I was thinking the other day about the reasons I sometimes get anxiety when it comes to my job. Is it because I want to do good based on my occasionally unreasonably high expectations? Is it because I want to do a good job based on other colleagues’ expectations? Maybe I am a bit too harsh on myself sometimes because I feel that I am never good enough – and maybe that is other departments’ fault for not understanding what product marketing does. Or my inner saboteur for always telling me “you can do better than that”. The bottom line is that I am always having anxiety about work because I don’t feel that I am worthy. And yes, other people at work make me feel like that, too, with their words and actions. So I was thinking of how I can change that feeling moving forward so I feel valuable to myself above all and then to the rest of the business.

One thing I love is music. I used to be part of the local municipality’s choir growing up in Greece, trained to be a soprano and got plenty of awards and No.1 spots in competitions. I also created my own chamber music choir in my teen years that went to be successful in various Panhellenic competitions. Singing never felt as a chore when doing it and, because I was focused on what I knew needed to be done, I pushed out all random voices and criticisms and focused on becoming better for me. I loved what I was doing and I loved myself in my element. The only reason why I didn’t pursue operetta singing as a profession is because I came from a limited-means family and, if that didn’t work out, I would have been left with nothing to fall back to. So I followed my brain and studied marketing. And whilst having those thoughts, it hit me: I need to love what I do and love myself in my element more, just like with music.

Why people treat product marketing as a support function?

So, that is the reality for plenty of product marketers out there. There are many leaders in organisations that view product marketing as a support function, assisting sales and product teams with collateral, messaging, and market insights. In turn, the departments that get that support think of marketing as executive assistants, with just admin value and no substance. This historical perception can be challenging to change, especially in organisations where roles and responsibilities are deeply entrenched. For example, I worked with a product lead that expected me to do market research and share it with them; nevertheless, they never shared customer interviews findings and never invited me to customer visits even after plentiful of requests.

Have I been vocal in the past about changing this type of behaviour? Yes. Did I have a manager to back me up and drive change from a leadership level? No. When you have no backing from people with “people power” in your organisation, trying to instil change sounds more like a complaint instead of a natural process towards growth. And this is where I started thinking of ways I could get that backing and showcase that, not only I have significant experience in what I do, I am also good at it and my passion shines through in every single project.

What are the main issues a product marketing team is facing when implementing internal change?

I recently relived some of those situations. This time, however, there were more product marketers that shared similar experiences. After some discussions, we felt that our collective voice was not making any noise (excuse the pun). So we pulled a team workshop to identify the reasons why people view us invaluable at the moment and how we can start remedying this issue. In product marketing terms, we did a gap analysis of our team and, based on the current findings, it was decided that the time to reposition ourselves internally was neigh.

During the workshop, we uncovered the below issues that were affecting all PMMs:

• Lack of understanding of what we do as a PMM function: Some stakeholders did not fully understand the strategic importance of product marketing. We had a GTM director who would never share any GTM work they were working on and wouldn’t let us be part of it even as an observer. We were just ordered to do website changes and “give sales what they want” so we don’t hinder their sales targets. The pricing director was also mentioned, where they would be the only one that understand how they price up deals – including internal bonus structures – so they seem “invaluable”. Some sales directors also were an issue, not updating the CRM and keeping a spreadsheet with only sales and the CEO having access to it, so when we were requesting information to do a win-loss analysis we were told “it is none of the product marketing’s business”. Even some of the product teams were treating us as a comms function, churning features and asking us to market them without questioning their rationale.
• Siloed efforts: Some of us didn’t have the opportunity to fully integrate with those teams, which meant that we were seen as a support function instead of a strategic partner. Mentioning the examples above, it is clear that everyone was doing their own thing and you were only privy to the results during a 1-hour monthly meeting. This resulted in disarrayed metrics, cross-departmental accountability issues, and, consequently, wasted product marketing efforts.
• Focusing on short-term goals: The other teams demand from us only tactical activities such as creating sales materials and case studies, rather than driving strategic initiatives like market positioning, customer segmentation, and GTM strategy. The fact that our manager was promoting us as a “yes” function didn’t help. A great example of amplifying our stress as a team and minimising our value was the last-minute work volunteering we needed to do for RFPs (requests for proposals) during procurement bids. Even though the stakeholders of that project knew about the RFP for months, the product marketing team was only pulled in 3 days before the deadline asking to create new case studies, branding and product videos, and we were expected to deliver within 48h before the deadline.

