What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is about taking a product to the market and ensuring its successful adoption. A Product Marketing Manager:
Defines its positioning and messaging
Gathers and processes customer feedback
Manages customer relationships post launch to a limited extent
In the long run, this adds up to the successful branding of the product and its success.
How is it related to Product Management?
Product Marketing and Product Management are adjacent functions.
A Product Manager defines the why, what, and when of a product i.e. the product vision. The Engineering decides the how. The Product Marketing Manager communicates the why, what, and when of the product to the market i.e. the go-to-market strategy.
The Product Manager conveys the why, what, and when of the product to internal stakeholders. The product Marketing Manager conveys the same to the outside world. In larger organizations, the Product Marketing Manager is also responsible for arming the Gp-To-Market teams with this knowledge, especially sales plays.
The Product Manager creates the product roadmap. The Product Marketing Manager creates the Go-To-Market roadmap, which depends on the Product Roadmap.
The Product Manager focuses on the problems of the customer to figure out how best to solve them. The Product Marketing Manager focuses on the problems of the customer to figure out how to pitch and sell the product to them.
The Product Manager seeks feedback calls with the customer – for design, beta, and post launch phases. The Product Marketing Manager showcases the product – through demos, webinars, etc – to potential customers/adopters.