https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKkLGnAtehY

The job of Product Manager is increasingly trendy in tech companies. At the same time, Product Marketing is a fairly recent activity in startups, something that’s seen a lot more traction over the last 4–5 years, as innovation becomes more and more disruptive and there’s a need to make those innovations easier to grasp & master by end users.

And yet, there are no schools to be trained in these professions, nor are there any typical profiles. There’s still a general blur.

We took a close look at this issue and tried to answer the following questions for tech companies: What is a Product Manager? What is a Product Marketer? How are they different? When should you hire them?

You’ll find below the summary of our research & reflexions on the matter, as well as super cool 3min video in which we gathered great insights of PMs & PMMs of some of the best startups of the moment: Charlotte @Heuritech, Johan @Malt, Pierre @TVTY and Timoté @Elium.

We sincerely hope that this will help you clarify the distinction between these 2 jobs and write your job desc.

#1 Product Manager, boss of the product

The Product Manager is very often perceived as the boss of the product. A Product Manager is a builder, constantly iterating, solving problems and empowering its collaborators to build the better experience for its users. They’re in charge of new product development from vision to roadmapping, defining features and design.

Let’s have a close look at their main missions:

• Shape a vision: put on paper the vision of the company’s CEO and, if there is one, in collaboration with the Product Marketing Manager. He formalizes the product vision that delivers value and differentiation and turns it into something understandable and actionable for all the rest of the team.
• Gather and analyze data: gather and analyze data and business intelligence from both internal sources like sales and/or marketing teams and external sources like customers, prospects, analysts, market studies, competitive analysis. The analysis of these data gives inputs that will create the rational to make decisions at strategy and roadmap level to enhance user satisfaction. In parallel, the PM defines and analyzes metrics that inform the success of products.
• Build a roadmap: define, design and deliver the roadmap which is a strategic (high level) document that articulates the main usage scenarios to address for each persona. The Product Manager will then cut these big blocks in smaller pieces to be prioritized.
• Write specifications: lead the ideation and transcribe roadmap elements into “stories” activable by the product, tech and design teams.
• Coordinate the development: share the product vision, roadmap and key issues with the development team so that they understand what they need to develop. The Product Manager will then help them and manage eventually the acceptance phase at the end of the technical development.
• Communicate the product enhancements within the company: interact very regularly with all the relevant stakeholders incl. developers, designers, sales and marketing teams to communicate the product enhancements and get feedbacks to ensure the product success.

#2 Product Marketer, boss of the go-to-market

Now let’s try to dig into why Product Marketers are so critical in tech companies.

The job of Product Marketing is still very fuzzy. In fact, it’s one of the few job functions that covers product, marketing and sales at the same time. It is more or less the link between the technical and the business worlds, with Tech and Product on one hand, and Sales and Marketing on the other hand.

Its end goal is to bring a product to market that generates revenue. Concretely, this means working hand in hand with the product to be a 2-way conduit for information between business and tech.