BSMS 47 - Critical product marketing capabilities every team needs

 

Whether it’s your first marketing hire or someone from your founding team, someone on your team should be able to connect their deep understanding of your product (features, capabilities, value delivery) with an overarching go-to-market plan.

 

Some of the core product marketing capabilities your team needs are:

Links shared in this episode: t2d3.pro/masterclass

Submit and vote on questions for us to answer: https://www.kalungi.com/podcast 

 

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to episode 47 of B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks. My name is Mike Northfield. I lead product marketing at T2D3 and Kalungi, and I am together again with Stijn Hendrikse, who is the co-founder of Kalungi, a serial SaaS marketing executive, and ex-product marketer at Microsoft. And today we're talking about product marketing specifically with regard to the gaps that we see in a lot of the early-stage software companies that we work with. Some of the core functions that you need to make sure are addressed by someone on your team, whether that is a founder or your first marketing leader or someone else, the nuances of product marketing, specifically in the early stage, what's important and the things that you need to go focus on, what you can goal your product marketing function on, and when it makes sense to actually hire a full-time product marketer for your marketing engine.

Something that's worth noting here is that if you are a marketer who is looking to kind of level up their strategic marketing skillset or add some product marketing skills to your tool belt, or if you're a founder and you're trying to add some capabilities on the product marketing side before you're able to hire a full-time marketing leader, the T2D3 Masterclass program could be a really good fit for you. There are a few lectures in there that are really specific to a lot of the topics that we're talking about today: A lot about positioning and messaging, the more strategic side of a go-to-market segmentation and ideal customer profile, figuring out your personas and choosing the right channels to go after. And then some pricing and packaging lectures as well. We've gotten some really good feedback on it lately. I was actually talking to somebody pretty recently, and this was the feedback that they shared with us about the masterclass.

I had started my MBA in marketing, and this was far more useful. Don't tell my alma mater that though. My expectation going into it was that I would gain the knowledge and the credibility to be able to go into B2B SaaS and influence growth. And I've done that, and I just want to keep going. If your goals are to be a very, very strong marketing leader, this is the best thing that you could do for yourself to level up your marketing leadership game.

I was interviewing with other companies and every last one of them were absolutely intrigued with T2D3 and I'm like, this is what I'm doing right now. Here's how it works. Here's what it's supposed to do for you. My two founders, they had looked it up and they were like, yes, we want you to come in and do that. So I ended up getting the best job in the world by finding out about the CMO masterclass. I was able to walk in the door and just start leading right away. And that's so cool. It's because of the program, to be honest. That's how it came to be.

So if you are trying to level up your strategic marketing skillset, I would recommend checking out the T2D3 masterclass at t2d3.pro/masterclass and T2D3 in general for more frameworks and strategic marketing concepts like this. All right, let's get into it.

I love that you say it's not about being clever, it's really clear, but also being I think there or taking a little bit of risk and to pick some things that you say, this is what we are, this is what I am, this is what my positioning will be focused on.

All right, so today I wanted to I guess ask some questions about product marketing. The role of product marketing is extremely important in early software, early-stage software companies, and I think it sometimes gets well filled by the founder or the first marketing leader. Sometimes it doesn't. And I think that, I don't know if a lot of people, founders, or first marketing leaders really have a good concept of all of the things that a product marketer does or should do or should put in place for a product when it's just launching. So I'm curious to hear your perspective about what a good product marketer does and at what point you think a software company should look to hire one.

It's a great topic, and I was fortunate enough to, when I was at Microsoft, Mike, to work for I think one of the best product marketers in the world. He's now the CMO at Microsoft, Chris Capella, and I was working for him in the office team, the Microsoft office team. And the first thing I would say is that there's many ways to explain what product marketing is. And what I learned, for example, when I worked in the office team is that product marketing was much more about really what I would call the strategic sides of product marketing. How do you position it? How do you price and package it? How do you determine basically what's it for? How do you determine what the audience is, the people that you're making it for - who's it for? And then ultimately also how you go to market, the place, if you think of the piece and marketing position, product positioning, the people, the packaging price, the place.

But then there's also the technical side of product marketing, and we did both in the office team and the technical side is more about how do you enable your field? Your customers need to hear about the product, the materials that your salespeople need, the partners that you maybe want to enable. So that's kind of what I call, maybe that's the promotion "P" in the "Five Ps." How do you enable sales for your partners? What campaigns are you going to run? How do you make sure you have the right online presence, the content on the website, the brochure, the flyer, the demos that you probably need to create so that your [team] can demonstrate the product, the testimonials that you need to develop, and how do you get those? So there's kind of these two sides of product marketing. And then the letter example.

