Product and services manager

Product Marketing Managers oversee the entire life cycle of a product (or sometimes a portfolio of products) from creating the original concept all the way through to selling it in stores.

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The life of a product manager...

Product managers draw on various marketing strategies

A product’s in-store success all depends on the marketing strategies product managers introduce. The main marketing strategies at play nowadays are how products are positioned in terms of price, how they’re promoted (with vouchers, discounts, etc.), how they’re advertised in the media (on television, in the press, on billboards, online, etc.), the extent to which they appear on shelves in stores (distribution) and even product innovation. Product managers therefore have to act as conductors of this great retail orchestra, becoming the single interface between R&D, sales staff, regulatory bodies, logistics and legal.

Market research and focus groups

In order to really understand how their products are performing, product managers often rely on quantified analyses using market research and focus groups. As a result, product managers are able to monitor their product’s market share, how effective their publicity campaigns have been and the extent to which consumers are noticing their products on the shelves. Depending on the results, product managers will alter their strategies accordingly.

2 key career paths: development and operations

Product managers sometimes have to be responsible for both product development (coming up with new ideas) and the operational management of their existing portfolio, but frequently nowadays these roles are separated into two distinct careers - product development managers and operational product managers.

Could this be a career for you? Give yourself the best chance and discover how to ace an interview to become a product manager at Danone in pictures.

Fun fact

In 2019, Epic Games were all set to launch Fortnite Chapter 2. But not like any other release. 36 hours before the official launch, their servers were taken offline and the developers hid around 12,000 tweets from the official Fortnite account, leaving just a short video of a black hole visible on their profile. Enough to get all the players’ adrenaline pumping and their imaginations working overtime!

Skills

Hard skills

  • Advertising techniques
  • Product life-cycle
  • Customer insight
  • Statistics
  • Product comprehension
  • Content marketing strategy
  • Sales promotion techniques

Soft skills

  • Oral expression
  • Formulation of opportunities
  • Evaluation

Required skills

Disciplined and comfortable working with numbers, candidates need to be creative, product aware and good at having a strategic vision.

Typical educational background

5 years of higher education, business or technical studies, masters in marketing

Within companies

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