What Everyone Should Know About PMM
A non-fluff deep-dive on what a Product Marketing Manager really does and how they're unique from other roles. Figure out whether your team needs one now and what to look for in the right candidate.
This is a guest post by Aatir Abdul Rauf.
Aatir is the VP of Marketing at vFairs with 15 years of experience in building and growing SaaS products across various industries. He currently leads growth at vFairs where he led a team of marketers to grow it 15x to an $18+ million ARR business in the past 5 years. In his career, he had the opportunity to run Product Marketing for multiple SaaS products at different stages of maturity: AfterHire (early-stage employee onboarding platform), Talentera (scaleup, recruitment SaaS), vFairs (mid-market event tech solution).
Aatir also happens to be prolific creator on LinkedIn and Substack where he talks about the intersection of product management and product marketing.
You can find more of Aatir on his substack Behind Product Lines.
I’ve chatted with several tech founders with a common itch.
They were looking for someone who could help them identify their sweet-spot customer segment, articulate why they were the best product for their needs, and run their go-to-market efforts.
Some sound bytes from those conversations:
“My marketing team can do ads but they aren’t technical enough to understand product.”
“Do I ask my Product Manager to write the copy for the home page? Or a content writer?”
“Who is responsible for educating customers about all the great features we roll out?”
I would get all variations of these questions.
These are all classic symptoms of a product team that is sorely missing a Product Marketing Manager to bridge the gap internally and externally.
But what does a Product Marketing Manager bring to the table, really?
In this article, I hope to help technical founders with this mystery and answer:
What is Product Marketing?
How is it different from other roles in the organization?
What the heck do Product Marketing Managers do? The tangible outcomes.
What are signs that you need to hire one?
What should you ask during interviews to gauge their caliber?
What is Product Marketing in simple terms?
Here’s what your trusty LLM tool will tell you:
Product marketing is a strategic function at the intersection of product, marketing, and sales. It focuses on bringing a product to market, ensuring its success, and driving its demand and adoption among target customers.
Or the more snazzy version on top blogs:
It’s the discipline that is responsible for getting the right product to the right hands at the right time.
Maybe you understood that but I’m going to pretend you didn’t.
So, I’m going to use some analogy magic here.
Imagine you’re running a sushi restaurant. Yes, sushi.
To run a successful sushi operation, you can imagine you’d need:
a marketing and branding team to promote the restaurant,
a brilliant head chef (like your product manager and engineering manager combined), and
a restaurant manager (your CEO) keeping everything running smoothly.
But here's the thing:
The marketing team, talented as they are, aren't sushi experts.
They wouldn't know the subtle differences between hon-maguro and chutoro, why aging fish matters, or how the rice-to-fish ratio can make or break a nigiri.
Question 1:
Who helps the marketing team understand why they should be highlighting the chef's traditional wasabi root instead of the fancy new plates?
Who tells the waiters what to say?
They might be great with people, but they might not even like raw fish. Some might have never tasted uni before starting the job.
Question 2:
So, who gives the waiters that compelling script about the various menu items and what specials to highlight?
And hang on - who writes the restaurant menu?
The head chef is a maestro with fish, not really with words.
Question 3:
Who crafts the perfect menu description that guides guests on what they should pick? Who influences the pricing that goes on the menu?
In summary, you need someone who can:
Write that mouth-watering menu that sells before the food arrives.
Craft waiter scripts that turn servers into confident cuisine guides.
Develop compelling narratives for promotional materials.
In the world of SaaS, these are just some scenarios where a product marketer would shine.
Product marketing is about:
Knowing enough about the product to understand its true value.
Uniquely positioning the product that it sets it apart from alternatives.
Articulating the product’s value such that audiences deeply resonate.
Empowering customer-facing teams to tell the right story.
and more.
Engineers code. Designers design. What the hell do Product Marketers do?
Tech founders I talk to often share their fears about hiring a Product Marketing Manager.
Some of their irrational phobias:
📛 "It's a fluff role that makes pretty slide decks."
📛 "They sound like expensive armchair strategists."
📛 "They ideate for other teams but don't really execute."
I get it. No one wants to pay a six-figure salary to doodle abstract circles in the air and rattle off marketing jargon.
So, I had to spell out specific activities PMMs worked on, clarifying that the exact tactics would vary depending on the product's stage.
