On Product Marketing

Personal opinion warning!!! This post is mostly about my views on what is a job of a product marketer in a startup.

Soon I’m to begin a new chapter in my professional life as apart of the drytools team. It’s a bit sad to leave such a great team behind and it’s going to be hard not seeing all of those familiar faces. Sad time over. Woot, drytools here I come!

As exciting as it may be to work with a new team and a new kind of product, I feel a need to reflect on the job of a product marketer in a startup ecosystem. This blog post is going to be sort of a time capsule, intended for my future self. Can’t wait to read it in a few years.

A couple of years have passed since I had my first taste of product marketing. At this point, I (think) have a vague idea of the role a product marketing guy or gal has in a startup.

If you’ve worked in any kind of a tech startup you know that it’s a “get the job done” environment where your title means little and what you do means the most. With that in mind, you have a set of well-defined jobs and a set of not so well defined ones. In most cases product marketing hits that gray area, where one is to handle all that is in the “non-technical” sphere of a startup’s business, in its early stages. This can cause a lot of confusion and can result in lost opportunities down the road.

Foremost, product marketing should focus on getting to know and understand the market and market needs. Knowing the market you get to know your buyers and users/customers. Product marketing should be responsible for developing a clear market position, defining a communication style with clear and consist messaging and differentiate the product from the competition. The end goal being to enable sales, direct or indirect.

Often it’s a case that in startups only the engineers develop the product. That’s wrong. Product marketing has the same responsibility of developing a quality product as engineering does, hence the product in the title. In my mind, engineers build products “vital organs”, its insides. Desing builds the outer skin. Product marketing gives the product a soul, a voice and a character. These three “forces”, engineering, design, and marketing, working together make a product stand out at the market.

All said, product marketing is involved in product strategy and product development, product launch, go-to-market strategy and tactics. Who wouldn’t want to do that? :)

‘till next time. Take care and have a great day!