up.

Soon after that, I was asked for more “favors”.

• Can you send an email blast using Mailchimp?

• Can you handle our social media posts on LinkedIn?

• Can you set up some Google Ads?

During this process, I felt a vacuum. Even though I was creating promotional content, I wasn’t clear on a crisp value proposition. I felt the content going into these channels wasn’t really answering “Why you?”

In 2017, I was asked to adopt a dual role to lead both product management and marketing. My first assignment was to build an in-house digital marketing team. This is the point I decided to take a step back and first invest in myself by learning the fundamentals.

I eventually realized that all this while, I had been only scratching the surface of digital marketing. I was then introduced to product marketing - the strategic science that constructs the bridge between the functional product and the target customer (and much more).

I immersed myself in books, podcasts, courses, and LinkedIn posts to understand how to shape a product's narrative, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. I, along with my team, continued to evolve our understanding of the discipline and apply it across our marketing footprint.

What does a Product Marketing Manager really do?

Like product management, the boundaries that Product Marketers operate in change with the organization, company stage, and market of operation.

For example,

• In early-stage companies, the focus of a PMM is a lot more on consumer research, product launches, landing pages, demand-generation content, and educating prospects about the product as a whole.

• In mid-market and growth companies, the focus can shift more towards enabling sales and customer success through content, developing strong messaging for each feature, conducting positioning exercises, and drafting go-to-market strategies. There’s a lot more coordination work between PMMs, sales, and customer success.

• In large enterprise companies, PMMs may be assigned to segments of a larger product, orchestrating product launches for specific industries or geographies. There’s an increased emphasis on cross-functional coordination across departments. They may find themselves collaborating a lot more on pricing tiers and packaging too.

How does product management and product marketing work in tandem?

How about a restaurant analogy?

There are 3 parties in play:

• the chef

• the restaurant manager

• the restaurant’s ad agency

First, all three parties research and understand the food market and profiles of restaurant visitors. They will identify and agree on the target segment, and figure out preferences and taste palettes they will serve.

The product manager is like the chef. They take that input and invent creative meals customers would enjoy. They work with their kitchen crew to get the dishes ready.

The product marketer is like the restaurant manager. They work with the chef to understand the planned dishes. They decide how the restaurant should be classified to the world (fine dining, fast food, cuisine type, etc.) and articulate how the restaurant’s experience will be different than others. They work towards wording the menu card carefully to ensure customers not only instantly understand the dishes they want but excitedly order them.

The digital marketer is like the restaurant's advertising agency. They take the restaurant manager’s advice on messaging and value proposition. They identify the best channels to promote this message and craft creative integrated campaigns to get it in front of the right audience using a mix of digital and offline campaigns.

Here’s a little graphic that sums it up in another way:

Image Source: Tidio

Misconceptions about Product Marketing

Misconception 1: Product Marketing = Digital Marketing

Many people, including Product Managers, believe product marketing is the department that handles social media and sends out flowery newsletters.

Additionally, they conflate the duties of product marketing and digital marketing.

Product marketers strategize how to get the product into the right hands, at the right place at the right time using the right message. They work alongside PMs to identify ideal customers and select their pain points. They carve out messaging, positioning, competitive differentiation, and a go-to-market strategy to drive demand and adoption of the product. They also work with sales and customer success teams to produce content to enable them to sell better.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, has an external focus. It executes the strategy laid out by PMMs and utilizes their channel expertise to open up the top-of-funnel. It follows a marketing plan to create brand awareness, produce campaigns aligned with the PMM narrative, and construct journeys to capture leads. They leverage mediums like search engine marketing, content marketing, social media, and organic traffic to achieve this.

Both are not the same. Here’s a visual that shows what areas each owns:

Misconception 2: Messaging = Copywriting

Some people ask me: “Why do I need a product marketer when I already have a copywriter to write my headlines, emails, and ad copy?”

Copywriters can frame beautiful sentences and polish concepts to deliver impact. But they need substance and the raw ingredients to play with. They need to know who to address their copy to and the right problem themes that will resonate with prospects.

Product Marketers have close proximity to the product and are best positioned to identify that for them.

