Product Marketing Salary Survey 2019 - Global Results

#PMMSalarySurvey
PRODUCT
MARKETING
SALARY
SURVEY
GLOBAL RESULTS
2019
#PMMSalarySurvey Product Marketing Salary Survey 2019
Contents
Introduction 3
Who took part 4
The average of all averages 6
Location, location, location 8
Men vs women 11
How much do job titles matter? 13
By industry, product and market 16
Company factors 19
Backing from above 22
Company cultures 23
Let’s get personal 27
Pay progression 35
Salary satisfaction 36
Career stability 41
Conclusion 43
What can we do about it? 44
P.s. Curious about the calculations? 45

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Product Marketing Salary Survey

Pay is one of those sticky subjects. No-one particularly wants to talk about it but everyone wants to
know about it. How much do people across the pond get paid? What can I expect my salary to be as I
move up the ladder? Are product marketers around the world happy with what they get?
All questions people are wondering, all answers we’re about to uncover.
Before we dig into the juicy details though, here are a few things to bear in mind as you’re flicking through:
• All figures represent base salaries only, excluding bonuses and shares. We felt there were too many
variables to consider with all three.
• At the beginning of the report, we split salaries by continent, country and in the US, state. However,
not all subsequent stats are segmented geographically and as you’ll soon see, where you are on the
map matters.
• We asked all respondents to express their salary in US dollars, whether that’s what they were paid in
or not.
• In the survey itself, we asked people to put themselves into salary bands for a few reasons:
1 To account for the fluctuating currency conversions of those who don’t get paid in US dollars.
2 To eliminate the scope for inaccurate responses that can come with FreeType fields.
3 To ensure 100% privacy. Some countries, cities and states only had one representative and for
them, the thought of disclosing their exact salary made them uncomfortable.
• Because we didn’t receive enough responses to paint a statistically viable picture, not every country
within a continent is called out.
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> 3
Who took part

All in all, 1,627 product marketers took part in our salary survey. The majority of
respondents were based in North America (71%) and the remaining count was made up
by Europe (22%), Asia (3%), Australasia (1%) and South & Central America (1%).
North America Europe
71% 22%
3%
1% Asia
1%
South &
Central
America
Australasia
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> 4
Who took part Less than 1% of the sample was made up by Africa and because the quantity was so much
smaller, we weren’t able to representatively include them as a standalone continent.
By position, the divide looked like this:

Associate Product
Marketing Manager
Other 5%
8%
VP of Product
Marketing
5%
Product Marketing
Director of Product Position Manager
38%
Marketing
20%
(People) Manager of
Product Marketing
Senior Product
4%
Marketing Manager
20%
Psst. If, while you’re reading through,
there’s a specific segment or dataset
The rest you’ll find out as you read on.
you want to deep dive into that we’ve
not included, just drop us a line on This is our first report of this kind but as the role continues to evolve and grow, we’ll begin to
richard@productmarketingalliance.com benchmark and compare all things product marketing and pay year-on-year. Until then, enjoy
and we’ll send you the stats separately. this first edition!
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> 5
The average of all averages

Across every continent, country, title, company size, product type, gender, the lot, the average salary
for a product marketer came in at $117,041, but not all employment types earnt in the six-figure mark:
$117,829
$100,303
$86,875
$59,500
Full-time employee Independent/ Full-time employee Part-time employee

freelance/contractor of a consulting/
contracting company
>
> 6
The average of What’s the median salary?
all averages At $112,500, the median isn’t a million miles off the average and the best-paid 25% made $187,500,
versus $67,500 for the lowest.
$112,500
$67,500 $187,500
25% Median 75%
And when it came to salary bands, here’s how the product marketing population was split. Of the 2% who
were paid less than $25,000, 28% were from India, 25% Brazil, and Russia and the UK claimed 7% each.
18%
15% 16%
12% 12%
8% 8%
6%
4%
2%
<$25K $25-35K $35-50K $50-75K $75-100K $100-125K $125-150K $150-175K $175-200K >$200K
As expected though, there were many other variations depending on all the aforementioned factors
and more and next, we’ll explore each.
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> 7
Location, location, location

With an average annual salary of $134,587, product marketers in North America came out better off than
any other continent, earning almost $20,000 more per year than their closest contender, Australasia.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US ($137,132) topped the table in North America with Canada ($95,700)
some distance behind.
Where you are in America makes a difference too and of the states that had sufficient representation,
salaries ranged from $152,307 in California to $95,208 in Ohio.
Washington $137,794
Minnesota $115,000*
Oregon $117,500*
New Hampshire $125,313*
Massachusetts $132,389
Michigan $121,389*
Connecticut $136,250*
New York $138,676
Pennsylvania $125,313
Utah $109,342 New Jersey $134,348
Ohio $95,208
Colorado $128,462 Indiana $126,250*
Virginia $125,526
Illinois $121,458 North Carolina $131,944*