If I think of doing demos and webinars and things like that, you might even argue that's even a different role that's more like product evangelism, but sometimes those are, especially in smaller companies, those are all still combined. But that would be the first thought when you introduce the topic, what do we really think about when we say product marketing? And of course, small software companies need to do all of these things, but then when you think of having a separate role, what are you really trying to focus on?

Yeah. And so what you're talking about sounds fairly...it sounds synonymous almost with a full stack marketer. It feels like someone who has their hands in a little bit of everything to they see the lifecycle of a product from start to finish essentially. So you say, "Who's it for? What's it for? How was this going to get messaged and distributed and uptaken, and how do you think about the people actually adopting it and using it and getting referrals from it?" And that set of responsibilities also feels similar to what you would expect a marketing leader to kind of do at least your first marketing leader for a smaller software company. Is that fair?

Yeah. I think when you build your first marketing team, these are typically the responsibilities that we just called product that the marketing leader will probably hold onto for the long. They'll start to hire someone to manage the website on a day-to-day basis and manage the HubSpot instance and get digital marketing and do content more in volume, more blogs, more maybe social media coverage, all those things that are more about the real technical execution at scale, building DemandGen channels and campaigns across multiple media, et cetera. And as you build your team out with those roles, you probably will hold on to the core product marketing for a while yourself as the marketing leader until you're ready to actually hire. Usually it's your third or your fourth hire on the team, someone who's dedicated to doing product marketing. But you're right, I think you can almost argue the first marketer in a company, and this could be the founder or the first marketing leader, is really more about this product marketing set of responsibilities than fine tuning SEO on the website.

But they may have to dive into some of the tactical components to actually execute on it. And then over time shape and over time they maybe step into more of owning the big strategic elements of it. So the positioning, the packaging pricing, the go-to-market, and then you have the actual team members who are specialists who kind of execute on the strategy.

And when you get that opportunity to go deeper as a product marketer, because you have some of these other things covered in other roles in the team, you can really think about, how do I do market research? How do I use product usage as an input to improving my product marketing, the field feedback from customers on tickets in the support system, real competitive research, figuring out why do we close deals and why do we not right close win and closed loss analysis? All these things become when you have a dedicated product marketing manager where other people are taking care of the day-to-day campaigns and the day-to-day content management and the day-to-day, digital execution, et cetera, then the product marketing manager can now actually really go think about how do I build influencer marketing around this product category? How do I get Gartner to put it in a certain quadrant or all those things?

Sure. And from your perspective, what kinds of outcomes should someone like that be responsible for? I get it kind of changes depending on the maturity of a company and this product, but overall, what would you goal a product marketing manager on?

Yeah, I think ultimately where marketing is often of course defined as for many just drive demands, right? Build the pipeline. Those are the common of course outcomes for leads and things like that. But for a product marketing manager, it's good to just go to watch product success a little more, which could still include leads or demand gen for that specific product, but it could definitely include things like usage, is the product being used, is the product being liked? Are there things that you do—especially when you as a product marketing manager, you prepared the launch of a product, you do maybe the beta program, all those things that go into the product marketing role—are there more leading indicators that you can track like adoption of a product that's relatively early stage and getting a beta program to get the right amount of beta users getting the right amount of feedback, doing an A/B test with pricing and packaging that leads you to get really good insights, but ultimately improve your ARPU, your revenue per unit, your ACV, your, basically, product-specific revenue growth because your packaging and pricing gets improved.

So those would be metrics that would be helpful for a product marketing manager that go way beyond or are just different than the general demand generation. The other thing, I think what's really key for a product marketer to be successful is to realize there's a linchpin often between the, call it the field or the go-to market team, that there's a lot of the actual prospecting and selling and being sort of in front of the audience and the product team who manages the product creation and the product development, etc. You're kind of in the middle between those. You're also the linchpin of making sure that customer feedback turns into product insights and how could that help you improve your product roadmap? How do the ideas that were behind creating a certain capability in the product that were based on a certain assumption that it would be valuable for customers? How do you translate those into the right marketing content and the right value proposition and objection handling for the sales team? So you're really in the middle of those two. So you can argue that the other metrics would be the success of both of those teams. Is the sales team able to sell this? Do they have the right materials? Is the marketing team able to run the right campaigns? Is the product team able to build the right product?

