As part of this year’s Study of Product Team Performance we asked product team members to describe the nature of their relationship with marketing or product marketing. We know from past studies that successful collaboration with marketing colleagues is an important contributor to a product team’s success and that organizations often under-estimate the importance of this relationship.
From our perspective, we view tight integration between the product development team and marketing counterparts as a critical element of successfully bringing products to market. The more integrated the marketing team is, and more clearly delineated the roles and responsibilities are, the more likely the team is operate at a high level. This has been substantiated in our regression analysis.
A product teams relationship with the marketing team typically falls into several clearly defined categories. Survey respondents told us that their organization’s characteristically fall into one of five categories. These categories are outlined in Table 8.
A Closer Look at the Marketing and Product Development Relationship
A third of respondents characterized the relationship between the product team and marketing as a strong working partnership throughout the product development lifecycle. Additionally, 18.60% of respondents indicated that a weak working partnership exists with marketing throughout the entire product development lifecycle.
Another 18.60% of respondents revealed that while there is a relationship between the marketing and product development teams once the product is complete, there is little to no involvement or collaboration between the two teams prior to that point. 20.94% of respondents revealed that product managers are shouldering both responsibilities and nearly a tenth of respondents (8.14%) stated that product marketing has no involvement in the launch of new products.
Significantly, only one third of marketing organizations are actively engaged with product teams throughout the entire product development lifecycle. This represents a significant opportunity, and challenge, for organizations seeking to improve their performance.
Where does your team fall on this spectrum?