Product Management vs. Product Marketing

Most people still refer to the functions of product management and product marketing as inbound and outbound. Unfortunately, there is more than a semantic difference between the two and confusion can be deadly for the product organization. Indeed, product life cycles keep shrinking, competition takes no prisoners and engineering resources are always scarce!

Both product managers and product marketers have to know intimately representative customers if your product organization is to achieve a customer-centric design process. This will allow the product manager to have both knowledge and authority when she writes MRDs. And, the product marketer will gain a clear understanding of how the product is being used and what benefits are derived. So, while both functions have different roles and are accountable for different parts of the process they have to converge in their knowledge of the customers' needs.