Empathy – the PMM superpower nobody talks about (but should)

In the world of product marketing, technical skills, data-driven insights, and strategic thinking are often celebrated — and rightly so. However, one essential skill is sometimes left out of the spotlight: empathy. For Product Marketers, empathy isn’t just a “nice-to-have” — it’s a superpower that can transform how we understand customers, align cross-functional teams, and ultimately, sway the success rate of your product launch.

At its core, empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and genuinely understand their needs, frustrations, and desires. Let’s have a look at why empathy matters so much in product marketing and where it can make a real difference.

1. Truly understanding your customers

Let’s start with the most obvious place: understanding your customers. Sure, you can build customer personas with demographic data and research, but empathy brings it to life. When you’re genuinely curious about what your customers are going through — their challenges, their needs, and what they’re really trying to accomplish — you start to see things differently.

Listening closely to customer calls, reading between the lines in feedback, and thinking about the “why” behind their behaviours helps you build messaging that isn’t just on target but truly resonates. And it goes beyond messaging; empathy helps you make strategic product decisions because you’re no longer guessing what matters to them. Instead, you’re making educated decisions rooted in an understanding of their world. 

2. Navigating Conflicting Priorities

As a PMM, you’re not only juggling your own priorities but balancing the needs of multiple teams: product, sales, customer success, and leadership. Each team has its own goals, and sometimes those goals don’t perfectly align. This is where empathy can make a massive difference.

When you take the time to understand each team’s pressures — whether it’s product focusing on feature delivery timelines or sales needing clearer positioning to hit their quotas — you can approach conflicts with a genuine desire to find common ground and the right solution. Empathy enables you to acknowledge each team’s perspective and find ways to bridge those gaps. When teams feel heard, they’re more likely to support the overall strategy, making your job much easier and creating a more cohesive, aligned organisation.

3. Stepping into the sales team’s shoes

A strong relationship with the sales team can make or break a product’s success. But if you’ve worked with sales, you know that their world is fast-paced, highly goal-driven, and often under intense pressure. To truly support them, it’s crucial to understand what they deal with daily — from prospect objections to tight deadlines.

When you have empathy for their experience, you can create resources and training that actually help them rather than overwhelm them. This might mean providing concise, easy-to-digest collateral, hosting regular Q&A sessions to understand their needs, or even joining sales calls to hear firsthand what they’re up against. Empathy helps you craft tools that aren’t just well-made but truly valuable, and it positions you as a partner who gets what they’re up against and is there to help.

4. Fostering effective collaboration across teams

Product marketing lives at the intersection of so many teams — product, engineering, customer success, and more. Serving as a connector is a natural part of the role, but effective collaboration doesn’t happen automatically. It requires trust, open communication, and, yes, empathy.

Take the time to listen to each team’s perspective on what they’re working on and how it impacts the customer experience. Engineers, for example, may want more context on how a feature impacts users, while customer success might need insight into what’s coming in the roadmap to better support customers. Empathy helps you act as the bridge between these teams, giving them visibility into each other’s work and showing them how they each contribute to the bigger picture. Collaboration happens naturally when people feel connected and aligned — and the end product is better for it.

5. Communicating with leadership

Finally, empathy plays a key role when you’re engaging with executive leadership. Presenting to leadership isn’t just about sharing data; it’s about knowing what they care about most. Executives are often juggling high-level priorities and need information that cuts to the chase. By putting yourself in their shoes, you can tailor your insights to show them what they need to know — without drowning them in unnecessary details.

This empathy-driven approach builds trust and makes your voice as a PMM stronger and more impactful within the organization. You become a trusted advisor who understands the pressures they face and supports their decision-making with concise, actionable insights.

Empathy as a competitive advantage

In a world where metrics and data often dominate the conversation, empathy gives PMMs an edge. It deepens your connection to customers, helps you bridge internal divides, empowers your sales team, and strengthens collaboration. Empathy isn’t just about being nice or understanding people’s feelings; it’s a strategic tool that helps you make smarter decisions, deliver more impactful messaging, launch better products, and align your company around shared goals. Ready to put it to work for your business?