A copywriter without a product marketer’s input/direction will write a lot of polished but aimless sentences that fail to strike a chord.

After all, even the most accomplished chef can't make an omelet without eggs.

Why should one shift to Product Marketing?

I’d like to unpack reasons I’ve heard in recent times:

The Airbnb Take

Brian Chesky’s (CEO of Airbnb) comments earlier in the summer really caused a stir. When he announced that they had merged the product management function into product marketing, many thought it was the beginning of the end for product management.

I’ve even seen poor takes on Twitter that made PMs nervous:

Listen.

Just because a heavy powerlifter decides not to wear a safety belt around their waist, doesn’t mean every other person in the gym should do the same. That’s not just bad judgment. It’s dangerous.

Similarly, Airbnb’s move is a testament to its own success and the maturity of its processes over the years. They can afford to distribute the duties of product management among different departments because of their unique ownership structure and operating model. It’s NOT an open invitation for every company on the planet to follow suit. I’ve written more about this here.

In other words, PM is here to stay. That’s not a reason to jump ship.

How’s the money?

Compensation structures vary wildly from one company to another for both PM and PMM roles.

Although product marketing is rising in popularity, it’s still playing catch-up. For example, lean startups don’t always have a product marketer in place. In that respect, product management has more widespread recognition.

As of this writing, if you compare the median pay scales of a PM and PMM with 1-3 years of experience in the US on Glassdoor, you’ll see the former falls in a higher bracket. So, money might not be a compelling reason to move.

Then, why move?

So, if Product Management isn’t under threat and the money isn’t relatively a whole lot better, why would someone think about switching?

Some reasons:

1. Go-to-market (GTM) strategies can make or break a product.
   Companies, especially SaaS ventures, are increasingly finding themselves in red-ocean markets. Building a product is simply not enough to cut through the noise. A feature-rich product doesn’t mean much if customers aren’t aware of it and convinced of its value against alternatives.
   
   That’s why Product marketers are becoming increasingly essential. They help devise a GTM strategy that identifies the best audience segments to sell to, positions the product favorably against the competition and describes the plan to reach them. Even if the product lacks capabilities, a strong GTM strategy can still make up for it by finding appropriate buyers.
   

2. Product marketing helps unlock massive business impact.
   Product marketers work a lot closer with customer-facing teams like sales and customer success, especially in B2B settings than Product Managers. By equipping them with the right messaging, competition differentiation, and approach vector, PMMs can dramatically affect conversion rates, cost of acquisition, and sales cycle lengths. Businesses across all stages care about that impact a lot.
   

3. Product marketing is on its way to becoming a core role.

   As AI becomes more prevalent in product development, “features” are becoming an ephemeral advantage. Product marketing (in partnership with PMs) will drive the differentiating factor behind a product’s success.
   
   PMMs are on a trajectory to become a highly sought-after role in years to come. As of this writing, Google Trends shows that searches for product marketing are on the rise in the past few months:

   

What skills & traits do I need to be a Product Marketer?

Like everything else, product marketing isn’t for everyone.

There are a few important traits that I believe Product Marketers require to thrive. I’ll try to focus on the delta that Product Managers looking to switch might need to fill up.

a. Power of Articulation

While you don’t need Shakespearean-like wordsmithing skills, the ability to express concepts with clarity is paramount, especially during messaging, positioning, and evangelism exercises. Not only do you need to learn this art, you must enjoy it.

Distilling your customer research, competitive analysis, and product data into vivid narratives and storytelling requires intense thought and discourse. The words you use are your scalpel to make inroads into the customer’s mind.

I know PMs who love devising solutions but find it tedious to explain them with brevity and in creative ways. Product Marketers need to get good at that.

b. Understanding Human Psychology & Buyer Behavior

PMMs need to have an appreciation of the psychology of buying.

They must be able to learn how their customers process messages rationally and emotionally, how businesses buy a product (in B2B), and quickly pick up on who is involved in the purchase (buyer personas).

