Why Is AI Killing Product Marketing And How Can PMMs Survive?

In a recent YouTube video titled "AI is KILLING Product Marketing," Ajit Pal Ghuman, a former product marketer turned pricing consultant at Monetizely, delivers a candid assessment of the product marketing profession's decline in Silicon Valley. Drawing from his extensive experience, including his time at enterprise software startup Medallia, Ghuman outlines how the role has evolved—or rather devolved—and offers strategic advice for product marketers looking to remain relevant in an AI-driven landscape.

The Decline of Traditional Product Marketing

Product marketing as a profession is undergoing a dramatic transformation. As Ghuman bluntly states in his video, "I'm just going to come out and say it. Product marketing as a profession is dying."

This stark declaration comes from observing how the function has shifted over time. When Ghuman started as a product marketer at Medallia, the role was deeply strategic. He describes the comprehensive responsibilities they held: "We had to really understand the nuances of what was happening in these industries and we had to enable a large field sales team to understand those nuances and also make them talk track ready, make them positioning ready."

The focus was primarily on positioning, ensuring the sales team could effectively communicate benefits and outcomes rather than just features. As Ghuman explains, "We had to make sure that the positioning aligned with company perspective, then we had to help the sales team in targeting, in finding the named accounts, and then positioning and packaging all of the features and functionality that we sold."

What Changed? The Consumerization of IT

The transformation of product marketing didn't happen overnight. Ghuman identifies a critical turning point: "Somewhere along the line, what started to happen was this trend called consumerization of IT. And with consumerization of IT, deal value started to fall."

This shift had several ripple effects:

1. Sales teams became less experienced: "Most of the sales team in the valley were kids who were just out of college. These were not honed enterprise sellers."
2. Product marketing became more tactical and less strategic: "Instead of a strategic PMM, you had a person now who was mostly responsible for maybe updating the competitive deck or maybe updating the website."
3. Software solutions began replacing traditional PMM tasks: "There were new solutions such as Clue that came out that you at that point didn't need a product marketer for."

This evolution raised important questions about the value proposition of product marketers. Ghuman recalls conversations with team members: "I remember having these conversations with my team members who said, 'Hey, we want to invest in this tool.' I'm like, 'Sure, but then what will you do? You're paying you $150,000 plus a year, maybe more.'"

The Pricing Blind Spot

Perhaps the most significant failure of product marketing as a profession, according to Ghuman, was ignoring the economics of the business, particularly pricing:

"Product marketers never took into account was the function of pricing. We always thought, or not me, but most people always thought pricing was the star card, you had to do a lot of data analysis and funny enough product marketers never really cared to go too much deep into the economics of the business."

This disconnect seems puzzling to Ghuman, who notes that product marketers should naturally understand metrics like ARR, NRR, and CAC to ensure that their positioning translates into effective packaging and monetization. As he puts it, "Product marketing has full business in understanding this so that whatever positioning it creates becomes packaging and that gets realized at the end through monetization."

Instead, many product marketers avoided these aspects of the business: "For some reason, product marketers never cared about this. And they thought, okay, maybe some external consultant will solve this problem, and as a profession, I felt like product marketing has completely washed its hands of the thing that it should have been doing."

The AI Disruption

The final blow to traditional product marketing comes from artificial intelligence. Ghuman doesn't mince words about the impact:

"Now comes AI. AI does all your copywriting, AI does a lot of the deck making, AI does competitive analysis. There's nothing left for you to do if you were doing your job as a tactical product marketer."

The result is predictable: fewer jobs and higher expectations for those who remain. "A company that hired four to five PMMs earlier would only hire maybe one person now, and they better be good. They better have the sales team's ear. They better understand customers."

How Can Product Marketers Survive and Thrive?

Given these existential challenges, what should product marketers do to remain relevant? Ghuman offers several clear recommendations:

1. Embrace pricing knowledge: "Now is the time for you to not have blinders on about pricing, learn about pricing. Pricing is not that complicated."
2. Overcome the fear of data analysis: "People are afraid of doing a pivot table. Is it that hard?"
3. Become more holistic professionals: "Get closer to the customer, get closer to the sales team because it is a really human role at the end of the day, and be closer to the economics of the business."
4. Take ownership of pricing: "Get pricing in your hands, go deep with it, understand how it's working, and get the authority to actually change pricing structures and models."

The benefit of this evolution is clear: "That's really where product marketing goes from being this intangible role to a tangible role that drives top line and bottom line results."

The Path Forward

Ghuman concludes with a call to action for product marketers to upskill themselves in the face of automation. "For good or for worse, the tactical, repetitive part of product marketing has now been completely automated. Nobody's going to be hired to be doing that."

He urges product marketers to embrace a more strategic role: "I hope you take inspiration and upskill yourself… as a former product marketer, I do think the time has come for you to play a much bigger role."

By focusing on the economics of the business, particularly pricing and packaging, product marketers can transform from tactical support roles into strategic partners who directly impact revenue and growth. The future of product marketing lies not in creating decks and copy—tasks that AI can now handle—but in becoming true strategic partners who understand customers, sales, and business economics.

For those who can make this transition, the rewards are substantial: continued relevance in a rapidly changing landscape and the opportunity to make a measurable impact on business outcomes.