How Should You Organize Your Product Marketing Team and What’s the Ratio You Should Maintain Between Product Marketing and Product Management?

These would seem like two separate topics but they are intertwined somewhat. You can’t make changes to portfolio coverage without considering the impact on the ratio between Product Marketers and Product Managers.

There isn’t any set approach to going about finding what is the right coverage. Having gone through this exercise before, here are some tips on what to consider in your determination.

Organizing Your Team

There are a number of vantage points to consider in this process which I’ve outlined below. You may have other factors you want to consider. Ultimately, your decision on dividing coverage across the portfolio cross multiple perspectives.

  • Revenue – What is the annualized revenue outlook for each portion of the portfolio you have? If you work in a large organization, you may have multiple distinct portfolios. If you work in a smaller organization, your portfolio may be comprised of just a few offerings.
  • Sales Opportunity – When revenue is small across your portfolio, opportunity pipeline goals might be another vantage point to consider.
  • Cash Cow or Emerging Area – Does your organization have a long-established part of the business while trying to get an emerging are off the ground? This might be something to consider. However, as appealing as working on an emerging area might be for a Product Marketer, you need to be sensitive that revenue contribution should be a concern for that same Product Marketer.
  • Persona – A persona focus can be a good approach to layer onto some of the other elements listed in this approach unless your organization really has a clean split between personas and parts of the portfolio that serve different portfolios. For most organizations, this approach likely cuts across the portfolio in different ways and may make it harder to understand who has responsibility for what part of the portfolio when looking only at a persona perspective. Only select organizations that can effectively divide their portfolio responsibilities in a way that caters directly to one persona or another can likely focus 100% on this approach.
  • Industries – From my experience, industries have been layered on to other core responsibilities of the Product Marketer. However, an industry orientation may make sense in your organization.
  • Commitment to Marketing – If you have one part of the portfolio where leadership and others are keenly interested or disinterested in Marketing’s contribution, adjust your coverage appropriately. Don’t bang your team’s head up against a wall when there is other good your organization can do for those willing to embrace it.
  • Launch activity – Some parts of your portfolio may have a lot going on in terms of bringing new and enhanced offerings to market while another may be very static.
  • Logical portfolio splits – Your organization may already be covering the portfolio based on distinct business lines. That may very well be the final answer after your consideration. However, it’s always okay to challenge the thinking behind the status quo.
  • Sales Coverage – How well does Sales understand your portfolio and successfully sell? At times, Sales can be really good at selling one part of your portfolio and terrible at another. Expanding coverage to enhance Sales’ ability to sell across your entire portfolio may be another important consideration.
  • Technical Difficulty – Some parts of the portfolio may be inherently more complex than others. This may affect both who and in what way you split up areas of responsibility.
  • Team experience and skillsets
    • What experience does each of your Product Marketers have and how does that apply to consideration of parts of the portfolio?
    • How technical is each of your Product Marketers and which part of the portfolio is better suited for each of them?
    • What areas have your Product Marketers expressed interest in? 
  • Current Ratio Between Product Marketing and Product Management – You need to assess your current ratio of coverage. We’ve seen this ratio be between as many as four Product Managers to one Product Marketer though we don’t recommend it. Use the ratio factor to level-set your thinking above. In some cases, it may be that you’ve come up with a perfectly thought through justification for how to organize your Product Marketers but Product Management seems out of alignment. As a leader, take this up with your Product Management counterpart. After all, Product Marketing is a partner to and not a subordinate of Product Management.

Aim for a 1:2.5 Product Marketer/Product Managers ratio on average across your team. I say “average” because there really can be times when you need a 1:1 for one part of the portfolio and 1:3 in another area. In the latter case, imagine that one of those Product Managers is working on internal tools and processes that have limited visibility to customers and subsequently, limited need for Product Marketing support.

Aim for 1 Product Marketer to 2.5 Product Managers on average across your team.

You need to take all of these in balance to get at a division of coverage that makes sense. Watch out for situations that can arise through this thinking. In particular, be on the watch for splits in the portfolio that create the following imbalances: 

  • Very little revenue in one part of the portfolio versus another
  • Very little investment or development activity in one part of the portfolio versus another
  • Very little launch activity in one part of the portfolio versus another
  • You are putting Product Marketers in areas they are less inclined for
  • You are putting a Product Marketer in an area they are completely disinterested in
  • Clearly uneven coverage across business units

We recommend creating a simple spreadsheet to capture the criteria you use and once you’ve made your decision, store that spreadsheet away as documentation on your thinking.