How to Organize a Top-Tier Product Marketing Team Structure

Remember the failure of Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad from 2017.

The ad was criticized for trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement and making protests seem lighthearted. Due to the negative reaction, Pepsi pulled the ad within 24 hours and issued an apology. 

If you analyze the whole controversy, the key takeaway would be ” Product marketing team, do your research and strategic planning properly”. Not only big companies like Pepsi, but 14% of startups fail because of product marketing disasters.  

Where the problem wasn’t the product itself, but rather a lack of alignment and coordination within their marketing efforts. This is why you need a well-structured product marketing team that can make all the difference.

Whether you own a startup or a large corporation,  stay with us; in this article, we will explain how you can structure your product marketing team structure.

What is a Product Marketing Team?

Your product marketing team is a group of marketers who focus on promoting and marketing a specific product or set of products to target customers to increase revenue.

As you can see in the image, it’s a cross-functional team. The product marketing team sits between marketing, product, sales, and customer success. You probably think the product marketing team is for organizations at the mature stage, but the reality is as long as your organization is marketing for a product (digital or physical), the product marketing team is as impactful as it is in later-stage organizations. Whether you own a startup or a large corporation,  stay with us; in this article, we will explain how you can structure your product marketing team.  

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Roles for the Product Marketing Team 

Let’s start by explaining the roles. To shape your dream product marketing team structure, you must include a balance of generalist and specialist team members. Here are some common roles you can include in your team.  

Product Marketing Manager

Your product marketing manager sits at the intersection of product, sales, marketing, and customer success and oversees the entire product marketing strategy. Market analysis, strategy development, and campaign management are his/ her main responsibilities. He/she works closely with cross-functional teams.

Product Marketers:

The implementers of your product marketing team are your product marketers. They focus on promoting and selling a specific product to your target audience. His / her responsibility also includes the overall product strategy, development, and roadmap. 

Content Manage

Your content managers manage the innovative part of the product marketing strategy by creating content. Content can include blog posts, web pages, videos, case studies, podcasts, social media posts, ebooks, newsletters, and more. He/she also collaborates with other teams( design, SEO, marketing, sales, and customer service) to ensure consistency and quality of content.

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Partnerships Manager

The person responsible for building collaborative relationships with other organizations to help the product succeed is your partnership manager. His/ her responsibilities include finding strategic relationships, negotiating good deals for both sides, and overseeing joint marketing projects.

Market Strategists /Data Analysts:

Your Market Strategist is responsible for creating a comprehensive marketing strategy based on market research to match the product’s unique value proposition with the target audience’s needs. His/ her job also includes everything from figuring out the company’s brand positioning to picking the best channels for advertising and making campaigns that work.

Product Trainer

The person who makes sure that your frontline warriors and other stakeholders have a deep understanding of the product so that they can effectively communicate its value to customers are your Product Trainers. His/ her responsibility includes creating and handing out sales materials, training materials, and product demos. 

Digital Marketer

Your Digital Marketer is an expert at using digital media to promote a product. He/She is in charge of planning and carrying out online marketing strategies that use social media, email marketing, content marketing, SEO, and paid ads. He/she uses insights from data to improve campaigns, make them more visible online, get more visitors, and connect with the right people. 

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Product Marketing Org Structure Suitable for Team:

As you know, there is no fit for all organizational structures. Your product marketing team structure always depends on your organization’s goal, budget, resource availability, etc. Here, we will discuss some organizational structures you can choose for your organization. 

Product-Based Divisional Structure 

The first one is a Product-based divisional structure. In this product marketing organizational structure, your employees are allocated to a product line or feature. The division is focused on the product’s development, marketing, and sales.

If you have multiple product lines and you have enough resources, This one is best. In this structure, employees from different functional departments work together with your marketing team on a specific aspect or feature of the product. They all report to their product managers.

For your marketing team, the divisional marketing manager oversees the team. Other team members report to him. 

Product-Based Organizational Structure

If you have limited resources, this product marketing organization structure is for you. Here, your employees will work for your product, similar to the Projectized organization structure. You can collocate your employees. They can provide support services to other products. The authority belongs to your product manager – one per product. 

