Senior Product Marketing Manager – Business & Government
Remote - United States
About the Role
The Business & Government (BizGov) segment represents a critical and differentiated growth market for Blackboard — federal agencies, state and local governments, and corporate workforce and training organizations that rely on enterprise learning platforms. This is a specialized market with distinct buyers, procurement dynamics, and compliance requirements.
The Senior Product Marketing Manager, Business & Government owns the go-to-market strategy for Blackboard’s products in the federal, state and local government, and corporate/workforce learning markets. You are the recognized subject matter expert and trusted advisor to Sales, Product, and Marketing leaders on these buyers, their missions, their procurement constraints, their compliance environments, and the specific ways Blackboard’s suite of solutions delivers value to their learners.
Sitting within the GTM Marketing org and reporting to the VP, GTM Marketing, you will define and lead the BizGov GTM strategy and set the direction for positioning, messaging, competitive intelligence, and sales enablement that allow Blackboard’s sales teams to compete and win in these specialized segments. This is a senior individual contributor role with high visibility, significant autonomy, and direct accountability for one of Blackboard’s most differentiated market opportunities.
The right person for this role is intellectually curious about government and workforce learning markets, relentless about understanding the buyer and the regulations that govern them, and capable of translating technical product capabilities into plain-language value stories that resonate with a procurement officer, a training director, or a Chief Human Capital Officer alike. You bring the credibility and judgment to influence senior stakeholders across Sales, Product, and Marketing and turn market insights into business decisions.
What You'll Own
Segment Positioning & Messaging
- Define and drive the cross-functional GTM strategy for BizGov and share accountability with Sales for pipeline and bookings targets at a quarterly and annual level.
- Own positioning and messaging for the BizGov segment, including distinct value propositions for federal agency buyers, state and local government buyers, and corporate/workforce learning buyers.
- Develop persona-specific messaging for key buyer types across the segment: procurement officials, learning and development directors, IT security officers, agency training leads, and workforce development program managers
- Establish and govern the BizGov positioning framework and documentation, ensuring it evolves with product changes, competitive shifts, and evolving buyer priorities and is applied consistently across Marketing, Sales, and Product.
- Advise the VP, GTM Marketing and peer product marketers on how BizGov positioning integrates into Blackboard’s multi-product messaging architecture, shaping the broader architecture where segment needs diverge.
Go-To-Market Planning
- Lead go-to-market planning for the BizGov segment, setting the strategy, priorities, and success metrics that Product Management, Revenue Marketing, and Sales/CSMs execute against to drive high levels of conversion across all channels.
- Influence Product Management roadmap priorities with segment and buyer insight, and translate roadmap investments into market-facing stories before launch, not after.
- Build the BizGov segment business case and GTM models, including market sizing, target account prioritization, and pipeline contributions analysis, to inform investment decisions and annual planning.
- Partner with Revenue Marketing and Customer Marketing to ensure campaigns are built to aligned strategies with accurate, current positioning.
Competitive Intelligence & Market Research
- Own competitive intelligence for the BizGov segment: monitor competitors, track changes in positioning, pricing, and product capabilities, and maintain battle cards that give sales a credible, current edge in competitive deals
- Design and lead the segment's buyer research program, including win/loss interviews, customer conversations, and secondary research, and turn findings into recommendations that shape positioning, product, and sales strategy.
- Track federal and state procurement trends, compliance requirements (e.g., FedRAMP, Section 508, FISMA), and government IT modernization initiatives that create opportunities or risks for Blackboard, and advise leadership on their implications for product, pricing, and GTM strategy.
- Partner with the Market Intelligence team to synthesize intent signals, technographic data, and account-level research into sharper segment targeting for Revenue Marketing and Customer Marketing.
Sales Enablement
- Build and maintain the sales enablement materials that equip Blackboard’s BizGov sales team to have credible, differentiated conversations with government and corporate buyers: battle cards, discovery guides, objection handlers, and segment primers.
- Develop RFP/RFI response language and standard proposal sections that reflect accurate, current product capabilities and compliance positioning.
- Run segment-specific enablement sessions with the BizGov sales team — keeping them current on product changes, competitive dynamics, and evolving buyer priorities.
- Measure enablement effectiveness by tracking which materials are used in active deals and correlating content usage with win rates, and use those insights to set the segment's enablement priorities.
Campaign Execution and Content Development
- Shape the strategy for new logo and customer marketing campaigns in the BizGov segment and guide the development of campaign assets that demonstrate Blackboard’s value in government and workforce learning environments.
- Identify and help develop reference customers and advocacy relationships within the BizGov segment to align with GTM strategies in partnership with the Customer Marketing team.
- Represent Blackboard’s BizGov perspective in event content, analyst briefings, and external communications.
- Represent BizGov in our annual user conference and other major market-facing moments, developing content and customer-facing materials that reinforce Blackboard’s narrative.
How You Fit Into the Team
Product Marketing at Blackboard owns GTM strategy, market positioning, sales enablement, and the content strategy that drives quality pipeline. You co-own the new bookings target AND the retention/cross-sell target for BizGov. As the Senior Product Marketing Manager, your GTM strategies and positioning work is what separates Blackboard from LMS competitors in a market where procurement is formal, compliance is non-negotiable, and the sales cycle demands organizational credibility. You will frequently advise leaders across Sales, Product, and Marketing on complex segment decisions and may lead cross-functional project teams to deliver on segment goals.
You will work closely with:
- VP, GTM Marketing for strategic alignment, positioning review, and visibility into cross-portfolio messaging.
- BizGov Sales team as their primary marketing partner: you are their go-to for marketing strategy, positioning questions, competitive scenarios, and RFP support.
- Revenue Marketing and Customer Marketing to ensure that both functions are coordinated on segment strategy, that campaign execution reflects accurate positioning, and usage of marketing assets are being leveraged across the customer and the new logo buyer journeys.
- Product Management to stay ahead of the roadmap and translate new capabilities into BizGov-specific value stories.
- Market Intelligence for competitive data, intent signals, and sector-specific research.
Required Skills and Experience
- 8+ years of B2B product marketing experience with a bachelor's degree (or 6+ years with a Master's degree, or equivalent experience), with direct exposure to government, public sector, or enterprise workforce/training markets strongly preferred
- Proven track record of developing positioning and messaging frameworks for complex, multi-stakeholder markets: you know what a good messaging doc looks like, and you can defend positioning choices with evidence to senior leaders
- Track record of building sales enablement programs that sales teams adopt and that measurably improve win rates
- Strong written communication skills: you can write a compelling one-pager, a sharp battle card, and a persuasive solution brief without extensive revision
- Analytical mindset: comfortable with win/loss data, pipeline metrics, and making the connection between PMM outputs and revenue outcomes; experience building business cases or GTM models that inform investment decisions
- Ability to operate with a high degree of autonomy, determining the approach and priorities for new and ambiguous initiatives in a lean, fast-moving organization
- Demonstrated ability to influence with authority and advise senior cross-functional stakeholders across Sales, Product, and executive leadership, adapting style to the audience
- Fluency in written and spoken English
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Working knowledge of federal and/or state procurement processes, compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, Section 508), or government IT buying dynamics
- Familiarity with corporate learning and development, workforce training, or skills credentialing markets in addition to government
- Prior experience marketing to federal civilian agencies, the Department of Defense, or large state workforce agencies
- Exposure to Blackboard’s solutions, including Blackboard LMS, Blackboard Ally, and Blackboard Institutional Effectiveness products
- Background in a turnaround or post-acquisition EdTech environment where you had to build credibility in a segment with limited existing brand equity
About Blackboard
Blackboard is a leading EdTech company and SaaS provider that delivers the digital environment for transformational teaching and learning. We serve thousands of institutions with the industry's most AI-advanced LMS, Blackboard Ally for accessibility, and institutional effectiveness solutions that put educators and learners at the center. We're an education company that builds technology. Learn more at blackboard.com.
The expected salary range for this position is $127,200 - $130,000. The range reflects base salary only and does not include additional compensation such as company bonus or benefits. Placement within the pay range will depend on a variety of factors, such as experience, skills, internal parity, and location.
Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the country where the role is based at the time of hire and must maintain that authorization for the duration of employment. The company does not provide visa sponsorship or immigration support for this position.
This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.
Blackboard is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, protected military/veteran status, or any other legally protected factor.