California $152,307
Georgia $147,727
Texas $127,892
Florida $118,438*
*= more than five but less than 10 responses
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> 8
Location, Averages from outside North America solidify where you are in the world really does matter and
location,
product marketers in South & Central America receive the lowest remuneration of everyone - which is
around $100,000 less than the average North American.
location From best to worst, the continental averages were:
North America Europe
$75,847
$134,587
$81,094
$46,220 Asia
$36,023
Middle East
$115,921
South &
Central
America
Australasia
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> 9
Location, And drilling down to a country-level, salaries started to look like this:
location, $150k
location United States 🇺🇲

$120k
🇭🇲 Australia
🇸🇬 Singapore*
🇨🇦 Canada
🇮🇱
$90k
🇬🇧 Israel
🇫🇷 🇮🇪 🇳🇱
Avg. Salary
🇩🇰 🇩🇪
Great Britain
Denmark*
Germany 🇪🇦 Spain
France
Ireland*
🇸🇪 Sweden*
Netherlands
🇮🇹
$60k
Italy*
🇮🇳 🇵🇱 🇧🇷
Brazil
🇭🇷 🇷🇺
India Poland*
Croatia*
$30k Russia*
$0k
Country *Countries with an asterisk had single-digit responses.
“It’s not really a surprise to see this difference in salaries across geographies as they are often based on
the cost of living, and I assume are not just limited to Product Marketing. However, working in the SaaS
industry, I believe these salaries should be levelled more as companies are selling globally and thus are
also competing for talent globally. For example, if your company’s main market is the U.S. but your HQ is not,
should you get paid less than employees of key competitors?”
Bozena Pieniazek, Product Marketing Manager at TravelPerk
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> 10
Men vs women Women

52%
47% 52%
Men
47%
The overall split between male and female product marketers is relatively even (47:52%)
but on average, men take home $653 more than women a month.
Men
Women
$121,147
$113,307
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> 11
Men vs women Not everywhere though. In Asia and the Middle East women earn more than men.
$150k
Men Women
$120k
$90k
$60k
$30k
$140,568
$132,500
$101,000
$44,348
$40,000
$84,740
$129,621
$27,500
$65,581
$48,971
$93,214
$75,313
$0k
Asia Australasia Europe Middle East North South & Central
America America
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> 12
How much do job titles matter?

As expected, quite a lot. Salary jumps align with progressive promotions and the average raise is
pretty attractive, with the steepest coming during the Product Marketing Manager to Senior Product
Marketing Manager transition.
8
$174,622
$18,830
6.7
$16,480 $155,792
6.2
Avg. # years in product marketing
$11,752 $139,312
5.7
$127,560
$34,880
3.6
$92,680
$28,399
2.3
$64,281
Associate Product Senior (People) Director VP of Product

Product Marketing Product Manager of Product Marketing
Marketing Manager Marketing of Product Marketing
Manager Manager Marketing
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> 13
How much do job In contrast, when we looked at the US, UK and Canada in isolation (the three largest datasets), the
titles matter?
numbers started to look like this:
$35,167
Associate Product $74,575
Marketing Manager $51,111 The rest of the world
$67,500 United States
$58,284 United Kingdom
Product Marketing $113,115 Canada

Manager $73,855
$76,333
$74,297
$141,827
Senior Product
Marketing Manager $91,310
$95,000
$57,885
$167,222
(People) Manager of
$122,857
Product Marketing
$118,750
$111,167
$166,255
Director of Product
$121,635
Marketing
$133,611
$146,429
$185,110
VP of Product $135,938
Marketing
$143,750
$0 $50K $100K $150K $200K
Avg. salary
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> 14
How much do job And when we segmented the data by gender and job title, the splits were:
titles matter? Associate Product Marketing Manager
Men 38% 60% Women
Product Marketing Manager
Men 42% 57% Women
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Men 47% 53% Women
(People) Manager of Product Marketing
Men 62% 36% Women
Director of Product Marketing
Men 54% 44% Women
VP of Product Marketing
Men 53% 44% Women
As you can see, women occupy more spots earlier on and then as the role gets more senior,
the dial changes.
Other job titles given by product marketers include:
Competitive Intelligence Manager Growth Manager

Product Evangelist Chief Marketing Officer Communication Manager
Marketing Manager Customer Marketing Specialist Product Content Specialist
Customer Adoption Manager Marketing Solutions Architect

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> 15
By industry, product and market

Industry-by-industry
Computer Software (35%), Information Technology & Services (19%), Marketing & Advertising (6%),
Internet (5%) and Financial Services (4%) were by far the most populated industries overall and their
variances weren’t worlds apart.
The average salary for product marketers working in Marketing & Advertising was the highest of the
bunch - $122,952, and pay for the lowest of the five was $7,817 less.
$120k $122,952 $122,238

