From Digital Marketing to Product Management: My 9-Year Journey

The Marketing Foundation

At Digifish3, I learned skills I still use daily:

Understanding users through data:

Marketing taught me to obsess over metrics — what drives engagement, what converts, what retains. Product management is the same mindset applied to features instead of campaigns.

Stakeholder communication:

Managing client relationships meant translating between business goals and execution. Product management is similar — translating between users, business, and engineering.

Working with constraints:

Limited budgets, tight timelines, demanding clients. Marketing prepared me for the reality that you never have enough resources.

The Transition Through Key Accounts

At Thriwe, I started as a Key Account Manager for financial institutions. This role became my bridge to product:

Client problems became product problems:

Managing accounts for banks in India, Dubai, and Singapore meant hearing the same pain points repeatedly. I started advocating for product changes, then helping define them.

Building the Thriwe App:

I moved from suggesting features to owning them — creating product strategy, writing requirements, coordinating with engineering. The title changed to Product Manager, but the transition happened gradually.

Formalizing Product Skills

Once I knew product management was my path, I invested in formal learning:

IIM Kozhikode MDP:

The Product Strategy programme gave me frameworks for prioritization, roadmapping, and stakeholder alignment. Structure to complement my intuition.

Certified ScrumMaster:

Understanding agile methodology deeply made me a better partner to engineering teams. I could speak their language.

Generative AI Masterclass:

Staying current with how AI changes product work. The tools evolve; the learning never stops.

What Marketing PMs Bring

If you're coming from marketing, you have advantages:

Customer empathy:

Marketing forces you to think from the customer's perspective. You've been studying user behavior all along.

Communication skills:

Writing clear copy, presenting to stakeholders, distilling complex ideas — these translate directly.

Metrics orientation:

You already think in terms of measurable outcomes. Product metrics aren't that different from marketing KPIs.

Advice for the Transition

If you're a marketer considering product management: