In this blog post, we will look at professionals who switched from marketing to product management and what they learned on this journey.

Our partner Sean Ellis made a poll on LinkedIn to find out more about people’s experience in switching to product management. From this survey, we learned that most people came to product management from marketing, which turned out to be a great starting point.

So we decided to talk to a few people who successfully made this transition and answer the following questions:

  • Why did they decide to switch from marketing to product?
  • How long did the transition take, from the moment they decided they wanted to switch to the moment they got the PM job?
  • What was the hardest part of making the switch?
  • Which skills did they find useful?
  • Which skills did they already have and which ones did they have to learn?
  • How did they learn the skills they lacked?
  • What was the journey like once they made the switch to a product role? Did their marketing background help further down the road?
  • What would be their advice to someone from marketing who wants to switch to a PM position?

Note that we are taking a broad look at this transition, where you can approach the product through a wide spectrum of roles between marketing and product. For example, you can get a step closer from marketing to product by taking on a Product Marketing role. Another way marketing people made their way to product management was to start by becoming a product evangelist.

→ Test your product management and data skills with this free Growth Skills Assessment Test.

→ Learn data-driven product management in Simulator by GoPractice.

→ Learn growth and realize the maximum potential of your product in Product Growth Simulator.

→ Learn to apply generative AI to create products and automate processes in Generative AI for Product Managers – Mini Simulator.

→ Learn AI/ML through practice by completing four projects around the most common AI problems in AI/ML Simulator for Product Managers.

People who participated in this essay

We want to thank the following people for helping us get to the core of this topic. Your time and experience are an immense help for the product managers to-be.

  • Georgia Vidler (Ex Head of Product at Canva)
  • Lauren Davis (Associate Product Manager at Indeed)
  • Adam Greco (Product evangelist at Amplitude)
  • Sean Ellis (Co-founder at GoPractice, previously led growth at companies that reached IPO)
  • John James (Chief Revenue Officer at Hybrency)
  • Joan Lockwood (Head of Growth at Huggg)
  • Bailey Lenart (Former Product Manager at Xero)
  • Ethan Garr (Former Co-inventor at RoboKiller)
  • Kelleri Nicole Riegel (Sr. Product Manager at Fairygodboss)
  • Joni Hoadley (Former Product Management Leader at Sonos)
  • Jasmin Ward (Co-Founder at Cribber)
  • Maja Voje (Founder at GrowthLab, Ex CMO at OriginTrail)
  • Louisa Tsai (Sr. Product Manager at Starface World Inc.)
  • Malene Mandrup (Product Marketing at Zuum Transportation)

We would also like to thank Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, the creators of the Breakout Growth Podcast who provided some content for this blog post. Feel free to subscribe to get updates on new episodes and content at https://breakoutgrowth.net/subscribe/

Q: Why did you decide to switch from marketing to product?

Based on the answers, there are two primary reasons why people decide to switch from marketing to product:

  • Many people realize at some point of their marketing career that most of the levers that affect the overall business and its growth lie in the product itself. This is a trigger for many to start shifting to product management.
  • In some cases, people who have a marketing job title are actually doing the job of product managers without realizing it. This is especially true in small early-stage companies. When a startup is born, few people are involved. At that point, the division of labor is vague and everyone in the team is responsible for many things at the same time.

Joan Lockwood (Head of Growth at Huggg)

I’ve been working in marketing for 14 years—since 2007. [My job] morphed into Growth Marketing over the years, having identified my ability to grow online communities and scale companies rather quickly. As I grew my skills, it became apparent that product was just as important as creating demand. This happened for me in 2012 when I was global head of PR, when the product and user experience was intrinsic to growth. It was from this point forward that I started to involve product/user experience in my strategies.

Bailey Lenart (Former Product Manager at Xero)

I was appointed to a Product Marketing Manager role because of my ability to communicate and demonstrate the value of our products to accounting professionals. I had incredible opportunities to travel and present at conferences as well as work closely with Product Managers around the business to clarify the value propositions and lead on our go-to-market strategies. But I found myself losing my spark without understanding why. I was feeling burnt out despite my workload being quite manageable. About a year into the role I hit a real low point and I asked myself who I wanted to be when I grew up? I looked at an experienced Product Marketer and the Product Managers I had been working with and realized it was Product Management that interested me. The deciding factor was the type of problems I like to solve.

Georgia Vidler (Ex Head of Product at Canva)

I always wanted to be a product manager, it seems. I joined an incubator back in 2011 in Sydney and found myself in an amazing environment, surrounded by young and motivated people, like myself. I saw the impact you could do with a comparatively little effort, building products in an online space. That was when I realized I really want to build products.

Funny enough, at the same time, Canva was kicking off: They had just launched an early access page, and only a year later did they launch publicly. I was mind blown by the product. I was still working in Marketing, yet I felt I wanted to be a part of the Canva product, but I obviously had no skills in product yet. So joining the company as a part of Marketing and then making my way to the product role became my goal.

Adam Greco (Product evangelist at Amplitude)

I believe that digital experiences (website and mobile apps) have gotten too complex to be owned by the marketing team and have seen a steady shift in ownership to the product team.

Lauren Davis (Associate Product Manager, Indeed)

I transitioned within my company, to be a PM for a product I had worked on before in a growth marketing capacity. The product actually started out fully owned by marketing, no product involved. So in those early days I had a lot of opportunities to act like a PM (honestly without knowing it) and grow the product. My situation was unique, but I think it’s really just an example of taking on projects/roles that are tangential to where you want to go.

Malene Mandrup (Growth & Product Marketing, Zuum Transportation)

In June 2020, I was recruited as the first full-time marketing at Zuum Transportation to grow the marketing team. I focused on building the team, setting up tracking and performance infrastructure. Once the basics were covered, I started focusing on product marketing as we were planning on launching two new SaaS products in the first quarter of 2021. That’s when I realized my passion for product marketing and the importance of building a product with product-market-fit before spending a lot of money and effort on growth and acquisition channels.