Product marketing of global products additionally requires being great at adapting to different cultural/social contexts and reading between the lines when researching customers.

c. Branding & Content Mindset

PMMs deal with a ton of content. Although they don’t drive branding activities alone, they are required to care about consistency of content style, tone of voice, design aesthetics, and overarching narrative. Moreover, in my time as a PMM, I had to produce several sales presentations, marketing collateral, email templates, one-pagers, battle card pages, Looms videos, and so on. You may be able to delegate content when you achieve scale but in the start, be ready to write and design.

d. Adaptability in Communication

PMMs collaborate extensively with customer-facing teams. Flexibility in adjusting your language to align with sales and customer success jargon is essential. Whether it's leads, opportunities, objection handling, or competitive battle cards, you need to speak their language. Luckily, most PMs are able to pick this skill up quickly.

What are transferable skills between Product Management and Product Marketing?

There are some skills that most Product Managers already have in their bag of tricks that come in handy in PMM. These are:

• Customer discovery and market research

• Competitive analysis

• Persona or segment identification

• Problem framing

• Product launches

• Pricing (in certain organizations)

Alright then, how does a product manager moving over to product marketing learn the missing skills and complete the transition?

Let’s look at this 4 step process:

1. Close the Knowledge Gap.

2. Understand the tools involved.

3. Gain some hands-on experience.

4. Tailor your resume.

Step 1A: Close the Knowledge Gap

Here is a list of resources that will help you cover the main pillars of the product marketing activity wheelhouse:

1. Defining the value a product marketer brings

   1. Read Misunderstood by Richard King and Bryony Pearce.

   2. Read Loved by Martina Lauchengco.

   3. Read Product Marketing, Simplified by Srini Sekaran.

   4. Watch Product Marketing for Startups by Google Ventures.

   5. Watch a free Product Marketing course by Gerardo Dada.
      

2. Market Research & Understanding Buyers

   1. Read How to do Market Research by Debbie Farese (Hubspot)

   2. Watch Market Research to Drive Product Strategy by Ankit Desai

   3. Read Influence: Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

   4. Take CXL’s course on Segmentation & Persona Research

   5. Subscribe: Why we Buy newsletter by Katelyn Bourgoin
      

3. Messaging & Positioning

   1. Take the free B2B Messaging Course by Wynter

   2. Take CXL’s course on messaging and positioning

   3. Read Obviously Awesome by April Dunford

   4. Read How to write a SaaS homepage (Growth Unhinged)
      

4. Competitive Research

   1. Guide to Competitive Intelligence by Product Marketing Alliance

   2. Take Hubspot’s course on Competitive Strategy
      

5. Go-to-market Strategy & Product launches

   1. Read The essential go-to-market guide by Yasmeen Turayhi

   2. Read Guide to Go-to-market strategies by Product Marketing Alliance.

   3. Read Product-led Growth by Wes Bush

   4. Take CXL course on product launches
      

6. Understand the marketing funnel

   1. Watch: Building a Sales & Marketing Machine by Michael J Skok

   2. How to create a marketing funnel by Single Grain
      

7. Basics of Marketing Channels

   1. Take Hubspot’s free Content Marketing Certification

   2. Take SEO Principles: An Essential Guide for Beginners from SEMRush

   3. Take PPC Fundamentals course from SEMRush

   4. Read Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz

   5. Take Organic Social Media course by CXL
      

8. Metrics Product Marketers care about

   1. Read: 13 Product Marketing KPIs by Elise Dopson (Databox)

   2. Read: Essential Metrics to Measure Success in SaaS by UserPilot
      

9. Differences between B2B & B2C Product Marketing

   1. Read B2B vs B2C Product Marketing by PMA

   2. Read B2B vs. B2C Product Marketing Differences by Upland
      

10. Introduction to Pricing

    1. Read Pricing Guide by Product Marketing Alliance

Do you need to do all of this at once?

It depends on the target role’s requirements. However, getting exposure in all of these knowledge buckets will maximize your chances of nailing a role.

Step 1B: Follow experts for daily content

The product marketing field is constantly evolving. It’s important to know who to follow to:

• learn interesting frameworks and get access to learning materials

• understand unique and nuanced perspectives of industry leaders

• join the conversation and gain visibility among the PMM fraternity

Some people I recommend following:

Anthony Pierri & Robert Kaminski: fantastic visual representations of how messaging should be done. They offer practical advice on creating compelling messaging (and copy) for SaaS home pages.

