2023 | State of PMM

State of Product Marketing Report 2023

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Contents 3 Part 1 108 Part 10 Introduction Indispensable Part 2 product marketing skills 9 Introducing the participants Part 11 110 Product marketing 28 Part 3 career aspirations How has product marketing changed since 2022? 113 Part 12 Part 4 Product marketing tools 33 Roles, responsibilities, Part 13 and team infrastructure 116 Product marketing tips 59 Part 5 122 Part 14 Product marketing KPIs Making the great, greater ... 68 Part 6 136 Part 15 Product marketing highlights Conclusion and challenges 78 Part 7 Friend or foe: The evolution of AI and its role in product marketing 88 Part 8 Product marketing budgets 97 Part 9 The in昀氀uence of product marketing 2

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 1 Introduction 3

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introduction “Time 昀氀ies when you’re having fun…” We’re sure you’re sick of this expression being used for the umpteenth time, but what can we say? It perfectly encapsulates the 12-month period that’s elapsed since the 2022 installment of this report. In the 昀椀fth edition of our annual exploration of the product marketing landscape, we’ll deliver an engrossing exposé into a range of areas and lift the lid on what the industry looks like for product marketers plying their trade at start-ups in their infancy, to those honing their skills at well-established corporations. We’ve combined qualitative and quantitative insights to deliver perspectives from practitioners at various stages of their product marketing journey, from Associate Product Marketing Managers cutting their teeth in entry-level positions to VPs of Product Marketing with a wealth of experience under their belt. 4

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introduction Key 昀椀ndings Don’t have the time to unpick the report in its entirety? Here’s a selection of some of the key takeaways from 2023’s installment of the State of Product Marketing Report to whet your appetite: • Most product marketing teams included 1 - 2 people. • Survey respondents revealed they collaborate with the product team more than any other in their company (89.4%). • Product positioning and messaging was earmarked as the main responsibility of PMMs, with 90.1% of respondents selecting this option. • 55% of participants said product marketing is viewed as being product-focused by their colleagues. • In most cases, product marketers support 5+ products in their organization (33.7%). • 22.5% of product marketers never liaise with their customers, instead relying on intel from other teams. • In most cases (37.7%), product marketers said they’re sharing KPIs and metrics results with colleagues on a monthly basis - 9.3% indicated they don’t share KPIs and metrics results with other internal teams… • 51.7% of product marketers felt AI tools have prompted increased demand on product marketing teams; 53.6% said they’re implementing AI within their PMM strategies. • 35.8% of PMMs surveyed didn’t have a product marketing budget in place at their company. • When product marketers ranked the in昀氀uence of product marketing at their company on a scale of 0 - 10, this generated an average rating of 6.7. 5

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introduction What is product marketing, anyway? Although there’s an overwhelming number of professionals who are either a) transitioning into a career as a PMM, or b) expressing an interest in taking the next step in their product marketing career, the role of a product marketer is still somewhat ambiguous. Amidst the ongoing clamor to ride the product marketing rollercoaster, we decided to establish what marketing actually is, seeking clari昀椀cation directly from the horse’s mouth: “As a product marketer, you’re your product’s CMO, cheerleader, and everything in between. Product marketing is the glue that brings marketing, sales, and engineering together to tell a great story and bring a product to market.” Elisa Lippincott, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft “We align the activities required to get the right products to the right customers so they solve their problems and realize value.” Robert Waters, Lead Product Marketer at Ivanti 6

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introduction “Product marketing is the connector between the different ‘dots’ that affect your organization. A dot could be a product, client, or department, each with their needs and goals. That’s why they all can bene昀椀t from product marketing; it’s the one department that’s focused on understanding how everyone can interact with each other.” Eduardo Gutiérrez, Director of Product Marketing at Sprout Solutions “Product marketing captivates audiences by showcasing a product’s unique value, fueling sales growth, and engaging customers through clever strategies and irresistible campaigns.” Jonathan Burns, Product Marketing Manager at Zivver “We ensure product success on the market by meeting the needs of current and future audiences.” Elizabeth Shcherbakova, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Depop 7

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introduction “As product marketers, we create and tell the best story about products to generate revenue and drive growth for the organization.” Amy Owens, Director of Product Marketing at Time Doctor “We understand the need, understand the magic of your product, connect them both, and inform customers on why they actually need it.” Aman Bhardwaj, Senior Product Marketing Manager at DBSync “Product marketing takes products to market, working with the teams who build the products to ensure the voice of the customer is in the room during roadmap discussions, and then creating the right messaging and positioning for the products the teams are building. We then work with marketing to create the right content to tactically take those products to market, and collaborate with sales to make sure they’re con昀椀dent and successful in selling those products.” Stephanie Pye, Lead Product Marketer at Momentive So, having put some 昀椀gurative meat on the bones and familiarized ourselves with how product marketers view themselves, let’s meet the participants who contributed to this report… 8

Part 2 Introducing the participants In the interests of gaining a deep understanding of the industry landscape, we surveyed experts the world over, honing in on the experiences of professionals from all walks of product marketing life. Our survey respondents ply their trade in an array of roles, in a variety of industries, at companies large and small - put simply, we left no stone unturned.

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Job title participants We were keen to gain perspectives from a diverse range of professionals within the product marketing space - and we weren’t disappointed. One-quarter of participants (25.2%) were Product Marketing Managers, more than any other group within our sample, closely followed by Senior Product Marketing Managers (23.8%). 10.2% of respondents selected the ‘Other’ option, with job titles including Content Manager, Go-to-Market Manager, Director of Project Management, and Executive VP Strategy & Innovation. 1%1% - Associate Product Marketing Manager 25.2%25.2% - Product Marketing Manager 23.8%23.8% - Senior Product Marketing Manager 2% - Principal Product Marketer 3.3%3.3% - Product Marketing Lead 1.3%1.3% - (People) Manager of Product Marketing 14.6%14.6% - Director of Product Marketing 2% - Senior Director of Product Marketing 4.6%4.6% - VP of Product Marketing 6%6% - Head of Product Marketing 6%6% - Chief Marketing Of昀椀cer 10.2% - Other 10

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Location participants Once upon a time, the mere mention of the term ‘product marketing’ would prompt a raise of an eyebrow and quizzical expression, with product marketing teams con昀椀ned to PMM hotbeds, predominantly in the United States and Europe. But now, companies the world over are incorporating teams into their company structure, as our results demonstrate. Whilst most of the respondents in this report were based in North America (68.9%), there were also participants from Europe (17.3%), Asia (6.6%), and Australasia (4.6%), whilst Africa and South America yielded 1.3%, respectively. North America Europe 68.9% 17.3% 6.6% Asia 1.3% 1.3% 4.6% South Africa America Australasia 11

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Customer types participants We wanted to understand what types of customers product marketers are serving at their companies. Because let’s face it, without the customer, product marketing efforts are futile. An overwhelming majority of the people we spoke with said they market to a B2B customer base (93.4%), with 13.9% indicating they cater to a B2C audience. In 10.6% of cases, respondents worked in B2D. B2B 93.4% B2C B2D 13.9% 10.6% Other 1.3% Customer type NB: Participants could select more than one option for this question. 12

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Type of product participants We were also curious to establish what kind of products the participants marketed. Over three-quarters of product marketers surveyed (76.2%) specialize in SaaS products, with just 4.6% indicating their priority sits exclusively with marketing physical products. In 12.6% of cases, product marketers market both physical and SaaS products, whilst 6.6% selected the ‘Other’ option. These PMMs specialized in areas such as simulation software, cloud services, and technical talent. 4.6% - Physical 76.2% - SaaS 12.6% - Both 6.6% - Other 13

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Industry Product marketing’s in昀氀uence is growing - fast. Last year, there were a broad variety of industries cited participants when we asked which areas PMMs were working in; it was great to see the function had cast its net far and wide. This year, the trend has continued, with one-quarter of respondents working in the Computer Software industry (27.2%), more than any other category. This comfortably outranked the number of product marketers who said they were working in Information Technology & Services (13.9%). 27.2% - Computer Software 13.9% - Information Technology & Services 7.3% - Financial Services 6.6% - Marketing & Advertising 4.6% - Computer & Network Security 3.3% - Hospital & Health Care 3.3% - Human Resources 2.6% - Education Management 2% - Automotive 1.3% - Electrical & Electronic Manufacturing 14

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Stage of growth participants When we asked participants to disclose the stage of growth for their company, most respondents were earning their corn at mid-growth companies with an experienced Go-to-Market team (31.8%). One-quarter of the respondents were from late growth/scale-ups (25.8%). 6.6% - Early pre-product market 昀椀t 17.9% - Early post-product market 昀椀t 31.8% - Mid-growth with an experienced Go-to-Market team 25.8% - Late growth/scale-up 17.9% - Enterprise 15

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Company culture participants When we analyzed the data for the 2022 edition of this report, 60.2% of respondents described their company culture as either product-昀椀rst or customer-昀椀rst, with 30.1% falling into these two categories, respectively. This year, however, product-昀椀rst and sales-昀椀rst were the two leading categories, with the representation of customer-昀椀rst product marketers dropping by 10.9%, and sales-昀椀rst responses rising by 8%. 4.7% of survey respondents selected the ‘Other’ category. When asked to elaborate, they described their company culture as ‘employee-昀椀rst’, ‘technology-昀椀rst’, and ‘service-led’. Company culture Percentage 2023 Percentage 2022 % increase/ decrease Product-昀椀rst 36.4% 30.1% +6.3% Customer-昀椀rst 19.2% 30.1% -10.9% Sales-昀椀rst 37.1% 29.1% +8% Marketing-昀椀rst 2.6% 6.4% -3.5% Other 4.7% 4.3% +0.4% To broaden our understanding of company culture (and why it’s important), we asked our selected crop of product marketing experts what the business values look like at their company, and how it can contributes to the success and growth of a product marketing team. 16

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “Working in the UAE/MENA region is different from the west, especially participants compared to the US. I believe this region has a lot of catching up in general to do to drive higher levels of pyschoglical safety, stronger communication and sense of community and my company is no exception to this and as a startup, life is frenetic. “As the marketing lead, I see it as my duty to champion this by leveraging my experience from more mature organisations and partner closely with the people team to deliver a sense of belonging and pride in the work as this will drive higher levels of productivity and growth. “My product marketing team is setup for success in its pursuit to drive a healthy cutlure because it’s the connective tissue between product, sales and the customer, and automatically breaks down silos and creates a sense of direction and focus.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 17

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “My division places a lot of emphasis on psychological safety and participants communicating openly and transparently about what is working/not working. This visibility fosters an inclusive environment where we are always iterating and not afraid to try new things. As a result, each time we carry out a product marketing task, the outcome gets better. This success breaks down silos, fosters greater collaboration across stakeholders, and drives alignment. As we improve upon the way we do things with each iteration, you begin to identify the ‘specialists’ in the team. This is valuable insight into scaling these best practices as well as developing these individuals further along their desired career path.” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis “Spendesk is widely known for its strong culture of ownership, positivity, caring, and being daring, which makes it a great place to be a product marketer. “Firstly, product marketing is a very cross-functional role, which is facilitated by our company’s culture - everyone is willing to help, work towards a common goal, and move things forward. “Secondly, it’s sometimes hard to measure the ROI of product marketing efforts. We sometimes try and fail. And Spendesk has a culture that is not afraid to take risks.” Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk 18

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “The notion of ‘culture’ is a top-down thing, and Zi昀氀ow’s co-founders are participants extremely cognizant of that. “When creating our employee handbook and core values, they took care to bold-face ideas like “The customer is the hero”, “Progress over perfection”, “Focus on the right things” and “Be curious, humble, and fair”. So, as a PMM, it’s amazing to know that the type of values that I 昀椀nd best suited to my own success are literally part of the company’s DNA.” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow “The culture at Airbase stems from our company values which puts everyone in control of our destiny. “Every member and every team is empowered to make their mark on the company and help be a core contributor to our success. This empowerment allows us to think outside the box and take educated bets, move fast, learn faster and grow both personally and professionally. “As a product marketing team, this gives us ownership to prioritize what we know is most important to the business, ideate on how to tackle problems with new approaches and own the success of our business. This couldn’t be more important, especially for the product marketing function which covers a wide breadth and depth responsibilities across the business.” Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase 19

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “Culture is the responsibility of every employee and is an incredibly participants important part of life at LinkedIn. “We focus on trust, transformation, acting like an owner, inspiring excellence, and honesty – for each other, our customers, our members, and the wider community. Our culture and values are re昀氀ected in everything from planning, hiring, talent development, and our ways of working. “Having a strong culture allows each employee to do the best work and help each other.” Jen Bunting, Head of Product Marketing EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn 20

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Total experience as a product marketer participants The sample size for this report was generous, gifting us a sample of product marketers with varying degrees of experience within the 昀椀eld. Just over one-quarter of the people we spoke with (27.2%) had been product marketers for 1 - 3 years, whilst this 昀椀gure was followed by just over one-昀椀fth who’d been in the industry for over a decade (22.5%). 21.9% of respondents said they had 4 - 6 years of experience under their belt, with a further 18.5% revealing that they’d been riding the PMM bandwagon for 7 - 10 years. Last, but by no means least, 9.9% of respondents were relatively new to the industry, having been a PMM for less than a year. Less than 1 year 9.9%9.9% 10+ years 22.5%22.5% 1 - 3 years 27.2%27.2% 7 - 10 years 18.5%18.5% 4 - 6 years 21.9%21.9% 21

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Total experience before product marketing participants Report contributors provided an indication of how many years’ experience they had in the world of PMM before their career in product marketing. The 10+ years category was the most popular category with 27.8% of people selecting this option, though it’s worth mentioning there was a difference of just 0.6% between this and the next category, with 27.2% of product marketers selecting the 4 - 6 years option. Less than 1 year 6%6% 10+ years 27.8%27.8% 1 - 3 years 20.5%20.5% 7 - 10 years 18.5%18.5% 4 - 6 years 27.2%27.2% 22

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Most recent, non-product marketing job participants Our results suggested professionals are transitioning into product marking careers on the back of an established career in an alternative sector. We asked participants to disclose their most recent, non-product marketing job, to try and establish some idea of what a pathway into product marketing looks like, with roles including: Compliance Coordinator Director of Marketing Communications Director of Revenue Operations Senior Segment Marketer Head of Venture Lab Content Manager Marketing Director Strategic Sourcing Manager Director of Innovation Medical Director Head of Partner Marketing Design Manager Research Analyst Content Strategist Marketing Analyst Content Manager Inbound Marketing Analyst Business Advisory Consultant Growth Marketing Manager Chief of Staff Marketing Content Creator Partner Relationship Manager Digital Marketing Specialist Public Relations Manager Marketing Communications Manager Vice President of Business Development Communication Designer Technical Writer Head of Integrated Marketing & Creative Operations Customer Success Manager Marketing Programs Specialist Growth Marketing Manager Senior Manager of Sales Enablement Support Engineer Product Implementation Consultant Product Implementation Consultant Journalist Product Education Lead Regional Marketing Manager National Training Manager 23

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Why do people transition into product marketing? participants An increasing number of professionals are leaving familiarity behind and dipping their toes into the realm of product marketing. We can’t say we blame them - yet we’re bound to say that, right? So, we sought an impartial perspective and asked product marketers who’ve made the leap of faith to outline why they opted to seek pastures new. “There was a lack of resources for new product development, and a great need from the company to align our products with marketing and sales efforts.” Eduardo Gutiérrez, Director of Innovation & Product Marketing at Sprout Solutions “I wanted to be closer to the product.” David Palacios, Product Marketing Manager at Distrito “I was keen to learn how to win the market.” Elizabeth Shcherbakova, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Depop 24

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “I needed a career that was less transactional and routine, and I didn’t want to exclusively be in a customer-facing role. I wanted to sit in between sales, participants marketing, and product. I wanted more balance between art and science, analytics and creativity.” Stephanie Pye, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Momentive.ai “Product marketing was the last area of marketing I hadn’t practiced, although I did some in my marcom role.” Elisa Lippincott, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Security Incubations at Microsoft “I transitioned into product marketing because I wanted to think more strategically about product messaging and overarching strategy.” Leanna Jackson, Product Marketing Manager, Growth, at Chatbooks 25

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the “I was looking for the opportunity to move toward a more marketing- participants focused position where I could leverage my relationships to create phenomenal work.” John Reagan, Product Marketing Specialist at Park Place Technologies “I was driven by a love for the customer voice and storytelling aspect while launching products, enhancing adoption and keeping products top of mind for customers.” Jill Sawyer, Product Marketing Manager at RLDatix “When getting my MBA, I had thought I would transition to product management. Instead, I really enjoyed the marketing classes. I’d planned to go into brand management at that point, and more in the consumer space, but after interning, I decided to stay in technology. That’s how I found out about product marketing.” Kathryn Vargas, Senior Product Marketing Manager, North America at Backbase 26

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Introducing the Educational background participants Having dissected what our participants and their companies look like, now, let’s take a look at some of the most common educational routes taken by product marketers, using the top 昀椀ve areas of study identi昀椀ed in 2022 (Marketing, Business, Economics, Finance, and Product Design) as a starting point. Area of study Percentage 2023 Percentage 2022 % increase/ decrease Marketing 36.4% 38% -1.6% Business 33.1% 34.3% -1.2% Economics 4% 14.1% -10.1% Finance 5.3% 4.3% +1% Product design 1.3% 3.1% -1.8% Other 17.9% 4.4% +13.5% I didn’t go to college 2% 1.8% +2% 17.9% of respondents fell into the ‘Other’ category, with areas of study including Medicine, Architecture, Journalism, Advertising, Mechanical Engineering, and Psychology. 27

Part 3 How has product marketing changed since 2022? 3

State of Product Marketing report 2023 How has product Whether it’s the cyclical nature of sporting dominance, trends in the world of fashion, or the latest ‘It Girl’ in the music industry, everything in life is prone to evolution and change - and product marketing marketing isn’t exempt from the rule. changed since We were intrigued to decipher how product marketers had seen the industry change during the course of the last 12 months. So, we did what we do best and asked them to feedback on their 2022? 昀椀rst-hand experiences. “Product Marketing Managers are being sought after - more than ever. The talents of working cross-functionally, leading complex Go-to-Markets, and bringing together a business and product perspective is being noticed. “The time is now to continue working across the organization to connect teams, and deliver and execute strategic plans that drive business value.” Holly Watson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) “In more mature product marketing functions, there’s a shift towards process mapping and the introduction of project management methodologies to scale best practices and eliminate bottle-necks. “For example Asana is used to map out every stage of a product launch and drive alignment across demand gen, content and digital. “There’s also been an introduction of templates to leverage best practices.” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis 29

State of Product Marketing report 2023 How has product “We’re seeing an increase in the number of hybrid product marketing teams marketing who have to support both sales and product led growth models. “This isn’t surprising: product marketers develop and support the changed since Go-to-Market motions of their companies, so naturally with the growth in 2022? product-led growth, product marketers evolve too. This requires new ways of working, faster execution cycles and new skills.” Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk “When I answered this question in the State of Product Marketing Report 2022, I had said that the role of a product marketer—and their core job responsibilities—were continuing to evolve and expand. “One year later, I think this has led to putting product marketers in a position to have greater in昀氀uence in buying decisions—they’re quite literally the ICP for an ever-growing number of SaaS tools. “So, as the economy experiences some turbulence, and budgets start to shrink, product marketers are now being seen as an extremely hot commodity by software sales reps. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive at least one cold-call from a BDR looking to get me into a buying cycle. Product marketers are suddenly the belles of the ball (and I’m kinda here for it).” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow 30

State of Product Marketing report 2023 How has product “Since 2022, product marketing has continued to take an increasingly marketing strategic role. This transformation is evident in several key areas. “First, there’s a stronger focus on messaging and positioning, emphasizing changed since the importance of communicating a unique value proposition to 2022? differentiate in a crowded market. This requires a deep understanding of the target customer, the product and the market. “Additionally, product marketers are becoming more involved in roadmap development, ensuring alignment between product features, bene昀椀ts, and the evolving market needs. This includes strategizing product launches and updates to maximize market impact. “Competitive intelligence has also become crucial, as businesses operate in highly competitive environments. Here, product marketers play a vital role in gathering and analyzing competitor data to identify opportunities and threats and informing strategic decisions. “Successful product marketers are expected to contribute strategically moreso, and need to be the experts of their business in the above and more.” Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase 31

State of Product Marketing report 2023 How has product “It’s very evident leaders of organisations are seeing the economic value marketing add of including product marketers into organisations in the last couple of years. There’s been an explosion of product marketing positions going into changed since the market place since 2022. 2022? “I believe the function has morphed from an outbound comms role from a few years ago to a fully 昀氀edged strategic partnership role in both the B2C and B2B space. Product marketers are becoming a lot stronger in taking a strategic decisions and data driven tactical role (experimentation and leveraging more tools) and know how to create the foundations to get things out of the door. “I believe a lot of this stems from having a strong connection to the product and the creation of adaptable frameworks which has been a great co-pilot for product marketers. I’m also seeing professionals playing a stronger role in the brand identity conversation and how that ties into the product. “Overall the function has come into its own. I’ll also add that SaaS businesses really helped build a home for product marketers and B2B product marketers are vital to the sales cycle. Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 32

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 4 Roles, responsibilities, and team infrastructure 33 4

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Who do product marketers report to? responsibilities, It’s a rich source of debate as to who product marketers should report to in their company, but there’s no de昀椀nitive answer to this question - it varies from company to company, and from and team team to team. infrastructure That said, this didn’t deter us from asking the product marketers in this survey about who they report to at their company. It came as no surprise that product marketers cited marketing (57%) and product (19.2%) as the two departments they report to. There was a reduction of 0.6% in the number of product marketers who said they reported directly to their CEO, but it’s worth noting the marginal nature of this decrease. However, it was interesting to note an increase in the number of respondents who selected the ‘Other’ option, with this jumping from 5.9% in 2022 to 13.9% in 2023. When asked to elaborate on their direct reports, responses included VP of Growth and Innovation, Chief Strategy Of昀椀cer, Product Commercialization, Chief Growth/Revenue Of昀椀cer, Head of Portfolio Product Marketing, Chief Product and Marketing Of昀椀cer, and Solutions Lead. Other 13.9%13.9% Business development Marketing 1.3%1.3% CEO 57%57% 8.6%8.6% Product 19.2%19.2% 34

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Product marketing team size responsibilities, As was the case in 2022, product marketing teams comprising 1 - 2 people were most common; this segment increased by 6.5% this year, with 46.4% of participants selecting this option. and team 31.8% of people indicated that they had 3 - 5 people in their team, an increase of 0.5%, whilst 11.3% infrastructure selected the 6 - 10 option - a decrease of 7.7% when compared to 2022. Ending this section on a high, there were 10.5% of participants who said their product marketing team exceeded ten people, which is 0.7% higher than 2022. 1 - 2 46.4% 39.9% 3 - 5 31.8% 31.3% 6 - 10 11.3% 19% 10+ 10.5% 9.8% Product marketing team size Avg. % (2023) Avg. % (2022) 35

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Team structure responsibilities, We’ve already established direct reporting for product marketers varies depending on a variety of factors, and the same can be said for how the product marketing team is structured. and team We asked product marketers to explain how their team is structured at their company. Here’s an infrastructure outline of our 昀椀ndings, in accordance with stage of growth. Early pre-product market 昀椀t “I’m the Head of Marketing, and report to “I’m the 昀椀rst marketer at my company, the CEO. I handle both product marketing so I own everything relating to marketing. and demand generation. I am the sole Strategy, execution, etc. I report to the marketer at my startup. There’re 昀椀ve Head of Product and Market Strategy founders: one CEO, one engineer, one who has no marketing experience. He CFO, one product designer, and myself.” reports to the CEO, who has experience running marketing organizations. We have a Sales Ops Specialist with a dotted “We’re structured by subsidiary and by line to me.” product type, i.e. security, modern work, business apps, dev-ops, etc.” “The Senior Director of Product Marketing “I report to the VP of Solutions and reports to the CMO, and product marketing reports to the Senior Director Customer Marketing, and have four product marketers that report to me.” of Product Marketing.” 36

