Product Marketing Manager: How to discover the correct Professional

Who is a product marketing manager? What do they do? Kristina Shtaudínger, the head of online marketing of Admitad Startups, explains how to hire the best candidate and if it’s feasible to survive without a PMM

A product marketing manager (PMM) works at the intersection of sales, marketing, product, and client service. They accumulate product-related information from various sources and coordinate activities of several departments. 

The product marketing manager doesn’t occupy a higher position in the business hierarchy than other marketing specialists. Here’s the list of typical PMM duties:

• Setting the goals for other marketing professionals
• Monitoring their work advancement and making sure their actions align with the product goals
• Determining target spectators with the product manager
• Bringing customer demographics to other throng members
• Sharing worth propositions verified by sales and product departments
• Letting others recognize about results of customer achievement studies

Finally, the product marketing manager helps other professionals outline their spheres of responsibility. 

Example of a product marketing manager’s schedule

Let’s imagine a scenario where a business wants to earn a sure amount of money. To reach this objective, the corporation has to make 100 sales, each worth a specific sum. The product marketing manager realizes that with the existing conversion rate, the business needs to get 300 leads per month. Depending on the goals that they identified, the PMM outlines tactics that can assist them obtain 300 leads:

• SMM
• Paid traffic
• Content marketing

The product marketing manager gets in touch with the SMM specialist and sets a obvious job for them. It may look like this:

“We require this propose to attract people from social networks. Please draft a schedule to explain:Which social networks we should useWhich communication we’ll distribute on each platformWhich content we’ll postWhich throng management methods we’ll applyAlso please kindly advise if we should interact with the spectators or just post the information for them to read/watch.Our objective is to get 300 leads per month in total. 100 of these leads should arrive from social media marketing efforts.”

Then, the product marketing manager approaches the traffic manager and gives them a similar job of getting 100 leads per month from paid traffic. Following the same template, the PMM specifies how many leads to get, how to spend the money, which content to make, which strategies to use, and which hypotheses to test.

The last 100 leads require to arrive from content marketing. The PMM contacts the content marketing manager and decides what articles, interviews, and emails the business needs to produce in order to attain its objective.

The product marketing manager stays in touch with these specialists and helps them fine-tune their workflows. Then, they get the results and contrast the efficiency of the three marketing methods used. Based on the outcomes, the product marketing manager will be planning further marketing activities for the product.

Can a recent business survive without a product marketing manager?

Of course,  a recent business can survive without a PMM but the standard of its existence will be substandard. We sometimes receive startups without product marketing managers. And after we explain to them how to integrate these specialists into their workflows, they commence to deliver better results. They test hypotheses faster and more efficiently, thus saving period and money.

A product marketing manager and a traffic manager are two professionals that a recent business needs from the onset. If a traffic manager is excellent enough, a corporation can outsource them. But a product marketing manager should be hired as an in-house specialist. Otherwise, it would be challenging for them to establish a powerful connection with the throng and the product. This professional acts as the founders’ correct-hand man — or as a part of their brain that is responsible for marketing.

Where can a corporation discover a top-notch PMM?

It’s not enough to graduate from a university with a diploma in marketing to land a job as a product marketing manager. The classic methods that are taught at universities are outdated and irrelevant to the modern trade. excellent PMMs are often self-taught. They dip their toes in the water, realize that they like this niche, and keep learning. Ideally, founders require to assist their throng members develop to become top-notch product marketing managers. The perfect candidates for this position are people who are passionate about working for this recent business but lack the essential qualification yet.

An enquiring mind is a vital prerequisite for this position. The previous encounter might or might not matter. Soft skills are more significant than challenging ones because it’s quicker and easier to acquire the latter.

Here are the two essential questions I inquire during an interview with a candidate on this position:

• Which product case are you most proud of?
• What was your biggest setback?

The truth that the person can assess their achievement reveals that they are capable of reflection. Whereas if they recognize how to admit their failures, it means they’re ready to bear responsibility for their actions. If the candidate feels shy to confess their failures, then I distribute a setback narrative from my encounter to diffuse the circumstance. 

They can also propose a real-life or made-up case for the candidate to solve. That’s vital for understanding their way of thinking. Typically, 80% of candidates fall short to pass the interview, so founders have to choose from the remaining 20%.

Final thoughts

A product marketing manager determines the general vector of the marketing efforts produced by different product-related departments. PMMs collect information from various sources, procedure it, and spread it among throng members. They make sure each professional understands what they should do and how their goals align with the work that other specialists carry out. The PMM makes sure the whole throng looks in one path, everyone shares the same imagination of the product, and transmits this imagination accordingly in their area of responsibility.

When hiring a product marketing manager, it makes sense to focus not on their education or previous encounter but on their enquiring mind. If the person has the correct soft skills, they can quickly acquire challenging ones.

The product marketing manager serves as the mouthpiece of the product and the founders’ correct-hand man. They should be hired in a recent business as an in-house specialist from the onset.