How to structure a product marketing team

Investing in product marketing for the first time? One of the biggest mistakes we see businesses make is hiring a Product Marketer before they know how they want to build their team. There is no one size fits all approach to the design of product marketing teams. Understanding the right structure for your business is crucial for continued growth. 

In this article, we break down the different product marketing team structures and how you can decide the right one for your business.

Jump to:

• Overview of product marketing and key roles
• Horizontal vs vertical structures
• 5 key team structures

What does product marketing do?

A product marketing team is responsible for developing, managing and executing the process that bring a product to market. From understanding the market fit all the way through to executing the go-to-market strategy.

Working closely with product management, marketing and sales teams, they are responsible for communicating the product's value to your target audience. They play a crucial role in the growth of your business, communicating not only new product launches, but also feature releases and updates.

So, how do you build the right team for your business and product offering? 

What roles make up a product marketing team?

Full-stack Product Marketers possess a wide range of skills to bring awareness to your product, including:

• Go-to-market strategy
• Product launches
• Positioning and launching
• Competitor analysis
• Sales enablement
• Analyst relations

The combination of these skill sets bring the product marketing strategy to life.

When should a business invest in product marketing?

Founders often ask when they should hire their first Product Marketer - after traction, before launch, or once sales are scaling? But the real answer is simpler. You know you need to invest in product marketing when:

• Your story stops scaling
• Every sales deck tells a different tale
• Product and marketing can’t agree on the ICP
• Launches feel busy but unfocused, and no one can clearly articulate why this matters or who it’s for 

This is the moment you need someone to unify the message, connect product to pipeline and turn customer insight into strategy. 

It's important to get the timing right. Bring a PMM in too early and they’ll lack the data to make a real impact. But, bring them in too late, and they’ll be stuck cleaning up chaos.

Specialist product marketing headhunter, Jason Goodwin, shared his view...

"Hire a PMM as early as you can. Without clear messaging, positioning, and segmentation, how can demand gen or growth truly go to market effectively? You can pour money into ads and outbound campaigns, but if the story isn’t sharp, everything downstream suffers. 

A strong first product marketing hire builds the foundation that every other GTM function depends on. They make sure you’re not marketing harder, but smarter."

Horizontal vs vertical

You can structure your product marketing team either horizontally or vertically (or in some cases both). Each have their own benefits, so it's important to assess how it will support your specific product growth.

Horizontal team structure

The horizontal team structure spreads the product marketing roles across the business. In this structure, Product Marketers oversee the go-to-market strategy for a number of products or segments, rather than one. 

Here is an overview of the benefits of horizontal team structures:

• Broader resource and knowledge sharing
• Improved collaboration and skill development across each role
• Ability to react quickly to changing business needs
• Easier to maintain brand consistency

Types of horizontal team structures:

Horizontal structures tend to group teams by shared functions or skills, such as:

• Centralized
• Function-specific

Vertical team structure

The vertical team structure aligns teams and roles around specific products, markets or segments. In this structure, there is a team dedicated to each launch strategy. 

Benefits of the vertical team structure include:

• Clear ownership of strategies, with stronger accountability for outcomes
• Deeper expertise of the product, customers and segment
• Tailored go-to-market plans

Types of vertical team structures:

Vertical structures organize teams by products, regions or customer segments, such as:

• Decentralized (or divisional)
• Customer-focused

5 different team structures

As mentioned above, there are five core ways to structure your product marketing team:

1. Centralized
2. Function-specific
3. Decentralized
4. Customer-focused
5. Hybrid

#1 Centralized

Centralized product marketing teams bring all roles under one leader (usually a VP of Product Marketing). No matter if you're a Product, Content or Growth Marketer, this structure unites all skill sets under one department. The VP is then responsible for coordinating their team members and resources across one or multiple products.

With each skill set sitting underneath one leader, everyone is clearly aligned on the go-to-market strategy. This creates a consistent marketing and brand experience for your product. It also allows the strategy to evolve quickly to any lessons learned.

This model works well for SMEs or start-ups with one key product or limited product portfolios.

#2 Function-specific

In function-specific structures, businesses build teams around core marketing skills. This means that each marketing skill set operates as it's own team with it's own leadership. For example, your content marketing team will be led a Head of Content and have specific roles underneath, including Copywriters and Designers.

This structure ensures specialist execution of all marketing activities. Each leader will work closely together to ensure a cohesive go-to-market strategy. However, with the functions siloed, the strategy will naturally move at a slower pace.

Larger organizations with a bigger product offering and customer base usually implement this team structure. 

#3 Decentralized

In a decentralized structure, organizations align marketers to individual products. This usually involves placing a marketer into each product management team. 

Within this structure, marketers develop a deep understanding of their product, including its unique roadmap. It also allows for Managers, Designers and Developers to play a bigger role in the marketing of their product. This creates highly-tailored marketing campaigns for each product.

Corporations with a significant product portfolio tend to use this structure.

#4 Customer-focused

Within customer-focused structures, companies build teams around customer segments. Marketing teams are built around business size or industry, rather than the product, usually resulting in a stronger collaboration with sales teams.

This structure allows for a hyper-personalized approach to each customer base, allowing for tailored messaging that truly speaks to the audience. Their deep understanding of each customer means that it's harder to share learnings across the business.

This structure works best for global brands with a wide-reaching audience.

#5 Hybrid

A hybrid structure is a combination of the centralized structure, with some marketers embedded in specific product teams.

In this structure, you have the benefit of a consistent brand and marketing strategy combined with the hands-on skills. This allows for a clear strategy, whilst maintaining the ability to be flexible with resources.

This is ideal for scaling businesses who need cohesion and product-specific marketers.

Start building your product marketing team

Now that you know the differences between product marketing team structures, you can make an informed decision for your brand. If you need support in picking the right option, be sure to get in touch with our expert product marketing recruiters.

Working across the entire revenue engine, our headhunters can support you with your go-to-market hiring needs.