What success looks like for a product marketer
An MBA student recently asked me how to succeed as a product marketer. He pointed out that resources exist for what product marketers do and how to become one but not much on how to succeed once in the role.
Here’s my take.
What is product marketing again?
To succeed at something, it helps to first define it.
A product marketer generally owns or is principally involved in:
- Understanding customers and the competitive landscape
- Positioning and messaging based on market insights
- Go-to-market campaigns
- Sales enablement
- Setting metrics and measuring them
(You can find additional definitions at Product Marketing Alliance, Hubspot, and Intercom).
Effectiveness comes from knowledge and relationships
With that list of bullet points for reference, how do you know you’re doing these things well? You’ll know it when you are a go-to resource for initiatives or input across marketing, sales, product, and customer success.
Success as a go-to, in short, comes from having a strong knowledge base and building relationships.
To get there, I’ve broken it down to seven points.
Get close to customers and prospects
The first bullet point above is the most important. Product marketers should be customer-centric at all times. Start by understanding the target market’s pain points. This makes it easier to identify the use cases of your product.
The best source is feedback from the market directly. Talk to customers, prospects and prospects who ultimately chose a competitor instead of you. Do this in close collaboration with product, customer success, and sales teams.
If you can, conduct 45–60 minute interviews with users and decision-makers to gain insight into their journey and why they chose you or someone else. How many interviews is enough? 10 to 20 interviews per core product is realistic for identifying common themes.
If lengthy interviews are not an option, conduct a survey consisting of a few, open-ended questions. Ideally you get at least 30–50 responses to start seeing patterns.
In addition to interviews and surveys, join as many sales calls as you can. Get invited to meetings led by customer success managers. Tag along to any customer meetings where the product manager is attending.
Additionally, research competitors so you can understand what they’re doing/not doing well. I once attended a conference sponsored by a competitor. When it was the competitor’s turn to present, they barely mentioned their product and instead told a story that methodically debunked myths about the broader industry, to great effect. Myth-busting and a light touch on the product made for great storytelling. It inspired some ideas of my own for crafting a compelling but ownable story for my own product line.
Truly understand the product
Whether it’s DevOps or microchips, product marketers need to know the ins and outs of the product. That doesn’t mean you need to know the code, but it does mean using the product as often as you can.
If it’s software, log into it frequently and navigate it as though you’re a customer. You should be able to demo the product as though you’re an expert. There’s no better way to learn the product than to write a few demo scripts for your sales teams. Being familiar with the product helps you validate positioning and messaging.
Also, get access to the dev or beta environment of a product so you know what’s coming next.
Be a model partner
Be attached at the hip with your product management counterparts. Have weekly check-ins. Attend their meetings. Support their initiatives. Be their biggest cheerleader, and they will usually become yours.
Spend time with the customer success team. Get to know their work, end-to-end: from how they categorize the different customers they support to the specifics of how they communicate with customers. Make sure they’re as aware of go-to-market initiatives as the sales teams. They will not only appreciate you proactively keeping them in the loop, they’ll also be a rich source of ongoing feedback from customers.
Working closely with the sales team seems obvious, but it’s important they are — and feel — heard, especially when you’re new in your role or when you’re onboarding a new sales partner. It goes a long way to building trust if you’re able to deliver extra value for them early on.
All of these close relationships make it easier to get both ideas and support for your go-to-market campaigns.
Identify the must-haves
Deliver the foundational pieces first. A pitch deck and product one-pagers are often the top sales enablement items valued by sales teams, followed by product launch training and related materials.
After you’ve done the market research work, invest time in creating a good story and updating what you have. If you’re lucky enough to have a separate sales enablement function, partner with them closely to ensure the positioning and messaging are clear throughout the pitch deck and related materials.
Regardless of how many resources you have, make sure your key cross-functional partners sign off on the positioning and messaging before rolling it out.
Familiarize yourself with other teams’ goals
To succeed as a product marketer means to be in tune with the business. It goes without saying that your OKRs (objectives and key results) should align with your company’s objectives.
But you can also go a level deeper and get familiar with the OKRs of the product, customer success, and sales teams. It doesn’t mean your OKRs will be the same as theirs, but it helps build mutual collaboration.
For example, let’s say the customer success team has an OKR around increasing the number of customers who use your software weekly from 10% to 50%. It might spark a campaign that increases value perception among current users, which you might not have done otherwise.
Embrace “done is better than perfect”
Product launches or releases are constant. Your job, as a result, is to iterate.
As marketers, we tend to want to deliver the most complete information, the greatest amount of materials, and perfect positioning — but it can come at the expense of delivering immediate value.
Use the 80/20 rule when possible. If something is roughly 80% ready and you know its impact would be much higher if released now versus later, send it out now. You can always add to it later.
The 80/20 rule can be controversial, but it can be a sanity saver and help you deliver high impact work more often.
Be invested in the analytics
As the owner or co-owner (in partnership with the demand generation team) of go-to-market campaigns or initiatives, your product marketing responsibilities don’t end with execution. You need to measure performance, analyze metrics, and apply lessons to future initiatives.
Get to know the KPIs, conversion rates, and methodology for each stage of the marketing funnel. Learn what channels drive the most pipeline and ask your demand gen counterpart if this is typical in their experience. Find out what surprises them most and why.
For the bottom of the funnel — where sales enablement materials live — measure how content or materials are being used. For example, what piece of collateral is the sales team sharing most often? What are high value prospects engaging with most? There are tools for tracking this, e.g. DocSend or Clearslide.
Even if you don’t have sales engagement tools, you can gather insights using internal surveys. Work closely with the sales team to collect this data.
The goal is to learn what’s working and what’s not so you can focus on activities that drive the most value.
