Most tech companies break out product management and product marketing into two separate roles: Product management defines the product and gets it built. Product marketing writes the messaging—the facts you want to communicate to customers—and gets the product sold. But from my experience that’s a grievous mistake. Those are, and should always be, one job. There should be no separation between what the product will be and how it will be explained—the story has to be utterly cohesive from the beginning. Your messaging is your product. The story you’re telling shapes the thing you’re making

Tony Fadell • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making - The New York Times bestseller

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A product manager’s responsibility is to figure out what the product should do and then create the spec (the description of how it will work) as well as the messaging (the facts you want customers to understand). Then they work with almost every part of the business (engineering, design, customer support, finance, sales, marketing, etc.) to get the

Tony Fadell • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

What product ships, sales can't sell. This can indicate product was created in too much of a “tech-first” vacuum—and there is some failure in the product team process. Better looks like: Product marketing is a partner in product planning and provides input on what's meaningful to the market. Beyond if a story can be wrapped around it, they should h

Martina Lauchengco • Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products (Silicon Valley Product Group)

A good product manager will do a little of everything and a great deal of all this: Spec out what the product should do and the road map for where it will go over time. Determine and maintain the messaging matrix. Work with engineering to get the product built according to spec. Work with design to make it intuitive and attractive to the target cus

Tony Fadell • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

I would take more of a micro-view of it. Which is: Okay, how many great product pickers do you have, people who can actually conceptualize new products? And then how many great architects do you have, who can actually build it? Sometimes, by the way, those are the same person. Sometimes it’s a solo act. And sometimes that’s the founder.

Elad Gil • High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

Use marketing to prototype your product narrative. The creative team can help you make the product narrative tangible. This should happen in parallel with product development—one should feed the other.