For example, when vFairs (event tech platform) was an early-stage startup, the PMM hat required me to:
focus on one ICP: multi-nationals looking to run job fairs.
learn about the customer by shadowing sales calls.
center the positioning around the online job fair use case.
conceive a basic landing page & iterate on messaging.
train sales & customer success about product specifics.
draft email campaigns for existing customers.
write blog posts and LinkedIn posts.
record a 10-minute demo video to support sales & training.
collect video testimonials to put on the site.
But when we scaled into 8-figure ARR territory, our PMM's tactics evolved to:
constantly stay in sync with PMs and their build cycle.
talk to customers + unpack sales call recordings.
inspect new leads in the CRM to detect persona trends.
create custom AI agents to analyze G2/Capterra reviews.
draft positioning/messaging docs for EACH product.
draft copy for landing pages of a large marketing site.
drive launches using paid media, email, social, PR etc.
roll out a sales enablement library (decks, videos, etc.)
host sales trainings and equip them with competitive intel.
And yes, a PMM remains deeply involved in strategy.
But it's a far cry from "marketing fluff."
Done right - that strategic groundwork can save the team from harmful rabbit holes.
For example:
No amount of marketing fixes a wrong ICP.
Wrong go-to-market channels burn budget.
Focusing on sub-optimal use cases creates "bad" pipeline.
Uninformed or misaligned sales teams kill win rates.
The same founders I was speaking to also admitted that no one in their organization was focused on these problem sets.
That’s when their phobia turned into → demand.
In practice, of course, a Product Marketer in SaaS might do a lot more.
Another way to think about this is that Product Marketers are universal translators. They:
Translate market needs for the Product Team
"Here's what the market needs"
"This is how customers use our product"
"These are the pain points we're not addressing"
Translate the product for Customers
"Here's how our features solve your problems"
"This is why our approach is better"
"Here's the value you'll get"
Translate the product value for Sales/Marketing teams
"Here's how to explain our differentiators"
"This is how to demo the key features"
"Here's how to handle common objections"
But let’s get real.
Here’s what Product Marketers at famous SaaS products might do for them:
Market Research & Intelligence:
Competitive Analysis Reports
Ex: A PMM would conduct a deep-dive analysis to conclude that Riverside - a podcasting platform - should lean heavily on their studio quality recording advantage across their marketing messages as competitors lack that.
Voice of Customer (VoC) Program
Ex: A PMM at vFairs would run ongoing user interviews and analyze G2 reviews to understand exactly why customers are switching to their platforms (could be price, service, design etc.). They then funnel this back to sales and customer success to strengthen their pitches.
User Research & Segmentation
Ex: A PMM would analyze user data to decide Asana should launch a solution specifically for marketing teams and build out marketing-specific templates.
Core Strategic Work:
Write Positioning Docs
Ex: A PMM would decide to position Airtable as a "low-code platform for building business apps" after seeing enterprise users building complex workflows.
A Product Marketer would typically lead efforts to improve what your home page should say. Anthony Pierri (a homepage messaging expert) highlighted a few examples of how updating your home page positioning can make a world of difference:
Create Sales Battlecards
Ex: A PMM would craft battlecards showing HubSpot reps exactly how to position against Mailchimp, emphasizing enterprise features that Mailchimp lacks.
Here’s an example from SmartBug:
Design Product Launch
Ex: A PMM would orchestrate the entire launch of Canva’s Magic Tools. From positioning it as a “make your first draft, fast", to deciding on launch phases (Magic Tools was rolled out over 9 months of small releases), to crafting the campaign creatives (landing pages, social posts, emails etc.), a PMM would run the show to create awareness and adoption.
Conduct Win/Loss Analysis
Ex: A PMM would interview lost prospects and analyze loss patterns and discover product or service gaps the product has. This helps with detecting market demand shifts, tackling acquisition friction and even potentially blocking churn.
Messaging & Communication:
Message Architecture
Ex: A PMM at Linear would write the messaging docs that describe it as "The issue tracking tool you'll enjoy using" to battle Jira's frustrated users.
Value Proposition Frameworks
Ex: A PMM at DataDog would write docs that articulate the value proposition (feature, capabilities, benefits, differentiation, and specific use cases) for DevOps teams vs Security teams based on their distinct needs.
Content & Enablement:
Build Customer Case Studies
Ex: A PMM would strive to develop customer stories on how customers of DocuSign save hours in manual coordination and have better peace of mind with digitally signed docs.
