Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Software Management

Where Does Product Marketing Belong?

6 Mar 2026

A man standing between a marketing office and a product bullpen

Some companies put product marketing in product. Some put it in marketing. There’s a pattern—consumer companies lean product, enterprise companies lean marketing—but the reasoning behind it usually goes unstated.

Here’s how I think about it.

Product marketing is about information transfer. Once you accept that, the org question gets easier.

Ask what problem you’re trying to solve

If the biggest problem is that your product organization doesn’t understand the market, you need people bringing information in. Competitive research. Win/loss analysis. Sales battlecards. Market alternatives. Put that function in marketing, where it’s close to the channels where external signal comes from.

If the biggest problem is that the market doesn’t understand your product, you need people moving information out. Positioning. Sales enablement. Content. Category education. Put that function in product, where it’s close to the people who know what’s actually being built.

That’s the whole framework.

Why consumer and enterprise diverge

Consumer companies tend to put PMM in product. Consumer businesses usually have deep customer understanding baked in—close to users, constant experimentation, analytics on everything. The hard problem isn’t knowing the market. It’s communicating at scale to people who haven’t heard of you. Outbound problem. PMM goes in product.

B2B companies tend to put PMM in marketing. Enterprise buying is complicated. Multiple stakeholders, long cycles, procurement processes that obscure what customers actually care about. It’s genuinely hard to internalize the buyer. The company needs market reality fed back in constantly. Inbound problem. PMM goes in marketing.

The pattern follows the framework.

Reporting line isn’t the whole story

Regardless of where PMM reports, product marketers should be embedded in the product org. Not invited to launches. Embedded.

Design reviews. Product standups. Roadmap sessions. They should be acting like product managers who also own the market-facing story. If PMM only shows up for launch prep, positioning gets bolted on instead of built in. By then it’s too late.

The reporting line determines where they get context and where they have organizational leverage. The day-to-day presence determines whether any of it actually works.

How to decide

Two questions. Answer them honestly.

Does your product org have an accurate picture of what customers need and why they buy? If not, put PMM in marketing.

Does the market understand what your product does and why it matters? If not, put PMM in product.

Most companies have both problems. Pick the worse one.

The org chart matters less than people think. A PMM with the wrong mandate fails anywhere. A PMM who owns the right problem and stays close to both product and market can make almost any structure work.

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