Today is buy your PMM a beer day!
Okay, not officially — but it should be. In fact, given everything I’ve seen product marketers do, every day should be Buy Your PMM a Beer Day.
Before you belly up to the bar, though, you might need to know how to identify who your buying a beer for. Some product marketers wear the PMM label loud and proud, but many are hidden behind titles like Solutions Marketer, Vertical Marketing Manager, Technical Evangelist, or Product Manager. Like Clark Kent, their superhero identity is often disguised. Read on to learn about the clues to help you unmask them.
Product marketing is one of the most critical — and most misunderstood — roles in B2B marketing. It’s also the one function that can make the difference between an effective sales pipeline and one that’s clogged with dead zones, poor close rates, and general confusion.
Let’s unpack it.
First: What does marketing do?
I’m going to keep beating this drum until everyone gets it right: Marketing creates selling conversations. Sales finishes them.
More precisely, good marketing helps people with a problem discover a solution that perfectly fits their needs.
Starting this type of sales conversations takes a lot of effort. You need to know what to say, how to say it, how to make it look great, how to get it in front of the right people, and how to measure and improve it all. This takes the effort of the entire (capital-M) Marketing team.
Most people think of Marketing as the visible stuff — logos, websites, digital ads, content. What they don’t see is the strategy and science behind the curtain: Why this audience? Why this message? That’s where Product Marketing comes in.
What Does Product Marketing Do?
There are entire books on this, but since we’re just trying to figure out who to buy beers for, here’s the short version.
Product Marketing sits between the market and the engineering team. It’s their job to make sure the company builds things the market needs and to explain to the rest of the world (and the internal team) why those people should buy it. PMMs are the voice of the customer and the voice of the product.
Here’s what that actually looks like:
1. Defining the target market.
PMMs start by segmenting the market into meaningful buyer groups and translating those insights into actionable guidance.
Example: “Hey digital team, you can skip cat-bounce.com. Our buyers are dog lovers.”
2. Crafting the message.
How is our product better? What does the buyer actually care about? What’s the right price? How do we explain this feature so people see its value? Product Marketing builds the story that makes sense to engineers, marketers, sales reps — and most importantly, buyers.
3. Launching the product.
PMMs lead the go-to-market strategy. Do we announce with a press release? Launch at a trade show? Let sales run with it? They develop and execute the launch plan, coordinating across teams to make sure it lands like a tidal wave — not a ripple.
4. Equipping sales.
While Marketing creates demand and Sales closes deals, Product Marketing supports the entire conversation. They prepare the sales team and the channel, to handle objections, counter competitor claims, and help buyers build the internal business case for purchase. PMMs support the entire sales funnel.
5. Supporting demand gen.
Product Marketing helps the demand generation team hit the right targets, guides the content strategy, and often creates or reviews all of the assets. They also help measure and report on performance to refine future programs.
And That’s Not All…
All of this rolls up under what PMMs call Product Lifecycle Management. But let’s be real: that bucket also includes customer satisfaction programs, win/loss analysis, analyst and press briefings, product roadmap inputs, trade show support, plus random requests like writing HR recruiting content, and a lot more.
PMMs do a lot. Think about your organization. Who is responsible for accomplishing these tasks. Is it one person, or a dozen? You might have more than one beer to buy!
So this Friday — and maybe every Friday — consider buying your PMM a beer (or the beverage of their choice). Chances are, they’ve more than earned it.
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