What are some "hot takes" you have where traditional product marketing misses the mark?

One is too much focus on high-level messaging/positioning.

While messaging and positioning are key, do not overthink the messaging/positioning. Should be simple. Who is the product aimed at, what it is, what is does/benefit, how different/better, why it is needed now. Remember the audience is a newbie who wants the basic info…so make this easy on them.

I’ve seen it countless times where many teams and people work on messaging for many weeks and at the end, the message ends up straying from plain English and is full of buzzwords and focus on differentiators. The audience ends up still unclear on what the product is and what it does. #marketingfail

While it's extremely important for PMMs to focus on the customer-facing aspect of their jobs, its equally as important to focus on the internal enablement and comms - half our job is to bring others in the company along and make sure they speak the same language and understand your product and differentiation for example. I’ve seen a lot of teams get lost in delivering campaigns but fail to bring others along across the org.

Product Marketers dream of having a seat at the table but are spread too thin and have a hard time proving their value.

Product marketers often don't know the business and don't know what the business's priority is. They focus too much on "stuff" and "process"

Product Marketers want to have an impact and work on strategy and high-leverage topics, but they have no agency - they have no decision power, so they need to convince too many people. While others decide (e.g. VP DemandGen, Sales), they are preaching and selling internally.

Product Marketers are happy when they deliver to Sales Enablement, but they forget to check if it has any meaningful impact on Sales - they forget that Sales is the actual and ultimate customer they should care. Sales Enablement is just a partner, not a customer.

Product Marketers think that everything needs research for weeks and months, while the business doesn't have that time to wait - they either choose to be irrelevant, or have to deliver more and faster. Less perfection, more focus.