Aligning Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers for Success – Interview With Aatir Abdul Rauf
Overlapping responsibilities and conflicting priorities are just a couple of the many friction points between product managers and product marketing managers – leading to inefficient workflows and potential product failures.
To avoid such adverse consequences and to ensure harmony between both these crucial roles, we talked to Aatir Abdul Rauf, VP of Marketing at vFairs.
Keep reading to discover his invaluable insights about aligning PMs and PMMs for product success.
Overview of interview with Aatir Abdul Rauf
- Aatir Abdul Rauf, VP of Marketing at vFairs, shares valuable insights on aligning product managers and product marketing managers. Here are the main takeaways:
- Product managers focus on building the right product, while product marketing managers focus on getting the product into the right hands.
- PMs prioritize product development and functionality, while PMMs focus on market adoption and product desirability.
- Friction arises from differences in target personas, messaging misalignment, timeline conflicts, lack of clear ownership, and communication gaps.
- PMs and PMMs should work in lockstep, engage in joint planning sessions, collaborate on internal evangelism, have aligned KPIs, and mutually agree on responsibilities.
- Leadership support, shared ownership of outcomes, cross-functional training, and celebrating collaboration can encourage PM-PMM alignment.
- Project management software, visual collaboration tools, roadmap software, shared Slack channels, and customer feedback and analytics tools can facilitate collaboration between PMs and PMMs.
- If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform for both product managers and product marketing managers, Userpilot is the solution you need. Book a demo to learn about its engagement, feedback, analytics, and self-service features.
Aligning PMs and PMMs: Insights from Aatir Abdul Rauf
Let’s go over the questions we asked Aatir one by one.
What are the typical roles and responsibilities of product managers and product marketing managers?
Every company has its unique flavor of product management and marketing – they add nuances that work for their business. While the roles/boundaries can be fluid from one organization to another, there are common areas in which most PM/PMM roles will operate.
Product managers focus on building the right product. They define the product vision, strategy, and roadmap. They pair this with swift execution, where they collaborate with engineers and designers to devise solutions that solve user problems in a manner that works for the business. This execution involves defining requirements, managing priorities, and shipping.
Product marketing managers focus on getting the product in the right hands. They also conduct in-depth discovery of their user base, research competitors, and build personas/ICPs (ideal customer profiles).
They articulate the value of the product and make it compelling to prospects through messaging and positioning exercises. They develop go-to-market strategies, plan product launches, and equip revenue teams with narratives, insights, and collateral to help them close deals.
What are some key differences in priorities between PMs and PMMs?
PMs are typically more internal-focused and deal with stakeholders like leadership, engineering, and design. Their priority is to optimize the existing product for utilization and keep shipping maximum value on time.
PMMs are more external-facing and work with customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer success (alongside leadership). They focus more on product perception, market adoption, and communicating value propositions with prospects and customers.
Other differences include:
- PMs prioritize the top problems to solve and build for, while PMMs prioritize the right market segments and channels to attack.
- PMs have to take care of product usability and functionality while PMMs take care of product desirability.
- PMs have to take care of the product roadmap while PMMs take care of the go-to-market strategy.
- PMs have to take care of development timelines and work with engineering to set expectations while PMMs take care of launch timelines, planning campaigns, and getting the customer-facing teams (like sales and customer success) ready.
- PMs prioritize product performance metrics (user adoption, retention). PMMs also care about adoption but may additionally monitor marketing performance metrics like leads, sales pipeline, sales velocity, and win rates.
Editor’s note: Speaking of performance metrics, product managers and product marketers can visualize important KPIs on Userpilot’s analytics dashboards. They can populate existing dashboards or create custom ones to suit their needs. Book a demo to learn more.
What are the most common sources of friction between PMs and PMMs?
In environments where product managers and product marketers work closely together, disagreements and debates on certain aspects of the product can happen. They primarily stem from how each uniquely perceives what the market wants from their vantage point.
Some common sources of friction are:
1. Differences in target personas
There can be debates about which target persona or market the team should pursue and prioritize in the development roadmap.
For example, PMMs could lobby for an emerging market segment that they view as a lucrative blue-ocean opportunity, whereas PMs might want to stick to the original vision and stay on course.
2. Messaging misalignment
PMs and PMMs may not agree on the true value proposition of a product or feature. They may contest the first-order benefits that matter to the customer and, more specifically, the way the value is articulated.
3. Timeline conflicts
A major friction point is launching on time. PMMs want predictable launch timelines from PMs who, in turn, may be seeing challenges in the development pipeline to commit to one.
Also, PMs sometimes delay the launch of a product or completely de-prioritize a feature due to various factors, which puts the PMM’s product launch plan in disarray.
4. Lack of clear ownership
There can be ambiguity over who leads overlapping initiatives like customer research and competitive analysis. Sometimes, both parties undertake such initiatives and might report back very different findings which can cause conflicts.
