It's not unusual for friction to exist between product and marketing teams — especially because "product manager" and "product marketing manager" are often loosely defined job functions. In this webinar, we'll share five practical tips for how product managers and marketers can work better together.

1. Building an Amazing Relationship Between
Product Management and Marketing

2. Today’s Speakers
Ronnie Regev
Group Product Manager,
AppFolio
Shaun Juncal
Product Marketing
Manager, ProductPlan
Andre Theus
Marketing Director,
ProductPlan
Submit questions at anytime during the webinar!

3. Alignment
between
product and
marketing is
crucial for
success

4. Intro
• The Product Manager and the Product Marketing
Manager often have loosely defined job functions
• They usually report to different VPs and
sometimes have different success metrics
(website traffic vs. product usage for example)
• Different VPs and different success metrics can
mean very different priorities
• And this can introduce challenges...

5. Today’s Agenda
1. Roles and Responsibilities
2. Customer Communication
3. Product Planning
4. Pricing
5. Product/Feature Launch
6. Q&A

6. Who is joining us today?

7. 1. Roles & Responsibilities

8. Roles & Responsibilities Challenge
What is marketing responsible for and what does
product management own?
• Who is leading the market analysis?
• Who defines the buyer persona?
• Who executes win/loss analysis?

9. • Private B2B
software company
• ~250 employees
• 5 PMs and 2 PMMs
• ~15 people in
marketing
RightScale B2B Software Example

10. AppFolio Property Manager Example
• Public B2B SaaS, ~500 Employees
• 8 Product Managers
• 3 Comms & Content Specialists
• Marketing:
– Prospect messaging
– Customer messaging w Loyalty & PM
– In-App with PM
• Product
– Market analysis, sizing, pricing, win/loss
– Go-To-Market - shared

11. Roman’s Product Mgmt Framework

12. Roles & Responsibilities Takeaways
• Frameworks can give you guidance
• Focus on strengths rather than shortcomings
• Remember: It does not matter who does what, as
long as the job gets done
• Roles do not need to be set in stone, if something
does not work change it
• Rather than holding onto something: Divide and
conquer (you’re working towards the same goal)

13. What are your biggest customer
communication challenges?

14. 2. Customer Communication

15. Customer Communication Challenge
How can marketing and product management best
collaborate on customer communication related
projects?
• Who writes the positioning statement?
• Who drives in-app messaging ?
• How to collaborate on marketing programs?

16. Example: AppFolio In-App Messaging
1
2

18. Customer Communication Takeaways
• Align on goals and collaborate
• Keep an open mind to new approaches
• Be patient and educate each other
• Agile can be challenging
• Healthy tension is good

19. Who is primarily responsible for your
product planning process?

20. 3. Product Planning

21. Product Planning Challenge
How to divide the product planning process between
product management and marketing?
• How does the PM loop marketing folks in?
• How to prioritize your roadmap?
• How to collect feature ideas?

22. • 5 PMs and 2 PMMs
researched major
themes
• Present proposal
to executive team
• Collaborated on
launch plan
RightScale Yearly Major Themes

23. Collaborate on Ideas & Prioritization
• Collect ideas across
teams
• Prioritize together
• Be transparent
about your roadmap

24. Prioritization

25. Product Planning Takeaways
• Transparency during the planning process is key
• Have a central location for your roadmap
• Solicit marketing and other stakeholders early in
the process for roadmap feedback so that they
can be pro-active rather than re-active
• Different parts of the organization work at
different paces

26. How often do you test your pricing
model or price point?

27. 4. Pricing

28. Pricing Challenge
How can you effectively navigate a pricing update?
• How often should I test my price point?
• Who do I need to involve in a pricing update?
• How to go about communicating a pricing
increase to existing customers?

29. Pricing: Keep It Simple (if you can)
• Don’t over
complicate your
plans
• Keep pricing teams
lean
• Award early
adopters
• Experiment

30. Pricing Takeaways
• Award early adopters and grandfather price.
• Keep it simple: if your sales force does not
understand it, your prospects certainly will not.
• Don’t be afraid to update your price point or
pricing model. You probably did not get it right
the first time around.
• In my experience, more often than not, you won’t
need to compete on price.

31. How long is your process from product
or feature idea to market launch?

32. 5. Product/Feature Launch

33. Product/Feature Launch Challenge
What does marketing drive and what does product
management drive during launch?
• Who drives Go-To-Market planning?
• Who briefs the press or talks to the analysts?
• How to create sales messaging and collateral?

34. AppFolio Feature Launch Example
• Key Messaging Doc
– Value propositions & feature benefits
– Supported and unsupported ( ) use cases
• Cross Functional Core Teams
– Meet early & often
– Establish transparency and bi-directional
inputs

36. Product/Feature Launch Takeaways
• Produce development is an iterative process
• Roles and contributions shift over time
• Meet early and often
• Maintain transparency and communication

37. In Summary...

38. 3 Takeaways
1. Product managers and product marketing
managers need to wear different hats – that’s the
nature of their jobs
2. Understand that you’re working on the same
company goals (same user outcomes)
3. Be experimental, if something does not work,
change it (i.e. marketing writes content today and
analyzes user engagement tomorrow)

39. Live Q&A
(please continue to submit your questions)

40. Thank You.
Visit www.productplan.com to learn more.
@ronnieregev
@atheus

41. Pragmatic Marketing Framework