A Product Marketing Manager Hiring Guide

Product marketing is extremely important for any business because it communicates its product’s value proposition to relevant customers. 

Product marketing managers are responsible for creating a demand for products by strategically positioning their products in the right market, and for creating the right message to consumers through research, messaging, promotions, and distribution. 

Today, there are various emerging trends that make it more challenging to introduce products and sustain their demand:

• Personalization & customization: Product marketing managers should be able to personalize and customize targets better due to the increasing amount of customer data available. 

• Storytelling/content integration with product promotion: Product placements in entertainment content are favored over usual ad placements. A good product marketing manager knows how to authentically integrate their products in storytelling to build emotional connections with their market. 

• AI & automation: Product marketing should be able to create immersive experiences with the use of AI and technology. Automation would also enable more efficient marketing campaigns. 

• Social responsibility: Companies have the chance to help the community or environment with their products, and a new generation of consumers would love to hear about this. 

With that being said, it’s difficult to find good product marketing managers who could effectively create strategies that keep up with these emerging trends. Luckily, we’ve created a product marketing manager hiring guide to help you find great candidates. 

How to Find Viable Product Marketing Managers

As much as possible, you’d want to avoid wasting resources by hiring the wrong people. Finding the right marketer is actually the first step to having a solid product marketing plan for the year. 

Here are a few places hiring managers to find great product marketing managers: 

• Social media
  Many email marketing specialists have a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, and you can often find them by searching for relevant keywords or hashtags.

• Companies within the same industry
  You could look into companies within the same industry, especially those with great product marketing implementations. You may click the “People” section of their LinkedIn page and find their product marketing managers. 

• Outsourcing platforms/freelance marketplaces
  There are platforms that help you find the candidates you need. In our team’s case, we rigorously screen our candidates in order to find one who could meet the client’s required skill sets. Below is our screening and interview process for good candidates:

  • Skills & experience screening

  • Technical interview

  • Live interview

  • Pilot project

  • Sustained performance

• Associations & networking
  There are several associations that provide product marketing resources and networking opportunities. Here are a few: 

  • Product Marketing Alliance

  • The Association of International Product Marketing and Management

  • The Product Management Association 

  • The Product Development and Management Association 

Skills to Look for in Product Marketing Managers

Now that you’ve found your pool of product marketers, the next step of the hiring process is identifying certain skill sets that make a good candidate. 

Therefore, we’ve provided a list of skills great product marketing managers must have:

• Market research & analysis
  They should possess an understanding of the market and competition to make informed decisions. This helps them determine where to position your product.

• Product knowledge
  They must have a deep understanding of the product, its new features, and its unique value proposition in order to know which market demands it will fulfill, and how to position it. 

• Audience targeting
  A good product marketing manager knows which customers to reach, and understands their needs to know what solutions your product can provide

• Strategy
  They must know how to strategize and implement market plans based on market analysis, target audience, market trends, and KPIs/metrics. 

• Content creation & messaging
  They must know how to describe your product in various different content and platforms. They are also in charge of your product’s messaging and communicating it to both the sales team and customers. 

• Project management
  They must have the ability to lead and handle projects while simultaneously collaborating and coordinating with cross-functional team members. 

• Marketing automation, CRM, and analytics platforms
  They must know how to use essential tools for product marketing. 

Don’t be too quick to jump the gun if you find a candidate with the above marketing skills. Soft skills may equally be important when working with a manager. Thus, they must also possess these essential soft skills: 

• Communication
  Being in charge of the product’s overall messaging across their customers and team, they must have the ability to clearly and effectively communicate their product’s value to all stakeholders.

• Creativity
  They’re tasked to come up with creative and innovative ways to launch and sustain a product. 

• Leadership
  They must know how to lead cross-functional teams and delegate tasks as they head product marketing campaigns. 

• Customer-centricity
  Product marketing is all about heeding the demands of customers, thus they must have the ability to understand customers’ preferences and behavior, and create successful product campaigns that resonate with them. 

Roles with Similar Background

A lot of the candidates you’ll find may not have a product marketing background from the very start of their careers, but other marketing roles may just give them the right credentials to be good product marketing managers. 

Here are a few roles that equip a good product marketing manager with the right skill set: 

• Digital Marketers

• Product Managers

• Project Managers

• Public Relations Experts

• Market Analysts

• Brand Strategist

• Sales Channel Development Experts

Clearly communicate your needs and goals for your product marketing campaign to ensure a manager that’s right for your business. To learn more, refer to our product marketing manager job description template.  

How to Assess Product Marketing Managers

Product Marketing Strategies

It goes without saying that great product marketing managers must know all phases of product marketing strategies. When creating interview questions for candidates, it may help to shape them according to various strategies, which include: 

1. Product Positioning
   This is the process of identifying a product’s unique value proposition, and where it belongs to a market. With this, product marketers can create a compelling message that resonates with the target audience.

2. Segmentation
   This strategy breaks down the overall target market & look-alike audiences into groups so that the marketing team may tailor messaging for each group. 

3. Product differentiation
   This strategy differentiates an organization’s product from competitors’, highlighting its special features and unique value. 

4. Pricing
   With the target audience, costs, and competition in mind, a product marketing manager must know how to determine the best pricing strategy for their product. 

5. Promotion
   This strategy aims to build awareness and demand for the product through marketing tactics such as advertising, product placements, public relations, sales promotions, influencer marketing, and more. 

6. Distribution
   A good marketer knows the best channels to invest in to reach their audience and increase sales. 

7. Product launch
   This strategy includes the overall planning and implementation of launching a new product, from pre-launch promotions to launch events/immersions and post-launch campaigns. 

8. Product Life-cycle management
   A product marketing manager is responsible for the product through its entire lifecycle – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. 

9. Influencer marketing 
   In this day and age, it may be important to partner with social media influencers to promote products or place them within their content in order to reach a wider audience.

10. Interactive and immersive experiences
    Brands do well when they provide interactive and immersive experiences that enable people to test their products in exciting ways. 

11. Sustainability
    With today’s high regard for social responsibility, highlighting your product’s environmental or social sustainability may set you apart from the competition. 

Sample Skills Assessment Test 

It’s quite risky to hire candidates who haven’t undergone a skills assessment test, mainly because you’re unsure if their resume and interview responses do in fact match their capabilities. 

Thus, it’s always advisable to send them a little test after the interview rounds. Here’s a quick example below. You may of course change the product to match your industry. 

We just created a new product – [a plant-based banana cinnamon protein powder]. We would love to introduce this to a new market, but we do not have the specifics like target market and price. 

Tasks:

(1) Define the target audience of the product & segment them. 

(2) Create cohesive product messaging across all channels. 

(3) Create a product marketing campaign timeline and strategy, from promotion, to product launch, and post-launch. Please include all elements of the campaign.