$118,365
$115,313 $115,135
$90k
$60k
$30k
$0
Marketing & Computer Internet Financial IT &
Advertising Software Services Services
With an average annual salary of $138,700 though, it’s product marketers who work in Computer
& Network Security (2%) who tend to walk away with the higher paycheque. At the other end of the
spectrum, of the industries with double-digit respondents, Consumer Goods tallied the lowest global
income - $85,208.
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> 16
By industry, Physical vs SaaS
product and SaaS is where it’s at and the overwhelming majority of PMMs (74%) market software as a service. Of the
outstanding quarter, just 8% work exclusively with a physical product and the rest a blend of both.
market When it came to the type of product plus pay, SaaS trumped physical products and people who are
employed to deal with both were marginally better off:
Physical SaaS
Both
product $120,230 product
$105,673 $117,440
Despite the disparity in pay though, pretty much the same per cent of product marketers felt their
salary was reflective of everything their role entails.
Quick-fire fact: Just 6% of the VPs we surveyed work solely with physical products.
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> 17
By industry, B2B vs B2C
product and It came as no surprise the split between B2B and B2C product marketers was very much in favour of the
former and of the specialists who took our survey, 70% were B2B, just 6% were B2C, and the remaining
market 24% served both.
The difference in pay isn’t enormous, but it’s there:
B2B product marketers $118,840
B2C product marketers $112,500

$6,340
Difference
$0 $40K $80K $120K
Just 5% of product marketers specialise in physical and SaaS products in a B2B and B2C
environment and interestingly, there wasn’t a single VP from our survey who worked in B2C.
We asked Jason Friedlander, Senior Director Product Marketing at Verizon, what he thought
about the difference in numbers:
“I would say the numbers vary so much because B2C probably considers themselves more as a marketing
function whereas the product marketing role aligns directly to B2B. I also think many B2B companies are able
to spend more revenue on salaries because it’s usually based on committed sales vs B2C businesses.”
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> 18
Company factors
Next up, we took a look at company-specific factors like growth stage, employee headcount,
revenue, and the number of people who make up the product marketing team.
Stage of growth
While most might expect salaries to increase as companies grow and gain more funding, that wasn’t
actually always the case and the average salary went down in between organisations who’re early post-
product market fit and mid-growth with an established go-to-market team.
Early pre-product
market fit
$93,529
Late growth/
scale-up
$121,918
Early post-product Mid-growth with an established

market fit go-to-market team
$116,791 $113,865
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> 19
Company Employee, revenue and team numbers
factors Product marketers working at companies with the largest employee count (10,000+) took home the
biggest salaries ($137,290). Unsurprisingly, three-quarters of those organisations were in North America.
In general, pay increased in tandem with staff headcount but there were a couple of exceptions after
the 1,000 mark:
10,000+
501- 5,001-
1,001- $137,290
1,000 10,000
5,000
$123,445 $124,353
$117,041 $121,351
Average
salary
201-500
51-200
$111,672
$109,813
11-50
1-10
$95,787
$91,042
And a very similar trend was present in the company revenue data. Unexpectedly, salaries began to
slump after organisations grew to more than $500million in revenue, before a final surge for those
exceeding $2billion.
>$2B
$250M- $141,767
$50M- $100M- $500M $500M-
$250M $1B $1B-$2B
$100M $128,759
$117,041 $117,707 $119,078 $120,958 $123,037
Average
salary
$10M-
<$10M $50M
$99,634 $105,225
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> 20
Company Just under one in 10 (9%) product marketers work for a private company and on average, they’re
factors
compensated with $107,217 a year.
Finally, making it a hattrick of patterns, the trajectory of salaries in relation to product marketing team
sizes took a knock around the same point too.
11+
$139,736
3-5
$118,462
$117,041
Average
salary
6-10
$116,777
1-2
$105,788
>
> 21
Backing from above

