How a product marketing consultancy can help you build alignment & execute faster
ARTWORK BY Anya Derevyanko
Product marketing consultants can bring an unbiased opinion to the table, introduce fresh frameworks, help you execute faster, and establish your first product marketing function.
It’s no secret that product marketing is an incredibly cross-functional and strategic role, with visibility into almost every function in the organization. That’s because product marketing sits at the intersection of product, marketing, customer success, and sales. Occasionally, product marketers even work with more specialized functions like customer support, design, UX research, and legal. What does this mean for your product marketing function? Product marketers are uniquely positioned to connect the dots across the business, influence people and teams, and move the business closer to its goals. But doing this is obviously no easy feat.
As a product marketer, you are constantly faced with challenges thrown your way. Some of these challenges might look like:
Product prioritizing a feature no one asked for (or needs)
Marketing running growth campaigns with ineffective messaging
Sales pitching the same value props for every decision-maker through the sales cycle
A solution for all these problems? Hire a product marketing consultancy.
Now we know outsourcing the strategic work product marketing does may seem risky. How do you trust consultants who don’t know your business? How do you hand over a project to a consultant who knows nothing about your product? How will they build relationships and influence teams without being a full-time employee?
Our product marketing consultants at Olivine have worked with companies of all sizes and stages who’ve opted to partner with us to support their go-to-market goals — whether it be launching products, uncovering new personas, revamping positioning and messaging, or creating effective sales enablement collateral.
Pngme, a Series A fintech startup needed help establishing their foundational positioning and messaging and killer sales deck to close more deals faster
Elation Health, a Series C healthcare SaaS org worked with our consultants to redo their positioning, messaging, and website
ServiceNow, an enterprise DevOps company, hired our product marketing consultants to launch their newest incident response product following a product-led-growth strategy
Through these partnerships and our expertise in B2B tech product marketing, we’re positive that hiring a product marketing consultancy can help you build alignment and execute faster.
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Product marketing consultants bring new perspectives and frameworks to your company.
When you hire a product marketing consultancy like Olivine, you access a network of expert product marketing consultants who have experience doing product marketing across diverse industries, company sizes, and business verticals.
If there’s one thing every PMM knows, it’s that product marketing looks different at every company. So when you hire consultants to oversee a product marketing project, they can leverage their unique experiences across other companies and apply the most appropriate framework and approach to develop a strong product narrative that powers your go-to-market strategy.
For example, here at Olivine, our consultants have previously done product marketing across companies of all sizes — from tech giants like Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Oracle, to hyper-growth tech startups like Zendesk, Intercom, and Envoy. And while they were all doing product marketing, the type of work they were doing varied vastly. This dynamic and multifaceted background can only be found by hiring consultants who are always learning, growing, and experiencing the different aspects of product marketing. We see 5x more companies and challenges (and tested solutions) than the average in-house employee.
Product marketing consultants are a neutral, third-party who can call you out on your BS.
Slightly harsh, but it’s part of the process and we always have your best interest at heart!
When you work with a product marketing consultancy, you’re bringing in a neutral, third-party who can hold up a mirror and help you see the inconsistencies and bottlenecks that may be contributing to misalignment and inefficiencies across the organization.
Remember, the consultants you hire aren’t building your product. They aren’t attached to the company and have no reason to sugarcoat or hold back where things are broken and need work. That’s because consultants, by nature, are being hired to give you their honest, unbiased recommendations. They aren’t gunning for a promotion, nor will they be easily swayed by internal stakeholders whose opinions may sometimes dominate or steer the larger business strategy at hand.
Product marketing consultants can help you hire teammates, execute faster, and be more cost-effective.
It’s easy to feel the pain when you don’t have a product marketing function or a large PMM team. You don’t have the right marketing person partnering with product to inform what to build, you may not have strong positioning and messaging in place, and you might be misaligned with sales on the overarching go-to-market strategy. Bringing in laser-focused product marketing consultants on a specific initiative can help you do all these things faster while giving marketing leaders the time to focus on the larger business strategy and planning.
On the other hand, product marketing can also be a challenging role to hire for. The job market for PMM is hot right now. There are a ton of opportunities, but the supply of great PMMs is pretty low and we’ve seen openings remain unfilled for months on end. And that’s because the perfect candidate is creative, analytical, resourceful, and an excellent communicator. But, they also should have experience leading launches for cross-functional teams, establishing positioning and messaging, conducting research, and enabling sales to close more deals. Bringing in a product marketing consultancy can help you understand what good product marketing looks like and can even help you vet the right candidates who can successfully establish the function at your org.
Lastly, hiring a product marketing consultancy can help you be more cost-effective by packaging up many different skill sets that would be hard to find in a single full-time hire, such as product strategy, messaging, copywriting, design, competitive intelligence, sales enablement, and more.
Rather than expecting the one product marketing hire to be your silver bullet, you can diversify your product marketing talent by bringing in consultants who can strategize together and execute quickly and effectively.
The case for hiring a product marketing consultancy
Whether you’re an early-stage, growth-stage, or mature company, there is always a case for hiring a product marketing consultancy. Hiring product marketing consultants bring an unbiased opinion to the table and opens your eyes to innovative frameworks and approaches. Most importantly, they can support marketing leaders by taking on challenging product marketing projects and helping them establish their first product marketing function.