Deciding the right course of action

We didn’t struggle at finding the solutions to the issues above. We struggled mainly with how we would present those solutions to the leadership team and get them to buy into our function.

Our plan was set in 3 parts. First part was to educate the business on our business strategic importance. We decided to do a presentation and present it during a company-wide monthly update. That involved all PMMs presenting to clearly articulate our value proposition as a team and how we align with the broader business objectives. Second part was to get feedback from the company and the leadership team on the content of the presentation – what needed more clarification, what made sense and who else we need to speak to within and outside of the business to ensure alignment with our messaging. Third and last part was to start asking for that seat at the table – be in meetings with the leadership team, suggest solutions based on facts, share more intelligence with the teams, and start saying “no” and vetoing work that is outside the product marketing remit.

First part of the plan went smoothly. We presented our function during the call, directed them to a Confluence page I created with more details on how we engage with the business and how we work with the different departments with many examples. Some of the consultants had some questions, which we tackled successfully. Everyone seemed to understand what we do as a function and individually per product.

For the second part, our manager suggested to let them take the lead so we can get a more accurate feedback. Deploying a third party was going to get us more honest feedback. The results were a bit disappointing. The revenue director felt it was not something that was directly associated with them. The pricing director’s feedback was that we should be more humble. The GTM director asked for us to do research for them on what features our competitors have (the product manager was not doing that task at that particular timeframe). The sales directors feedback was also mixed, depending on the product director and the matching PMM. The product team’s response was also mixed, stating that our job is still to feed them information at all times and get launches ready based on release notes and internal videos/demos of the features after they finish the sprint. The PMM team collectively felt that those attitudes didn’t foster collaboration and integration to ensure alignment and maximise our effectiveness as an organisation. The feedback clearly showed that, even though we positioned ourselves as business strategy marketers, we were still going to have to work the same ways we worked before to make sure that stakeholders were comfortable in their own roles. Our only saving grace was part three of our plan.

We started asking more business strategic questions: how is our existing CRM segmented? What insights did the last segmentation strategy give us? What is the USP of our software? What are the jobs-to-be-done by our customers on a daily basis? How did we test product-market fit and what was the market feedback? How does our overarching software brand mesh with our professional services proposition? So many more questions were asked, usually met defensively until the purpose of the question was thoroughly explained.

Working daily for change

It took a merger with a couple of companies to actually get stakeholders to rethink their role and relationships with the product marketing team. It also took that massive change for me to start loving what I do again and showcasing my structured and creative thoughts again. The PMM team is now part of the Marketing Excellence department, taking care of more than just software, and being met with more respect. I love volunteering in interesting projects when I get the bandwidth, and being part of that department gives me that option. I get to speak to more leadership members, network my way through the department, and actually drive and support projects. The department seems to have a better understanding of what PMMs do, we get clearer role boundaries and we base our relationships based on being adults and wanting to do better for the organisation we work for.

How would I improve the PMM function to make it invaluable to the business? I would specialise each PMM to an associated core set of skills they enjoy doing. One can be the champion for competitive analysis, another can be the expert on product positioning. That way we would all make the most of our skills, improve collaboration and learn from each other in the process. I would also make clear divisions on the role of product marketing and content marketing, as it sometimes is a bit too much for one person to handle – and they are a separate role, too. I would, additionally, advocate for each individual PMM within the business, whether they were present or not. We are all skilled professionals and we deserve to celebrate our successes collectively and individually. And I would always push for a seat at the table, even if I get to be met with “no” most of the time.