The Product Marketing Maturity Matrix
“Where do you start with Product Marketing?”
If I had a nickel for every time I get this question. It doesn’t just come from startups or early-stage companies either. I get this question from more mature companies too, whether it’s from a new CMO, CRO, or occasionally CEO.
The root cause is always the same: these leaders know they need (some, more, or better) product marketing but they aren’t sure what that looks like. It’s a common challenge for any team in any organization, not just product marketing.
After nearly 20 years in product marketing with B2B SaaS and manufacturing companies, I’ve witnessed, experienced, and built enough product marketing capabilities to come to the realization that there is a definable scope to the role that fits most organizations, and a measurable degree of maturity that accompanies it.
I’m excited to share my take on this with the 16 Volts Product Marketing Maturity Matrix — a multidimensional view on a range of product marketing functions and their capability progression from non-existent to advanced.
The Product Marketing Maturity Matrix Axes
There are two axes to this matrix. The vertical axis lists 8 unique functional areas that product marketing teams need to cover. They are:
Team - how many, which roles
Leadership - Who’s at the top (if anyone is), their titles
Processes - How process-oriented is your product marketing function, as defined by which capabilities or contributions are standardized
Technology - any tools or platforms used by the team to get work done
Sales Influence - Scaled from -2 to +2, where negative numbers indicate inward influence (Sales influences Product Marketing) and positive numbers indicate outward influence (Marketing influences Sales)
Marketing Influence - same as above for the Marketing team
Product Influence - same as above for the Product or Engineering team
Strategic Input - areas in which Product Marketing is seen as a strategic contributor
The horizontal access shows the level of maturity, along this progression:
Embryonic — Junior — Intermediate — Advanced
Put together, the matrix looks like this:
Your product marketing operation likely doesn’t mature at the same pace in each functional area. That is largely driven by the seniority and experience of the people on the team, their diplomatic skills, their resources, and more. For example, you may have a one-person product marketing team featuring a seasoned veteran who excels in Sales and Marketing Influence and Strategic Input, but doesn’t use any dedicated technology and hasn’t yet learned how to influence the Product roadmap. And you may have a team of 3 junior PMMs with great processes and tech but no influence on other teams. It’s a constant work in progress.
Why do you need to mature?
That’s an easy one. A mature product marketing operation yields stronger positioning, tighter alignment with Buyers, smarter and better equipped salespeople, faster sales cycles, and a differentiated and desirable product capability set and roadmap that is the envy of your competition, who by the way can’t make a move without you knowing it. And that’s just the beginning.
But getting there takes time and focus. Product marketers have lots of ground to cover, internally and externally. The perfect outcome is a product marketing-born CMO who is second in command to the CEO and who brings unassailable alignment between the Product, Sales, and Marketing teams. Or better yet, a product marketing-born CEO!
Here’s a visualization of what maturity looks like along each dimension. It’s by no means an empirical study, but it comes from nearly 20 years of personal and observed experience, so it’s a good place to start your plan.
Download your copy of the 16 Volts Product Marketing Maturity Matrix PDF below. It contains more details and descriptions of the matrix and includes some helpful resources to get you going on your path to the C suite!
