This document summarizes a discussion at ProductCamp Boston on the future of product marketing. Key challenges discussed include barriers between product marketing and other teams like sales and engineering. Participants debated whether product marketing should own the marketing of a product or act as a service function. Ideas for the future included product marketing taking a more strategic role and acting as a bridge between teams, focusing on goals generation rather than just tactics, and jointly owning go-to-market strategy with product teams. The session looked at how product marketing could deliver better value through a common message across organizations.

1. © 2011
www.SolutionMarketingStrategies.com
The Future of Product
Marketing
ProductCamp Boston
Steve Robins
April 9, 2016

2. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
Discussion Notes
Thanks Saeed Khan!

3. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies

4. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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

5. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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

6. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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

7. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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”

8. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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?

9. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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.

10. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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.

11. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
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)

12. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
Thanks Jeffrey Vocell

13. © 2009-2016 The Solution Marketing Strategies
Thanks to everyone who
participated today!