AMA: Intercom Product Marketing Lead, Platform, Sonia Moaiery on Product Marketing vs Product Management

The copy in the product itself is owned by our Product Design team. However, we have a Customer Engagement / Customer Lifecycle Marketing team that owns copy for in-app messages like tooltips, banners, carousels etc. PMM will also schedule in-app messages (depends on the message itself) where we will own the copy. I know some orgs will have copywriters specifically for the product that will sit within the product or UX team, but I think this is more of a luxury at most organizations.

I’ll outline where I see PM and PMM overlap and diverge, and what signals to look out for to assess the better fit for you. I had a chance to test out a PM role in the past and was a CPG Brand Manager which is similar to a PM. PM/PMM Overlap. They both: * Have the end goal of solving a customer/end user problem. This requires a deep understanding of who the customer is, their needs and the value they seek. * Work cross-functionally to get x-func teams bought into a vision, solutions to a customers' problem and plans for how to get customers adopting and using new products and features. * Require strong skills in distilling insights, storytelling and influencing a complex set of cross functional stakeholders. Both are often influencing people who don’t directly report to them. * Make trade offs between the following things: 1) building for prospects vs. existing customers 2) building new innovative features vs. optimizing existing features 3) when to announce vs. when to make available etc. PM/PMM Differences: * PMMs have the challenging job of translating the solution and value the PM/Eng teams are building into a compelling narrative for prospects and existing customers and what channels to activate that narrative in. PMs should certainly input into how we tell the story, but that is not their primary role. It's good for a PM to be aware of the 'marketing plan' for a new product or feature, but they're not deeply involved in the mechanics of the marketing plan the way the PMM isn't deeply involved in the technical mechanics of the product. * The main cross functional stakeholders they serve. PM works primarily with Engineering, Product Design and UX research, designing and building a solution and to deliver a coherent product roadmap. They’re often working with Engineering in tools like Jira and design in tools like Figma, to determine how to actually solve the customer's problem via the product. Their deliverables include product requirements, technical plans, JIRA product stories/tickets and roadmap rationales. * PMM works primarily with Marketing, Sales and Enablement to build a go to market strategy. They’re often working with Marketing in tools like Asana/Figma to track customer-facing creative projects, collateral and new landing pages, or in Google Slides coordinating training for sales, launch plans and marketing collateral. Deliverables include launch/adoption strategies, pitch decks, buyer insights / personas and market analyses. * PMMs tend to be more involved in the nuts and bolts of pricing and packaging, and may even own it entirely at some companies. Although if you’re at a PLG company, “growth PMs” may be more commercially-minded and responsible for driving acquisition where pricing and packaging are a big component. * PMMs are expected to have more of a pulse and eye on what’s happening in the market landscape, industry, competitors and buyer insights. They should be seen as the customer expert especially as relates to how to reach and engage them. PMs will benefit from a PMM who does this, but if they don't have a PMM counterpart, they'll often have to do it themselves and it can fall to the wayside. * PMs more often have to make hard trade off decisions around optimizing and maintaining existing feature/product challenges/bugs/shortcomings or building new innovative features. They are often translating the overall company strategy to their specific domain or area to determine where to invest. PMMs certainly input here but it is not their primary role. * PMs have to figure out where to start. They might have a lofty vision and roadmap but that has to be broken down into smaller pieces and parts to get to the bigger end goal. You have to be skilled at working with engineering to think about sequencing, prioritization and iterating.

At one point pricing and packaging sat in the PMM team at Intercom but as pricing and packaging became more complex for us with many, many plans, we actually now have a dedicated pricing and packaging team that PMM works closely with when it comes to new product releases to determine if they fit within existing plans or need to be an add-on, and which plans access given features. The P&P team tends to own P&P overall and for much bigger product releases, and for smaller tier 2/3 releases, PMM will still drive for those. Product will have input into these conversations but they're not the final decision makers. We have a "pricing steering committe" the approves all big pricing changes and this includes members of our exec team.

I think there’s a high degree of overlap. The two functions may cut metrics differently or over different time horizons but for the most part many metrics are shared. A few examples that are top of mind: * Acquisition / Conversion / Activation - if you’re at a self serve or PLG company, Growth PMs might be really focused on activation and getting customers to the ‘a-ha’ value moment. Whereas PMMs, may be focused on acquisition specifically tied to campaigns or a specific buyer persona (i.e. are we converting the right leads). * Win Rates - PMs will generaly know about win/losswfor their specific domain. For example, “we lose a lot/some/few deals due to XYZ feature/product gap.” Whereas PMMs tend to be closer to all the win/loss reasons and what those look like overall. * Adoption/Usage - PMMs might be looking more at big adoption pushes after a campaign or launch event whereas a PM is looking over a longer period of time. * Some KPIs/metrics that are specific to PMM : Sales Collateral Usage (what Sales is actually using in pitches or outbound outreach), Marketing Channel Performance (how effective demo videos on a Landing Page are vs. email vs. in-app messages).

Many different functions gather customer feedback - we have a customer feedback hub that attempts to centralize all the different streams of customer feedback from various teams into one dashboard / engine. This includes everything from NPS surveys, feature requests logged in product, win/loss notes from Salesforce etc. We have a research team that drives a lot of this feedback, but product often is gathering customer feedback from betas, PMM from buyer persona research, BizOps from broader market research etc. I think what matters is less who is collecting the feedback, but moreso how you’re sharing the learnings across teams and making them accessible to everyone through a “centralization” dashboard like we do at Intercom!

Like any good working relationship, you have to take the time to build trust. Here’s a few things I do to build trust and position myself as a strategic partner to PM. * Meet regularly and come with a prepared agenda. It doesn’t necessarily have to be weekly but know how you want to use the time and deliver value to them as well. This might include asking them to walk through the latest roadmap rationale and asking them questions around what challenges they’re running into with testing, adoption and see if there’s an area where you can help them. Whether it's supporting some sales enablement, or connecting them with the product education team, help be a bridge to other teams. * Bring them value - bring insights from marketing that PMs don't typically get access to. Product often doesn’t get deep insight into how your website converts leads, the customer purchase journey, brand perceptions, marketing campaigns - show them how you’re showcasing their product in marketing and what learnings they may take from marketing's latest work. For example, "we know prospects spend 3X time on our pricing page than any other page in our site. Maybe we should consider surfacing pricing on that new product in our app to give customers the information they want" * Pull them into marketing meetings (if express interest in it) where you think their voice is of value. Show them that you understand their goals, what they’re working on and that you value their voice too. PMs want to know the products they're shipping are in good hands, so help them understand the marketing process. * If you have a PMM charter / mission - walk them through it. Help them understand what PMM does and doesn’t do. If it’s not well defined at your company or you’re the only PMM, I urge you to do this.