Mediaboss Marketing

Whether youre a global technology brand actively growing your stack through acquisition or a private software-as-a-service (SaaS) company looking to steal market share and create new categories, its never been more important to have strong product marketing that sits at the intersection of your product, marketing and sales functions.This is especially true because nailing market fit and product adoption right out of the gate will make or break software companies in categories full of innovation and competition.

Even today, product marketings fit within an organization can still be described as unusual or hazy. Its not quite sales or product, but its not quite classical marketing either. However, when done correctly, product marketing can elevate all three: marketing, sales and product management.

Working in the product marketing function myself, I have five bold predictions for the next evolution of the product marketing role, its impact and career path predictions I believe well start to see this year.

Product marketings impact will transition from conceptual to empirical.

In 2020, well no longer see the days where product marketings impact was considered a volume play. Rather than lazily focusing on the number of campaigns, products launched or resources built, product marketings metrics will span the entire intersection of product, marketing and sales. The ultimate indicator of success will be product adoption and customer retention.

These are two metrics with values that anyone could understand. And they ultimately point to the fact that the capabilities were positioning and launching have market fit, are driving demand, are understood by sales and are being bought by prospects and customers.

Product marketing will drift further away from traditional marketing.

As an intersectional role meant to incorporate and unite multiple disciplines, product marketing doesnt truly win unless all three functions it supports do. Product needs its capabilities effectively positioned and adopted. Marketing needs context and content to fuel programs to meet its demand metrics. And sales needs training, tools and intel to close new business.

If thats the case, reporting to just one of these functions may not make sense. Is it possible to be fully accountable to three different divisions? Is it reasonable to report to three different bosses? Im still not entirely sure. This is where the product marketing role begins to enter truly uncharted waters. But ensuring 100% alignment with these three areas of the business is going to be mission-critical, as products continue to deploy faster, needs become more complex, sales becomes more competitive and executive and board-level expectations continue to increase.

Product marketing will begin to develop its own subspecialties.

The idea of marketing specialists isnt a new one in fact, youll find them across virtually every other marketing function! Under demand generation, youll find growth marketers, events marketers and field marketers. On traffic teams, youll find writers, back-linkers and technical search engine optimization (SEO) experts. And strong creative teams are made up of copywriting, graphic design and web design pros.

Expect product marketing to follow suit, especially as resource investment and head count increase. Eventually, it wont be uncommon for product marketing teams to be organized by discipline rather than product, with some product marketers specializing in tactical product launches, while others focus solely on value messaging, persona and market analysis, or resource creation and enablement.

Product marketings path to the C-suite will become clearer.

Its anecdotal, but product marketings path into the C-suite has felt hazy. And even today, its far more common to see chief marketing officers (CMOs) with traditional demand generation and brand backgrounds in the role than product marketers themselves.

There are a number of reasons for that. Brand marketing is the most visible part of a company, and demand generation is the easiest to measure and most closely tied to revenue. All are good reasons. But perhaps product marketings direct path to CMO is still less common because CMO isnt actually the most natural C-suite seat for product marketing!

The emergence of the chief experience officer (CXO) role offers similar intersectionality to product marketing, focusing on every single customer and using related touch points across a companys journey. The role is gaining traction. Its been reported (subscription required) that three-quartersof executives see improving customer experience (CX) as a high priority. With many companies establishing a C-level position to oversee CX, we may soon reach a point in business where its accepted that every company needs a CXO.

The next generation of marketers will choose product marketing.

While its common for many product marketers (including myself) to have fallen into the path by chance, this will soon cease to be the case. I believe the next generation of product marketers will choose product marketing.

Once the great unknown area of modern marketing teams, product marketing is finally getting its time to shine. The launch and growth of the Product Marketing Alliance, industry awardsandglobal influencer lists have provided recognition like never before. Its now only a matter of time until these product marketing leaders get promoted into the C-suite and take full ownership of their brands marketing and experiences.

This increase in awareness and influence is likely to catch the attention of up-and-coming marketing generalists as they prepare to choose a track to specialize in. And it should inspire the next generation of product marketers to raise the bar and push the profession to new heights.

More:
Five Reasons 2020 Will Be Product Marketing's Breakout Year - Forbes