We've been recruiting product marketing talent for as long as we've been recruiting Product Managers. Our first product-specific searches happened in 2006 when both functions were still a mystery and largely undefined to most people.
In 2016, our Principal, Martyn Bassett, decided to invest heavily in these two areas, and our Product Practice was launched. Fast forward seven years and our product practice has scaled to include a team of Recruiters, Researchers, and Ops support who dedicate themselves to completing tough-to-find searches across product management, product design, and product marketing.
While product management has been widely adopted as the cornerstone of success for product-based businesses, Product Marketing, on the other hand, has continued to perplex many.
To help those looking to scale their product marketing function, let's take a look at the three basics when hiring Product Marketing talent:
- What is it
- Why you need it
- When you need it
1. What is Product Marketing?
Product marketing is the art and science of ensuring a successful product launch and adoption. It involves researching and identifying customer needs, developing messaging and positioning, creating the strategy for marketing campaigns, and collaborating cross-functionally with teams.
2. Why Do You Need Product Marketing?
Tech companies need the value product marketing brings because the ultimate goal is to drive revenue growth. Product marketing can help achieve revenue growth by increasing the likelihood of customer adoption through effective go-to-market strategies with a value-driven narrative.
3. When Should You Hire a Product Marketer?
The time to hire a Product Marketer is now. If there is a V1, it’s time to hire. The fact that you landed on our blog and are reading this should tell you something about your journey to making your first product marketing hire.
Many first-time Founders we’ve worked with begin this hiring journey proactively, wanting to ensure the big investments in product development and product management don't fall flat when it comes time to launch and begin commercialization.
This is especially important for companies where channel partners and sales teams need to be enabled to hit the market with value messaging and positioning.
Product management grew and matured into a mission-critical function and we believe product marketing is closely following suit. It is an essential part of any tech org ecosystem, and the best time to hire is sooner rather than later.