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Early post-product market 昀椀t responsibilities, “I report to the Head of Marketing, I have “I have one product marketer and team one Product Marketing Specialist and reporting to me and I report to the VP one Digital Marketer, and I’m currently of Marketing, who reports to our CRO. infrastructure hiring two additional roles. Campaign, Product marketers kick off all campaign product messaging design, UX, digital, efforts and also manage content and marketing automation form my creation to support campaigns. Our team’s remit. All four roles will report to overall marketing team is pretty lean.” me.” “I report to a B2B Customer Marketing “I report to the Global Head of Marketing. Manager and my colleague reports to There’re three other product marketers a different Head of Marketing for a B2C each responsible for one or more product. Neither of us have direct reports products. There’s another person solely and we’re responsible for our respective responsible for sales enablement. product suites.” Product marketers work with content marketers to get top-of-the-funnel content created for respective products. The same applies to the Demand Gen “I’m a team of one and the 昀椀rst product team.” marketer at the company building from scratch. I report directly to the Head of Marketing, but coordinate with both sales, customer success, business development representatives, and product in regularly scheduled meetings.” 37

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Mid-growth with an established Go-to-Market team responsibilities, “We’ve just changed from being a “I report directly to the CMO. I’ve one and team centralized team. I was reporting globally market research/competitive intelligence to a product marketing boss under product marketer reporting to me. We infrastructure strategy. We’re now split into different work across areas of subject matter teams. I am reporting to a General expertise for a portfolio of products.” Manager of USA. They’re now on a mixed demand generation team supporting Europe.” “I report to the Marketing Director (who reports to the VP of growth). Other team members include an Operations Marketing Manager, Content Marketing “We’ve two Head of Product Marketing (one EMEA and one US). Each Head Specialist, and Digital Marketing of Product Marketing manages two - Specialist. As the sole product marketer, I three Associate and Product Marketing don’t have any direct reports.” Managers. The Head of Product Marketing reports to a Director of Product “I report to the Senior Director of Product Marketing, who reports to the Chief Marketing. I’ve no direct reports, but work Operating Of昀椀cer.” closely with Product Managers, sales enablement, and marketing (especially content and demand gen).” 38

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Late growth scale-up responsibilities, “I report to a Senior Director of Product “The VP of Solutions Marketing oversees and team three Solutions Marketing Directors; each Marketing who leads the entire product of these cover a different technology marketing team and reports to the infrastructure area. Each Director oversees a handful CMO. I manage the team for two of of product marketers and technical our product lines as a Director, which marketers. Solutions marketing also includes two product marketers and two includes our content marketing team.” associates.” “We’re split by product pillar areas “I report to the Senior VP of Marketing. I’ve and all report into a Head of Product two direct reports; one Product Marketing Marketing, who reports to the Head Manager and one Principal Product of Product Marketing/Growth/Web/ Marketing Manager.” Localization, who reports to the CMO.” 39

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Enterprise responsibilities, “Product marketing reports to marketing. “I report to a business development lead and team There’re other roles that are part of who reports to our product and business product marketing, including competitive developers director. I have no direct infrastructure intelligence, customer advocacy, and reports.” 昀椀rst-party events.” “I report to the Director of Product “There’s no formal product marketing Marketing and work with a Senior role, but we have sales enablement Specialist of Product Marketing.” which supports industry teams with sales and pitch materials. The solutions group works to develop our own ‘products’ so our client leads can listen for problems “The services marketing organization and introduce us as a solution.” reports up to the product business unit. We align with corporate marketing.” 40

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Which teams do product marketing work with most? responsibilities, The adoption of a cross-collaborative approach is pivotal to the success of any product marketing team. The companies with the best product marketing teams foster a culture of communication and team and support throughout the business. infrastructure We were keen to see which departments our respondents work with most frequently and found in most cases, PMMs work with product (89.4%) and marketing (83.4%), which came as no great surprise. A takeaway we were encouraged by was over half of the participants (55%) identi昀椀ed leadership at their respective companies as one of the teams they collaborated with the most - could this represent a sliding doors moment in the relationship between product marketers and the powers that be? Watch this space… NB: Respondents could select more than one answer for this question. 89.4% - Product 83.4% - Marketing 75.5% - Sales 27.8% - Business development 44.4% - Customer success 10.6% - Engineering 44.4% - Sales enablement 55% - Leadership 3.3% - Other 41

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Supplementary layers of product marketing teams responsibilities, “The more the merrier…” There’re some teams that are seemingly part of the product marketing furniture, i.e. sales, customer and team success, etc. - but who says companies can’t broaden their horizons and extend their scope to other infrastructure areas of the company? When we asked product marketers which other types of specialist areas were part of their team, 27.2% of respondents said sales enablement was also part of their product marketing team, closely followed by customer marketing (26.5%) and competitive intelligence (23.8%). Just under one-昀椀fth of the respondents (18.5%) said pricing was involved in the PMM mix, while 11.3% indicated competitive enablement is incorporated into their strategy. 14.9% of product marketers picked the ‘Other’ option, earmarking alternatives such as: • Technical marketing engineers • Web/growth and localization • Content marketing • Customer insights • Business development NB: Respondents could select more than one answer for this question. Competitive Sales Customer intelligence enablement marketing Pricing 23.8% 27.2% 26.5% 18.5% Competitive Other enablement 14.9% 11.3% 42

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Common problems when reporting to internal teams responsibilities, It goes without saying, a seamless product marketing world, is the dream product marketing world. But therein lies the problem - as it stands, it’s a ‘dream’, and product marketers often encounter and team problems when reporting to internal teams such as product, marketing, and C-suiters, as they infrastructure strive to accomplish short and long-term goals. “There’s a lack of understanding of the “When we’re reporting to marketing, scope and value, dif昀椀culty measuring we’re included in projects too late qualitative outcomes, and little support and too close to release and there’s a from C-suite due to the previous two dif昀椀culty in measuring the impact of work factors.” to justify spend on the team. Similarly, when we’re reporting to product, there’s no marketing budget, and we have to “There’re multiple competing compete for creative production and marketing channels resources with perspectives and ideas to navigate from senior leadership.” marketing teams who have a budget.” “CX is only a minor priority for product to “Product marketers are expected to work deliver the MVP. They often disregard the on their non-core skills, i.e. list building, value of clear communications.” demand generation, and more. We’re also not given directed resources to have in昀氀uence on designers or content “There’s a lack of focus on execution marketers.” of strategic marketing; they tend to reference visual marketing heavily.” 43

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, responsibilities, “In my experience, reporting into one “At previous companies, there was department often means less visibility, always a big disconnect when product and team alignment and/or collaboration with the marketing reported to product. Product other departments. For instance, when marketers tend to be treated as infrastructure we’ve sat in marketing, we’ve been really engineering’s ‘marketing team’ to pretty involved in the production of assets/web, up some slides versus having an actual events, and branding decisions -- but seat at the table and bringing market it takes more effort to stay connected insights, etc., to the discussion. There still to the product org and sales. And vice seems to be some misunderstanding versa -- when we sat in the product org, on what product marketing actually is we had less oversight and connection to and what value the role can bring to an our partners in marketing.” organization.” “The main problems I see are product/ “Reporting to marketing is the biggest sales leaders will have a to-do list in challenge. There’re budget constraints mind and won’t think strategically. This and other teams see product marketing leads the product marketing team to be as a ‘support team and order taker’, taken away from large initiatives. The instead of a valued and trusted partner.” other problem is when leaders need help understanding storytelling/narrative design and want to bring singular features to the market. Again, these problems stem from a need for more understanding of the PMM function and what it can do when run correctly.” 44

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Product Marketing Manager : Product Manager ratio responsibilities, We looked at how teams are structured in terms of the ratio between Product Marketing Managers and Product Managers. and team The top 昀椀ve PMM : PM ratios ranged from 1:1 to 1:5, with the most common ratio being 1:3, mirroring the infrastructure trend from 2022. It’s worth noting, though, that the overall percentage for this ratio has decreased by 4.2%, with an increase in the 1:1 (+2.2%), 1:4 (+2.2%), and 1:5 categories (+4.1%). 22.1% 17.9% 15.3% 12.6% 13.3% 13.3% 11.9% 11.1% 10.4% 9.2% 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:4 1:5 PMM to PM ratio Avg. % (2023) Avg. % (2022) 45

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, We asked product marketers what they considered to be an effective Product Marketing Manager responsibilities, to Product Manager ratio. and team “I don’t think the ratio should be “PMM:PM”, but more like “PMM:Product Line”, infrastructure or “PMM:User Persona”. “The fact is there isn’t always a 1:1 relationship between one product manager and one product line. A lot of product managers own multiple parts of their product and work with several engineering teams. “I feel that if there’re different products or feature sets that appeal to different customer pro昀椀les or sets of customer needs, that’s where the alignment should be. “So, if a company can’t align a product manager to a product line, then leadership should make its best effort to do so at the PMM level. Because product marketing isn’t “the voice of the product manager”, we’re the voice of the customer they’re trying to build for. Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow 46

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, “There isn’t a de昀椀nitive answer to this as it largely depends on various responsibilities, factors. These include the business itself, the product lines, and Go-to- Market structures, among other things. and team “However, I’m of the 昀椀rm belief that a product marketer must have infrastructure suf昀椀cient capacity to delve deep into their product portfolio. This depth of understanding, encompassing the persona, product, and market, is crucial. “Only with such nuanced knowledge can a product marketer create the foundational messaging and positioning that’ll enable their product to thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace. “This approach also ensures optimal ef昀椀ciency across the Go-to-Market engine. Thus, you must question whether your current ratio permits your team to reach this level of understanding. Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase “This depends on the type of business; there’s no universal answer to the ration of PMMs to PMs. “A successful product doesn’t depend on this ratio; the key is to develop clear communications and collaborations between both parties, understand their roles and responsibilities, and how one can support the other to drive growth and success for the product.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 47

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Main product marketing responsibilities responsibilities, Much has been made of the fact that product marketing offers the opportunity to enter a multifaceted and varied role. But which parts of the role do product marketers spend more time and team on, than others? infrastructure We asked product marketers to identify what they considered the main responsibilities of their role, and this reaf昀椀rmed our stance that you need to be a true all-rounder to thrive in the industry. As was the case in 2022, product positioning and messaging were the main responsibilities for a product marketer, with this option selected in 90.1% of instances. NB: Respondents could select more than one answer for this question. 90.1% - Product positioning and messaging 86.8% - Managing product launches 80.8% - Creating sales collateral and updating internal documents 68.2% - Storytelling 66.9% - Sales enablement 64.2% - Building personas 58.9% - Competitive intelligence 58.3% - Managing the website and customer-facing documents 55% - Reporting on product marketing success Responsibility 53.6% - Content marketing (e.g. blog posts, articles, e-books, reports, webinars, etc.) 43% - Customer segmentation 36.4% - Customer marketing and advocacy 20.5% - Product roadmap planning 18.5% - Onboarding customers (e.g. onboarding emails, webinars, etc.) 10.6% - Other 48

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Delegation of responsibilities responsibilities, So, it’s one thing outlining the most common responsibilities within a product marketing team - and team but how are these tasks delegated and divided between the team members? infrastructure “We’ve a matrix structure, where there’re “Whilst we’re building, I’m giving people speci昀椀c people aligned with each experience across the breadth of our business unit, but multiple people within portfolio. When I’ve suf昀椀cient resources I’ll the team can be involved in each project align people to products.” or deliverable.” “We’re split by personas which span “Product marketing roles are a hybrid the entire product suite and then we between user-based and product- each have speci昀椀c products we support based. Individual products are not fully directly for launches/maintenance. Some owned end-to-end by a single person.” PMMs on our team are not persona focused and exclusively product focused e.g., integrations.” “My current company is very small - thus, there are two people actively “We work on one core platform with working on marketing - one more on the related capabilities, so we divide tasks by competitive intelligence side and the other on product, content, and promotion industry vertical.” side.” 49

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, responsibilities, “Because I believe product marketing “We delegate in accordance with subject is the foundation of everything else, my matter expertise - I handle internal and team two marketing generalists each own a enablement/product launches for all product, including communications with products. Then my direct report handles infrastructure product management, sales collateral, market research and competitive sales enablement, and product release intelligence for all products.” announcements. The objective is to help them grow in thinking strategically about marketing including the foundations “We’re segmented by pillar and each of messaging, positioning, personas, pillar has assigned products. We own competition, Go-to-Market strategy, etc., each product end-to-end.” and give them more 昀氀exibility as they grow in their careers.” “We’re a double-sided marketplace, so “We sit on product squads that’re each PM is responsible for one customer focused on key aspects of the product. (retailer vs brand) and then we work For example, a dashboard squad across all product verticals.” consists of the product, marketing, and engineering members responsible for building dashboard and analytics “Our product team is focused on features. The product marketer for different areas of the customer journey dashboard is responsible for all launch for the most part and we have a product strategy, research, etc related to releases marketer aligned with each area of from the squad.” focus.” 50