April Dunford: the official guru of positioning. Read her books, follow her podcast, and internalize her learnings. Enough said.

Jason Oakley: Jason goes deep into PMM topics like competitive intelligence, product launches, and relationships with sales/customer success. His newsletter and website have tons of great resources, templates, and swipe files.

Peep Laja: Peep is an expert in all things product marketing, digital marketing, and messaging. His “Do you even resonate?” series on LinkedIn is supremely informative.

Elena Verna: Elena goes deep into growth conversations around acquisition, retention, and expansion. If you’re aiming to be a Product Marketing Manager for a PLG-driven product, you will benefit from her practical advice.

Katelyn Bourgoin: Her “Why we Buy” newsletter contains refreshing perspectives on buyer psychology and persuasion tactics that are useful for messaging and positioning.

Amanda Natividad: her perspectives on marketing engines, demand generation, trends, and general life experiences offer a lot for product marketers. Her work on “zero-click” marketing was stellar.

Step 1C: Connect with other product marketers

I highly recommend joining Product Marketing Alliance’s Slack community and attending their events if they are happening in town. It’s a great way to connect with modern Product Marketers.

The #pmm-resources and #pmm-questions channels are super informative. It gives you a sense of what PMMs do at their job and organically exposes you to real-world problem scenarios.

Step 2: What tools do Product Marketers use?

The tool sets vary from one job to another. I’ll share a bunch of tools I’ve been exposed to in my journey. Some of these will already be familiar to Product Managers:

Wynter - a tool that enables you to test your messaging with real user feedback. The founder, Peep Laja, also does this amazing series called “Does it event resonate?” where he does landing page teardowns.

Sparktoro - This is an amazing tool that uncovers places on the internet where your prospective buyers hang out. It reveals websites, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc. that audiences following hashtags, websites, and social handles of interest are accessing. It uncovers “hidden gems” - niche blogs that you could partner with to bring cheap but relevant visibility. Super helpful tool in developing creative go-to-market strategies.

Hubspot - In its core, it’s a CRM which is crucial in B2B. Hubspot’s Marketing hub has tools to launch email campaigns, organize SEO, and run social campaigns. Hubspot’s sales hub allows you to track down entire user journeys - from the point of conversion to email opens and engagement with your sales enablement assets.

Grammarly & Jasper - Product Marketers have to write a lot and it’s important to maximize the impact of that writing. A Grammarly+ account (or even the AI-powered Jasper) can not only help you cull basic grammar mistakes but also improve your writing’s impact.

Brand24 - I’ve hooked Brand24 to a Slack channel. It gives me a notification every time there is a mention of my brand (or my competitor’s) across the web, be it in the form of an article, tweet, press release, instagram post, etc. It’s super helpful to keep tabs on how my product is being “described”.

G2 & Capterra - these are third-party review marketplaces (not tools per se). However, when you have a steady stream of reviews coming in, they become a goldmine of insights to learn how customers describe you, whether your positioning is working well, what objections you need to pre-empty in your messaging, and much more.

Dovetail - Consolidate all your customer research (calls, surveys, feedback) in one place and surface insights on any topic of concern.

Storylane - Create interactive product demos and walkthroughs for your product. This works much better than static screenshots. Interactive tours are ideal to put on marketing landing pages and knowledge bases.

Asana - You obviously would need to manage tasks somewhere. Asana works well for marketers with support for project plans, linking dependencies, and running through marketing checklists.

Ahrefs & Keyword Planner - tools that surface search volumes of a keyword, your current rank, difficulty in ranking and organic trends over time. Also, find related keywords.

SEMRush - the best tool to compare your paid ad campaigns vs. competition.

Notion - I’m in love with Notion. It serves as a highly flexible workspace for docs, wikis, memos and more.

Optimizely - Conduct A/B tests to assess which variations of copy, images, layouts optimize conversions (like sign-ups or lead conversion forms).

