Product Management vs. Product Marketing

Marty Cagan argues that many product releases fail because the product manager role is poorly defined in companies, and that this is a root cause of wasted release cycles. He defines the product manager as the single accountable owner who details the product to be built, and product marketing as responsible for telling the world about it. He describes three common broken setups: marketing-driven products, splitting product definition across two people, and combining both roles into one person. Each leads to products customers don't want or struggle to use. He concludes that clearly separating the two roles, with a dedicated product manager who validates with real users, is essential, since no engineering team can build something useful without a clear definition.

01Key takeaways

• Assign every product a single accountable product manager who owns the detailed product definition.
• Keep product definition and product marketing as separate jobs, since each requires distinct skills.
• Watch for marketing-driven products where marketing defines the product and the PM role is ignored.
• Avoid splitting product ownership between a business owner and a spec-writing PM, which stifles innovation.
• Have the product manager validate the product with real customers and users before engineering builds it.
• Recognize that great engineering is wasted without something useful and usable to build.

02Key sections

The core problem

Cagan claims most releases are ill-conceived and traces the root cause to how the product manager role is defined and staffed. He notes the article has been long in coming because changing how an industry thinks about roles is hard.

Defining the two roles

The product manager owns the detailed product definition for engineering, while product marketing owns telling the world about the product. Cagan insists every product needs one accountable product manager.

Three problem situations

He describes marketing-driven products where marketing defines the product, a split between business owner and detail-level PM, and a single marketing person covering both roles. Each situation weakens ownership and product quality.

Why combined roles fail

Finding one person excellent at both product definition and marketing is rare and does not scale, and the product manager role is a full-time job. Enterprise companies often end up merely relaying customer requests.

The way out

Companies should clearly define distinct roles, with the product manager validating the product with customers and product marketing handling launches, sales tools, and campaigns, while communicating through defined input channels.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.