Aatir Abdul Rauf

Q: What's the difference between a PM, Growth PM & a Product Marketing Manager (PMM)?

I'll preface this with the usual disclaimer: every company defines it's own boundaries of what such roles do, so it varies.

Similarities? All 3 care deeply about the customer's problem.

𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀

🔸 PMs build a solution for a customer pain point in a manner that works for the business => Get the right product built.

🔺PMMs work on the go-to-market strategy to reach the right audiences & promote the product's utility. => Get the product in the right hands.

🔴 Growth PMs laser focus on a business metric like acquisition or retention & run experiments to optimize for it. => Accelerate the rate with which the product is acquired/retained.

𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀

🔸 PMs conduct user interviews, strategize, validate/scope the problem, collaborate on the solution & designs, execute with engineers, ship the product & then track it's performance.

🔺 PMMs understand users/personas, identify where users hang out, craft differentiated messaging, work with creative teams to develop digital assets, promote the product using relevant channels like blogs, landing pages, social media etc. to reach the right audiences.

Evelyn Hartz explains the difference between the 2 using an apt analogy (cereal box = product):
> PMs own getting the cereal ON to the shelf (i.e. ingredients, nutrients, placement in relation to competitors, etc.). 
> PMMs own getting you to take the box OFF the shelf (i.e. packaging, pricing, etc.)

🔴 Growth PMs segment audiences, research needs of each, identify growth levers, construct hypothesis, devise experiments, work with engineers/designers to implement them, analyze results & iterate quickly.


𝗘𝗫𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗘

Scenario: Canva is launching a collaborative whiteboard web app where graphic design teams can hash out cool design concepts together in real-time.

A Product Manager would have: 
- conducted discovery interviews to understand design team needs
- collaborated with their engineering/designers staff to conceive a solution 
- chalked up a PRD/Specs.
- finalized a design & worked with engineering to implement them in sprints.
- rolled out to production.
- tracked behavior & utilization.

A Product Marketing Manager would have:
- figured out the persona to target, say, graphic design & marketing teams.
- developed a landing page on the Canva website to open a new acquisition flow.
- sent out an email to all customers informing them about this.
- pushed a social post with a GIF/video announcing the product.
- issued a PR.

A Growth PM would have:
- Decided on a business metric e.g. optimize for paid user acquisition.
- Ran an A/B test on the headline of the landing page.
- Experimented with the team invitation interface.
- Tried variants of the onboarding flow when the whiteboard is being setup.
- Devised an email sequence to showcase how others use the whiteboard.
- Sent timely reminders before the trial ends.

#productmanagement #growthpm

Product Managers constantly swim in an ocean of evidence.

They use “evidence“ to make informed decisions, prioritize, build strategies & devise solutions.

Evidence comes in different shapes & forms.

Some examples are:
- vision or strategic input from leadership
- customer interviews / anecdotes
- surveys or polls
- data from an analytics software
- market trends
- perspectives from engineers & designers
- community feedback
- reviews on G2/Capterra

Now, evidence primarily flows in two ways.

👉 Product Managers have to PULL evidence from a source.

Ex: when it comes to customers, partners and prospects, PMs have to reach out to do discovery. PMs then analyze their qualitative feedback, analyze product metrics, carry out surveys/experiments etc. to improve their understanding of the problem.


👉 In other cases, evidence is PUSHED to a Product Manager.

Ex: Sales teams contact PMs to learn about edge cases or feasibility of customizations. They share common objections. Customer success conveys product feedback & wishlists. Customer support escalates common problems users are facing. Engineers highlight opportunities and designers partner on user experience analysis.

It's HARD for a PM to deal with such a firehose of information.

Getting access to information is the easier part. Distilling it into actionable insights? That's the real craft.

This challenge only becomes bigger as PMs try to maintain some sort of balance between PULL and PUSH evidence paths.

In most product cultures, one supersedes the other (usually it's push >> pull) and that can lead to a myopic view of the ground reality.

Why?

🚩When PUSH inputs are disproportionately larger than PULL inputs >

🔹Product teams become overly reactive & opportunistic.
🔹It's difficult to plan strategies for the future.
🔹PMs lose all their time to firefighting.


🚩And when no PUSH inputs are coming in & it's all PULL >

🔹Customers either aren't invested enough in the product to issue feedback to customer-facing teams.
🔹support teams are blocking off feedback loops creating blind spots for PMs.
🔹Customer fires keep burning, resulting into eventual churn.

What kind of evidence pools do you tap into?