Marketing strategies play a crucial role in every SaaS company, irrespective of the company size and type. When your marketing strategies are not efficient enough, they can result in a loss of time, effort, and money. Hence, it is vital that companies hire the right talent and structure their marketing teams as effectively as possible. This in turn will ensure that your marketing strategies are well-planned, effective, and successful.
When it comes to a SaaS marketing team, there are several roles within the overall marketing team. They can be categorized into four core groups – growth marketing, product marketing, content marketing, and brand marketing. In this post, we will dive deep into understanding more about product marketing and how to structure your ideal SaaS product marketing team.
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Product Marketing Team Responsibilities
Product marketing, in general, has a very wide scope, including driving product demand and boosting the adoption, retention, and account expansion of the product. All of this is an ongoing process, which further proves why structuring your SaaS product marketing team is crucial. One of the key responsibilities of the product team also includes reducing the learning curve of the product for the users whenever there is any UI enhancement or new product features introduced. Some of the other key responsibilities of a SaaS product marketing team include:
- Designing, developing, and executing marketing strategies for pre-product launch and post-product launch.
- Creating marketing campaigns that focus on your target audience in a cost-efficient manner.
- Enabling the sales team with various sales collateral and helping them in closing deals more quickly.
- In some SaaS companies, the product marketing team is also entrusted with the content marketing aspect of the product. They help in creating content from real user data, ensuring that the content includes the relevant keywords, terms, topics, etc., which might be searched by their intended audience.
- One of the most vital responsibilities of the product marketing team is conducting their target audience research. This research will enable them to find your product-market fit, identify the various marketing channels, and create effective marketing strategies.
Apart from these key responsibilities, a product marketing team is also responsible for:
- Conducting market and user research
- Lead generation
- Demand generation
- Creating various brand awareness initiatives
- Identifying Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and user/buyer persona
- Analyzing marketing analytics and reports
- Executing various growth tactics
Key Roles in Product Marketing Team Structure
Some of the common roles that you will find in a product marketing team include:
- Product Marketing Manager
- Content Manager
- Content Marketer
- Partnerships Manager
- Growth Lead
- Research/Data Analyst
- Marketing Strategist
- Go-To-Market Owner
Organizing your Product Marketing Team
Before you start organizing and structuring your product marketing team, you must answer for key questions:
- Is your SaaS product sales-led or product-led?
- What is your primary marketing strategy?
- Is your marketing strategy cost-effective?
- What is the learning curve of your product?
Answering these questions will give you an idea of whether or not you need to start building your product marketing team. Now, there is one specific way of organizing your SaaS product marketing team. There are several different ways that you can choose, such as:
1. Feature
In this option, the product managers and product marketers are paired up together, which helps facilitate better collaboration and communication. With clear communication in place, there is no confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the team members involved. However, there are some drawbacks to structuring your product team with this option. For example, the marketing messaging may become too feature-focused without sufficient focus on what the customer really wants. This option also does not focus on clearly communicating the benefits of the features to the end customers.
2. Function
A product marketing team organized by function requires categorizing your team into four main categories: competitive intelligence, positioning and messaging, product launch, and sales enablement. The separate focus on each of these categories can bring positive results; however, it is a high-cost option since you would have to set up teams for each of these pillars of product marketing. Also, this option may not be as effective when your business scales up.
3. Segment
This option refers to organizing your product marketing team based on different segments, such as sales segment, customer segment, persona segment, etc. This is an effective way of aligning your product marketing team with your sales teams, which in turn will enhance the interaction between the two teams, resulting in the development of effective strategies to target customer needs. Though it is an efficient way of structuring your SaaS product team, it also comes with its share of drawbacks. One primary area of concern under this approach is the complexity that arises when there are certain elements that fall under all the segments, leading to confusion about who is in charge of them.
4. Line of Business
If your SaaS company is involved in selling products belonging to different verticals, then organizing your product marketing team by a line of business is a good option. Line of business typically refers to the industry that you are targeting, such as finance, marketing, technology, etc. It is kind of similar to organizing by segment; however, instead of customers, the focus here is on the business department.
5. Objective/Theme
Organizing your product marketing team by objective/theme is a more seamless way of structuring the team as it allows the team to focus all their strengths and efforts on attaining the business objectives. Whether the objective is to increase brand awareness, retain revenue, improve engagement, etc., this method enables the team to utilize all their resources to fulfill the objective. While implementing this approach, the product managers must ensure that everyone involved is kept on the same page so that the team can adapt to all the rapid changes. This is because the teams may often be switched depending upon the priority goals.
If you find the above-listed options to be too generic in nature, then we recommend you try structuring your SaaS product marketing team based on either outcome or on the growth stage of your SaaS company. Also, ensure that the team is well-aligned towards the primary goals as it will enable the team to enjoy better collaboration and efforts in achieving those goals.
Conclusion
The first and foremost thing to remember is that there is no one-size-fits-all concept when it comes to structuring your ideal SaaS product marketing team. The roles and responsibilities of your product marketing team will vary company-to-company, and depend on various factors, such as company size, stage of the company (startup/established), etc. However, what remains common is the importance of their right structuring and ensuring you have the right talent who can boost your product marketing team’s efficiency and success.
We recommend you check out this amazing list of top Product Management Software on SaaSworthy to better manage your products!
