I’m building a new product marketing team at Mendix, and I’ve hired my first several team members.  They’re talented.  They’re hardworking.  They’re curious.  They’re fun.  They’re technical.  They’re awesome.  We’re going to be the world’s best ever product marketing team. Just one thing, none of these people are not product marketers.

I mentioned this the other day to a colleague, who asked, “why are you doing that?”  

The answer flew out of my mouth before I could think: “Because I need people who speak Customer.”

This team includes people from product management, expert services, sales engineering, and a former customer-side architect.  They haven’t joined the team knowing what a launch plan looks like, how to brief an analyst, or how to write a compelling messaging brief.  But each one of them already knows how to talk to potential customers in a way that resonates.  And if product marketing isn’t about that, what’s the point?

I’m not saying product marketing is easy – it’s not. I just think it’s orders of magnitude harder to teach someone who’s never had the exposure to customers to create content that resonates with them, than it is to teach people who have internalized customer voice and pain how to channel that into compelling marketing.

Product marketing has changed dramatically since I started years ago. Success isn’t measured by number of assets created, amount of time spent on a launch plan, or even happiness quotient of sales teams.  Success in product marketing is about moving the needle on things as macro as global market direction, as micro as customer acquisition, and everything in between.  

Look, I may have buried the lede here, but the truth is that product marketing is the center of the universe.  It’s a critical part of the engine that’s driving the growth of the company.  It sits in the intersection of product strategy, product launch, messaging, competitive positioning, and sales. 

And some of the best product marketers aren’t career product marketers at all.