When asked if there was strong leadership support for
product marketing in their current company, overall,
more than six in 10 said yes. However, for B2C product No
marketers that figure dropped to just over half (51%). 37%
Yes
There were also quite significant differences depending
62%
on seniority. For example, 78% of VPs of Product Marketing
answered yes, compared to just 57% of Associate Product
Marketing Managers.
And finally, making up the extremes on the map for the better
were Australasia (84%) and for worse, Asia (52%).
So, did that higher-level backing make a difference on the whole? Yes, yes it did. On average,
product marketers with strong leadership support earn $12,762 more a year.
Wondering how you can get the C-suite invested? Here’s what Martin Aguinis,
Product Marketing Manager at Flutter, a Google company, had to say:
“Shift your focus to data. It should be your best friend. This is because there is no better way of gaining
leadership support than to demonstrate the direct impact and ROI you are bringing to a business as a marketer.
This can be top-line, bottom-line, or other OKRs your team cares about like sentiment tracking, awareness, and
product usage.
“Whenever I launch something at Google, I will then look at our tool usage or website visits and find direct
correlations with my campaigns and the results our data shows. This immediately links the direct effects of
marketing to the rest of the team and key stakeholders, thus getting execs more invested. So, elevate the role
through data to demonstrate direct impact.”
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> 22
Company cultures
Whether there’s a right or wrong approach is up for debate but our survey discovered the majority of
businesses operate with a product-first mindset (42%). In second was sales-first (30%) followed by
customer (24%) and marketing (4%).
In terms of salary, people operating in marketing-first organisations drew the shortest straw ($108,254)
and those in product-first companies the longest ($120,151).
Customer-first $116,539
Marketing-first $108,254
Sales-first $114,033
Product-first $120,151
$0 $20K $40K $60K $80K $100K $120K
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> 23
Company Who should Product Marketing report to?
cultures The split for this one was actually pretty decisive:
Marketing
73%
$118,733
73%
Other
3%
3% % of product
marketers who
CEO 2%
2%
report to...
$118,214 3%
Business
Development
3% 19%
$103,466
Product
19%
$112,010
Outside of the big four, the most common departments/positions given included Customer Ops/
Experience, Sales & Partnerships, Technology, the Board, Chief Operating Officers and Revenue Ops.
Just a couple of people said their Product Marketing department was its own entity.
When it comes to who you report to though one or the other isn’t necessarily right or wrong.
We picked the brains of product marketers assigned to each to see what they thought.
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> 24
Company Product
cultures “How often do you hear a PO say “marketing doesn’t need to know that” when a marketer asks about the
intricacies of an asynchronous API? As a PMM reporting to Product, you are trusted to understand the most
technical of specs and apply your magic to turn them into a message customers get excited about. Working side
by side with Product Managers allows a Product Marketer to participate in a product’s development process from
the very beginning and be an integral part of its success, especially after everyone washes their hands.”
Anna Kovalenko, Product Marketing Manager at NMI
Marketing
“There are both pros and cons to being aligned with marketing but for me, the advantages are being directly
involved with the end-to-end buyer journey, especially on the digital front where all the businesses are going,
if not already there. It’s also easier to conduct customer-facing activities as you are on the same team as the
events and marketing ops folks, etc., and you always have swag lying around for you and/or your customers.
“On the flip side, you’re perceived as general marketing and asked to pretty up presentations instead of working
on strategic tasks, and you’re further away from your product management colleagues and often find yourself
in silos. The KPIs you’re tracked on are also more focused on marketing ones, basically site visits, organic growth,
conversions, etc., and so not focused on the customer.”
Parag Pathak, Team Lead, Product Marketing at IBM Security
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Company Business development
cultures “I report into the division of Vendasta that focuses on growing our existing customers. The main benefits to this are
that we get a closer understanding of our customer cohort, which allows us to build a stronger understanding of
where they find value. This forces us to keep our key messaging up-to-date and highly specific.
“Reporting to a division also enables us to successfully collaborate with product, sales and marketing by working
as the main line of unbiased communication between functional teams. Additionally, I find that for companies
like Vendasta who have a wide variety of products and solutions, having product marketing focused on customer
cohorts allows them to have more autonomy to build strategic plans using everything at their disposal.”
Rylan Morris, Director of Product Marketing at Vendasta
CEO
“For someone who’s responsible for the go-to-market strategy, especially in hi-tech orgs, when releases are
frequent and benefits for each persona are not obvious, the CEO can provide unique insight into messaging,
new angles to tell a story, all consistent with his/her vision and north star metric.
“Not all CEOs are able to do that though, it depends on their background and skills. Reporting to the “right” CEO greatly
helps any product marketing effort. Reporting to the “wrong” CEO on the other hand can be a total nightmare.”
Donato Mangialardo, CMO at Giunti Psychometrics
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> 26
Let’s get personal

This section focuses on people-specific factors, like education, certification, how many products
they manage, how long they’ve been in the industry, the number of hours worked, and more.
Certification & education

We’ve seen several discussions on Slack and online around product marketing certification and
whether it’s needed for the role and although we already knew it wasn’t, our results confirm it
doesn’t affect pay, either.
The vast majority of product marketers (77%) don’t hold any current certification and the salary
difference between those that did and didn’t wasn’t significant enough to suggest the credential
alone was the differentiator:
Do you have
Yes current product No
22%
marketing 77%
$118,726 $116,568
certifications?
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> 27
Let’s get In terms of certification and job titles, there weren’t really any trends to report on. VPs of Product
personal
Marketing were most likely to have an up-to-date certificate (32%) and Product Marketing
Managers least (19%). Outside of those though, the numbers were pretty up and down.
% who have current certifications

