Does your product marketing team sit in marketing, product management or someplace else?

This is a really great question and one that will define the role you play in the organization greatly. I like to say that when the PMM team sits in Product Management, they become capital P Product, lowercase m marketing managers (PmM). The focus is heavy on technical capabilities and you're going to spend a less time with the Marketing team. Often this felt like I was throwing my work "over the wall" to the marketing team.

When I've sat in Marketing it's reversed. Lowercase p, capital M (pMM) and the role is much more focused on marketing activities with less time spent on technical expertise. In these scenarios, I had to be focused on immersing myself in the PM team, and making sure I understood what they were building and why. It's tempting to get sucked into all the marketing programs, but that decreases the value you provide to those teams. You know you're not driving value to Marketing if they are going to the PMs to get the answers to their questions. You need to be the first stop for their questions.

I've done both and had a modicum of success in both. My preferred scenario is to be managed in Marketing, but have my seat as close to the Product team as possible. In one role that meant that I was two floors away from the rest of the Marketing team because I sat with the PMs. It meant that I was up and down the stairs a dozen times a day, but I also got to immerse myself in the daily work of the PM team.

Our team, Portfolio Messaging (product, industry and solutions) are part of the Product organization (I report to the Chief Product Officer) to help build synergy with Product Management and solutions team. We work closely with Product, Marketing and Sales to meet business needs. We have the process and team interlocks across Boomi from Demand Generation, Sales Enablement, Business Ops, Sales Ops etc.

Here is a good read for the holidays on how to think about where product marketing would sit. It depends on the company needs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2019/09/30/where-is-product-marketing-or-portfolio-messaging-in-your-organization/#6215f0d747c9