Comments on: Product Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die)

By: desk_stage

desk_stage — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:54:07 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/yd5xjxx
Product Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die) | Rocket Watcher Product Marketing for Sta

By: Tyler Willis

Tyler Willis — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:00:51 +0000

Why I'm in Marketing, not Communications: http://bit.ly/76tD0x /via @aprildunford ht @danmartell

By: Lynn Pina

Lynn Pina — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:19:30 +0000

Great article – Product Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die) : http://tinyurl.com/yd5xjxx

By: Darrin Johnson

Darrin Johnson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:03:25 +0000

Who to hire 1st – RT @danmartell Prod Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die) http://bit.ly/74OzHR #marketing #startup

By: Dan Martell

Dan Martell — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:35:14 +0000

Product Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die) http://bit.ly/74OzHR #marketing #startup

By: Payper

Payper — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:29:50 +0000

I absolutely agree. Though both sound alike and one, there really is a big difference between both jobs. Worldwide Product Marketing does much more to a business.

By: bob corrigan

bob corrigan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:04:47 +0000

I love marcom teams. They have the time and the expertise to write collateral, to wordsmith press releases, to enforce consistency in trademarks and messaging, to buy and place ads, to do surveys, to manage the PR team, to make sure stuff makes it to the website, to collaborate with partner marketing teams, to organize shows, to work with speakers, to manage the thousand and one projects that are created when a company decides it wants to sell things, not just make things.
Do you want product managers doing this work? Nope. You want them to consume market intelligence, digest it and then use their crafty skills to get the organization to build the products that people want to buy. At which point the marketing team takes over again to arm sales, to manage the launch, to do all of their magic.
When product managers (who are adept at writing product-centric stuff and managing product-centric processes) begin to imagine themselves as marketing managers (who are adept at writing market-centric stuff and managing market-centric processes), we have a problem.
This is not to say that product managers should not be market-aware, any more than marketing managers should not be product-aware.
But they are two very different jobs, with two very different mind-sets and sets of priorities. They need to work together – and do it well – in order for the manufacturing-to-customer-to-feedback continuum to work. The best companies do it very, very well on both sides of the equation – the build side and the sell side.
It is therefore unwise to trivialize marketing, but it happens because so many organizations tend to focus on their products first – especially organizations headed by “product people” who don’t want to be told what the market wants, because “they know what the market wants”.
BTW – I’ve written elsewhere that the top-left part of the pragmatic grid is something that product manager “makes happen” in a transparent, collaborative way with the executive team. This is where the company truly comes to understand itself and where it wants to go in the marketplace, what it hopes to achieve, and how it plans to get there. The senior product manager is an agent of change, not the source of the change – it’s the organization that needs to own its direction and its future.

By: April

April — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:14:41 +0000

Hi Wilson,
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you, particularly for smaller companies – sending this stuff outside makes a lot of sense. Like you say, it isn’t core to the business and there are more important skills that you need inside.
April

By: wilson

wilson — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:05:59 +0000

Outsource, outsource, outsource. The business of any company is its business, not “creative” marketing materials. As soon as that creative is in sourced, it immediately falls into inside out thinking.
In small and larger companies, the people who know about the product, customers, and business need to create an ecosystem of communications service providers that can bring their expertise to the core messaging, branding, promotional strategy, and promotional materials.
This group of service providers (in a B2B business, I start with a PR agency) brings a critical level of removed expertise to looking at your products or services. Additionally, it is a variable cost that can be managed based on revenue without the overhead commitment to internal creative.
Even in much larger companies, the internal staff needs to be focused on project management. They need to work with Product Management on the substantive issues of features, benefits, pricing and positioning in order to provide the related communications agencies with crisp direction.
So Marketing Communications needn’t die, it just needs to be outsourced.

By: Steve Tennant

Steve Tennant — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:59:50 +0000

Hi April -
I like your post — an interesting thought, why not product marketing first? I think marketing communications is frequently in place first because of what Trevor said – the founders serve the PM role initially.
I would add that marketing communications is added first because it is frequently misunderstood by founders as developing a website, brochures, “buzz” and “sales support” — without appreciating how this requires an understanding of the customers. The founders want these things to sell the first version of the product.
I agree with you that companies would frequently be better off hiring a PM who knows the market and customer needs, and who can also get the marketing communications infrastructure in place.
I don’t look for this to happen because the founders will continue to want “marketing” to come in and design the website and sales tools prior to replacing themselves in the PM role.
Steve Tennant
See my blog at http://blog.tennantconsulting.com