Market-Based Structure

A market-based structure gives a more flexible and agile product marketing team. If your organization is in an early growth stage and needs to adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions or has products or services unique to specific market segments, a market-based structure is suitable for you.

In this product marketing org structure, your team is divided into market segments, customer segments, or geographic areas. The marketing manager oversees the work of the team. The CEO oversees the work of marketing management.

Functional Structure

If your organization is focused on specific skills or aspects of the product marketing process, you can choose Functional Structure. In this product marketing organizational structure, the reporting and communication lines within the marketing team are very simple; other team members report to the functional lead, who reports directly to a VP of Marketing or the Chief Marketing Officer. 

Matrix structure

Matrix organizational structure is the most adaptable management structure. It is a combination of Functional and Projectized Organizational Structures. This allows each product marketer to work on both a specific product line and a specific function within the product marketing process.

If you want to use your employee’s skills and expertise across different products and aspects of the product marketing strategy, the matrix product marketing organization structure is the one for you.

How to Structure Your Product Marketing Team Structure:

Now that the basics are clear to you. It’s time to assemble a team. 

Step 1: Assess Your Current Situation:

You can have two types of product marketing teams. You can create one from your existing marketing team for a specific product. Or you can hire people for your product. For this, you need to determine the current situation of your organization, which includes your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can find all of them by data analysis(research, surveys, interviews) and assessing the roles and responsibilities of your current team.

Step 2: Determine Your Team Size and Role:

Study shows that the size of your product marketing team depends on the stage the product is in as much as your business and marketing goals and your marketing budget.

Let’s say your product is a pre-market or post-market fit; you can have 1 to 4 product marketers. If it’s in a mid-growth stage, 9 to 11, and for the growth stage, you can have 20 to more according to your project need.  

Once you have decided on the size, you can select the role. I have already discussed the typical roles before. You can pick the roles according to your company’s needs.

Step 3: Choose the Best Structure for Your Product Marketing Team:

Once you have decided on your size and role. It’s time to find the best structure for your team. For a product marketing team, you can structure it by product, market segment, function, etc.

I have already explained how different functional structures, such as Product-based divisional structure, Product-based, Market-Based Structure, Functional Structure, and Matrix structure, work for product marketing teams. Now, all you have to do is analyze the information and make a decision based on your team’s needs.

Step 4: Hire, Train, and Empower Your Product Marketing Team:

Now that you have chosen the best structure for your product marketing team, you need to ensure that you have the right people, skills, and resources to execute it. You may need to hire new product marketers or train existing ones. Don’t forget to set the KPIs for your team. You can use user retention rate, customer acquisition rate, free trial to paid conversion rate, product adoption rate, etc, as KPIs. 

Step 5: Review, Regulate, and Restructure

You might think your job is done once you set up your team. The truth is that you just began. Finding the best team structure necessitates iterative processes. You need to keep an eye on how resources are being used and look at the results all the time. You should also be ready to change the way your team is set up if you need to.

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Tips for Organizing a High-Performing Product Marketing Team

Now that you are all set to structure your product marketing team. Here are some extra tips that always help. Additionally, consider consulting with an expert.

• Define the core responsibilities and goals of your product marketing team. You can use a framework like RACI(Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to clarify the roles of your team.

• Take extra care for communication and collaboration between cross-functional teams. Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana, or Trello can help you set the communication and collaboration channel alongside traditional ways (meetings, workshops, feedback sessions, surveys, etc.)

• Create a well-defined go-to-market strategy that includes launch plans, target audience analysis, pricing strategies, and distribution channels.

• Create a well-defined go-to-market strategy that includes launch plans, pricing strategies, target audience analysis, and distribution channels. If necessary, appoint a GTM owner who will be responsible for the go-to-market strategy.

• You can also use methods like OKRs(Objectives and Key Results), A/B testing, or lean startup to set and measure your product marketing goals alongside KPIs and test and iterate on your product marketing strategies.

• Foster a culture of learning, professional development, and growth. You can encourage them to learn new skills and best practices by providing training, coaching, mentoring, and feedback opportunities.