Disruptive forces in the market require product marketing teams that are able to quickly adapt and scale.
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Harness the disruptive forces for more effective product marketing
As ever-changing market conditions force product marketers to quickly and continuously adapt, they also offer an opportunity for leaders to upskill and highlight the team’s value to the organization. Newly minted AI-enabled offerings will require an AI-empowered product marketing team that can clearly articulate and differentiate its offerings.
And while the role of product marketing is often ill-defined and unclear, now is the time for product marketing leaders to highlight the impact of the team and step into a leadership role by strengthening internal alignment for go-to-market (GTM) efficiency and growth.
The top 2025 product marketing trends — and their impact
Dig into these three emerging trends and their implications for the way product marketing leaders manage their teams.
Trend No. 1: Specialization is increasing within product marketing
The role of product marketing lacks a consistent definition across the tech sector and is highly fluid. Depending on the organization, product marketers can have a broad range of upstream and downstream GTM responsibilities. However, Gartner finds that within larger tech providers, the function is becoming more specialized.
We also see a growing need and emphasis for “upstream” product marketers to ensure offerings address customer expectations and market demands. This trend is supported by the need to validate market insights and GTM decisions early in the development process to mitigate the risks associated with misaligned products.
Trend No. 2: Unifying GTM efforts is a growth imperative
A unified GTM strategy is key to growth, but organizations are often plagued by GTM teams with conflicting perspectives on target markets, audience definitions and messaging. In fact, 50% of tech CMO and product marketing leaders indicate that a lack of effective collaboration with revenue functions (e.g., sales, account management, customer success) is a top barrier to reaching customer expansion goals. Additionally, these teams often battle siloed technology and data and analytics stacks, which further complicates efforts to unify the GTM strategy.
Organizations that fail to address these challenges are prone to misguided and disconnected actions that fail to adequately address customer needs and meet growth targets.
Trend No. 3: GenAI is transforming the product marketing function
The impact of AI — including GenAI — on product marketing leaders is twofold. They must understand both how to enhance the team with AI tools and how AI-enhanced offerings differentiate the organization from competitors.
There’s no time to waste. Most tech providers have already embedded or plan to embed AI. Additionally, buyers are struggling with an overabundance of AI-enabled offerings. This opens the door for product marketers to articulate the superiority of their products, which relies on a deep understanding of how AI works and delivers value to customers.
How the 2025 trends will influence product marketing leader priorities
To effectively respond to these 2025 trends, product marketing leaders will need to create a product marketing team charter, collaborate on alignment activities that maximize revenue potential, and boost proficiency in data and AI literacy.
FAQs on 2025 trends for product marketing leaders
What 2025 trends are influencing strategy for product marketing leaders?
In 2025, product marketing leaders will be under pressure to address AI/GenAI skills and knowledge gaps, drive a unified go-to-market (GTM) strategy and clarify the role and impact of product marketing.
How can product marketing leaders create a better go-to-market (GTM) strategy in 2025?
Clarity of target audience understanding lies at the heart of a GTM strategy. Product marketing leaders must play a unifying role to ensure sales, marketing and product leaders agree upon, and have shared definitions of, their ideal customer profiles (ICPs), segments and personas. This will ensure teams are building solutions for, and marketing and selling solutions to, the same target audiences.
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