Develop Pricing Strategies
Ex: A PMM may not own this entirely as other stakeholders like the CEO, Founder, and VP of Revenue may have input but a PMM would recommend packaging, tiers, pricing models (usage-based vs. license), and how to price competitively.
Script Demo Narratives
Ex: A PMM at ClickUp would partner with sales to craft custom demo flows to showcase how it can be used by HR teams to onboard new employees.
Create Persona-based Content
Ex: A PMM at Zendesk would partner with sales & marketing teams to develop distinct messaging tracks for Customer Support Leaders vs C-level executives.
How is a Product Marketer different from a Product Manager?
There is certainly some overlap between the roles. In my early career as a PM and Senior PM, I would have to wear the PMM hat when the team was lean. Knowledge of Product Marketing comes in handy for PMs in general as they’re able to impart more influence that way.
Things both roles share:
Customer discovery: Both roles need deep customer understanding, but use it differently. PMs use it to guide product decisions, PMMs to shape messaging.
Launch planning: This is a big one. While PMs handle the "what" and "when," PMMs orchestrate the launch with marketing, sales, and customer success providing them with messaging and assets to capture and engage the right prospects and customers.
Competitive analysis: PMs track competitors to inform feature decisions, while PMMs to craft positioning and narratives that help them differentiate.
Persona development: This involves defining who we’re building for. While both focus on factors like persona pain points, goals, and outcomes, Product Marketers deeply look into the buying committee, market segments, willingness to pay, and resonating narratives.
But they also have some distinct focus areas:
Product Management:
Owns the product vision and roadmap
Drives engineering and design execution
Manages backlog and feature prioritization
Product Marketing:
Owns go-to-market strategy
Crafts positioning and messaging
Drives market sizing and segmentation
Enables sales and marketing teams
I like to think that they both need each other:
PMs need PMMs to ensure product decisions are informed by market reality and competitive positioning.
PMMs need PMs to deeply understand product capabilities and roadmap to craft authentic, compelling narratives.
Together, they create a feedback loop: market insights → product decisions → market positioning → customer feedback → refined product decisions
OK, I’m confused. Isn’t a Product Marketer just a digital marketer?
This is a common misconception. I wish I had a penny every time I’ve asked about hiring a PMM and people thinking I’m getting someone to schedule Google Ads or handle social media.
Traditional digital marketing and product marketing are fundamentally different. Think back to the sushi restaurant example.
The marketer selects the target demographic, builds the creatives, and runs the ads. The product marketer provides the research and messaging fuel for each of those activities.
This infographic might help:
In a nutshell, traditional marketers:
Drive top-of-funnel through broad awareness campaigns and content marketing initiatives designed to reach the widest relevant audience.
Create general brand awareness through mediums like social media, blogs, PR, and advertising to establish market presence. They own and run these channels.
Optimize marketing costs while generating leads and nurturing them through email campaigns and content distribution.
Measure their success through metrics like cost per acquisition, MQLs, and return on ad spend.
Product Marketers, instead:
Own the entire customer journey from awareness through retention, ensuring product adoption and customer success at each stage.
Plan a go-to-market strategy, selecting the targe segment, positioning, and marketing channels. They take the lead during launch of new products and features.
Develop positioning and messaging that differentiates the product in competitive markets.
Create sales enablement materials, launch plans, and product narratives that directly influence buying decisions and product adoption.
I hope that clarifies why Product Marketers are distinct roles - not a subset of marketing or product management.
What outcomes do Product Marketers influence?
There are some metrics that Product Marketers directly own.
Examples of outcomes they can own:
Lead generation and demo requests when launching a new product.
Generated pipeline for a specific segment.
Conversion rates of landing pages for specific features
Adoption metrics of newly launched features
Improving win-loss ratio of competitive deals
But there are several metrics they can influence and move.
Sales outcomes:
They can help shorten sales cycles and higher sales velocity by enabling sales with the right assets.
They can also help with expansion revenue through effective cross-sell/upsell enablement to push existing customers to upgrade.
Marketing outcomes:
Improve the quality of MQLs (boosting conversion to opportunity) with better messaging
Reduce cost per qualified lead through better targeting and positioning
Better content performance measured by engagement and conversion metrics
Product & Customer outcomes:
Higher customer lifetime value through better product understanding and usage
Reduced churn through better customer education and expectation setting
What happens when you don’t have product marketing?
Here’s a little graphic that aptly describes the symptoms of teams with or without product marketing:
Who do Product Marketers influence and work with the most?