30%
32%
27%
20% 24%
23%
21%
19%
10%
0%
Associate Product Product Senior Product (People) Manager Director of Product VP of Product
Marketing Manager Marketing Marketing of Product Marketing Marketing
Manager Manager Marketing
Job title
However, whether directly or indirectly, level of education did appear to play its part and the
average salary of someone who didn’t go to college versus someone who had a Doctorate was
more than $50,000 apart.
Didn’t go to college
2%
$96,118
Doctorate
Bachelors
1%
53%
$149,423
$115,851
Masters
42%
$119,460
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> 28
Let’s get Number of people and products managed
personal Although plateauing slightly towards the upper end of the count, as expected, the more heads a
product marketing manager oversees the more they earn.
$200k
$173,784
$150k
$147,024
Average salary
$143,368
$121,309
$100k $106,581
$50k
$0k
0 1-2 3-5 6-10 11+
# people managed
And despite getting off to a slow start, a similar sort of trajectory occurs on a smaller scale when it
comes to the number of products supported, too.
$150k
Average salary
$122,639
$100k $112,421 $115,983 $118,694
$111,516
$50k
$0k
1 2 3 4 5+
# products supported
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> 29
Let’s get The increases can’t be attributed to more senior involvement either. As the below chart shows, the
personal
level of seniority to products supported ratios are all within a reasonably similar bandwidth across
the board, which can lead us to assume product marketers are being compensated for the extra
workload that comes with more products - perhaps just not as much as is arguably deserved.
50%
40%
% of PMMs
30%
20%
10%
0
1 2 3 4 5+
# of products supported
Associate Product Marketing Manager Product Marketing Manager Senior Product Marketing Manager
(People) Manager of Product Marketing Director of Product Marketing VP of Product Marketing
We caught up with Yoni Solomon, Head of Product Marketing at G2, to get his thoughts on pay
in relation to the number of products managed.
“While these pay bands look consistent to what we’re seeing in-market today, it’s becoming clear that the
What do you think? thoughtfulness and structure we commonly see in Sales and Demand Gen comp plans are quite lacking in
Product Marketing.
Let us know your thoughts
“As PMM importance and impact continue to be elevated in the coming years, I hope to see performance
on product numbers levers around number of products managed, product adoption, # of GTMs per quarter and top-line
and pay here > demand get built into the compensation packages of product marketers, all to ensure we’re properly
compensating our go-to-market teams for their performance both individually and in-support of our
Product, Marketing and Sales orgs that we live at the intersection of.”
>
> 30
Let’s get Number of hours put in
personal The average product marketer works 46 hours a week and bar one anomaly, this is far more than
each’s respective national average.
PMM average (hours) National average (hours) †
50hrs
50 50
48
45 46
44 43 44 44
40hrs 42 43
39
38 37
34
Avg. # hours
32 33 33
30hrs
29 30
28
26
20hrs
10hrs
0hrs
Germany
Netherlands
France
United Kingdom
Australia
Spain
Canada
United States
Israel
India
Brazil
Country
† Data for India’s average work hours was taken from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)’s first periodic labour force survey (PLFS). Brazil was
based on the country’s norm of eight hours Monday-Friday plus four hours on Saturday. All other averages came from the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In San Francisco, the average climbed up to 50 hours per week and the upper 19% tallied a whopping
62 hours every seven days.
As you might expect, VPs of Product Marketing racked up the highest weekly total (51 hours) and
those earlier in their career, Associate Product Marketing Managers, hit just below the product
marketing average with 43 hours - but still way more than the overarching norms.
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> 31
Let’s get So, what’s contributing to product marketers’ long working weeks? Here’s what Tania Clarke,
personal
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Atlassian, had to say.
“I used to work for a company where I was supporting 11 product managers and a very large sales team as
one person. The amount of work that goes with supporting that many people is exhausting and enormous
and the ideal ratio should be 1:2 (1x PMM for 2x PMs) and a team of PMMs with resources like content
marketing and demand gen to support a growing sales team.”
Minorities
Next, we asked our panel of product marketers whether they considered themselves to be part of a
visible or invisible minority where they currently work. Around two thirds (65%) said they didn’t, just
over one third (35%) said they did.
Whether they did or didn’t had no bearing on pay though and in fact, people who were part of a
minority received a marginally higher remuneration.
Yes No
$117,773 $116,506
34% 65%
Do you consider yourself

