State of Product Marketing 2025: PMM Isn't Going Anywhere

Every year, someone predicts the death of product marketing. AI will replace it. Sales will absorb it. Product will own it. Growth will subsume it.

And every year, the data says the opposite.

The Product Marketing Alliance's State of Product Marketing Report 2025 just dropped—their seventh annual survey of the profession. The findings paint a clear picture: product marketing isn't dying. It's becoming more strategic, more central, and more recognized at the executive level.

Here's what the data actually shows.

The Strategic Shift: From Content to Core Business Function

The most telling metric in this year's report isn't about headcount or budgets. It's about culture.

"Product first" companies increased from 31.2% in 2024 to 41% in 2025.

That's a 31% jump in companies orienting their entire organization around product. And who sits at the intersection of product, market, and revenue? Product marketers.

This isn't coincidental. Companies are discovering—painfully—that product alone doesn't carry. Markets are crowded. Differentiation is thin. AI makes everything look the same. The only teams who can articulate why this product matters to these people at this moment are PMMs.

Without that, engineering ships features into the void and sales shouts into the wind. Execs moan about pipeline and churn but can't pinpoint where the rot is. PMM is the connective tissue that holds the go-to-market motion together.

That connective tissue only gets more important as markets get noisier.

Seniority Is Rising, Not Falling

If product marketing were being commoditized, you'd expect to see more junior roles and fewer senior ones. The data shows the exact opposite.

Senior PMM roles jumped from 17.3% to 28.9%—a 67% increase. Meanwhile, mid-level PMM roles dropped from 44% to 33.3%.

This isn't contraction. It's maturation. Companies aren't eliminating PMM—they're promoting experienced practitioners into more senior roles and recognizing the strategic value of the function.

The emergence of CMOs in the survey data (1.5%) signals something important: product marketing is earning a seat at the executive table. Leadership teams are starting to understand that positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy aren't marketing support functions—they're business strategy.

Revenue Accountability Is Increasing

Here's another metric that kills the "PMM is overhead" narrative:

Generating new revenue as a key performance indicator increased from 50.9% in 2024 to 53.2% in 2025.

More than half of product marketers are now directly measured on revenue generation. That's not a support function. That's a core business driver.

The report also shows that 30.69% of respondents reported increased product marketing budgets since 2024. When companies invest more in a function and tie it more directly to revenue, that function isn't on the chopping block—it's being elevated.

The Collaboration Pattern Reveals Strategic Position

The report shows product marketers most frequently collaborate with:

• Product team: 88.8%
• Marketing team: 81%

This cross-functional positioning is exactly why PMM is becoming more important, not less. In a world where product, marketing, and sales often operate in silos, someone needs to be the connective tissue.

Product marketers are the only function that:

• Understands what engineering is building and why
• Translates technical capability into market value
• Equips sales with the language to win deals
• Feeds customer intelligence back into product decisions

That connective tissue only gets more important as markets get noisier.

AI Makes PMM More Valuable, Not Less

The obvious question: doesn't AI threaten all of this?

No. Here's why.

AI kills low-level marketing execution—content calendars, ad creative, generic email flows, social posts. It doesn't touch:

• Customer insight and buyer research
• Narrative construction and positioning
• Market segmentation and ICP definition
• Pricing strategy
• Feature-to-value translation
• Competitive differentiation

If anything, AI makes PMM's strategic work more valuable because everyone else is now producing 100x more mediocre noise. The more noise, the more someone has to define the signal.

The report shows main responsibilities for product marketers remain product positioning and messaging—exactly the strategic work AI can't replace.

Small Teams, Big Impact

One finding might initially seem concerning: 44.3% of product marketing teams still comprise just 1-2 people.

But this actually reinforces PMM's strategic importance. These aren't bloated departments doing busywork. These are lean teams with outsized influence on company direction.

A lone PMM at a Series B company often shapes:

• Positioning against 5+ competitors
• Launch strategy for quarterly releases
• Sales enablement for a 50-person sales team
• Pricing and packaging decisions
• Customer research and win/loss analysis

That's leverage. That's strategic impact. That's why the function keeps growing despite small team sizes.

Companies That Scale Have PMM at the Helm of GTM

Look at Series B–D SaaS companies that break out. The pattern is consistent: they have PMM integrated into product, sales, CS, and leadership decisions.

PMM isn't sitting in a corner writing launch emails. It's functioning as the operating system for the entire go-to-market motion:

• Segment definition: Who are we actually selling to?
• Win/loss analysis: Why are we winning and losing deals?
• Messaging and value pillars: What story are we telling?
• Launch readiness: Is the org actually prepared to sell this?
• Narrative control: Are we owning the category conversation?
• Pricing: What's this worth and how do we capture it?
• Competitive intelligence: How do we beat the alternatives?

That's not "go write a blog." That's strategy.

The companies that scale successfully don't treat PMM as a marketing support function. They treat it as the connective tissue between what gets built and what gets bought.

The Boomerang Effect

Here's the pattern we see repeatedly:

1. CEO thinks PMM is a "nice-to-have" storyteller
2. PMM gets cut or sidelined
3. Product starts drifting away from market needs
4. Sales gets louder but less effective
5. Marketing goes random-walk
6. Go-to-market loses cohesion
7. Revenue slows and everyone panics
8. Leadership brings PMM back with a mandate twice as big

It's a boomerang role. It gets undervalued in the short term and overvalued in the long term. The PMA data shows we're in the "recognition" phase of this cycle—companies are investing more, promoting PMMs to senior roles, and tying the function to revenue.

The Title Might Evolve. The Function Won't.

Titles are fashion cycles. We've already lived through:

• Product Marketing
• Strategic Marketing
• Growth
• Product Strategy
• Revenue Marketing
• Commercial Strategy
• GTM Operations
• Market Strategy

The industry will rename it another five times. Doesn't matter. The work stays the work.

Someone has to sit at the intersection of product, market, and revenue. Someone has to translate what engineering builds into why customers should care. Someone has to equip sales with the ammunition to win competitive deals.

No AI replaces that. No sales-led org bypasses that. Every company eventually realizes it.

The Real Trend: Content PMM → Strategic PMM

The 2025 data reveals a shift that's been building for years:

Companies are quietly phasing out PMMs who act like copywriters or launch coordinators. They're doubling down on PMMs who run:

• Positioning and narrative strategy
• Buyer insight and customer research
• Market segmentation and ICP definition
• Pricing and packaging
• Competitive intelligence and battlecards
• Win/loss analysis

The job isn't dying. The lightweight version of the job is dying.

The PMMs who survive and thrive are the ones who own strategy, not just execution. The ones who influence product roadmaps, not just announce them. The ones who shape pricing, not just document it.

What This Means For Your Career

If you're a product marketer reading this, the data should be encouraging—but with a clear message.

The function is gaining strategic importance. Budgets are increasing. Senior roles are expanding. Revenue accountability is rising.

But the bar is also rising. Companies aren't looking for more PMMs who can write blog posts and coordinate launches. They're looking for PMMs who can:

• Define positioning that wins competitive deals
• Build buyer insights that shape product direction
• Own pricing strategy that drives revenue
• Run win/loss programs that improve win rates
• Create sales enablement that actually gets used

The PMA report shows the function is becoming more central, not less. The question is whether you're positioned for the strategic version of the role or the version that's being phased out.

Sources:

• Product Marketing Alliance State of Product Marketing Report 2025