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, responsibilities, “We divide responsibilities according “Products are owned end-to-end plus to the level. For example, we have one product marketer is Go-to-Market and team Senior Product Marketing Managers focused and one is Intelligence (market, that make strategic tasks among the customer, competitive) focused.” infrastructure product squads teams and the analysts, specializing in speci昀椀c topics that will support product marketing in creating: “We’ve just hired our 昀椀rst product communications, launch events, webinars, product newsletters, etc.” marketer, but plan to have the team be full-stack marketers with end-to-end ownership over speci昀椀c product areas.” “We own different areas and those areas have multiple products within them. I work in cyber - so for example - one “We divided our work between product area is business-critical security, another lines end-to-end. One of us focuses on core (existing) product features/ is threat detection, investigation, and releases and the other focuses on net response.” new product features and those things coming through M&A.” 51

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, “We’re currently in transition and trying to 昀椀gure that out. It’s been hard. The responsibilities, product manager has been moved off the product marketing team, but the VP of Marketing (me) is responsible for the product roadmap.” and team “I keep it simple and focus on themes that compliment the user funnel, so infrastructure demand gen, sales enablement, advocacy & expansion.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech “At Spendesk, the product marketing team is split along three key focus areas: (1) the core team that supports sales-led motion; (2) the growth team that supports self-serve, growth and product-led motion; and (3) customer advocacy and marketing team.” Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk “In the “old world”, there was a school of thought whereby you needed a product marketer for every product, but now, I’m now seeing a change to this approach whereby product marketers are responsible for all products within a particular theme. For example, a product marketer for search and analytics, one for content etc. “I think this is a good approach as it allows the scaling of best practices and leveraging of cross-functional synergies.” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis 52

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, “Zi昀氀ow makes software for creative and marketing operations managers, so responsibilities, the structure of our organization is a bit different than most. “One of my peers is our in-house creative ops person, and we have a and team dedicated team of visual, video, UX, and motion graphics designers. infrastructure “As a result, product marketing doesn’t really need to own “how it looks”, only “how it appeals to a customer”. My team not only owns PMM-related activities (customer marketing, sales enablement, product launches, etc), but also broader content strategy (content marketing, social media management, long-form deliverables, etc). “This gives us the opportunity to have end-to-end alignment from product management down through to the blog through to the LinkedIn posts all the way to the sales and customer success teams. “It’s the 昀椀rst time I’ve been part of an organization that’s structured like this, and I don’t ever want to go back to the way I had it before!” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow 53

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Is the product marketing role Product-focused responsibilities, or Sales-focused? When we asked product marketers if they considered their role to be product-focused or and team sales-focused, 55% of respondents said their role is product-focused, while 45% of participants infrastructure said they considered the product marketing role to be sales-focused. With 89.4% of PMMs working with product teams, more than any other, compared to 75.4% of PMMs who work with sales, this makes a degree of sense. Sales-focused 45%45% Product-focused 55%55% 54

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Number of products supported responsibilities, When we asked product marketers how many products they support, 33.7% said they support and team over 昀椀ve products, replicating the outcome from 2022, when 32% fell into this category. infrastructure 33.7% 32% 19.9% 19.9% 20.2% 19% 17.8% 16.6% 9.9% 11% 1 2 3 4 5+ Number of products supported Avg. % (2023) Avg. % (2022) 55

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Collaboration with non-product marketers responsibilities, The lack of understanding of the product marketing role is a long-term source of irritation among PMMs. and team That said, PMMs do have a role to play in helping their peers understand the function - and this’ll infrastructure only improve with more time spent in the presence of those outside product marketing circles. Just under half of respondents (47.7%) said they have 4 - 6 daily interactions with colleagues outside the product marketing team. This follows the same trend as our report from last year, when this option was also the most common. 0.7% - None 17.9% - 1 - 3 47.7% - 4 - 6 17.2% - 7 - 10 16.5% - 10+ 56

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Total time attending meetings responsibilities, The importance of attending and hosting meetings can’t be overstated; they’re an opportunity to share ideas, innovate, address key areas of discussion, collaborate, and problem solve. and team That said, how much time are product marketers spending in internal and external meetings? infrastructure The results left nothing to the imagination: product marketers are spending signi昀椀cantly more time attending internal meetings than external meetings; on average, 10+ hours are spent per week attending internal meetings (39%), while the average time spent in external meetings was 1 - 3 hours (44.4%). 44.4% 38.4% 39% 23.2% 21.9% 13.9% 13.2% 2% 2.6% 1.4% Less than an 1 - 3 4 - 6 7 - 10 10+ hour hours hours hours hours Total time attending meetings Time spent on internal meetings (per week) Time spent on external meetings (per week) 57

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Roles, Customer correspondence responsibilities, There’s no doubting the importance of correspondence among colleagues, but liaising with customers is equally important to success. and team We asked product marketers how often they liaise with customers, and most of the product infrastructure marketers we spoke with indicated they speak on a monthly basis (33.8%). A takeaway from this section of the report we found particularly interesting, (and arguably worrying), is over one-昀椀fth of PMMs (22.5%) said they never speak with customers themselves, opting instead to rely on feedback from other teams to guide their decisions. Other Everyday 7.9%7.9% 1%1% 2 - 3 times a week 13.2%13.2% Never, we gather feedback from Once a week other teams 11.3%11.3% 22.5%22.5% Every other week 7.9%7.9% Monthly 33.8%33.8% 58

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 5 Product marketing KPIs 59 5

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Common product marketing KPIs marketing Whilst we all appreciate the value and bene昀椀ts product marketing brings to the table, you need to have clear-cut goals in place to demonstrate distinguishable value to key stakeholders. KPIs However, with a variety of KPIs and metrics at the disposal of product marketing teams worldwide, which are being tracked the most? NB: Participants could select more than one option for this question. 25.8% Go-to-Market 60.9% Increased sales 2023’s results strategy 64.9% quali昀椀ed leads 29.9% 2022’s results Generate new 49.7% 24.5% Active users 19.5% revenue 54.5% Up-sell 37.1% 22.5% customers 28.6% Asset utilization 26% Increased 35.8% 19.2% marketing Customer 49.4% satisfaction scores 19.5% quali昀椀ed leads Increased win 35.8% Increased trial 17.2% rate 28.6% sign-ups 23.4% 35.1% We don’t 17.2% Cross-sell 15.6% customers 22.1% have KPIs Sales 31.1% Time taken to 7.9% complete actions 13% con昀椀dence 33.8% 29.8% 6.6% Customer retention 32.5% Other 2.6% 60

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Which teams support product marketers with metrics marketing reporting? Product marketers bend over backwards to make the impossible happen, creating compelling KPIs messaging, devising meticulous Go-to-Market strategies, and designing invaluable sales enablement assets - to name just a few of their responsibilities. Given the burgeoning workload involved with the role, PMMs inevitably need support to alleviate the workload and maintain performance. So, which teams are playing their part and contributing to the metrics process? We asked survey participants to identify the teams that’re contributing to the metrics and reporting process at their company, and found over half of the respondents (53.6%) earmarked marketing as the team that support metrics reporting. This was closely followed by sales (49.7%). 19.9% - Product marketing 29.1% - Product 53.6% - Marketing 49.7% - Sales 14.6% - Customer success 24.5% - Leadership 11.9% - Other 61

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Product marketing’s contribution to goals and strategy marketing To establish how much product marketers feel they contribute to KPIs and metrics at their company, we asked participants to rate their input on a scale of 0 - 10. 10 being the most KPIs in昀氀uential and 0 the least in昀氀uential. This generated an average rating of 5.9 out of 10, 0.6 lower than 2022. 5.9 Average 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5.3% 4.6% 2% 7.9% 11.3% 13.2% 8.6% 9.9% 17.2% 5.3% 14.6% 62

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product How often are KPIs and metrics results shared with marketing other teams? It’s all well and good keeping a tab on KPIs and metrics, but you need to ensure you’re sharing KPIs results with internal teams to optimize the effectiveness of your 昀椀ndings. We discovered that in most cases, the product marketers surveyed were sharing results monthly (37.7%). However, it was a surprise to see that 9.3% of product marketers don’t share 昀椀ndings with other teams, at all. Daily We don’t share 昀椀ndings with other teams 2.6%2.6% 9.3%9.3% Once a week Annually 2.6%2.6% 19.9%19.9% Monthly A couple of times 37.7%37.7% a week 11.3%11.3% Every other week 6.6%6.6% Less than once a month 9.9%9.9% 63

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “It’s imperative that product marketers share KPIs and metrics with other marketing internal teams, failure to do so, results in a lack of alignment. “My KPI’s are aligned with my counterparts in other departments and this is KPIs helpful as we’re all marching in the same direction with the same priority on adhering to these business priorities. “In other organisations, it hasn’t always been the case as what’s been important to me in my goals didn’t feature in my counterpart’s. Always remember, what gets measured gets done!” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis “Sharing KPIs is crucial in running an agile business. It should also be a two- way street, meaning that other teams should share their KPIs with product marketing, too. If you’re not racking and sharing KPIs, then you risk losing opportunities, time, and revenue. “We share these in a variety of ways given that the team is global. In a nutshell, KPI updates are included in weekly launch update email, status review meetings, and quarterly/annual reviews.” Jen Bunting, Head of Product Marketing EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn 64

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “Sharing data-driven results based on historical benchmarks is a standard marketing practice at AWS. Communicating those KPI is part of the planning process. “We begin by writing a narrative form document articulating the plan and KPIs its goals. Progress reports are shared regularly, and a summary report is written at the end of the project. This communication is vital to maintain strong collaboration and trust across teams. Holly Watson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) How do product marketers share results with internal teams? Whilst it was disappointing to see some product marketers don’t share their 昀椀ndings with their peers, we’re keen to focus on the positives and recognize the fact that 90.3% are following recommended protocol. There’re numerous systems product marketers can use to share results - here’re some of the most common tools used among the PMMs we spoke with. If you’re part of the 9.3% club, heed our advice: make notes, and take action! 65

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Syncing and aligning metrics with other teams marketing It’s essential that product marketing metrics align with those in place within other teams to ensure personal and collective success can be achieved. KPIs Oftentimes, companies fail to ensure metrics the product marketing team is using complement those other departments are measuring. This can make it more dif昀椀cult for the organization to reach its goals. The million-dollar question: How do product marketers align product marketing metrics with metrics used by other teams, such as product, revenue, and Go-to-Market? “We generate product marketing targets “We tie our value to churn reduction, after establishing targets for sales and customer retention rates, trial activation, product.” and traf昀椀c.” “RevOps owns the majority of metrics. We “It depends on the product and goals, share systems and regular touch bases.” but goals are established before marketing initiatives begin.” “We align to other teams’ metrics, and measure sentiment by number of CX “We identify metrics separately, before identifying overlapping/informing tickets and app reviews.” metrics.” “This has been challenging for us, but we’re starting to collaborate better and “We work closely with our product and marketing stakeholders to make those are sharing in 1:1 environments/check-ins and in semi-regular readouts.” decisions collaboratively.” 66

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “We have company-level goals “I estimate the average opportunity marketing around things like annual recurring value per historical data and compute revenue, product innovation, etc. and that against the product group’s revenue KPIs department-level goals are expected to goals per product line/launch.” support those things. There’s a natural alignment when that happens.” “Product marketing is primarily “We start with OKR alignment to set responsible for generating new business product management’s priorities - this and ensuring that our sales team can ensures our whole business is aligned to win it. Product is more oriented towards things like adoption and success, and achieve the shared goals.” revenue own the actual win rates and quotas.” “All of our key metrics are tied to cross- functional OKRs.” “Typically, the company has Go-to- Market, growth, and sales goals that we then have to adopt as goals that inform “These are done quarterly, and are set by and create our initiatives for the year or senior leadership.” quarter.” 67

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 6 Product marketing highlights and challenges 68 6