part of a minority?
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> 32
Let’s get In-house vs remote
personal Working from home’s on the up full stop and it’s definitely just as present in product marketing.
According to our survey, 56% of product marketers work from home at least one day a week and one in
10 are 100% remote.
Not everywhere was quite so into it though. On the map, not a single product marketer in the Middle
East or South & Central America said they worked from home full-time and Asia (7%) and Europe (8%)
dipped below the average, with Australasia (11%) and North America (12%) just above.
So, did being in or out of the office impact pay? Yes, but perhaps not in the way you might have thought.
On average, remote product marketers earn $132,811 a year and in comparison, people who’re always
in the office receive $109,247 - more than $23,000 less.
# days working from home % of product marketers Average pay
1 day 29% $117,611
2 days 10% $122,741
3 days 4% $132,302
4 days 2% $133,047
Remote 10% $132,811
Always in the office 44% $109,247
Product Marketing Managers, Senior Product Marketing Managers and Directors of Product Marketing
were the most likely candidates to work remotely full-time and some titles did buck the trend.
>
> 33
Let’s get Associate Product $64,281
personal
Marketing Manager
$55,000 Avg. salary
Product Marketing $92,680 Avg. remote salary
Product marketing position

Manager
$95,407
Senior Product $127,560

Marketing Manager
$140,061
(People) Manager of $139,312

Product Marketing
$146,000
Director of Product $155,792

Marketing
$161,600
VP of Product $174,622
Marketing
$168,654
$0 $50K $100K $150K $200K

Average salary
The stage a company was at impacted this one too. For example, companies who were early
pre-product market fit a) had significantly fewer remote workers and b) didn’t show much
difference in pay at all.
In comparison, organisations categorised as late growth/scale-up returned a higher than average

disparity between the two, $24,913 - again, in favour of remote workers.
“It’s very fascinating to see that remote PMMs earn more than folks who are in the office full-time. This helps
confirm my theory that a distributed workforce is the way to go. We have a distributed team with team
members on the west coast, central and east coast of the US, and their salaries are comparable irrespective
of whether they are in office or remote.
“I advocate for remote work as it’s key for work-life balance and with video conferencing technology, you feel
like you are in the same room and can connect just like you would face-to-face.”
Div Manickam, Director of Portfolio Messaging (Product, Industry, and Solutions) at Boomi
>
> 34
Pay progression
In the last three years, the majority of product marketers have bagged between two and three pay rises.
Just under one in 10 (8%) didn’t receive a single salary increase and the lucky 0.5% earned more than five.
2%
0.5%
7% 0 pay rises
8%
1 pay rises
32%
2 pay rises
3 pay rises
20% 4 pay rises
5 pay rises
More than 5 pay rises

31%
As you can imagine, the product marketers who hadn’t had a raise in at least three years were least
happy with their current compensation and of those who received more than five, the consensus was
there’s still room for improvement.
Pay progression differed somewhat depending on where you are on the map too. Product marketers
What are your pay in the Middle East (19%) and South & Central America (14%) were most likely to have stayed on the
rises contingent on? same salary for the last three years, whereas people in North America were around 10% more likely than
everyone else to have had three or more raises.
If you’ve got a minute,
let us know here > By title, Associate Product Marketing Managers were least likely to see any changes to their salary and
18% of (People) Managers of Product Marketing welcomed four or more - that’s 8% more than any
other bracket.
>
> 35
Salary satisfaction
On the whole, the average product marketer is 7/10 happy with their current pay. The only continents
who dipped below the norm were Europe and the Middle East who rated their satisfaction at 6/10.
Despite earning quite a bit more than the rest of the world, product marketers in North America were
no happier with their wage than everyone else.
On a scale of 1-10, how happy

are you with your current % of product marketers Average pay
compensation?
0 2% $97,768
1 1% $93,947
2 3% $98,605
3 4% $95,896
4 6% $92,935
5 8% $101,654
6 13% $109,770
7 22% $118,253
8 24% $124,558
Not happy with your pay? 9 11% $138,077
We’d love to know what you 10 6% $136,521
think it should *realistically* be.

Of the 2% who said they weren’t happy one bit, almost two in five (39%) earned more than $125,000
Let us know here >
and more than half (57%) were Product Marketing Managers.
>
> 36
Salary On the opposite end of the spectrum, more than three-quarters (77%) of the product marketers who
couldn’t be happier with their pay were based in North America - perhaps unsurprising given their
satisfaction higher overall base salary.
Outside of increased pay, the most prevalent pleas for change around compensation include:
Quarterly bonuses instead of annual Smaller product portfolios

Some control over bonuses
More recognition Paid certifications
401k matching Better bonuses Travel compensation
Larger learning and development budget
More responsibility and visibility More/unlimited paid time-off
More authority and say in the role Flexible hours
Holiday trading
Incentives for effort beyond expectations
More equity More realistic targets
Better work-life balance
Profit-sharing
To be able to work remotely Higher base, less bonus
Better health insurance Commission for leads that close
Better pension plan
Incentives that are less dependent on others
Education stipend Bonuses tied to measurable performance
More stock options