First, do they sit with product, marketing or sales?
Ideally, Product Marketing should be a separate department of its own that directly reports to whoever owns go-to-market.
But in many organizations, that’s not possible since it’s still a role that’s picking up steam.
In such cases, I prefer keeping the “reporting line” of product marketers adjacent to product teams to remain in sync with how the product is evolving because at the very core, product marketers need to know what they’re messaging and positioning for.
However, PMMs work very closely with customer-facing teams, specifically marketing, sales, and customer success. After all, they are prime vessels for carrying out a go-to-market strategy and bringing product to the market.
What is the Product Marketer’s contribution in go-to-market strategy?
In many organizations, the Product Marketer is the GTM architect, much like how Product Managers decide what to build and own the roadmap.
This means:
Product Marketers own the product launch.
They provide market insights the help team position.
They collect evidence on the beachhead segments to pursue.
They arm sales and marketing with the fuel for their machinery.
They help orchestrate the initial launch and identify the best channels.
They help with campaign planning and align internal parties for a strong launch.
They help content marketers pick the right topics.
They work with brand marketers to position the product appropriately.
They help performance marketers sharpen their ad and web copy.
When should you hire a Product Marketer?
Do you need a Product Marketer from day 1?
As much as I’d love to say yes, I advise to exercise caution here.
Hiring a PMM before you achieve PMF can be helpful in iterating on messaging and finding a lucrative segment to focus on. However, at that stage, the founder or CEO is better suited to take up that mantle, as they need to own that part of the strategy early on.
A Product Marketer typically makes sense when you’ve seen strong signs of Product-Market fit, you have a clear and aggressive roadmap moving forward, and you’re observing a steady stream of “retained” customers.
Here are other signs that you need a PMM badly:
Your sales and marketing team can’t keep up with product’s delivery.
Your sales team struggles to explain the product’s value clearly to prospects.
Product adoption is lagging, despite positive feedback on features.
You’re getting leads but from the wrong segment.
Competitors are winning deals because their positioning resonates better with customers.
Customers are saying they had no clue you launched a specific feature.
Product launches are chaotic or an afterthought.
Feedback from customers and sales isn’t making it back to the product team effectively.
You’re unsure of who your ideal customer is or how to reach them effectively.
Customer churn is high, and there’s little insight into why they leave.
Sales materials feel outdated and lack focus on real customer pain points.
What should you look for in a Product Marketer?
As explained above, the exact skills and traits will depend on what your product stage demands.
But, in general, when I’m looking for a strong Product Marketing Manager for a SaaS product, I’m looking at the following boxes:
Marketing experience - they should understand user research, awareness and acquisition KPIs, segmentation, value proposition development, and basic lead generation principles.
Ability to zoom in and out - PMMs need to be able to strategize and look at the bigger picture of where to position a product and what a long-term GTM strategy would pan out to be. They also have to zero in details of product launches and enablement specifics.
Ability to write well - I can’t stress this enough. I know some people who object and say PMMs are not copywriters but I disagree. They need to be content creators at heart who have an innate ability to influence with writing. Sure, specialist marketers can make copy more spicy, but I haven’t yet seen a PMM who can succinctly describe products well.
Experience with product launches - you need to see people who follow a checklist vs. people who understand the audience and devise a go-to-market plan for it based on the budget.
Exposure to marketing channels - a PMM should have some sense of paid media, social media. content marketing, email marketing, PR, and content partnerships.
AI literacy - in this day and age, PMM should know a bit about how LLMs and SearchGPTs work (as organic traffic will soon shift towards these mediums) and shouldn’t be afraid to leverage AI tools to make progress themselves.
Ability to set goals - a lot of what a Product Marketer does requires setting the right goal and this can be very dynamic based on the initiative. For example, if you’re launching a new secondary product, PMMs might be measured on leads in the CRM. However, if you’re fortifying your product with new features, a PMM should be able to select the right adoption metric.
Educational mindset - the best way I can describe their relationship to sales and customer success is the role of an educator. Yes, PMMs produce sales decks and competitive intelligence docs, but the goal isn’t to dish out long PDFs. It’s to help sales and customer success to internalize the product’s value proposition and get truly excited about it. They need to teach with enthusiasm.
Influence and negotiation - PMM is a hard job. When people in the company don’t understand their strategic facet, they relegate product marketing into an ATM service for presentations. Sales is guilty of this a lot. PMMs, thus, need to know how to protect their time and also influence others to let them in on conversations they belong.