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product A career as a product marketer is like a career in any other industry; unmistakable highs, marketing accompanied by inevitable lows. Sure, it’d be great to be part of a 昀氀awless profession, but we need to acknowledge that for all its highlights and positives, life as a product marketer isn’t all sunshine and roses. In this section of the report, we’re going to pinpoint what product marketers love about their challenges jobs, and on the 昀氀ipside, what challenges they often face. Let’s start with things product marketers enjoy most about their role. Product marketing highlights “I like the holistic approach to product “I enjoy solving the problems that happen in success that includes diving in product, the gaps throughout the organization.” market, and marketing strategy.” Eduardo Gutiérrez, Director of Innovation Elizabeth Shcherbakova, Senior Product and Product Marketing at Sprout Social Marketing Manager at Depop “The combination of creative work and “Combining many aspects of commercial working on more practical projects.” activity to deliver a good strategy.” Jonathan Burns, Product Marketing Joshua Reeve, Go-to-Market Manager at Manager at Zivver Financial Technology Services 69

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing “I love that it not only touches every aspect “The day-to-day variety, solving of marketing, but also touches across challenges, and collaborating with different highlights and the organization.” stakeholders.” challenges Stephanie Pye, Lead Product Marketer Elisa Lippincott, Senior Product Marketing at Momentive Manager - Security Incubations at Microsoft “Impacting product roadmap by “I enjoy simplifying complicated things.” synthesizing insight from our market/ICP.” Farah Ellis, Senior Product Marketing Erin Veltkamp, Product Marketing Manager, Consumer at Trustpilot Manager at CSG “Translating technical products and “The ability to work and use relationships processes in human terms.” across a variety of teams to deliver results.” Brad Benson, Director of Product John Reagan, Product Marketing Marketing at Vidsy Specialist at Park Place Technologies 70

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing highlights and “Working with the customers, being very “I enjoy how 昀氀uid the product marketing challenges collaborative and helping shape the direction of either a product roadmap or role can be and the range of different feature function. Working on messaging things you can work on. Most times they’re challenging and exciting initiatives. The job and positioning - even though I get too never stays the same and keeps you on caught up on datasheets. I also enjoy crafting the storytelling of why our product your toes!” makes a difference in our customers lives.” Akua Sencherey, Senior Product Marketing Jill Sawyer, Product Marketing Manager Manager at Andela at RLDatix “Solving large organizational problems “Conducting customer interviews and such as category selection, competitive program enablement, and onboarding new research to In昀氀uence the product roadmap and perception.” sales members.” Shelley Mishra, Senior Product Marketing Allyson Moellenhoff, Director of Product Manager at HighRadius Marketing at Kalderos 71

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing “Collaborating with the product team and “Product marketing is like solving a big highlights and forming a story for sales and marketing.” puzzle and no two days are alike.” challenges Corey Hoyt, (People) Manager of Product Emily James, Director of Marketing Marketing at Liaison International at Scani昀氀y “I love working with insights and using them “It’s a tie between creativity and to tell better stories.” collaboration.” Vanessa Manz, Head of Product Marketing Kelsey Chan, Product Marketing Manager at Net Health at Thrive 72

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Common problems when reporting to internal teams marketing As the old adage goes: you’ve gotta take the rough with the smooth. So, we put our tin hats on and braced ourselves for insights into the internal and external highlights and challenges af昀椀liated with the product marketing role. challenges Internal challenges “People don’t want to try new things.” “It’s hard to measure our impact given the collaborative nature of the role. If there’s an increase in leads, marketing “There’re so many opportunities for communications gets the credit; if there’re more quali昀椀ed leads, lead improvement, but too little time.” generation is the one that reports it; if they convert more, it’s sales; if customers “There’s not enough time to complete all stay longer, it’s customer success; if the projects I need/want to work on.” they use more features, it’s product; if they avail of new products, it’s the upsell team. We’re involved in all that, and “Very few people understand the more, but it’s hard to quantify it.” strategic value of product marketing.” “The leadership team are constantly “Leadership isn’t being aligned with the changing goals and don’t seem to have product or its messaging. They’re always any form of cohesive strategy.” changing what they want, or aren’t aligned with one another.” 73

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “Product continuously go around my “There’s low product bandwidth so our marketing team instead of using us to contribute.” product is weak.” highlights and “The amount of work and support “We don’t have a sales enablement challenges we give to teams and projects isn’t function, so it feels like we can be order balanced with our team size. In other takers supporting solely sales needs.” words, we desperately need more product marketers to handle the workload.” “I butt heads with the product designer on occasion because she has her own ideas about how I should conduct user “The product marketing team is research.” stretched too thin and we’ve competing priorities.” “Few fully understand product marketing “Sometimes the product marketing team roles and responsibilities, which means sales (and closing deals) can dominate gets inadvertently left off of key meeting priorities.” invites that involve engineering.” “There’s a reactive approach to “It’s tough educating others that my role supporting the sales pipeline. When sales as a product marketer doesn’t mean that are down, I’m in a tactical triage mode, I’m solely sales support.” which takes away time for strategy.” 74

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “Executive teams don’t understand what “At my current company, not everyone marketing the product marketing team does. My knows what product marketing does, peers know since they work with me or the value we bring, but not being highlights and daily, but leadership is yet to get there included in conversations is the hardest. regardless of what I communicate and Also, other teams are absorbing challenges show.” aspects of my role because they don’t understand the job our department does. It’s hard to see the sub-par outcome of “There’s a lack of capacity to take on what they’re doing vs what I know I could more responsibility as a core function/ achieve if I was working on it.” value of product marketing. With so many products, we can’t go as deep into the market as I’d like for each product.” 75

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product External challenges marketing “There’s a lack of understanding of how “The tech industry feels like it’s unstable highlights and product marketing works.” and exploding; a lot of customers are challenges scaling back on budgets.” “There’re certain people/groups “Fighting for awareness when your in昀氀uencing the market who really don’t understand the domain or technology.” company has a lot of products can be challenging.” “Getting buy-in for new tools from education leadership and teachers.” “Staving off market competition in terms of product and value is a constant issue.” “Firstly, 昀椀nding time to connect with customers, but also getting feedback “It’s dif昀椀cult obtaining customer from customers that’s honest.” references. There’s also a lack of company investment being allocated to market research.” “Finding a scalable Go-to-Market strategy for an early-stage product.” “It can be hard 昀椀nding non-customers that’re willing to be interviewed for “Every company has different focuses market research.” for product marketing roles, leading to product marketers having managers that don’t know how to support you and “ChatGPT, the 昀椀re drills it has caused, and apply your expertise.” continues to cause.” 76

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “Seasonality of the market results in lots “Sometimes, there isn’t enough time to marketing of noise/competition for attention during engage the customers.” highlights and a short window of the year.” “The competitors in my market are very “The lack of ability to provide enough challenges aggressive and we have to constantly ‘might’ behind our marketing stay on top of their latest messaging.” messaging.” “Finding time to get quality time with “Customer exhaustion is an issue, customers. Our customer success team especially when you’re a small start-up. also don’t have a good understanding You only have a few select customers of our client’s wider strategic goals, willing to talk to you, and you don’t want which would aid in our messaging and to bother them too much, so you need development.” to prioritize what gets asked and what doesn’t.” “Our market is very hard to talk to as a whole. You have to talk to each “Market awareness, especially given vertical directly in order to connect, and we have a small marketing budget, in comparison to well-funded startups.” sometimes even this is too broad.” 77

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 7 Friend or foe: The evolution of AI and its role in product marketing 78 7

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: Chatbots, smartphones, facial recognition: these are just a trio of the many ways in which The evolution arti昀椀cial intelligence is gaining a stranglehold on our lives. We were keen to establish what impact, if any, AI is having on product marketing; is it a force for of AI and its good, or should practitioners approach technological advancements with caution? role in product New tech = New expectations? marketing With AI tools expediting previously convoluted processes, there’s a perception that these it could impact expectations of how product marketers should be performing in their roles. When we asked product marketers if they think the emergence of platforms such as ChatGPT are prompting increased pressure from senior 昀椀gures, it was a close call, but just over half of our pool of experts (51.7%) said they’ve noticed a difference in expectations of them, with 48.3% rejecting the hypothesis. Have AI tools Yes led to increased No 51.7%51.7% demand on Product 48.3%48.3% Marketing teams? 79

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: “I’m excited to see generative AI help reduce and remove rote tasks from The evolution product marketing. There’re many projects that require tactical execution and project management. of AI and its “Generative AI can help here so product marketing teams are able to role in product spend more time writing, researching customer needs and behaviors, and developing strategic marketing plans for their product(s) and organization. marketing “The potential to scale teams and focus on more complex problems is intriguing.” Holly Watson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) “In it’s simplest form, AI speeds thing up, and is a productivity tool. Where it can shine is to use it’s vast database to identify product marketing tactics, competitor analysis, threshold on performance, automated content development and identify new channels to leverage. “We’ve used AI for voice over for our videos and training material; it’s cost effective and fast. If used properly it can speed up your time to market. The area generally needs better governance but it’s an exciting time for product marketers.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 80

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: “I think there needs to be guidelines on using AI in product marketing, as a The evolution lot of the public facing content produced is based on internal proprietary information and if the wider marketing teams at organizations are feeding of AI and its this insight into tools like ChatGPT, they’re effectively providing training material, which could be putting valuable insights into the hands of role in product competitors or other bad actors.” marketing Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis 81

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: Are AI tools being used in product marketing strategies? The evolution With a widespread consensus that companies need to embrace AI, or run the risk of getting left behind, are product marketers introducing facets of arti昀椀cial intelligence into their strategies? of AI and its 53.6% of product marketers said they’re using AI tools to enhance their product marketing role in product strategies. We’re treating this as a positive sign and an epitome of the progressive mindset often marketing adopted by product marketing professionals. Are AI tools being Yes used in product No 53.6%53.6% marketing 46.4%46.4% strategies? 82

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: When we asked product marketers to divulge how they’re incorporating AI into their respective The evolution strategy, some were more cagey than others. But here’s a selection from those who weren’t as of AI and its tight-lipped. “We’re using AI tools such as Writer for “We’ll explore the prospect of using role in product content support.” ChatGPT to devise a Go-to-Market marketing strategy.” “We use AI to support with idea generation for content, email marketing, “We’re leveraging AI to support content research, blog outlines, SEO optimization, user persona development, competitive headline creation, and more.” research, landing page development, social media prompts.” “AI is occasionally used for competitive intelligence, meeting summaries, and “We’re leveraging AI tools to accelerate similar tasks.” content development and increase the quality of the content.” “AI’s used to Improve and often simplify “Basic blog writing, market scanning and initial drafts, as well as for market basic desk research.” research and framing.” “I use tools to enhance and quickly build “Since we’re a team frugal with messaging, revamp and build outreach resources, ChatGPT and similar tools campaigns, or sales outreach emails, are very handy; they effectively serve blogs, etc.” as another team member and help us achieve speed and scale.” 83

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: “I use tools to enhance and quickly build “AI is part of our product, so we are The evolution messaging, revamp and build outreach looking at our AI, ML, generative campaigns, or sales outreach emails, AI features, along with associated of AI and its blogs, etc.” messages and demos.” role in product marketing “It’s mostly being used for content “Ignition is used to auto-generate ideation, agendas, talk tracks, and sales GTM plans, battlecards, and copy, and outreach generation.” the same platform to make querying positioning/messaging/asset repository easy for teammates to enable sales “We use it to write copy for campaigns efforts.” and articles, and create headlines to re昀椀ne messaging. AI’s great for copywriting where a traditional expert “We’re using ChatGPT for content writing, would’ve been needed.” AI based video tools for product videos, text to voice tools, and LuciaAII for contact screenings.” “We’ve recently started using AI to suggest titles or subject lines or summaries of content as a jumping off “It’s useful for copy brainstorming, but point for ideation.” even ChatGPT is still awful for our speci昀椀c technology category. That said, it’s more useful than a thesaurus when you get “We’re leaning on AI tools to help us with stuck.” research and content development.” 84

