Generally, a Product Manager’s primary responsibility is to analyze the market, competitors, customers, external environment, lead and plan activities related to a specific product or product line. Product, is usually referring to any form of products or services.
There are too many textbooks available in the market that touches on marketing management, strategy or even business management. But most of what we learned from books as well as from business schools are general introductions to marketing management or high-level strategic concepts, but not the how to perform day-to-day responsibilities of owning and managing a product or product line.
The main difference between Product Management and general Marketing management are:
- The scope is focused on a specific / single product or product line in the responsibility of a Product Manager, while the Marketing Manager owns the entire portfolio of products.
- Decisions are mostly tactical and day-to-day for the Product Manager, but very strategic for the Marketing Manager.
- Product Managers focuses on short-term horizons (annually or shorter) while Marketing Managers think longer-term horizons.
However, not every organization’s marketing department would have a “product manager” per say, but may have equivalent marketing managers or business marketing managers who will be responsible for some or all of the responsibilities mentioned above and in some cases, even the responsibility of driving and owning the P&L for that product line. It all depends on how the organizational structures for marketing have are formed in the company. Sometimes, the marketing organization is by function (e.g. advertising, promotions, research, etc), sometimes it is by product (full ownership of the brand and product line), and sometimes by market segments (industry, channel, regions, country, customer size, etc).
So, what does a Product Manager do? Primarily, he carries out activities such as:
- Collecting and analyzing product category data such as close and distant competitors, factors of attractiveness, etc.
- Carrying out Competitor analysis and prioritizing competitors, comparing the product to its key competitors strengths and weaknesses, forecasting competitors’ actions, behavior of customers, economic conditions and other impacts on the demand of the product.
- Develop objectives and action programs such as marketing mix decisions (which are typically constrained by the company’s mission, objectives, strategy, policies, resources, legal, and other factors).
- Utilizing the data from analysis for development of a marketing plan (a written document containing guidelines for the business’ marketing programs) as well as a pro forma financial statements with budgets and profit-and-loss figures.
- Implementing the marketing strategy through the approved and documented marketing mix and related decisions.
- Measuring the progress through the planning period and determining the path towards the defined objectives.
In the past, it is normal for planners who have no feel for the markets where they are planning to determine the marketing program, being viewed as just managing by the numbers rather than planning through experience. There are still companies out there operating in this mode. However, in most successful companies, the people who plan are usually the people who execute.
Tags: Business, Consumers, Marketing, Product, Product Management, strategy