B2B product marketing is one of those roles that everyone agrees is important and almost no one can define cleanly. Yitzy Tannenbaum has spent over a decade doing it at IBM, Meta, and Palo Alto Networks. This episode is his attempt to set the record straight.
In this episode of The Inspired Marketer, Daniela sits down with Yitzy, Product Marketing leader at Palo Alto Networks, to talk through what B2B product marketing actually is, why it exists, and why most organizations add it too late or misuse it when they do.
Yitzy traces the role’s origins methodically. R&D built products. Marketing and sales sold them. Product management emerged to own the roadmap. But something was still missing: a function with deep expertise in the customer, the market, the competition, and the product simultaneously. That gap is what product marketing fills. And when it’s filled well, it influences roadmap decisions, shapes sales narratives, and connects teams that would otherwise operate in silos.
The hardest part of the role, Yitzy argues, isn’t the work. It’s the politics. Product marketing touches every function but controls none of them. A product marketer has to earn the seat at the table with product managers who think in technical specs, and with sales teams who will build their own stories if they don’t trust you to build better ones.
His framework is built around value delivery. If you give product managers genuine market intelligence that shapes their roadmap priorities, they’ll come to you before a release. If you give sales teams narratives that actually help them close, they’ll stop going rogue. The influence comes from being indispensable, not from org chart position.
For founders, CMOs, and marketers trying to understand when and how to build a B2B product marketing function, this episode is the clearest explanation of the role you’ll find.