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech, and Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow, The evolution gave their perspectives on how they foresee the role of AI tools in the coming months and years. of AI and its “I was initially skeptical of generative AI, mostly because I was concerned about the implications for writers and creators and the potential for tools role in product like ChatGPT to “take jobs away”. marketing “I can only speak for text-based chatbots, but I can tell you that most of what it spits out is half-baked, which is frankly ideal for product marketers. So many of us have a “blinking cursor problem”, where we get stuck at the start of a project. “By prompting it to come up with something that’s OK and requires some editing, ChatGPT can give you a head start. Then, you can jump in and 昀椀nish the job, rounding off the corners or providing additional prompts to get the deliverable you need. “By the end, you’ve done all of the work in less than half the time, thanks to the AI-powered assist. It’s like if Michelangelo set out to sculpt “La Pietà”, but instead of starting with a giant block of marble, there were already vague human forms sitting atop a plinth. I’m no longer a skeptic, and I’m using it to kick-off nearly every writing projects, such as blog posts, release notes, and demo scripts.” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow 85

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: “I’m an AI advocate. It’s here to stay and not going anywhere so we may as The evolution well embrace it and make it work. “I feel marketing teams will be smaller. because AI tools will become a of AI and its credible digital team member. I can foresee these tools building new role in product frameworks, helping with testing and optimizing messaging in real time and by persona. I also think future tools would allow you optimise your spend marketing even better and drive stronger returns. “AI’s going to help product marketers grasp the technical details of products quicker and increase the pace to market.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 86

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Friend or foe: Product marketing + AI = A match made in heaven - or hell? The evolution For all of the excitement and furore driving the AI discussion, the same question is asked time and again: with technology thriving, will the point come when humans are replaced of AI and its by machines? role in product After all, when we go to the grocery store, self-service checkouts are replacing checkout clerks, automated phone systems are replacing receptionists, and programs like Hemingway and marketing Grammarly have proofreaders looking nervously over their shoulders… So, taking this into account, are product marketers right to be looking at AI tools without trepidation, or are they digging their own grave? When product marketers were asked to rank the likelihood of their roles being deemed surplus to requirements (for some tasks, at least) following the development of AI, the results suggest they won’t be having robot-induced nightmares anytime soon, with responses generating an average rating of 3.2. For your sake, PMMs, we hope your instincts are correct! 87

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 8 Product marketing budgets 88 8

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product While money doesn’t always equate to success, there’s no doubt it’s easier to do your job when 昀椀nancial marketing constraints are loosened. In 2022, product marketing budgets worked on a sliding scale. At one end of the spectrum, 17.8% of PMMs budgets were forced to be frugal and juggle a small budget between $0 - $10,000, while 14.1% had a budget of $500K - $1M. The most common budget criteria in 2022 was $101,000 - $250,000, with 15.3% of participants selecting this option. So, with context and revisitation done and suited, here’s what the 昀椀gures looked like when we asked product marketers how much is being spent annually on product marketing at their company in 2023. The responses across all categories were, by and large, evenly distributed, with no clear cut budget standing out. However, the 昀椀nding that did set our pulses racing (and not in a good way) was that a staggering 35.8% of product marketers said they don’t have a PMM budget in place at their company. In light of this surprise takeaway, we asked our crop of product marketing representatives what message they’d give to companies that aren’t setting any budget aside to support their product marketing teams. “I’d focus on partnering with the CFO and understand the current levels of Gross Margin Per User for each product line. Understand the trend over time and if this is increasing vs the baseline you can ask for the difference in $ value to invest and further increase the growth. “The point is you need to justify what is the minimum spend required to drive a respectable ROI. Product marketers need budgers, otherwise, you end up sticking to earned and owned channels that’ll diminish over time as paid media supplements the growth. The role cannot 昀氀ourish if you have next to no budget.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech 89

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “Not setting aside budget for product marketing sets a dangerous marketing precedent which could create low morale and eventually churn. “Mentees in the past have told me, they felt demoralised when they’re budgets working night and day to support an event, only to see colleagues in sales and other functions given permission to attend, while they sit on the sidelines. “It’s a valuable experience product marketers miss out on, and there’s plenty of customer insights being wasted which could help the business.” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis “There’re two things that’ve worked very well for me to get a budget. It’s nothing ground-breaking but it’s worked well. “Firstly, the budget has to be tied to a clear business outcome and objective. When I make a business case or request a budget, I always try to quantify its impact on our goals and vision. “Secondly, make friends with your data team or show your results to create a track record. Then you’re asking for a budget from a strong position of someone who gets things done.” Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk 90

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “I’d say “I hope you have a good recruiting department, because you’re marketing going to lose some good product marketing talent in the next few months, and it’ll be an uphill climb to back-昀椀ll them.” budgets “Product management, content marketing, sales enablement, business operations, marketing and/or creative operations are all departments with budgets set aside for tools and technology (and don’t forget about contractors and freelance talent) to help them do their jobs. “If the product marketing team doesn’t feel the company is supporting them in ways that really matter, and they see their peers in other departments have ample money to throw at problems they’d normally be doing manually, then they’ll probably have a lot more “dentist appointments” and “gotta sign off for an hour” moments in their work day. “Staff attrition is a real thing and you don’t want to be trying to hire a new product marketer in Q4. Support your product marketing team and give them the things they need to be good at their jobs!” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow “If a product marketing team doesn’t have a budget, I’d question whether the organisation understands the business impact product marketers could have. “When that’s the case, there needs to be internal education about the role. In planning, leadership should be shown a side-by-side comparison of what zero funding can produce vs the projected outcomes with PMM investment.” Jen Bunting, Head of Product Marketing EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn 91

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Product marketing budgets marketing 8.6% - $0 - $10K budgets 3.3% - $11K - $25K 7.3% - $26K - $50K 2% - $51K - $75K 5.3% - $76K - $100K 2% - $101K - $125K N/A - $126K - $150K 2% - $151K - $200K 2.6% - $201K - $250K 6.6% - $251K - $500K 6.6% - $501K - $1M 35.8% - I don’t have a product marketing budget 18.5% - Other 92

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product How have product marketing budgets changed since 2022? marketing We’ve already mentioned that 35.8% of the product marketers we spoke with don’t have a budget in place, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that 64.2% do have a budget at their disposal. budgets We deemed it necessary to explore how product marketing budgets have changed since 2022, and found just over one-quarter of participants (27.8%) said their budget had stayed the same, with 17.2% highlighting a decrease, with a further 19.2% saying it’d increased. Other No, it’s stayed the same 35.8%35.8% 27.8%27.8% Yes, it’s decreased 17.2%17.2% Yes, it’s increased 19.2%19.2% 93

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product Where is product marketing budget spent? marketing NB: Respondents could select more than one option for this question. budgets 26.5%26.5% - Software and tools 14.6%14.6% - Customer research 19.2%19.2% - Written content 24.5% - Conferences and networking events 16.6%16.6% - Paid advertising 8.6%8.6% - Competitive research 19.9%19.9% - Video creation/editing 9.9%9.9% - Design 6%6% - Training/professional development 8.6%8.6% - Hiring and recruitment 12.6%12.6% - Other 94

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product With budget scarce for many product marketers, what processes can be put in place to ensure marketing money is being spent in the right places? budgets “Understand your commercial objectives and core customers that is driving your growth, and have a good understand of the volume segmented into deciles pegged by CLV (head, torso, tail). “You can then evaluate where to spend and run test & learn initiatives based on behaviour and see if they’re moving up the deciles into higher CLV customers. This way you can attribute back the % contribution of our initiatives to the overall revenue pot.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech “It’s about constant evaluation and tracking of whether our activities push the north star. There’re two aspects to it: (1) Are we spending the time on the right activities and areas of work? This is about ensuring alignment with other teams and the company’s vision. (2) The second aspect is about the tactics. “We may be spending our time on the right activities, but are the the tactics we’re choosing working well? This is more about measuring and tracking the impact, and optimizing over time.” Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk 95

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product “I’ve found with a lot of product marketing activities, time equals money. marketing So, if you can segment your working life by the time you’re spending doing certain activities and relate that time to business value, then you’re well on budgets your way to justifying the budget that you’ve been allocated. “Say it takes 12 hours of a 40 hour work-week to engage in sales enablement and activity analysis, and there’s a tool out there that can cut that time in half. Sales enablement has a direct correlation to bottom-line revenue, and using some budget on software that either increases the output of that time (the same 12 hours, but double the impact) or increases the overall ef昀椀ciency of the product marketer (now it’s the same impact but only 6 hours per week, and the other 6 is spent doing other things), then you can kinda back into a value proposition that works for the ultimate budget- holders—usually the 昀椀nance team.” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow “Given the tightening of budgets and a transition away from the “scatter gun” approach of marketing communications, organizations need to do a “post launch review/debrief” to understand what worked well, what didn’t, and what can be done better for next time as with each iteration, there’s improvement which can justify budget and focus marketing resources in the right area. “Ask questions like what was the open/click through rate this time vs last? What channel performed well etc? If something was successful, can we bottle it and scale it? Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis 96

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 9 The in昀氀uence of product marketing 97 9

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. The in昀氀uence of product Let’s not lo se sight of the fact that at one point, nobody could put a 昀椀nger on what product understood, to marketing actually is, so much so, it prompted us to write and publish a book, Mis marketing dispel the doubts and drive awareness around the function. Equip yourself with 昀椀rst-hand knowledge, techniques, and stories to amplify your role, establish your authority, and elevate your strategic value with our book: Product Marketing Misunderstood. GET YOUR COPY NOW Despite the undeniable fact that product marketing’s on the upturn, this didn’t satisfy our appetite to delve into the intricacies of whether PMMs feel they’re having the desired effect at their organization. 98

State of Product Marketing report 2023 We asked product marketers to answer the following questions on a scale of 0 - 10: The in昀氀uence of product • How much in昀氀uence do you feel you have on your company’s goals and strategy? • How much in昀氀uence do you feel you have on shaping the direction of the product(s) marketing you market? • How much do you feel like your role as a product marketer is valued at your company? When we calculated an average rating for each of the three areas, it’d seem companies can certainly do more to attribute more recognition and value to PMMs. 5.9 - Goals and strategy 5.7 - Shaping the directions of products 6.7 - Overall value at the company 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 99

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence “To stand out, you need to market yourselves better. Don’t forget internal of product marketing is a channel as well. Create key moments and celebrate moments, but don’t celebrate mediocrity. Focus on quanti昀椀able wins and marketing progress.” Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech “I say this all the time to my department head—we need to make sure we’re doing a “touchdown dance” for the key elements of the work that we’re doing. It’s not just that you’ve scored six points, it’s that everyone in the stadium knows that it was you who scored them. “So, I try to make speci昀椀c mention of our “wins” in our fortnightly Go- to-Market Meetings so that our team on-the-ground knows that we’re delivering high quality content and materials that’ll help them win. “Connecting those wins to company objectives and key results provides much-needed context to the work that we’re doing. But it’s not just good news: to carry the analogy forward, we sometimes fumble the football. “We communicate clearly and respectfully in those cases, too. As long as product marketing is seen and heard within the organization, and people aren’t sitting around asking “what does product marketing actually do around here”, the people who matter within the company will know that we’re driving results.” Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow 100

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence “Product marketing is a high visibility role, so it’s imperative you make of product yourself visible! Send that e-mail to stakeholders, celebrate key milestones - don’t be modest! marketing “If you don’t highlight big wins, people will question what product marketing’s role is in the organization and you’ll forever be perceived as sending e-mails or making pretty powerpoints.” Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis “Product marketing is seen as a partner and a revenue enabler. Our position at the epicentre of product, sales, customers, and the rest of the marketing team allow us to see the business from a holistic perspective. “We partner on strategy and implementation on everything from the product roadmap, narratives and positioning, sales strategies, and more.” Jen Bunting, Head of Product Marketing EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn 101

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence Perceptions of product marketing as a function of product It’s clear product marketers aren’t enjoying the in昀氀uence and appreciation they deserve, but how do they feel the function’s perceived by their organization? marketing Over half of our survey respondents said they felt product marketing is viewed as a revenue center (51.7%) with a further 35.1% selecting the cost center option. 13.2% of participants selected ‘Other’. When we asked them to elaborate on how the role is viewed, responses included collaboration center, support center, shared support, and enablers. Other 13.2%13.2% Cost center 35.1%35.1% Revenue center 51.7%51.7% 102

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence Are product marketers invited to leadership meetings? of product Product marketers often express a desire to be a part of leadership meetings. This allows them to communicate their current successes, highlight upcoming projects, and showcase their marketing contribution to company objectives. Encouragingly, over half of participants (55%) said they’re invited to attend leadership meetings, with 31.8% indicating they’re invited from time to time. Just 13.2% said they’re yet to receive an invitation. Sometimes 31.8%31.8% Yes 55%55% No 13.2%13.2% 103

