Product Marketing vs Product Management?

• What is a product?
• What is marketing? 
• What is management
• What is product marketing
• What is product management
• Diffrences between product maketing and product management
• Product marketing manager career path
• Product Manager career path
• Project manager vs project marketing manager

What is a product?

A product is anything produced to serve the needs, wants, and desires of a customer. A product can be physical or virtual. Good examples of physical products are mobile phones, laptops, and earphones. On the other hand, some examples of virtual products are technology, the internet and graphics, and digital art. 

What is marketing? 

Marketing, in simple words, is a process or a set of methods used to sell a product or service to a customer online or in person. Every business today has a marketing team and a group of professionals they call “marketers” who work online and offline to build demand for a product produced to serve the requirements of a targeted group of customers. 

What is management? 

Management is a sequence of processes used to design, monitor, and control the daily workflow of tasks and responsibilities of any given organization, a group of people, or even a product to achieve a set goal. 

What is product marketing? 

Product marketing, in other words, can be defined as the summation of all the efforts put into promotion, positioning, research, and development of a product or service to make it serve the requirements and desires of its target market. A product marketer works closely with customer support, sales, and operations teams. 

What is product management?

Product management is a process in which a product manager puts himself in the shoes of a customer to understand their needs and what problems they face and thereafter equip their team to come up with a product that help to solve the problems. A product manager works closely with marketing, research, and design teams. 

The difference in product management and product marketing 

• Product management works towards understanding a customer’s needs and thereafter looks at delivering a product that addresses those needs. 
• Product marketing, on the other hand, works towards positioning a product and adding due value to meet the requirements of a customer. 
• Product management sets the vision of a product while closely working with the product team 
• Product marketer works on building a demand for the product with the help of messaging techniques on and offline.
• Product managers work on all the aspects of a product life cycle from start to finish. 
• Product markets work towards making the product easily accessible for their customers. 

Product marketing manager career path 

• Associate Product Marketing Manager 
• Product Marketing Manager 
• Senior Product Marketing Manager 
• Director of Product Marketing

Associate Product Marketing Manager 

Job description 

• Promote internal communications and request product feedback from both internal as well as external sources.
• Act as a leader to promote feasible cross-functional team meetings within the organization to accomplish goals.
• Support in sorting out requirements differences between business and units or business and technology.
• Establish standards and provable project plans to improve Communication across operating modules. 
• Verify that new features are implemented according to specification, problems are solved, and business cases are addressed.
• Recognize opportunities that will help automate tasks, support technology and reduce failure points in the product.

Product Marketing Manager 

Job description 

• Plan and accomplish product marketing strategies using competitive research, platform determination, benchmarking, messaging, and audience identification.
•  Understand customers’ needs and try to fulfill the same in the product roadmap for the assigned category.
•  Create a business plan for each category, including all aspects of sales marketing.
• Visualize, design, and carry out product marketing campaigns from pre-launch to post-launch.
• Build, manage and track plans to achieve success across.
•  Conduct in-depth analyses to determine the goals achieved and continuously improvise the category constructs.

Senior Product Marketing Manager 

Job description 

• Establish distinct ICPs for each product across various geographies & industries.
• Nurture competitive intelligence and comparisons.
• Develop product ideas that distinguish new products and services from others in the market.
• Broadcast and develop capitals that show the value of new products and services to the sales and marketing teams.
• Speak and present well to promote the product.
• Develop and come up with new promotional activities when a product launches.
• Assist in creating product content like case studies, videos, website content and blog posts.
• Observe customers’ usage of current developments, untapped opportunities, and buyer persons. 

Director of Product Marketing

Job description 

• Develop and measure standard methodologies to drive efficient solutions adoption and new product activation.
• Describe messaging and positioning for new products and translate features and functionality into categories according to customer benefits.
• To understand the competitive landscapes and be an expert.
• Cooperate with the Product Management team to identify future B2B product opportunities and plan a product roadmap that involves customer insights, competitive differentiators, and feedback from CS, Sales, and other teams.
• Lead product scenarios end-to-end, including proposing design, target client identification, operational readiness, campaign planning and execution, seller enablement, and merchant feedback collection.