Canva - This is a powerhouse tool to create quick graphics, flowcharts and run whiteboard sessions. The latest AI features they injected (like removing backgrounds from videos and placing objects into a photo) are simply fire.

Miro - This is ideal when you need to run collaborative brainstorming sessions on a digital whiteboard.

Buzzsumo - A handy tool to discover trending content topics to write about.

(optional) Gong - A tool that makes transcriptions of sales calls across the organization searchable and organizable. Sales conversations have a ton of amazing insights about customers, and Gong can help you extract them.

Step 3: Gain experience

Alright, now that you are familiar with the product marketing theory and toolset, it’s time to accumulate some real-world experience.

There are a few quick wins that you can strike to get some exposure:

• Raise your hand at work

  • If you’re already working in a PM capacity, shadow your existing marketing team and observe their workflow.

  • Volunteer for projects involving like messaging, crafting a landing page for a feature, or working on an upcoming product launch.

• Work on a gig via freelance marketplaces

  • If the first point isn’t possible, try taking on a small product marketing project on Upwork or Fiverr.

  • Note that most Upwork gigs are tactical in nature involving activities like sending an email or leading a social media campaign. That’s OK. You want to ensure that it ALSO allows you the creative freedom to research users and collaborate with the employer on messaging, competitive intelligence or launch plans.

• Practice on your own

  • Open up a site like Betalist or Product Hunt.

  • As an exercise, go through a startup idea and read through the product details.

  • Then, attempt to create the following artifacts:

    • attributes of the ideal customer profile (after some research)

    • a one-pager detailing the core messaging and positioning.

    • wireframe an alternate landing page.

  • You could even connect with the product marketing lead of the startup on LinkedIn and share it with them to get feedback.

Whatever form of experience you garner, you need to capture it in a portfolio document to allow employers to visualize the value you’re bringing.

Include work samples like landing pages, email campaigns, and presentations to showcase your skills. If you want tips on building a portfolio, check out these guidelines.

Step 4: Develop a transition resume

After you’ve built some exposure to product marketing and have a portfolio, it’s time to get out there and secure your first interview.

The first thing people try to figure out is a resume that will work well in this situation.

Here’s a sample resume for a product manager turning toward product marketing:

Notice how the experience related to product launches and customer research is front-loaded in each block. It’s important to highlight work that PMMs care about even if it wasn’t your primary focus.

How about we work through an example?

Here is an excerpt from an actual Product Marketing Manager job from Hootsuite:

• Develop a marketing plan that drives market interest and generates demand through integrated global campaigns

• Create compelling sales and customer-facing collateral and thought leadership

• Develop product briefs explaining new features for internal use

• Conduct competitive analysis and gather market insights

• Development of go-to-market tactics, and being the leader for a new product or feature launches

How would you adapt your resume to speak to these requirements?

Here’s a shot:

• "Created integrated launch plans for 2 major product releases involving messaging, sales enablement, and digital campaigns resulting in 20%+ lead growth quarter-over-quarter."

• “Developed product brief decks and sales collateral for 5 key modules, educating the sales and success teams on our latest product updates, enabling a 25% reduction in onboarding time.”

• "Conducted quarterly competitive analysis on 5 top competitors to identify key gaps and opportunities for new product capabilities, leading to the launch of our app's new collaboration features which saw a 15% increase in activation."

• "Supported 2 successful product launches at X by creating internal product briefs and training sales teams on new capabilities.”

After this, the typical job seeker advice applies:

• build a tailored resume,

• look out for job postings on PMA’s Slack Channel (#pmm-job-postings)

• network generously on LinkedIn and connect with hiring managers,

• attend local events where Product Marketers convene,

• push for referrals within your network,

• apply to positions that align well with your domain expertise, and

• Share your learnings and lessons on LinkedIn to increase visibility.

Also, know that you might have to start on a lower seniority rung as you’re moving laterally into a different work stream.

Final word

Product Marketing is going to rise in importance in the next decade or so. It’s the role that will quarterback a SaaS product and navigate it through a busy playing field with smart positioning tactics.

While a move to Product marketing can be highly rewarding, make sure you set the right expectations by deeply understanding the value the role brings in a product team.

Hope this helped.

Till next time,
Aatir