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence How can product marketing perceptions be changed? of product We asked product marketers to contribute to the debate on how perceptions can be changed regarding how the product marketing team drives revenue and growth. Here’re a handful of the contributions marketing submitted: “Share case studies with founders, CEO, “Product marketing needs to drive etc.” thought leadership efforts. Thought leadership is so critical to market perception, and if it’s not closely aligned “Recognize product marketing as with product initiatives and roadmap, spanning functions and starting at there’ll always be a disconnect-- business strategy. The impact is on especially in companies scaling and company goals, not just Product or building a platform offering. When a Marketing goals.” strong product strategy drives thought leadership, the narrative to prospects becomes more cohesive and can in “First, establish a clear understanding turn inform effective best practices and difference between product and resources for current customers to management and product marketing.” improve their experience.” “Use case studies on companies/ “Educating teams on the value of products with excellent products but marketing, tracking metrics and KPIs poor market penetration due to limited/ appropriately to show that what product poor marketing practices. And the marketing does actually makes a opposite - highlight mediocre products difference to market perception and with excellent revenue supported by pipeline growth.” best-in-class marketing practices.” 104

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence “There’re lots of misunderstandings “You have to set expectations early and of product about what product marketers do, tie your value to metrics that matter. how they help the business, and what For example, product usage, customer marketing the function can achieve. This makes churn, expansion, leads, etc.” creating new materials and developing a better GTM strategy an uphill battle. The issue is a question of education. I highly recommend PMMs present to their “Don’t hesitate to voice your contribution commercial team on what you’re trying and show how your outputs have been used.” to achieve and how they can work with you to take revenue and growth to the next level.” “It probably won’t happen for a while, but personally, I think product marketing needs to be a lateral organization that works across the company versus “We heavily rely on insights and customer feedback to support our rolling up into the general marketing organization.” revenue and growth goals, and also use these insights to showcase our impact and change perceptions internally. Our team conducts the insights we need “Include product marketing early and rather than be beholden to a separate often in all product-related initiatives.” team or external vendor.” “Measure the differences, draft, and present the plans to C-suite so when the “I’ve had the best experience when we’ve shared cross-functional goals/KPIs to improvements happen, they’re aware of who steered the ship.” hit and we can drive product marketing initiatives.” 105

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence “Give a domain-based explanation for “Ensure everyone understands why it’s so of product what product marketing does, explaining valuable to include product marketing how we own messaging, pricing, and from day one. The wider organization marketing positioning, but not demand generation needs to include us in customer calls activities like social media marketing and and product and market validation, etc. PPC.” This’ll help us to contribute to the feature and functions that’ll drive revenue, adoption, and competitive advantages.” “Product marketing is at the center of the spoke wheel. It should be involved from the start of a project, the ideation stage of a sales outreach, and planning of a “Every product marketer needs to do marketing change in order to strategize an educational roadshow about the and connect all the dots.” function when they’re hired, especially if you’re the 昀椀rst in the function. Without this, you’ll constantly be correcting “Product marketing is a commercial perspectives as you go, instead of setting function that relates to customers. Use a foundation of understanding. Then, you need to show results to revenue/growth it to bring powerful insights and avoid product marketing from becoming the in the 昀椀rst 30-90 days. dumping ground for all sorts of hybrid activity.” “Constantly track and prove your impact as a product marketer and make sure that’s communicated all the way up to “Clearly de昀椀ning what OKRs you’ll be the C-suite.” measured against and ensure they’re focused on larger organizational goals - not just creating one sheet.” 106

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The in昀氀uence “Focus on your core discipline and add “You have to be your own cheerleader of product value from the perspective of connecting and PR manager inside the organization. product, marketing, sales, and client So much of product marketing work goes marketing success. Manage each of these on behind the scenes, and it’s important stakeholders equally.” to make sure folks know how you’re contributing and that it’s a strategic foundation for connecting with the “Establish clear roles and responsibilities market. Ask for a turn to speak at the end on what a product marketer can do of the sprint retro, make a Slack channel and why, Get a seat at the table with to talk about launch plans, and share insight on what the audience wants, take the awesome attribution stats from your launch campaign in the town hall.” a share of revenue or product growth metrics to show commitment.” 107

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 10 Indispensable product marketing skills 108 10

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Indispensable Product marketing is a unique, diverse profession, comprising a variety of roles and product responsibilities. There are, therefore, requisite skills a product marketer must possess to ensure they’re able to ful昀椀ll their duties. marketing skills We asked product marketers to disclose which skills have helped them thrive in the profession. The three most prevalent were communication (79.5%), collaboration (77.5%), and strategic planning/business skills (71.5%). 1.3% selected the ‘Other’ category, highlighting grit and the willingness to seek clarity when completing tasks as additional traits product marketers need to excel in their role. NB: Respondents could select more than one answer for this question. Skill 79.5% 77.5% 71.5% 68.9% Communication Collaboration Strategic planning / Problem solving business skills 54.3% 54.3% 45.7% 35.1% 1.3% Empathy and the Research and Content creation Persuasive skills Other ability to connect analytical skills and copywriting and negotiation with customers 109

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 11 Product marketing career aspirations 110 11

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product The State of Product Marketing Report 2022 reaf昀椀rmed our initial thoughts about product marketers: marketing they’re as ambitious as they come, with a fervent desire to reach the peak of their powers. Last year, a signi昀椀cant proportion (63.8%) of product marketers were keen to take the next step on career the product marketing career ladder, while one-昀椀fth (20.9%) indicated they were content with their aspirations current position. But as we all know, a lot can happen in the space of 12 months, so we collated data to establish if the role is still quenching the professional thirst of product marketers – and we weren’t disappointed. We were thrilled to see 58.3% had set their sights on a promotion in the product marketing industry. It was also positive to note 28.5% indicated that they were happy in their current position. Just 2% of respondents expressed a desire to enter a new 昀椀eld and leave product marketing behind. When asked why they wanted to bring their product marketing journey to an end, some said product management was their true passion, while others expressed a desire to enter a more analytics-based role. I want to become an entrepreneur 3.3%3.3% I want to enter a new 昀椀eld and leave product marketing 2%2% I want to enter a new 昀椀eld as a product marketer 7.9%7.9% I want to take the next step I’m happy where I am on the product marketing 28.5%28.5% career ladder 58.3%58.3% 111

State of Product Marketing report 2023 The future Looking for top-tier product marketing career insights? Tune into the Product Marketing Careers podcast, and join Al Dea, former Senior Product Marketing Manager at Salesforce, as he of product welcomes a string of pros who share insights into their PMM journey, practical tips, and tactical marketing career guidance on how to 昀氀ourish in your role. Tune in! 112

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 12 Product marketing tools 113 12

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product With 26.5% of product marketers revealing a proportion of their budget is spent on software and marketing tools tools, we wanted to establish the kind of tools companies are investing in. It seems collaboration is the name of the game for many companies, with 70.2% of product marketers saying they regularly use collaboration tools, more than any other category. Following up in second place, CRM tools racked up 64.2% of responses, while project management tools and reporting, analytics, and measurement tools were both tied on 63.6%. 70.2% - Collaboration 64.2% - CRM 63.6% - Project management 63.6% - Reporting, analytics, and measurement 55% - Sales enablement 52.3% - Email marketing 49% - Competitive intelligence 43% - Customer and market research 41.7% - Messaging and onboarding Tool Type 40.4% - Video marketing 37.7% - Knowledge base 37.1% - Design 36.4% - Roadmapping 29.8% - Content opps and marketing 28.5% - Customer experience and engagement 15.9% - Competitive enablement 114

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product When we asked product marketers to specify which speci昀椀c tools they considered indispensable marketing tools to their daily operations, here’re some of the most common tools identi昀椀ed: 115

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 13 Product marketing tips 116 13

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product We’re nearing the end of the State of Product Marketing Report 2023, and as is the case with marketing tips each of our reports, we’re keen to deliver takeaways that’ll offer tangible bene昀椀ts to you, as you strive for success in your PMM career. We asked product marketers to which golden tips they place above all others. Here’re some of the highlights: “Make sure you learn and understand your “Do the groundwork 昀椀rst. It’s a lot easier product - this is essential for a successful to spend time on strategy before making 100 tactical decisions that have to be Go-to-Market strategy.” retroactively tweaked later.” Laura Sanchez-Chaparro, Director of Andy Vale, Product Marketing Manager Product Marketing at What昀椀x at In昀椀nity “Collaborate with all the stakeholders and “Always be ready to de昀椀ne your actions in form a good rapport. It will help you get terms of output and impact.” the right information at the right time and make things easier for you.” Aditya Verman, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Synaptic Yatin Pawar, Product Marketing Manager at Leena AI 117

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing tips “Ask the questions nobody wants to, like, “Be best friends with salespeople and with ‘Are we really that differentiated as a product managers – it’ll help you create product? Should we really try to focus on better work and ultimately drive projects differentiation on the product/capability/ more successfully.” innovation level? Or are we in an industry Peter Schott, Senior Director of Product where the race is fuelled by the story?” Abhilasha Mantri, Product Marketing Marketing at Crunchtime Manager at IDnow “Listen closely to customers, potential “Always be curious, and ask ‘Why?’” customers, and churned customers.” Ken Oestreich, Founder of Shefali Chinni, Director of Product Fountainhead Marketing Marketing at Lookout Inc. “Keep the customer in mind all the time, “The truth is out there, so talk to customers.” and tell them stories.” Geovane Zanetti, Product Marketing Neil Miller, Director of Product Marketing Manager at Geofusion at Kiss昀氀ow 118

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing tips “Remember that everyone is human, “If you don’t like to write you might be in the regardless of their title, industry, or remit.” wrong profession.” Laura Foster, VP of Product Marketing at Renae Bradley-McBride, Senior Product Innovid Marketing Manager at OE Connection “Product marketing shouldn’t report into middle-management. It should report into “Don’t overthink it.” an executive that has a seat at the senior Mike Sutton, Director of Project leadership table.” Management at CompTrak Daniel Becker, Senior Manager of Product Marketing and Integrated Marketing at Bench Accounting “Become product management’s best “Be comfortable wearing many different friend by bringing something to the table hats.” they don’t have or can’t do. If you do, they’ll Jeremy Castile, VP of Product Marketing always champion you.” at GitKraken Ali Hanyaloglu, VP of Product Marketing at Amplience 119

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing tips “Stalk the people who work at your “Value propositions should be at the competitors on LinkedIn - there’s lots of intel there. Also, follow people in the industry customer level, not product/feature level.” you serve.” Candice Jones, Head of Product Marketing April Samuelson, Director of Product at Xero Marketing at Zift Solutions “Don’t be afraid to speak up in meetings “Be organized and track results.” when you have concrete data to share.” Jim Kidwell, Senior Product Marketing Linda Graham, Product Marketing Manager at Smarsh Manager at Ensono 120

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Product marketing tips “Don’t talk inside out (feature focused), talk “Know your technology and help sales to outside in (problem solving/bene昀椀ts).” drive revenue.” Scott Fasser, Principal Managing Shefali Chinni, Director of Product Consultant - MarTech/MarComm Marketing at Lookout Inc. at Point B “Focus on understanding the needs and wants of the target audience. This involves conducting thorough market research, gathering feedback from customers, and analyzing data to identify key trends and insights. “By truly understanding the target audience, product marketers can create messaging and campaigns that resonate with their customers and ultimately drive sales and growth for the company. “It’s also important for you to be adaptable and open to change, as the needs and preferences of customers can shift quickly in today’s fast-paced business environment.” Phil Lora, Product Marketing Manager at Dell Technologies 121

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 14 Making the great, greater… 122 14

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Making the Like its predecessors, this report has been completed with one aim, and one aim only: to help you, the product marketing public, understand the intricacies of the market and apply transferable great, greater… insights to your practice. We’re sure you’ll reap the rewards of the takeaways presented in this write-up and use them in the present – but what does the future of product marketing hold, and how can an almighty function become even stronger? Our participants joined the debate, highlighting changes they’d like to make to the product marketing function to make it even better. “I’d like to see delineation of sub- “Product marketing needs to become specialties. For example market research, more technology focused. As the role of content writing, product strategy, technology continues to increase, it’d competitive intelligence, with product be great to see companies put greater marketing as the superset of roles.” emphasis on ongoing technology training.” “Product marketing should be a role that reports to product and not marketing.” “In my company, I’d like to see product marketing have more of a say on the product roadmap.” “There needs to be closer alignment with the marketing organization overall “I’d like more opportunities to engage - especially content marketing and with customers; this continues to be a demand gen.” blocker in product marketing.” 123

