Product Marketing Manager

At Rite-Hite, your work makes an impact. As the global leader in loading dock and door equipment, we design and deliver solutions that keep our customers safe, secure, and productive. Here, you’ll find innovation, stability, and the chance to grow your career as part of a team that’s always looking ahead.  As Product Marketing Manager, you'll be responsible for leading all product marketing efforts for our Automation and Controls portfolio.  This includes generating customer and market insights and creating a multi-year marketing strategy and marketing plan across multiple product lines as well as assisting product management to develop winning product roadmaps.  You'll identify and drive opportunities for profitable growth with quality, on-time new product launches and for customer loyalty across the lifecycle of installed base products.  Key performance indicators include orders, price realization, share gain, customer retention, marketing ROI, utilization of marketing assets, etc. This is a hybrid position requiring three days onsite at our Milwaukee, WI corporate office. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Customer Focus Creates and executes an annual customer insight plan in partnership with the insights and operational excellence shared marketing services team to discover unmet needs and utilization trends, validate product concepts, test value propositions and inform pricing decisions Leads a regular sales and service advisory board to ensure the voice of teams closest to the customer is incorporated into the marketing strategy, plans and tools Builds direct customer and field understanding through customer visits, Customer Experience Center visits, ride-alongs, sales blitzes, beta sites, advisory groups, trade shows, and other immersion activities. Defines continuous enhancements to the customer experience and incorporates into the marketing plan Helps test ideas as part of the standard Rite-Hite innovation process to build a set of high value concepts for product management Market and Business Insights In collaboration with the performance marketing team and via analysis, research and problem solving, identifies and continuously drives insights from key external and internal data and trends (e.g., market and industry growth / headwinds / tailwinds, visibility, win/loss, strategic account performance, Salesforce, sales tool utilization, demand generation activities, marketing ROI) for the Automation and Controls portfolio to strengthen business investments and marketing impact Marketing Strategy From insights and aligned with the product management priorities and roadmap, creates the marketing strategy for the Automation and Controls portfolio to drive profitable growth (demand generation, funnel acceleration, share gain, price realization) Provides a market-backed pricing view to the product manager to help inform the final pricing decision; in concert with the performance marketing team conducts external pricing, concept, and voice of customer research studies; monitors pricing trends and leads problem solving workstreams to improve price realization In collaboration with the distribution and business development teams and product management, leads the definition of the commercial strategy including commercial risk assessment, target customer segments and sales channels Product Marketing Aligned with the defined marketing strategy and starting pre-Phase 0 of the new product development process, creates annual and multi-year marketing plans supporting product launches and lifecycle that include branding, value proposition, product and competitive positioning, messaging platform, evidence generation, sales enablement tools and training and demand generation Owns the development of a relevant, credible and unique value proposition to drive customer delight and profitable growth.  Incorporates competitive analysis from engineering teardowns, war-gaming sessions and product management input. Works with the performance marketing team and external agencies to develop the messaging platform and positioning; drives a strategic and practical competitive positioning analysis to develop a prescriptive and highly utilized toolset for the commercial team. Works with the performance marketing team to define the optimum marketing mix (awareness, lead generation/nurturing) and activities (digital, website, SEO, PPC, E-mail, media, print, tradeshow, content marketing, etc.) to maximize the business return on investment for the Automation and Controls portfolio. Coordinates the development of high quality, consistent and customer-focused marketing assets (sales content, sample kits, proposal support documents, and digital assets) working closely with the performance marketing and product management teams; maintains current materials in approved systems such as the digital asset management platform and Salesforce to ensure high utilization Identifies budget requirements and creative approaches to ensure execution of the marketing plan; owns a marketing budget and accountable to meet target and optimize spend Defines the branding requirements for the Automation and Controls portfolio (naming, trademarks, etc.) Drives execution of the annual marketing plan aligned with the product management timeline Collaborate with product management and distribution and leads creation of product training EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business or similar required. 8+ years related experience in product marketing, product management or related field. Or equivalent combination of education and experience. B2B product marketing experience across the complete lifecycle and substantial experience partnering with New Product Development preferred.    MBA or related advanced degree preferred. KNOWLEDGE / SKILL REQUIREMENTS The ideal candidate will demonstrate: Expertise in Upstream / Strategic Product Marketing - gathering insights from