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MBA Product Marketing Specialization

Bringing Foster insight to market

Every day, product marketing managers bring new ideas across industries to consumer markets, driving economies and delivering innovation to the masses. Our product marketing specialization focuses on bridging the gap between internal product management and external customer experience. Effective product marketing managers guide the delivery of the product to market and use the full strategic and tactical marketing mix to encourage consumer adoption and retention.

Product marketing is where you build product-market fit, the hardest thing to achieve when you bring a new offering to customers. My love for the discipline comes from the relentless focus on the customer, make the connection and in the end build marketing into the product. It’s the product marketer’s role to make marketing truly scalable and with that drive substantial value to the business.
Marja Koopmans, Director, Amazon Smart Home (Frequent Foster Guest Lecturer)
The new Product Marketing specialization for Foster students will be a huge asset to companies like Microsoft who are looking to hire graduating students who have a solid understanding of brand, strategic marketing, and advertising and promotion. The product marketing courses I took while at Foster were incredibly important for me as I was moving from non-profit to tech. The courses gave me the foundational knowledge I could apply to every different position I’ve held at Microsoft. As a company who recruits heavily from Foster, this is a very welcome investment from the University of Washington.
Jeana Jorgensen, General Manager, Cloud + AI, Microsoft (2001 Foster MBA)

Product marketing courses

To best prepare individuals for roles as product marketing managers, Foster’s Product Marketing Specialization features four related courses: Consumer Marketing and Brand Strategy (MKTG 552), Strategic Product Management (MKTG 554), Advertising and Promotions (MKTG 556) and Consumer Insights (MKTG 560). To complete the specialization, students are encouraged to complete at least three of the four courses.

  • Consumer Marketing and Brand Strategy (MKTG 552) focuses on the customer experience and how to design a brand that will resonate with the customer and drive adoption and loyalty.
  • Strategic Product Management (MKTG 554) establishes the relationship between product management and product marketing. This course bridges the gap between product design and product delivery with particular attention to the pricing and channel decisions facing a product marketing managers.
  • Advertising and Promotions (MKTG 556) delves into the final element of the marketing mix (promotion) that product marketers must manage to effectively communicate the value of the product to consumers and manage the consumer life cycle.
  • Consumer Insights (MKTG 560) is focused on the methodologies that can be used to reveal customer needs, drives and preferences. This will include attention to both exploratory and experimental research techniques.

Together, these courses will help future product marketing managers bring the customer’s voice into the company to guide product and brand strategy and to effectively deliver on that strategy. Note that while these courses are designed to be taken in sequence, they can also be taken as standalone courses (i.e., they are not required as prerequisites for each other).