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Making the “Product marketing should just focus on “There needs to be a better working with product managers and 昀椀nd understanding of what product great, greater… ways to growth hack product adoption marketing is amongst other functions, and focus on that alone.” and amongst top management, such as the CEO.” “We need to see the development of a senior role with more strategic “More people need to take on products/ responsibility and an additional roles so the team isn’t as stretched. This coordinator position to manage the can be achieved with higher investment tactical work.” into the team and tools for better outcomes.” “People need to appreciate that product marketing is more like product “There should be more recognition of the management than like any form of value of product marketing strategically marketing.” and at an executional level.” “I’d like to see product marketing be “Product marketing needs to be seen indispensable in any organization. The as a trusted partner to change the way knowledge and agility of the role allows traditional marketing has always been for so much value to occur.” done.” “More strategic power’s needed, in the “We need to be taken more seriously. form of direct central budget ownership.” We’re more than PowerPoint builders.” 124

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Making the “I’d like to see how generative AI will “People need to stop confusing product help us accelerate 昀椀nding the right marketing with commercial marketing great, greater… messages.” and enablement. It’s related but separate. We need to 昀椀nd better ways to measure the function.” “I’d like to experiment with different organizational structures where a product marketer would report to a Chief “We need to build close ties between Product Of昀椀cer rather than someone product marketing and product so that in marketing or sales. Building product product marketing can better name, marketing work into the development position, message, and promote product lifecycle seems to be a natural progression of the role so I wonder innovations.” whether that’d help with alignment and strategy.” “We work with so many stakeholders - prioritization is often a big challenge.” “My favorite role was one where I reported to the CPO. I had peer “We need more exposure to end- department leaders in product customers, partners, and sellers.” and engineering that I had deeply collaborative relationships with and I’d love for more product marketers to “I’d like to see product marketing get have that kind of support/to be seen as more air time from executive leadership a valuable player early in the product when they discuss what made their strategy.” companies successful.” 125

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Making the “I don’t think it’s easy for anyone to “I’d like to see more product marketers understand how product marketing that 昀椀rst worked in an adjacent 昀椀eld great, greater… impacts revenue. Nor is it easy to like marketing communications, understand the impact that strategy and product management, even business big-picture thinking has. If someone can development. Good product marketing put a metric against that, then please requires empathy for the internal send it to me!” Microsoft Teams that you have to enable and I 昀椀nd that easier to do when you’ve had to work on those Microsoft Teams “The role needs to become less content yourself. If you go straight into product generation oriented and more strategic.” marketing out of school, you miss a lot of real world experience that’s critical to doing the job well.” “It’d be great to report to the CEO and be part of the leadership groups.” “Too many things fall under the product “I’d like to see product management marketing umbrella. If I’m the sole return to the product marketing product marketer on a team, don’t department.” expect me to crush the 10 - 12 areas of responsibility that could hypothetically fall under the remit of a whole product “Content, customer marketing (and marketing team. It’s not possible. others) should stem from the positioning Something’s got to give.” and messaging that product marketing undertakes.” 126

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Making the Before we wrap up… Before we bring the curtain down on the State of Product Marketing Report for another year, great, greater… check out what Richard King, Founder of Product Marketing Alliance, had to say about this year’s report: “Every year, I’m blown away by the support and insights we receive when writing the State of Product Marketing Report. “On the back of a rip-roaring report in 2022, there was a lot to live up to, but I wasn’t let down – it was captivating to see how the product marketing industry has developed even further since last year.. “As is always the case with these reports, there’re positives and negatives – sure, it’s great to see just 2% of product marketers want to leave the industry, but on the other hand, product marketers need 昀椀nancial support to 昀氀ourish; my message to key stakeholders would be please back your product marketing teams - they won’t let you down! “We’re living in the age of arti昀椀cial intelligence, and I’m more excited than anyone to see the role this is going to play in product marketing; sure, a degree of skepticism is understandable, but in my opinion, technology such as ChatGPT will serve as a gateway for improved practices and awesome projects. “There’s never been a more exciting time to be a product marketer. Enjoy the ride - you’re in for a treat in the coming months.” 127

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank We’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who took the time to complete the survey for this report - without your input, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you you to our reports such as this; we’re extremely grateful! contributors We’d also like to extend our gratitude to our product marketing experts who’ve added an extra layer of intel with their expertise: Sandeep Bhara, Marketing Director in Fintech Sandeep Bhara is a seasoned full-stack marketer and team leader with extensive international experience in the US, APAC, MENA regions, including Central Africa. A gifted practitioner, Sandeep is able to switch from planning to operational execution and always ties marketing spend back to commercial goals. He’s built teams from the ground up and has experience of managing teams across UK, Africa and Dubai. Sandeep specializes in brand strategy development and execution, with strong ATL/BTL experience including TVC, OOH, DOOH development and deployment, as well as the development of brand health trackers. He also has experience in product marketing, performance marketing, social, CRM and new market entry strategies, and has set up and managed agency partners/retainers. 128

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Rebecca Geraghty, VP of Product Marketing at Publicis Media you to our contributors Rebecca is a B2B product marketer, communicator, and “translator”, currently leading a team of 昀椀ve at Publicis Media, a top three global advertising and marketing company, to advance a multi-product solution portfolio. She specializes in serving as a key spokesperson to be the voice and face of products. Rebecca works with complex, early-stage technology to ensure products re昀氀ect their value. She’s passionate aboutI giving demos and moving people with her words. She has a knack for helping get ideas out of people’s heads and transforming them into impactful messaging. Rebecca’s spent her career at leading global corporations (Publicis, Canon) and early-stage startups, across many industries (Aerospace, Automotive, Manufacturing, AEC, Supply Chain & Logistics, Media). She draws on experiences working with hardware, SaaS, and services products. In 2022, she had the honor of being named a Product Marketing Alliance In昀氀uencer of 2022 and is an active panelist and moderator at events in the community. 129

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Amit Alagh, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis you to our contributors Amit is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis. He leads the strategic and tactical activities for positioning, messaging, competitive differentiation, and sales enablement of patent prosecution products, LexisNexis PatentAdvisor and LexisNexis PatentOptimizer. A well-respected individual in the product marketing community, Amit was awarded Product Marketing Newcomer of the Year in 2021. In 2022 received nominations for Product Launch of the Year and Product Marketing MVP of the year. Amit is also a London Ambassador for the Product Marketing Alliance. Amit holds an LLB Law degree from the University of Reading, an MSc in E-commerce from Dublin City University, and an MBA from IE Business School in Spain. 130

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Jen Bunting, Head of Product Marketing EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn you to our contributors As the leader LinkedIn’s Product and Vertical Marketing teams in EMEA & LATAM for the company’s advertising business, Jen Bunting is responsible for Go-to-Market strategy, sales enablement, regional research, localized messaging, product launches, and product adoption. The intersection of technology with advertising and marketing has played a prevalent role in Jen’s career couple of decades now. Following this passion has took her from Silicon Valley, across the Paci昀椀c to Australia and Asia, and currently the UK. Jen’s experiences have presented her with a front row seat from start-ups to enterprises where she’s worked on products that created the genesis of in昀氀uencer marketing, the explosion mobile advertising, and ubiquity of social networks. Outside the realm of product marketing, Jen’s a member of the IAB UK’s Social Steering Group and Ambassador for the Product Marketing Alliance. She’s an ally and volunteer for LinkedIn’s Asian Alliance Employee Resource Group, helping foster deeper and actionable programmes to increase diversity, inclusion, and belonging. 131

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase you to our contributors Sonduren is an experienced and recognized product marketing leader with an entrepreneurial skill set working in the computer software industry, speci昀椀cally in B2B SaaS product marketing and demand generation from high-growth tech startups at various stages, to large technology companies like Microsoft Canada. He’s skilled in marketing strategy and planning, the development and execution of Go-to-Market campaigns and product launches, with demonstrated cross-functional stakeholder management experience. Sonduren also holds a Bachelor’s of Accounting from Brock University and has extensive knowledge in accounting and 昀椀nance with experience in corporate 昀椀nance, taxation, audit and business spend management. As a YouTube content creator, he’s create content to entertain, educate, and share his passion for cars with a global audience. Such is Sonduren’s 昀氀air for content creation, that he was awarded YouTube’s Creator on the Rise designation. He’s built a global following by leveraging his personal brand with his marketing, business and content production skills. As an Expert in Residence (EIR) for Product Marketing Alliance (PMA), Sonduren teaches and delivers our certi昀椀cation programs to product marketers around the world looking to up-skill. He frequently speaks to the latest marketing trends in B2B SaaS, product marketing and business strategy with PMA. 132

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Erik Mansur, Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow you to our Erik Mansur’s a passionate business leader with more than 20 years of contributors experience spanning product, marketing, and global operations. He’s currently the Head of Product Marketing at Zi昀氀ow, where he leads content marketing, customer marketing, social media and in昀氀uencer marketing, and product marketing. Zi昀氀ow is the leading creative collaboration platform that helps agencies and brands deliver exceptional creative work by streamlining feedback on any creative asset from concept to delivery, with customers including Showtime, McCann Worldgroup, AWS, Weber, Specialized and Dupont. Before joining Zi昀氀ow, Erik held product marketing leadership roles at Crayon, USA TODAY NETWORK | LOCALiQ, WordStream (merged with LOCALiQ), and Nanigans (acquired by Sprinklr). He’s a skilled writer, seasoned public speaker, and thrives on building teams and processes to help drive business value and improve customer relationships. 133

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Holly Watson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) you to our contributors Holly works diligently to foster great working relationships with all teams as a product marketing leader. She builds and implements cross-department Go-to-Market strategies, works closely with product to de昀椀ne and implement new product development, with experience in launching AI capabilities, Integrations & APIs, and new product lines, and thoroughly understands both the sales process as it relates to customer acquisition and the customer journey stages as it relates to retention and adoption. 134

State of Product Marketing report 2023 A huge thank Jana Frejova, Team Lead, Growth & Product Marketing at Spendesk you to our contributors A lawyer by training, a growth and product marketing leader by passion and trade, Jana is currently establishing a new function at the 昀椀ntech unicorn Spendesk focused on product-led growth. She has 10+ years of global experience from marketing and strategy roles at Spendesk and Axway in Paris, Oracle in London, Opower in the USA, and Equinor in Brussels. Jana’s taken products from early concepts to full market launches and adoption, led strategic initiatives, and oversaw product marketing for key solution lines. As a published author, speaker and mentor (including the Tech Talks Daily podcast and the Product Marketing Summit), Jana was recognized as a Top 100 Product Marketing In昀氀uencer in 2021, and was selected for Oracle’s Women’s Leadership program aimed at top performers and future Oracle leaders. Subscribe to her newsletter the Saassy GtM, and access tips, tricks and frameworks designed to help product marketers of all levels launch and grow their SaaS products. Subscribe 135

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Part 15 Conclusion 136 15

State of Product Marketing report 2023 We’d love your feedback… Conclusion And there you have it! We’ve wrapped up the intricacies of product marketing (for another year, at least!) - consider this your go-to guide for understanding the product marketing landscape for 2023. Without your input, there’d literally be no report, so we’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all of you who took the time to complete the survey. Before you leave to apply these 昀椀ndings to your role, we’d love to hear what you liked most, and what we ought to do differently, to make the 2024 report even better. Thanks in advance! Have your say 137

State of Product Marketing report 2023 Conclusion Producers Lawrence Chapman Senior Copywriter Lawrence is our Senior Copywriter here at PMA who loves crafting content to keep readers informed, entertained, and enthralled. He’s always open to feedback and would be thrilled to hear from you! Richard King Founder of Product Marketing Alliance Rich is the Founder of Product Marketing Alliance and is at the helm of our voyage to elevate the PMM role worldwide. He’s responsible for what happens next with the community so if you’d like to have your say, don’t hesitate to get in touch - Rich is always open to invaluable feedback and ideas. Jon Sayer Graphic Designer Jon is our graphic designer and looks at all our design requirements. He’s responsible for the layout and visual elements in this report and is always happy to hear your thoughts! 138

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