Better perks (e.g. gym membership)
Equity in the company
Clear path to promotion Better job satisfaction
More professional development opportunities
More empowerment
Leadership opportunities More clarity around bonus structures
>
> 37
Salary Salary:value happiness
satisfaction Those who felt their salary reflected their role earned just under $20,000 more than product marketers
who answered ‘No’ or ‘For now’.
Interestingly, just 14% of Associate Product Marketing Managers feel their current pay is fair for what they
do. On the flip side, more than half (57%) of VPs of Product Marketing do.
Do you think your salary’s reflective of your

role and everything it entails?
Yes No For now,

but I expect a raise soon
33% 32% 34%
>
> 38
Salary Geographically, despite receiving the lowest average salary of all the continents, product marketers in
satisfaction
South & Central America were least likely to feel they weren’t being compensated fairly (13%).
Most likely to feel they’re underpaid for the work they do were product marketers in Europe (33%) and
North America (33%) - despite the latter earning significantly more than Asia, Australasia and the
Middle East.
And when it came to product marketing salaries in general, slightly more product marketers did (54%)
than didn’t (45%) think they reflect the business value the role adds.
Do you think product marketing salaries in general

reflect the business value the role adds?
54% 45%
Yes No
>
> 39
Salary Is salary a sticking point?
satisfaction When making career decisions, salary’s the first thing around one in six (18%) product marketers look
for and women were slightly more likely to hold this in higher regard than men.
Geographically, people in North America and the Middle East were slightly more likely than the
average to take a salary-first approach (19%) - within North America though, Canadians were
considerably above this (27%).
Those in Europe and Asia sat a few percentage points below the norm (14%) and some countries in
Europe were even less bothered about salary than that:
• Spain (4%)
• Netherlands (5%)
• Germany (10%).
So, if not salary, what do product marketers hold dearly during career decisions? Here’s what.
44%
36%
27%
18%
Salary is the first The industry Progression The business’

thing I look for and product opportunities culture
Other key factors during job moves include:
Stability Time-off Job satisfaction

Work-life balance Ability to work remotely
Purpose Location of the company
Responsibilities Commute time
Benefits
The people I work with and for The company’s ability to grow
>
> 40
Career stability
If any CEOs or team leads are reading, watch out. More than half of product marketers are looking to
leave their job - 14% actively and 38% passively, and Associate Product Marketing Managers are 5%
more likely to want to jump ship than any other title.
There were variations depending on the type of product too. Slightly less than half (49%) of product
marketers who deal with SaaS are on the job market compared to two-thirds (66%) of those who work
with physical products.
14% 38% 48%
Yes, Yes,
actively passively No
Looking ahead to 2020, more than three in 10 (31%) product marketers want to leave their employer, a
third (32%) want to change roles, and only a per cent (or four) more are content right where they are.
36%
22% 23%
9%
New role + Same role, New role, Same role,

new employer new employer same employer same employer
>
> 41
Salary Of those who wanted to change employer, more than half (54%) said they don’t get support from
satisfaction
above and slightly less (49%) weren’t happy with their pay.
And from the people who said they’re looking to switch up their position, 36% were Product Marketing
Managers who’d been in the industry for 3.9 years and 25% were Senior Product Marketing Managers
who’d been around for 6.2.
So, where are they looking to go? Their length of product marketing experience suggests they could be
wanting to move up the ladder and this would align with the results in our State of Product Marketing
(SOPM) report.
Another possibility is that people are looking to leave the profession full stop and our SOPM survey earlier
this year divulged that at the time, one in 20 product marketers were, in fact, looking to exit the field.
We spoke to Aaron Brennan, Director of Product Marketing at airSlate, to get his take on the numbers:
“I think there’s a multitude of different factors in people looking to change profession but I think one of the
biggest pieces is that product marketing changes from place to place. When you go from one organization
that has the view of product marketing as a writer to another company that wants it to be more of a marketer
driving leads, it feels like you don’t know what the role actually is and that’s a frustrating feeling.
“I do think it’s cause for concern because product marketers have turned into the everything role that takes
on a lot of responsibility across the organization with no real foundation. They become a catch-all and unless
organizations can truly understand the product marketing role, they’ll lose out on great talent that could be
very strategic to an organization and help it grow.”
Are you looking to

change roles?
If so, we’re keen to hear why
- let us know by answering
this one, quick question >
>
> 42
Conclusion
We suspected it might be the case before we started this survey but our findings cement the
role geography plays in product marketing pay and as well as monitoring overall salaries, it’ll
be really interesting to see how these continental disparities play out over the coming years.
Another statistic we found particularly interesting was the number of product marketers looking
to change employers and roles. Although we don’t have data from other industries to compare it
to, 31% of product marketers breaking up with their employer next year alone strikes us as high.
So, what could be the cause? Our speculations include:
• Lack of job recognition and satisfaction. Having spoken to numerous product marketers
since we began, a relatively common consensus is that the role itself just isn’t valued enough.
People are having to justify the worth of their work and to some, that could well be a role-
changing deterrent.
• Aaron Brennan touched on it and we agree, product marketing roles can massively vary from
job-to-job. While some see this as a pro, understandably, others don’t like the instability and
unknown. A product marketer can go from one job they love to the same position in another
company that’s just worlds apart.
• Given almost half of those looking to leave their current employer don’t think their salary
reflects their role, pay could well be a driver and people might be looking for more financially
fruitful careers.
Our next focal point is around leadership support. Almost four in 10 (38%) product marketers say
they don’t have it and this more than likely feeds into the above issue of people wanting to leave
their current company.
>
> 43
What can we do about it?

