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2023 Product Marketing Talent Insights – What does the data tell us?

By Charlotte Dickinson. Charlotte is an Associate Consultant at Zeren’s London office, working within our Marketing divisions for Zeren’s clients across EMEA and the US.

If you are reading this, you have either had to hire, or have been hired, into a product marketing position in the past 12 months.

 

Over the course of the beginning of 2023, we have seen a huge uptick in demand in product marketing talent, so I felt it would be valuable to put the question to my community:

 

How many product marketers have moved roles or thought about moving roles since the beginning of 2023?”

 

LinkedIn tells us there are 374 SaaS product marketers in the UK. From my poll, the results came in, with 53 votes from my SaaS product marketing network casting a vote:

 

The results:

 

68% of those who voted (36 out of 53) were open to new opportunities.

 

9% of those who voted (5 out of 53) had found a new role since January 2023.

 

23% of those who voted (12 out of 53) weren’t considering a move.

 

 

We are all aware of the redundancies that have happened over the past couple of months, seeing the tech space reduce budgets and subsequently, marketing teams. This could perhaps equate to the number of people who responded in my poll answering ‘yes, they are open to new roles.’

 

However, having spoken to one person within my network recently, they shared with me that they have had over 30 interactions with companies and recruiters regarding new product marketing roles since Jan 2023. It’s clear the market is hiring despite the layoffs – at the time of writing this article there are:

 

254 Product Marketing job posts within the B2B SaaS space in the UK for varying levels.

 

What this shows is that yes, there is more talent in market, but the market still remains highly competitive as it is a candidate short market.

 

Only 9% answered ‘yes, they have found a new job’. This could suggest that candidates are being selective and only pursuing roles that are positioned correctly and only considering companies that have reduced or removed any worry over job security with funding, runway, profitability etc.

 

Yet 23% answered that they have not considered moving, which shows that despite the market fluctuating with a high number of redundancies, there is a certain stability that is important to demonstrate with this data.

 

Additional data to support this poll:

 

Following this I wanted to further understand the product marketing sector from LinkedIn Recruiter.

 

LinkedIn Recruiters search/algorithm highlighted that there are currently 374 product marketing professionals within the B2B SaaS, UK sector.

 

  • LinkedIn revealed that 161 of these professionals have changed jobs over the past year.
  • This demonstrates that nearly half the UK product marketing talent (43%) have moved roles within the last year.
  • In addition to this, it is very positive to see the stat on the gender split within the product marketing space. At present, there are 49% of female product marketing professionals and 51% are male.

 

So, what does this mean for companies looking to hire Product Marketers?

 

  • Although candidates are interested in exploring conversations, it is still a job seekers market for product marketers.
  • It’s critically important you are fully aligned with what the role is responsible for – product marketing is multi-faceted, and the focus can vary dependent on business needs.
  • You should consult experts on how best to position your function in the market and ensure that the role can offer the appetite for development and progression.
  • When hiring your first product marketer, ensure cross-collaboration across your team is in full effect, for a product marketer to be able to produce brilliant product positioning as well as big-picture strategic planning.

 

I hope these insights are useful to my LinkedIn community and if you have any questions regarding product marketing opportunities or hires, please do not hesitate to get in touch with myself at  charlotte.dickinson@zerenglobal.com