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Who is more strategic?

April 29th, 2009 | Product Management, Strategy

The product marketer or product manager? I can hear both groups making their claim for the title. To frame this, I am assuming their purview is the product and both roles belong to the same team (i.e. work as a team). Also I assume both roles are executing a strategy and therefore are important to the strategy, but in this context I am referring to the definition of the strategy.

Pragmatic Marketing have organized the product marketing responsibilites on the left of their grid, the tactical end of the spectrum. Does this make the role a tactical role? Not necessarily.

The product marketer, typically an outbound role, is listening to the market, understanding the buyers and running product launches. Armed with this information, product marketing will shape the product and define the target market. This sounds strategic to me.

The product manager, typically an inbound role, is also listening to the market, defining roadmaps, understanding users and working with development. Armed with this information, product managers will define and own the product plan.

This is where it starts to separate for me. Product managers own the plan. The plan defines the means to achieve the objectives. The plan is the strategy. Therefore, I am leaning towards the product manager as the ‘more strategic’ role.

It is worth noting that ‘more strategic’ does not equal ‘more important’ and all good product managers know to avoid defining the plan in isolation. The information from product marketing is mandatory for your plan.

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    • Where did the topic of this post come from? And why does it matter who is more strategic? Not saying I have an opinion, just wondering what I ultimately should be pulling out of this post as a learning. And I'm busting your 'you know whats'. ;-)
    • Sometimes, I am just thinking through my own thoughts publically. :-)

      It doesn't matter who has the perceived more strategic role for the same reason it doesn't matter who gets the job done. As long as the strategy is defined and the activities are completed then the team *should* succeed (assumes a good strategy and the right team).

      For me, I am still trying to understand the Product Marketing role. When I started this post I was heading in another direction, but at the end I wound up learning a little more about Product Marketing.

      Thanks for your 'lesson learned' reminder. I am going to ask myself that question after each post.
    • Here's my best analogy. Think about how you drive a car.

      How much of your attention do you focus on looking at the horizon? On what's around you? On the rear-view mirror? On the radio? On the other passengers? On the barking sounds in your head? (OK, that last one is just me).

      The reality is you're dividing your time up based on the needs of the moment, but regardless of those needs, you can't *not* look in the rear-view mirror as much as you can't *not* look far ahead.

      A well-integrated organization has specialists who are good at what's next, at what's now, and at what's behind. It's the job of leaders to make sure none of those specialists think they can drive the car on their own, or that their inputs are the most important. It's the integrated view that distinguishes the habitually from the occasionally successful.
    • Ha! See my reply to Steve above.
    • Somehow many people seem to think "strategic = good" and "tactical = bad." And then when they see the strategic activities (customer visits including win/loss analysis, business planning, product profitability analysis), they go "Oh, I don't want to do that stuff. But I want to be strategic." Don't we all?

      The tactical activities of go-to-market are important; of course they are. Good product marketing should be focused on the product we have today; good product management should be focused on the product we want to have someday. We need both to succeed.
    • Absolutely! We need everyone on board to be successful. Everyone has different skills and goals and if you have too many "strategic" people then you have not done a good job of hiring.
    • Stewart, reading the title of this post reminded me of a common boxing quote "Everyone has a strategy...until they get punched in the face". As you say "‘more strategic’ does not equal ‘more important’ ", it's just focusing on a different part of the value continuum in my mind/experience.

      Often in my career I have done both roles, sometimes with the title of Product Manager, sometimes with the title of Product Marketing Manager.

      A key strategic activity is positioning for example. Hopefully someone is doing it. If it happens to be someone occupying a Product Marketing box on the org chart (and in my experience it often is) then they are playing a key strategic role. Similarly, if a Product Manager is spending the bulk of their time/energy planning incremental bug-fix releases then this is very tactical.

      Prag-Grid notwithstanding, the key point is that victory requires both wise strategy and cunny tactics. If we are able to get both ends of this sprectrum covered then perhaps we can leave the titles and org charts for HR to figure out.
    • I agree completely. I started this post once and then backed away because I didn't want to play both roles against each other. There is a goal, or a strategy if you will, for the product and it is imperative for the entire team to march together executing, as your say, the strategy and cunny tactics.
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