Martin Aguinis made a great point around leading with data and we absolutely second his words.
As well as that though, we just need to talk about it more. There are people in this world who don’t
know product marketing exists and that needs to change. The same way everyone knows what
the role of a sales rep, accountant and marketer entails, everyone needs to understand that of a
product marketer.
The final thing we’d like to comment on is salary satisfaction. Our results uncovered 7/10 is the
average rating within product marketing and 67% think their salary reflects their role, at least for the
time being. Compared to other broad, third-party stats, that’s not actually all that bad - perhaps
even slightly better. For example, research published by The Conference Board showed less than
half (46.4%) of Americans are satisfied with their wage.
Richard King, Founder of PMA, commented:
“This survey is the first of its kind for both us and the industry and we’re really pleased to finally represent
product marketers and their salaries this way.
“Lots of really interesting statistics came out and these will hopefully help shape both individual and
industry-wide movements going forward. We hope everyone finds the content as useful and insightful as
us and we already can’t wait to run the 2020 edition and start comparing year-on-year.”
Got a segment of data you want to see that we’ve not already included?
Or just fancy leaving some feedback? We’d love to hear from you.
Reach us on richard@productmarketingalliance.com.
>
> 44
P.s. Curious about the calculations?

We split the difference of each salary bracket right down the middle. So, for example, a product
marketer who said they earn between $125,000 to $150,000 would go down as $137,500 and for
people who fit into the <$25,000 or >$200,000 bands, we used the upper and lower limits given in
each option.
Basically, what that did was ensure each bit of data we sliced and diced was based on the
averages from within it.
>
> 45
Meet the team

Richard King
Founder of Product Marketing Alliance
Rich is the Founder of Product Marketing Alliance and is endlessly
thinking of ideas to help elevate the PMM role. He’s responsible for
what happens next with the community and if you’ve got ideas you
think can help, he’s happy to listen!
Bryony Pearce
Content Marketer
Bryony’s our in-house content guru and takes charge of all things
content. She’s responsible for all the words in this report and if
you’ve got any feedback, she’d love to hear it!
Jon Sayer
Graphic Designer
Jon is our graphic designer and looks at all our design requirements.
He’s responsible for the layout and visual elements in this report and
is always happy to hear your thoughts!
>
> 46
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#PMMSalarySurvey

Who took part 4

The average of all averages 6

Location, location, location 8

How much do job titles matter? 13

By industry, product and market 16

Backing from above 22

Let’s get personal 27

What can we do about it? 44

P.s. Curious about the calculations? 45

Product Marketing Salary Survey

Who took part

North America Europe

By position, the divide looked like this:

The average of all averages

Full-time employee Independent/ Full-time employee Part-time employee

The average of What’s the median salary?

25% Median 75%

Location, location, location

Illinois $121,458 North Carolina $131,944*

*= more than five but less than 10 responses

location From best to worst, the continental averages were:

North America Europe

location United States 🇺🇲

Bozena Pieniazek, Product Marketing Manager at TravelPerk

Men vs women Women

How much do job titles matter?

Associate Product Senior (People) Director VP of Product

$58,284 United Kingdom

Product Marketing $113,115 Canada

$0 $50K $100K $150K $200K

titles matter? Associate Product Marketing Manager

Men 38% 60% Women

Product Marketing Manager

Men 42% 57% Women

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Men 47% 53% Women

(People) Manager of Product Marketing

Men 62% 36% Women

Director of Product Marketing

Men 54% 44% Women

Men 53% 44% Women

Other job titles given by product marketers include:

Competitive Intelligence Manager Growth Manager

Marketing Manager Customer Marketing Specialist Product Content Specialist

Customer Adoption Manager Marketing Solutions Architect

By industry, product and market

$120k $122,952 $122,238

By industry, Physical vs SaaS

By industry, B2B vs B2C

market 24% served both.

The difference in pay isn’t enormous, but it’s there:

B2B product marketers $118,840

B2C product marketers $112,500

$0 $40K $80K $120K

Early post-product Mid-growth with an established

Company Employee, revenue and team numbers

Backing from above

think it should realistically be.