When You Should Hire a Product Marketing Manager
The process used to bring a product to market, promote the product and sell it to customers is known as product marketing. Product marketing targets a specific product’s audience and uses messaging and strategic positioning to increase demand for the product.
The person responsible for developing marketing strategies and plans to convey the benefits and features of products to intended customers is the product marketing manager, not to be confused with the marketing project manager who is the one that implements the strategies. They conduct market research, guide sales teams and develop marketing positioning around products among other things. Typically a product marketing manager is not among the first members of a marketing team to come onboard. Here are some of the ways how to tell if a company needs to hire a product manager:
- When user requirements are unclear: when it isn’t clear what users are looking to gain from the product you are selling, a product marketing analyst will dig further to understand the core problems behind the requirements of the consumer.
- Your company is experiencing growth: when your company is expanding and adding more developers and personnel in marketing and sales, a product marketing coordinator is the person who connects all the teams and ensures developers understand product requirements and marketing and sales goals are scheduled and mapped out.
- Sales cycle is changing: if you are focusing on a specific group of customers and need to identify their needs or have hired a new sales team that needs material for messaging customers and positioning your product against competitor’s products.
What to Look for in a Product Marketing Expert
There are some skills and qualifications you expect to see in the person you hire to be in charge of your online product marketing. Generally, it is expected that specialists on a product marketing team have a degree in business, marketing or a related area. Relevant experience developing and working on marketing campaigns is also expected. Some of the skills members of a product management team should have include:
- Communication skills: the marketer will need good verbal and written communication skills. Although they may not be required to produce all of required content there will likely be times when they need to produce engaging copy for different marketing channels. A big part of product marketing involves communication.
- Research and analytical skills: market research plays an important role in product marketing and good research skills are essential for marketing specialists in order to gain insight into customers’ needs. Research will include surveys, customer interviews and analysis of data. The specialist should be familiar with Google analytics and other tools and have the ability to interpret data so they can make informed decisions.
- Marketing skills: the specialist needs in-depth knowledge of digital marketing, social media marketing and other marketing channels and how the marketing process works.
- Industry knowledge: the specialist should possess some expertise in the particular product or market including specific industry or technical knowledge.
- Business skills: a product marketer should have a solid grounding in business basics. They should be able to understand different elements such as business metrics, financial planning KPIs, revenue projections and more.
- Collaborative skills: product marketing managers have to work with different teams across the company such as sales and marketing as well as work with members of their own team so it is important they have good teamwork skills.
How to Identify a Good Product Marketing Professional
Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to recognize a good product marketing professional on sight as it would make hiring one much easier. You can look at their past experience to see if they have the skills and qualifications you need such as the ability to research markets, analyze data, develop marketing strategies and more. Much of this information is available on the product marketers resume.
In addition to information about product marketing specialists garnered from resumes you can also interview them. Some interview questions that will provide some good insight into the specialist include:
- What good product do you believe is marketed poorly?
- Can you walk us through your last product launch?
- Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot or rethink a strategy?
- What do you do to help make sure the sales team is positioning a product correctly?
- What are the markets and industries you have focused on and how are they similar or different to ours?
- What would be your approach to improving retention rates?
- Have you ever worked on a product launch that failed in any way?
- How can you check if an increased price or changes to packaging will have an effect on sales?
- How would you measure the success of a product launch?
- What do you know about our company’s target audience?
It isn’t easy to find and identify the right person for your product development team. One way how to hire a good product marketing lead is to outsource staffing to companies like ours. Staffing firms for product marketing managers and other marketing specialists are one of the best ways how to hire a product manager for your company.
How Our Company Can Assist You with Hiring a Good Remote Product Marketing Manager
We are a Ukrainian company that focuses on hiring online marketing specialists that match all of your requirements. The salary for a product manager Ukraine-based specialist will be much less than hiring an in-house marketer and will have equivalent skills. We are flexible and you can hire content manager, product manager or any other type of marketing specialist full-time, part-time or on a per-project basis.
Every product team specialist we hire is fully vetted by us and their skills and experience are verified. The IT product manager remote specialist that our company hires for you will be dependable and effective at their job.
When you are seeking a product manager for hire we have a simple but efficient process we follow to get the person you need.
- Provide our company with all of your requirements: we will talk with you either by phone or via Skype so you can let us know the specific requirements you expect in the remote product manager you hire so that we can find the best person for the job.
- Select a candidate: the resumes of the most suitable product marketing manager candidates that match your requirements will be forwarded to you.
- Conduct interviews: arrangements will be made for you to conduct interviews of the candidates you most prefer by Skype or by video conference. If you feel it is necessary in order for you to make a final decision, you can also administer a test to candidates.
- Final preparations: we will discuss the workflow and a start date will be determined. Once the service agreement is signed then everything is settled and ready to go.
Whether you want to hire a single marketing specialist or build product marketing dream team our company is capable of providing the staff you need.
Services the Product Marketing Specialist We Hire Can Provide You with
There are a number of different services that you can get when you hire product manager through our company. The following are some of the product marketing services our specialists are able to provide:
- Develop market segmentation for your product so different groups can be targeted using messages and strategies customized to their needs and characteristics.
- Write positioning statements that are consistent, messaging and associated proof points that will be used to generate marketing materials to promote the product.
- Analyze sales data and information from different channels and use the results to develop a plan to improve product sales using different marketing and sales techniques.
- Present relevant and up to date information about the products and also the markets that the products are intended to serve.
- Write copy for different types of marketing materials to target different audiences.