Product Manager career path 

• Associate Product Manager 
• Junior Product Manager 
• Product Manager 
• Senior Product Manager 
• Product Lead 
• Product Director 
• VP Product 
• Chief Product Officer 

 Associate Product Manager 

• Responsible for the product design and managing life cycles. 
• Come up with features and experiments about new offerings for the influencers/celebrities, including writing product specifications, driving cross-functional executions, making thoughtful product decisions, and sharing insights and results throughout the company.
• Carry out research on both influencer sides to rule out the needs and business requirements of content marketing/monetization.
• Must have a deep understanding of mobile app experience, identify and fill product gaps and develop new ideas that helps grow market share, improve customer experience and drive the company’s growth.

Junior Product Manager 

• Responsible for end-to-end product management, including roadmap definition, product definition, prioritization, and execution
• Assist in the execution of product/solution features targeted at winning in strategic markets, based on a deep understanding of market and company strategy
• To work closely with cross-functional teams to plan the product specifications and be responsible for continuously prioritizing product features in a scaled agile development environment
• Cooperate in driving along with the delivery of critical product initiatives, managing all aspects such as planning, Communication, etc
• Technical problem solver, identifying innovative solutions to avoid project deadlocks and resolving issues and constraints.
• Work with the development, architecture, and design teams
• Extend vision to establish ourselves as a trusted Partner for our Traders and an Internal Team with real-time data and decision tools.
• Ensure smooth product releases and continuous support.
• Improving the speed of in-house product development & team capability building

Product Manager 

Job Description

• Provide coaching, best practices, and influence teams, product owners, and leaders on complex product roadmaps for one or more departments and focus on areas within a complex business or function in one or more countries.
• Define product strategies, roadmaps, and backlogs that impact the declaration and delivery of user experiences.
• Communicate with business leaders on agile efforts and provide guidance and effective assistance to enhance complex product models.
• Overcome risks in new product efforts through value, usability, feasibility, and business testing and report results.
• Clubs with senior internal and external teams coordinate between multiple departments to ensure features are the best possible market fit.
• Help product teams rapidly develop prototypes, potentially launching them into minimally viable products.
• Independently handle complex issues with minimal supervision, thus escalating only the most challenging problems to appropriate staff.

Senior Product Manager 

• End-to-end ownership of a product lifecycle & roadmap. An analytical mindset that makes data-informed decisions
• Work with Engineers, Customer Success, and Sales to examine improvements that address companys’ objectives. 
• Market analysis process for new products/services to determine customer needs, industry direction, competitive development and market positioning, and overall product strategy.
• Evaluate new product/customization viability and build recommendations for your product’s go or no-go decisions. 
• Help balance your product’s long-term roadmap by prioritizing its backlog of issues and bugs.
• Translates the user stories into the specification, deliver product requirements to all stakeholders with a detailed PRD

Product Lead 

• Guide and own the entire product roadmap of our flagship product, cloud platform
• Accomplish deep customer and market research, use the insights to shape product strategy
• Work along with the design, engineering, and marketing teams to conceptualize, build, test, and ship product features.
• Create thorough quarterly and annual plans to give long-term product visibility to the design, engineering, marketing, and sales teams
• Define KPIs and ensure the product permits measurement.
• Help the design and engineering team in creating great product experiences by writing high-quality PRDs (sometimes wireframes)
• Boost predictability in the product development process.
• Construct the product team for the growth phase

Product Director 

• Admit and execute the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for “HackerRank for Work”; which includes planning product, cross-functional launch, building and managing a team
• Guide your team to collaborate with engineering and design teams to ship new, impactful features, including preparing necessary technical specifications, coordinating development activity, and tracking the progress of in-flight projects
• Be a customer advocate; Gain a deep understanding of their needs through both qualitative and quantitative measures, meeting with customers regularly to present the roadmap and collect feedback
• Work closely with the customer-facing teams; Constantly evangelize the vision so all stakeholders are aligned, have context, and understand where we are going
• Ideate improvements that address company objectives; Build business cases, pitch ideas, and gain buy-in from stakeholders
• Be particular about making data-driven decisions
• Be tenacious about achieving ambitious goals and help HackerRank scale new heights

VP Product

• SVP / VP Product will lead to multiple interdependent work-streams, each with massive business potential and scale
• Guide all aspects of our client’s processes for capturing stated and latent needs of the customers, framework for prioritization, and continuously improve
• Expand the skills and capability of Product Managers to ensure deep subject matter expertise in their respective areas of product management. 
• Deploy product roadmaps on time and with high quality and improve the speed of product innovation that will lead to the next phase of growth.
• Come up with innovative ideas, solutions, and products through leadership and decisive action and ensure implementation through the team of Product Managers.
• Assure that the technical requirements are met, and engineering teams maintain a solid understanding of the business context in developing the product.