5. Communication gaps
PMs and PMMs can get occupied in their silos leading to a communication breakdown. PMs may fail to communicate what’s been shipped or provide sufficient context as to why something is being developed.
They may also keep the roadmap changes opaque from the PMM. PMMs can feel short-handed in such scenarios.
On the flip side, PMMs may move ahead with campaign messaging or target segments without aligning with the PM. They may even start campaigning or evangelizing internally for a feature that the PMs aren’t yet ready to release.
What strategies can PMs and PMMs use to align their efforts and reduce friction?
For starters, PMs and PMMs need to think of themselves as one unit and as part of the same product team. If PMs think PMMs are the “watercolor and crayons” team and the latter perceives the former as “the dev kitchen,” it’s hard to create meaningful collaboration.
Aligning efforts and reducing friction means:
Working in lockstep
PMs and PMMs need to work together from discovery to launch (and beyond) for every product initiative. In most teams, this is not the case as there is usually a hand-off after a product has been shipped. PMs move on to the next thing while PMMs may market the product with incomplete context.
Joint planning sessions
PMs and PMMs should collaboratively discuss strategy and roadmaps. There should be sessions where they can exchange discovery notes. PMs should offer usage analytics, behavioral trends, and findings from customer interviews.
PMMs should share competitive analysis, market reports, and findings from their primary research of customers and prospects. Information disparity needs to be quelled by regular syncs.
Tag-teaming on internal evangelism
Many teams don’t realize that PMs and PMMs working together can amplify excitement for products internally, and that can fuel motivation for customer-facing teams.
Both should work on how they plan to announce a product feature internally and develop a cohesive storytelling structure that can be pushed to all channels, like email, town halls, and/or the company Slack.
Aligned KPIs
Both PMs and PMMs should have shared KPIs that they are incentivized on. Product adoption and retention metrics are a couple of metrics they could track together and monitor proactively. Both parties should ideate on ways to improve these metrics and playoff from one another’s efforts.
Should PMs and PMMs follow the divide-and-conquer approach for their shared responsibilities, or should one position be responsible for a specific role?
There’s no hard-and-fast rule here. Both approaches can work depending on the needs of the product. But if there is one activity both parties should participate in, it’s discovery.
It’s hard to work on a product if you can’t tap into customer feedback and challenges. Thus, PMs and PMMs need to conduct their discovery sessions (preferably on different sets of customers and prospects) and then exchange their notes.
This expands the research data points, builds more confidence in decisions, and produces more perspectives on the market demand.
Editor’s note: To easily collect customer feedback from different segments, sign up for Userpilot, select a predesigned survey template, customize it with the WYSIWYG editor, and trigger it for the right customer segment contextually.
Other activities could be divided. For example, competitive intelligence could be owned by the PMMs, who can commit to sharing their findings at a later point.
The ideal model should be flexible and align with the company’s dynamics, PMs and PMMs should mutually agree on the best path forward. The model can also evolve – starting from shared duties to the division of responsibilities.
How can misalignment between product managers and product marketing managers impact product success?
Misalignment can be damaging to team morale, product adoption, and key metrics.
It could lead to:
- Poor launches: Miscommunication can delay launches or compromise their potency because certain details aren’t aligned.
- Ineffective go-to-market motions: The wrong persona may be targeted, the positioning may not make sense for the product, or the go-to-market teams may not be clear about the story to tell to customers.
- Fragmented messaging: If messaging isn’t agreed upon, then that could send confusing signals to prospects and customers.
- Wasted resources: Marketing costs money and resources. Without agreement on a strong launch and GTM strategy, there can be a lot of wastage leading to poor ROAS and a higher cost of adoption.
- Team morale: Since both parties work in silos, there tends to be more finger-pointing when metrics go south.
How do you recommend resolving conflicts between product managers and product marketing managers?
It’s important to start with creating shared goals/KPIs and emphasizing empathy for each other, so they see themselves as one team. Leadership should encourage both sides to actively listen and understand the other’s perspective.
There also needs to be a preference for evidence-backed discussions. Rather than putting down opinions and personal viewpoints, both parties must be encouraged to debate using customer data or preferences. At the same time, there needs to be clear ownership for the different domains.
Product managers are ultimately accountable for what gets built on the product. So, when there is a deadlock on strategy, roadmap, or prioritization, they will take the call on it.
Product marketers are responsible for the go-to-market strategy. Therefore, they own the messaging, positioning, and launch plan and will issue the final call.
In teams where this is still not possible, there needs to be a clearly laid out escalation path. Management needs to clarify who the two parties will go to in the leadership or management team to break the tie.
How can companies create a culture that encourages collaboration between product managers and product marketing managers?
It starts from the top. Leadership needs to recognize that the PM-PMM partnership is crucial for success. They’ll have to design the organizational chart and the processes within to ensure there is healthy face-time between both.
Then, there needs to be shared ownership of outcomes, and ideally, financial incentives should be tied to that.
