The Product Marketing Alliance’s State of Product Marketing Report for 2020 shows that only 5% of product marketers feel like their role is fully understood, meaning quantifiable metrics are desperately needed to maintain credibility and leadership buy-in. So as you begin to determine how you could quantify product marketing at your organization, let’s first consider what’s possible from a metrics perspective.
There’s been much said about how to build a go-to-market plan (just do a quick Google Search). But where we at Fluvio think most companies fail resides in their macro-level ability to sustain successful product and feature launches over time.
Over the course of several years and dozens of engagements, we have mapped out what we believe to be the most effective, repeatable go-to-market process that any company can and should adopt – the Fluvio GTM Model.
When we sit down to write product messaging, we are naturally focused on how to address customer pain points and lure customers with meaningful phrases that speak to our value proposition. Many times, we forget that once customers are sold into a product, they still need our help to be ushered along. Messaging along the usage journey is equally as important as prospecting messaging - it helps optimize a customer experience and ultimately results in retention, and higher LTV, ie: more profitable customers than those you’ve just acquired (bingo!). And yet, so little of our time is spent on in-product copy, and oftentimes usage copy is not very well thought through.
Erica Foster presenting at the Product Marketing Summit in Denver
If you've ever thought about attending the Product Marketing Summit hosted by the Product Marketing Alliance but weren't sure what exactly you'd get from it, let me tell you.
The lineup of speakers was amazing, and they had a ton of insights to share. I learned a lot more than this but here are five (short) takeaways for product marketers:
No one wakes up and thinks "If this product were just enterprise-ready" or "I want to wake up and transform cloud today." Make it easy, tell me simply what you do. Instead of asking, "how does my product fix your problem?" we should be thinking, "What problem does my customer have, and do I have the solution?" Thinking about how your customer describes the problem, how are they googling it, this is the way to speak to them and not get bogged down in product jargon.
We want to change market perception, sales narratives, launch a new product, build muscle memory in your organization to self-serve Q&A, materials, competitive intelligence -- we're always trying to change something. People hate change, so lead with empathy and plan for resistance.
Do roadshows to share what product marketing is and what we do. Define it, show the impact for key teams within your organization, and align objectives and goals. Here are the outcomes we can now achieve now that I'm in the picture. Here's how we are going to work with sales, product, etc. and the impact to you. Do the low effort, high-value tasks in the first 90 days to establish trust and respect (aka get points on the board). Then focus on evangelizing your long-term vision.
As PMMs, sometimes we can fall into the trap of focusing on the product (features, technical details, naming, etc.) but we should really be hyper-focused on the buyer and user. Sometimes we focus too much on competitors (“so-and-so has that feature”). Sometimes we have internal company biases ("that one company does that"). Be true to your strategic priorities and make sure you're able to see the forest through the trees.
I have never felt more understood by a group of people -- product marketers are in meetings all day, constantly getting pinged by someone, and trying to fix a slide for someone all while we try to do our actual job. We all know the life. We can't do it all. We can't make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. Focus on the biggest priorities that will move the needle, and let the little fires burn.
I learned a lot from the sessions, of course, but the highlight of events like this is also getting to meet an amazing group of product marketers who I'm excited to build a community with.
See you at the next one!
There are a lot of change management principles that you can apply to product marketing. Change management frameworks, tools, and processes exist to help guide an organization through change in a way that mitigates the pain for people, identifies resistance to changing, and ultimately helps make sure the change sticks around.
Your team has worked tirelessly to build and refine a new product, and you're nearing your target launch date. But even if you've used customer feedback to guide your work, how do you ensure it matches their needs and expectations?
In-house testing can help you stress test a product's functionality, but eventually, you'll need to evaluate it in real-world circumstances. A beta program can help validate your early-stage product with end-users and give you insights to continue iterating your development.
We’ve seen the increased focus on establishing and growing product marketing teams, and with that the complexity of the question ‘why is it so hard to staff product marketing roles!?’ So, what are the skills that you should look for when aiming to hire a stellar product marketer? Focus on candidates who have experience in foundational product marketing skill sets.
A Marketecture (or Marchitecture) not only forms the foundation for how your products are packaged, marketed, and sold, they also provide the vision for how your products will evolve. Product teams can and should use Marketectures to plan roadmaps, with each launch representing a new building block. Despite its importance, there isn’t a standard, universal definition of what constitutes a Maketecutre. So let me have a go at it:
Humans love a good story; it's wired into us as a way of connecting and sharing our knowledge. Stories help us learn, connect, and feel. Stories inspire us to be better and do better. We use stories to understand the needs and wants of people so that we can build tools to help them achieve more.
So, how do you tell a great product story?
Product marketing focuses on developing strategy around introducing products into the market. Product marketing, however, can only take a product as far as the market wants it; a well-designed product won’t be successful if it doesn’t address an existing market problem. This is where product marketing’s visibility into customers’ demand and needs can help identify product-market fit.
As product marketing consultants, our team at Fluvio is tasked with quickly onboarding and assimilating with our clients’ products and businesses. Our goal is to become part of - or the sole member of - each client’s product marketing team, knowing and understanding their business, objectives, product and service offerings, competitive market and customer insights, in a matter of weeks. This is no easy feat, and in order to do so successfully we must use the time wisely to learn and get up to speed quickly, so we can begin making an impact.