Chief Product Officer 

• Led the adoption of Ariba in enterprise procurement region-wise and category-wise.

• Expertise in all the features available in Ariba S2P Tools.

• Close cooperation with SAP/Ariba to understand their product roadmap and build an interior Wipro roadmap for adoption.

• Experience in implementing Ariba S2P

• To work along with other procurement clusters to understand their requirements and map them to Ariba road map

• Conduct Ariba adoption cadence meeting.

• Business requirement gathering and prepared BRD for new changes

• Create Business requirement documents for new requirements.

• Design and conduct UATs for various test scenarios for new developments.

• Integration of S2P of newly acquired entities through Ariba and training the resources for new entities.

• Supplier enablement through network connectivity for online invoice submission.

• Supplier, user, and CPO team training.

• Adopt new technologies through POC for Blockchain, AI/ML, Big data, IoT, etc.

Which career path do you want to pursue? sign up for a professional course in product management and kick start your career today.

Project manager vs project marketing manager

Who is a project manager?

Product management generally involves ensuring the successful execution of the end-to-end product life cycle from the very first step of preliminary research to launch and post-sales support within an organization. Each step of the said cycle is guided thoroughly with a deep focus on the product and its customers. Therefore, a product manager becomes the one who makes sure that all the product management principles are executed and followed. Since it is an interdisciplinary role, the responsibilities might vary from one organization to another. This guide will help you to understand the difference between a Project Manager vs Project Marketing Manager.

Project manager Roles and Responsibilities

Apart from these, a set of further responsibilities are meant to be fulfilled by the Product Manager. Let’s have a look at what these responsibilities constitute.

• Other than defining product requirements and strategy, Product Managers also collaborate with technical and design functions.
• They are in charge of planning and maintaining the road map.
• They also take up coaching, team management and recruiting.
• They engage with customers and partners and look into pricing and packaging as well.
• Furthermore, they keep reviewing metrics and keep researching the market and competition.

Project manager Qualifications and Skills

Since these responsibilities are vitally important, you need to form a strong base with the right qualifications and skills to ascend to great heights in the field.

• Firstly, you should earn a relevant Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, Finance, Engineering, Economics or Marketing.
• You must be efficient and skilled at making detailed competitive reports right from the scratch.
• You should be comfortable in building or providing insights to roadmaps for any of the product development stages and understand the fine lines of resource allocation.
• You should possess ample business intelligence and the ability to research and stay updated about market trends and competition at all times.
• In terms of soft skills, you should develop sound critical thinking, analytical, problem solving, management and communication skills in order to outshine others in the field.

How to become a Product Manager?

Acquisition of these skills will guide you towards the final goal of becoming a Product Manager. There are two broad ways open for you to become a product manager. You can either follow the conventional path by taking up and following through a product management course or certification and then landing a job. Or you can take up courses for building and honing skill-sets related to product management by indulging in relevant projects or tasks at work. You can enroll in the product management free course online to be on the path of becoming a successful product manager.

Who is a product marketing manager?

You might be thinking about what a product marketing manager is and how important they are to the introduction of a product. A product marketing manager is someone who is in charge of a product’s placement, advertising, and labelling.

Product Marketing Manager Skills and Qualifications

There are certain skills and qualifications that a product marketing manager must have to be able to conduct advertising activities. These include: 

• Experience in campaign management and marketing fundamentals.
• Ability to lead projects.
• Communication and organizing skills. 
• Ability to evaluate pertinent data and make well-informed conclusions.
• The capacity to prioritize activities and responsibilities across projects is a valuable skill.

Employers seek candidates with at least a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, marketing, or a similar branch. Some organisations may look for people with advanced degrees and considerable marketing, sales, or advertising expertise.

What does a product marketing manager do?

These people are in charge of the narrative about the product that would convince potential customers to buy it, as well as collecting customer feedback when it launches.

When the product is ready for launch, the product marketing manager will be invited to educate the public about the product’s advantages and benefits so that potential customers can become enthusiastic customers.

How to Become a Product Marketing Manager?

Now that you know what a typical product marketing manager performs, you may be interested in learning how to become one. 

 Here is a simple rundown:

*Acquire the Required Qualifications.

*Consolidate Relevant Experience.

*Apply for Available Positions.