The 2024 State of Product Marketing report is here, and it’s fully of juicy insights.

I read all 48 pages, so you don’t have to (unless you want to).

This is the 6th year the Product Marketing Alliance has produced a State of Product Marketing report. With each report, I love to compare and contrast to the past year to see how the market is evolving.

And, let me tell you, things are changing.

In today’s edition, I’ll share the key insights that stood out to me most and discuss how trends are evolving (like, are PMM teams actually shrinking?).

Let’s get into it.

The State of Product Marketing

There were four charts that really caught my attention in this year’s report. Here’s what I think you need to know about the product marketing landscape 👇🏻

45% of PMMs work at companies with a product marketing to product management ratio of 1:3 or less.

This number has increased since 2023, which is a sign we’re moving in the right direction.

A ratio of 1:3 is the most common, with 20% of PMMs reporting this ratio (compared to 17.9% in 2023). I’ve always aimed for a ration of 1:2 within my teams as I’ve found this allows for the right level of collaboration and partnership with product.

47.5% of teams have 2 product marketers or less.

A lot has been said this past year about shrinking team sizes, but the data doesn’t reflect this.

While 47% may seem high, it’s basically remained flat since last year. In 2023, 46.4% of teams had 1 to 2 product marketers.

However, team sizes have shrunk significantly since 2022. In 2022, only 39.9% of teams had 1 to 2 product marketers and 19% of teams had 6 to 10 PMMs (compared to only 12.6% of teams this year).

23.9% of product marketers support 1 product exclusively.

This number has been increasing steadily every year since 2022, when only 17.8% of PMMs supported one product. I think this reflects a level of focus that’s being brought into the product marketing function.

I’m seeing more and more teams structure themselves by product line rather than solution or market, which may be another factor driving this increase.

Interestingly, there was a large drop in the percentage of PMMs supporting 3 products. In 2023, 16.6% of PMMs supported 3 products while only 12.9% say they support 3 products now.

Next year, I’d love to see if the number of products a PMM supports correlates back to whether they are an inbound or outbound product marketer.

11.9% of PMM teams do not have any KPIs.

Now, it’s pretty alarming that almost 12% of teams do not have KPIs 🤯

I know it can be difficult to find the right KPI, but the team still needs to be working towards shared performance metrics (I wrote an edition on how to making KPI tracking easy a few weeks back).

However, despite the large number, I am encouraged to see that this number has dropped significantly since 2023. Last year, a whopping 17.2% of teams did not have KPIs.

The report is 48 pages long, so there’s a ton of other insights I didn’t have space to cover here. What stood out most to you in the report?

CAMPER ESSENTIALS

📚 Reading List: Grab your own copy of the State of Product Marketing 2024 report.

🗓️ Events: Did I mention I’m hosting a summer camp for product marketers?! Join us for Day Camp, a free virtual event where you’ll have the chance to learn from Emma Stratton, Anthony Pierri, Jason Oakley and myself!

Until next week,