Isn’t It All Just ‘Marketing’?
The phrase, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” has often been used in a philosophical context. But as you’ll see, it will also be an apt analogy for the relationship between Product Management and Marketing.
If you’re like me, you cringe whenever you hear an Engineer say, “Marketing”, referring to Product Management. Why do I cringe? It’s not that “Marketing” is a bad word; it is just the wrong word for Product Management. Often, those outside Product Management lump it in with ‘the customer stuff’; that is, market-facing activities a company engages in to sell products. Determining which product to make, collecting insights from the field, creating strategy and content…that’s all “marketing stuff” to those who aren’t as familiar with the Product Management function.
And though you may have a thicker skin for semantics than I do, creating a clear delineation between the Product Management and Product Marketing functions (or just Marketing, depending on your org) is important to clarify your role and value to the organization, as well as that of the Marketing team’s. Both functions are critically important, but they are also critically different and interact with both internal and external customers in different ways.
Here are some tips on how to explain the difference to other functions within your organization.
What does Product Management do?
Put simply, Product Management handles the ‘why’ and ‘what’ part of the product equation. Why we need this (i.e. what problems does it solve and for whom?) and then working with the development team to build a product (the what) that fulfills the unmet need. Inherently, an element of this is understanding the user personas, their needs and desires and how those could be better satisfied with something new.
However, it doesn’t inherently include how to reach these users and what to say to them to convince them that this new product is better for them. This is Marketing expertise.
What does Marketing do?
The Marketing team knows where to find the audience (i.e. users) and how to engage them – the media, format, and story – so they hear the right message about the product. There is overlap with Product Management in determining and understanding the user, but the action the two functions take is completely different: from this common understanding, Product Management builds the product to fulfill the unmet need, and Marketing tells the story about how this happens.
Sometimes, organizations divide the Marketing function up into Product Marketing and other areas of Marketing, such as “Brand Marketing”, “Outbound Marketing”, and others. For our purposes, this doesn’t matter. The fundamental difference between Marketing and Product are consistent, visualied below;
The Grey Area
Unfortunately, these definitions can still be squishy. There is a grey area that you will need to work out (or find out what has previously been worked out) in your organization. This generally includes ownership of topics such as:
- Persona development
- Market pricing
- Positioning and differentiation relative to competitors
- Customer and unmet need discovery (i.e. user research)
In my personal experience, user research and pricing tend to be Product Management-owned while persona and positioning development are shared – but that is just in organizations of which I’ve been a part. You will need to work with your Marketing team to ensure the roles and responsibilities are clear. A RACI or RASCI-type exercise can help to do this (the level of formality required is up to you).
In summary – isn’t it all just “Marketing”? And what does any of this have to do with trees in the forest?
In short, no! Product Management and Marketing are very different functions, though they may often be lumped together by other functions for convenience. The truth is that a product or business cannot be successful without both. Returning to the tree and forest analogy; Product Management ensures the tree falls, and Marketing ensures people are around to hear it!
Adam Shulman is a Product Manager with extensive experience in software/hardware systems and a passion for music and audio technology. He currently leads the Installed Systems business at Bose Professional and has been a member of the BPMA since 2016.