Moreover, companies can opt for cross-functional training programs to expose PMs and PMMs to each other’s responsibilities to allow each to get a better handle on the constraints they operate within.
Finally, the collaboration needs to be celebrated and praised. When products do well, or customers show high satisfaction rates, the PM-PMM collaboration should be highlighted as the winning factor for the team.
Can you describe a situation where misalignment between PMs and PMMs had a significant impact on a product launch or strategy?
I was working on a recruitment tech product (applicant tracking system), and the product team had just rolled out a new release for candidate scorecards. There were no formal release notes, internal demos, or messaging collaboration on this.
The product marketing team was just invited to take a look at the feature on demo environments. The expectation, sadly, was to read the original spec or reverse-engineer the feature to come up with ways to market it.
By the time the marketing team had rolled out a landing page for the feature, the feature had already gone through multiple iterations and the interface screens had evolved to look different than the ones we were promoting. Moreover, it was reactively seen that marketing was promoting capabilities that they “thought” the feature had but tech confirmed that those aspects were still under progress.
As a result, customers didn’t have a great understanding of the product and hardly adopted it. We spent 100s of engineering hours building it but were unable to create traction because the messaging was unclear, the product was still in flux, and internal priorities were misaligned.
Can you share a success story where PMs and PMMs successfully aligned their efforts and overcame friction?
As vFairs was scaling its product footprint, PMs and PMMs were always falling out of sync. PMs would keep shipping out increments every week to meet customer commitments. But product marketers would be kept in the dark on many of these releases.
Leadership started noticing a massive lag between what product marketing was communicating to the market and what the product team had already achieved. PMs believed they couldn’t wait for the PMM team to get on board. PMMs felt disconnected from the roadmap cycle.
To combat this, a new squad called the “Product evangelizers” was developed. The team was unified on the goal that they had to create internal excitement about a product. The PM and PMM teams then started tag teaming on a few fronts: internal town hall demos, the product update email newsletter, and the customer community WhatsApp updates.
The teams started meeting on a regular cadence, sharing information about customers and the market and also the context behind why something was being built.
This led to a lot of positive outcomes.
- First, team morale was higher, and both parties felt they were in sync with the direction of the product.
- Secondly, we were able to market product releases on time before the competition did. This led to customers responding to our newsletters and converting them into leads.
- Thirdly, PMs saw a better adoption of their features as product marketing was giving them more air cover and educating customers on why they should try out the product.
What tools or processes can facilitate better collaboration between PMs and PMMs?
Effective communication can exist outside tools as long as both parties appreciate the value the other brings.
However, some tools that can make communication easier:
- Aligning on timelines using project management software like Asana.
- Visual collaboration on concepts using Figma and Miro.
- Roadmap software to keep teams aligned, like ProductPlan.
- Shared Slack channels with a constant stream of product updates.
- Customer feedback and analysis tools like Canny and FullStory.
Editor’s note: Looking for an all-in-one solution for product managers and product marketing managers with analytics, engagement, feedback, and self-service capabilities? Give Userpilot a go! Book a demo to learn more, or sign up for a free 14-day trial.
Is there anything regarding this topic that I didn’t ask that you’d like to talk about?
A great way to appreciate each other’s role and what they bring to the table is by experiencing it.
Product managers should pick out 1-2 features and attempt to shadow product marketers on the full cycle of activities that they undertake for it, like messaging, sales enablement, and go-to-market planning with marketing teams.
Similarly, product marketers should pick out 1-2 features and accompany PMs on their calls with engineering and designers, understand how they write PRDs (product requirements document), and listen to the challenges they face, especially in prioritization.
This endeavor will likely lead to higher empathy for each other and a stronger will to work together to deliver impact.
How does Userpilot help PMs and PMMs streamline their work?
Investing in separate solutions for different purposes often isn’t cost-effective. A more efficient strategy is to invest in all-in-one solutions that offer advanced functionality for both PMs and PMMs.
Userpilot is one such tool. Here’s how it benefits both product managers and marketing managers:
- Collect customer feedback through no-code surveys. Use predesigned survey templates or customize from scratch to gather insights on product performance, onboarding flow, satisfaction levels, and more.
- Analyze customer behavior through funnel, trend, path, and cohort retention analyses. The cherry on top – these reports can be easily shared with other team members when collaborating or tracking performance.
- Provide self-service support through an in-app resource center. Userpilot lets you add multiple modules to it, like a feature request survey and a checklist to increase activation rates.
- Create personalized in-app messages to onboard users, announce new features, share system updates, and more. You can even localize these messages into 130+ languages for global segments.
Conclusion
This thorough interview discussed all the strategies for streamlining work and collaboration between product managers and product marketing managers. If you want to read more about Aatif Abdul Rauf, subscribe to his newsletter.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one product growth tool that is user-friendly and offers great value for money, book a Userpilot demo.
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