Lost in Translation: Why Product Marketing should be your company's ultimate superpower
Even the most groundbreaking products don’t sell themselves.
Winning in the market is just as critical as building the product. Especially when attention is scarce, competition is fierce, and slicing through the noise is non-negotiable for success.
That’s precisely where product marketing steps in.
Product marketing is not about fancy messaging or "supporting sales." It is the connective tissue among product, sales, and the broader market. Yet it remains one of the most undervalued and misunderstood functions in business today.
Let's do this.
Ask a typical executive what product marketing does, and you’ll hear:
All true but they barely scratch the surface. At its core, product marketing ensures that:
Yet despite its critical role in revenue acceleration, product marketing remains one of the least optimised functions within many organisations.
Product Marketing Alliance illustrates the growth dimensions beautifully by showing the areas of growth that can be realised through effective cross-functional alignment with product marketing:
When done right, product marketing isn’t just a support function; it’s a growth engine.
麦肯锡 takes the above further and illustrates that product marketing acts as a translator between product and GTM teams. They illustrate, in the same way that Hattie the PMM favours here, that product marketing is at the nexus of alignment.
The pulse setter of effective cross-functional results:
Product marketing can thus be the difference between a product/service that stagnates on the digital shelf and one that scales into a category-defining leader.
The Product Marketing Paradox
So why isn’t every company championing product marketing from day one?
Three big reasons:
1?? It doesn’t fit neatly into a single department. Product marketing spans multiple teams yet often “owns” no single metric outright. It’s easy to overlook something that doesn’t show up on a neat org chart.
2?? It’s misunderstood. Too many leaders think product marketing is just “messaging” or “positioning.” In reality, it’s one of the most strategic levers for growth. Shaping demand, influencing retention, and driving product adoption.
3?? Its impact is tricky to measure. Sales has revenue metrics; product has shipping velocity. Product marketing influences everything from brand perception to pipeline acceleration, but tying it to a single KPI is hard. As a result, it’s often relegated to the sidelines.
But given the purpose of product marketing is growth and cross-functional alignment it would be foolish not to make it central to your strategies. As we wrote earlier, the misalignment of teams is costing the global economy trillions of dollars.
So it's vital to understand, and I think this diagram from Aatir Abdul Rauf shows it best, the areas of value delivered by Product Marketing in assuring alignment:
We can see that there's a lot more to it than 'messaging' and indeed it's about enablement of a great many stakeholders; particularly sales.
Product Marketing IS Sales Enablement
A major reason product marketing is undervalued is that many companies separate it from sales enablement. But they’re really two sides of the same coin.
When these teams work in isolation, messaging can become inconsistent, sales cycles take longer, and opportunities can be lost to competitors.
The best companies integrate these functions by design.
Beyond the top of the funnel
Product marketing doesn't just help companies win more customers (ARR ↗) it helps with:
?? Adoption → Drive activation & habit formation. Users churn when they don’t reach value fast enough. (NRR ↗)
?? Expansion → Unlock upsell & cross-sell. Growth doesn’t just come from new logos. Product marketing positions premium features at the right time (ACV ↗) and (CAC ↓)
?? Retention → Prevent churn before it starts. Renewals aren’t guaranteed. Great PMMs reinforce ROI through strategic content, proof points, and ongoing education (NRR ↗)
Product marketing isn’t a support or overlapping function it ensures customers don’t just buy but continue to see value, scale, and stay.
Skeptical? The Data Doesn’t Lie
Companies in the highest revenue growth quartile have a formalised PMM function and exhibit, on average, a 25 to 30 percent higher ratio of PMMs to product managers (PMs) compared with those in the bottom growth quartile, averaging approximately one PMM for every 1.6 PMs. (McKinsey & Co.)
24% higher win rates: Organisations with robust product marketing see a notable bump in sales performance. (SiriusDecisions)
74% of SaaS buyers prefer to self-educate before talking to a rep, meaning the value of highly effective product marketing and the sales enablement content they create is pivotal to success. (Forrester)
$1 trillion per year: The cost of misalignment between product, marketing, and sales. (Harvard Business Review)
High-growth companies invest significantly more (2-3x more) in product marketing than their peers. (McKinsey & Co.)
Taking Product Marketing (& Sales Enablement) Centre Stage
All of the above is why, here at The Prestige , we are building a novel product in relative stealth. Relatively because we're showing a little bit more today.
Our new product Vee unifies product marketing, sales enablement, and sales execution into a single, AI-powered alignment and value execution engine. It's an autopilot for product marketing and sales enablement that eliminates inefficiencies and cross-functional misalignment caused by an inherent lack of recognition of its value.
Vee does not have the legacy of traditional SaaS apps (human input) and copilots (human in the loop). Instead it was designed with Zoe Scaman's human on the loop in mind.
Nor is Vee a horizontal 'ask it anything' kind of function like ChatGPT etc. Vee empowers cross-functional excellence with a team of specialist AI Agents that automate high-impact tasks across product, product marketing, and sales; ensuring seamless collaboration, sharper execution, and accelerated growth.
With dedicated functions and purpose they make recommendations, make updates, create content, and carry out tasks autonomously. Importantly, like a real team, they have hand-off where data from one area needs to inform another.
What does that mean in practice?
The team of AI agents:
With Vee, your product marketing, GTM, and sales are on autopilot. Because in a world of infinite choices and limited attention, how you tell your story matters just as much as what you build.
The next decade’s category-defining companies won’t just have the best products; they’ll own the narrative. Look at Apple, Tesla, and Slack:
Apple dominates hardware not just through specs, but through masterful storytelling.
Tesla isn’t just a car company; it’s a movement.
Slack didn’t just sell enterprise chat; it sold a radical new vision of work.
None of these companies relegated product marketing to the sidelines. They made it a core strategic function—and reaped the rewards.
Takeaway: Product Marketing = Market Domination
Companies that prioritise product marketing sell more, scale faster, and define categories.
Those that don’t?
They get lost in translation.
Hope you enjoyed the read!
Senior Director, Product Marketing at SiriusXM (AdsWizz | Simplecast) | PMA Ambasador
1 天前Great article ??????
Co-creating product outcomes with Founders, Leaders and Teams
2 天前Great article John McMahon and love the memes :D The PMA petal sums it up so well, although where it says "Product led growth', I would prefer to see 'Customer led growth'. Everything else wholeheartedly agree on, especially on breaking silos, building end to end cross functional ways of working, and aligning on value drivers ?? ??
Scaling businesses and creating profitable products that customers love | Executive product leadership | Chief Product Officer & Advisor
2 天前If strategy is nothing without execution, product is nothing without distribution and PMM absolutely core to that as you rightly say. Comprehensive post as ever John McMahon
Director Product Marketing, ERP at The Access Group
2 天前Great article John! Especially the ROI impact of Product Marketing. For a role that has been around for a number of years it is still often misunderstood and this article nails the importance and impact of our role.
Product & Partner Marketing at RingCentral | Curious | Problem Solver | Strategic
2 天前Natalie Marcotullio ??