Not afraid to jump into conversations - PMMs need to be a bit nosy. I know that sounds off, but I assure you, no one will organically invite the PMM to a product review call, a win-loss sales huddle, or strategy calls. PMMs need to be on these. And if they aren’t and they get a hint of what’s happening, they shouldn’t be afraid to ask for an invite.
Bonus: industry or domain experience is a plus because a big part of a PMM is to translate complex product requirements into what a target audience would understand.
I know that sounds like a lot. But PMMs are strongly strategic roles. Companies like Google may hire PMMs straight from college, but I’m personally not from that camp.
I prefer to hire Product Marketing Managers who have evolved from Product Management, content or marketing roles.
Typically, a solid resume would show candidates with an early history in the following disciplines before working as a Product Marketer:
content writing / copywriting
content marketing / strategy
digital marketing / social media specialist
Product Management
marketing agency work
Of course, this isn’t set in stone. There are several paths that someone could arrive at their PMM calling. The goal is to understand whether they have been in roles where they were required to impart influence through writing, creatives, design, or documentation.
Potential Interview Questions to ask
What do you ask a product marketing manager in an interview? How do you discover a gem of a talent?
Here are a bunch of questions I ask based on the profile and position. Pick and choose the ones that suit your situation:
Strategic Thinking & Market Understanding
"Pick any B2B product you've worked with. What was its ideal customer profile, and how did you validate this?"
"Tell me about a time when you identified a market opportunity that your product team hadn't considered. What data led you there?"
"We think our early adopters will be [x audience]. How would you validate or challenge this assumption?"
"Look at our market: what trends do you see affecting our category in the next 18 months?"
Positioning & Messaging
What's the most successful positioning you've developed? Walk me through how you arrived at it.
Pick a competitor's product you're familiar with. How would you position against them?
How do you ensure messaging consistency across different channels and teams?
Look at these three competitor websites. What patterns do you notice in their positioning?
Launch & Go-to-Market Experience
Walk me through your most complex product launch. What made it successful or challenging?
We're launching [feature] next quarter. Draft a high-level GTM plan, including success metrics.
Tell me about a launch that didn't go as planned. What did you learn?
How do you decide which features deserve a big launch versus a soft launch?
Sales Enablement & Customer Journey
How have you enabled sales teams in the past? Show me an example of effective sales collateral you created.
Walk me through how you'd create and maintain competitive battlecards.
What's your process for gathering and implementing sales feedback?
How do you measure the effectiveness of sales enablement materials?
Research & Analysis
How do you stay informed about our market and competitors?
Show me how you'd analyze this competitor's website and messaging. What's working/not working?
Walk me through how you conduct win/loss analysis.
What's your framework for evaluating product-market fit?
Content & Communication
Show me a piece of content you're proud of. Why was it effective?
How do you adapt your writing style for different audiences and formats?
Walk me through how you'd rewrite our current homepage.
How do you maintain brand voice across different types of content?
Execution & Results
What metrics do you typically track? Walk me through a successful campaign with numbers.
Tell me about a time when you had to execute a project with limited resources.
How do you prioritize between competing initiatives?
Show me how you'd build our first-90-days marketing plan.
Startup-Specific Scenarios
We have no formal customer feedback process. How would you build one from scratch?
Our sales team is saying X about the product, but customers are saying Y. How would you handle this?
We're considering entering a new market segment. What would be your research approach?
How would you scale our messaging as we grow from 10 to 100 customers?
My favorite follow-ups to any of the situational questions:
What would you do differently if you had to do it all over again?
What assumptions did you challenge?
What were the main obstacles and how did you overcome them?
Hope this guide helped you gain some clarity on the Product Marketing role and dispelled some myths in your mind.
The bottom line here is the PMM is an internal and external bridge.
Internally, they are bridging the gaps between the technical intricacies of the product and how sales, marketing, and customer success understand and internalize that.
Externally, they are translating the product into digestible narratives and ensuring it gets in front of the audiences that will truly care about the product.
Their ultimate goal is to make prospects and customers feel “Yes, this product was designed for me.”
If you have someone who can nail that consistently, you’ve got yourself a keeper.
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 | A guest post by
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Thanks for the collaboration, Maja. Hope this helps folks gain clarity on PMM.
Great edition!
(from a fellow PMM ahah)