One of the things that I have been diving into a lot more lately is messaging in general. And I feel like from my experience and the people that I follow, what has stood out to me as something that sets a good product marketing manager apart is someone who can also really own the copywriting and is really, really in tune with being able to translate big picture benefits and features into outcomes and having that resonate with somebody and put it in a prospect's word so that they can relate with it. I think that it's not easy, but from what I've noticed, that seems to be the thing that really sets people apart. Instead of letting your content person own the messaging really, whether you're the marketing leader or the product marketing manager or the founder owning those responsibilities, being the person who truly takes ownership of the actual words that are used to describe the main benefits and the key operators of your product, and getting that feedback from customers, talking to them, asking them how your product solves their problem, the jobs it does for them. And I think to your point, validating the assumptions that you've made from a positioning perspective and actually just confirming this is kind of what we think our product is and what it does for people, but is the market also giving us that same feedback? Are they using it in the same way that we're intending them to, or do they kind of perceive it differently? And how do we use that information to change either the product or the way that we position the product?

Yeah, I think in general, marketers are going to be well off if they're good writers. Every marketing position almost benefits from someone learning how to write succinctly and clearly and being able to communicate value instead of features. All those things are true for almost every marketer, but you're right, it's key—it's crucial for a product marketing leader. And I think Chat GPT now helps with the grammar side of that and the spelling, so you don't need to worry about that anymore. But what do you actually want to say? If you're trying to say 12 things, how do you make sure you only say maybe three things, but that those are the most important ones, and they're not features, they're really outcomes or the impact? And that's something that's an enormously important skill for a product marketer to hone, because if they don't filter the signal from the noise, then downstream when this turns into sales collateral or it turns into content on the website, noise will be added by every step down the kind of content funnel. Everybody who's involved in turning the core product marketing assets into all kinds of derivatives of that will add their own pieces, and that sometimes creates extra noise. So the clearer the signal that the product marketer can make when they create the core content the better. So it's a very, very important point.

I like to say clear is almost always better than clever too. And I think especially now, I've even noticed this change, and we've talked about this recently, the last four years in the software world. You've spent a lot more time in this world than I have, but I've even noticed that the market is becoming so saturated with products just in every category. And then in order to actually stand out, you have to do a lot more both in terms of demand gen content, and especially what you say about the product, the niching down has gone to another level, and you really have to be specific about what it is that you do for a certain audience or for a certain use case or job, because if you don't, you're just stuck in the sea of sameness and it's very easy if you could just go on G2 and look at a category like the top, I don't know, 15, 20 products, and a lot of them will say the same things, and you're kind of left wondering, "Why would I actually decide to choose this product over another one?" And they're not making it super clear. And I feel like the companies or the products that will kind of start to become winners will be able to tell bigger strategic narratives and also connect that with really concise, clear messaging about why their products beat others out.

Yeah, you're right. And I think because there're so many products in the same category that often do the same thing and have the same benefits, the communication layer that you add to that as a product marketing manager is the additional piece of kind of positioning that you can do even if the products are not that different. I was looking yesterday, Naida, my wife, she sends me a new office chair thing. She says, this is the best chair ever made, and it's because I have the Herman Miller Aron, which I love, and I have actually multiple of them, one at home, one in the office, but I couldn't help with it to look at, "Hey, what's this chair? Is it better?" And the reality is they're not. It's very unclear what the real difference is. It's very similar, but then you see in the language, you think very good for gaming or very good for people who shift around on their seat.

And it's those small things that probably have nothing to do with the physical properties of this chair that might make someone decide, Hey, this is actually for me because that's what I connect with, with those words. I sit straight up or I sit crunched down, and the chairs are the same. But if the product marketer decides to say, this chair is really good for people who sit straight up, then the people who sit straight up might pick that chair over the other one that's basically the same. And so I think being really also not only clear, but also I love that you say it's not about being clever, it's being clear, but also being I think there, or taking a little bit of risk and to pick some things that you say, this is what we are, this is what I am, this is what my positioning will be focused on, which basically means you're also saying no to some other things, and you have to make that, you have to take a little bit of a leap of faith there and say, it's better for me to pick something that I position myself around versus trying to do these three or four things.

Even though your product might do all those things, you've got to pick something.

So learn how to take a stand with your positioning in your messaging.

And picking the stands probably more driven by what else is happening in your category than what the properties of your product are. And that's sometimes challenging because most product marketing managers, of course, extremely proud that their product does 45 things. And it's very hard to not talk about all those 45, especially if those things are actually really good, if they're all really beneficial for your audience. But you have to cut that list down and it's really hard. And you notice as a very good designer, Mike, when you want to draw something or make a beautiful, it's so easy to get overwhelmed by all the cool things you can do. And cutting it to the core is really, and the product marketing manager is probably the most important role to do that in a marketing team.

It's like thinking about your slide deck. It's like every slide should say, "What's the message? What's this one? What's the one takeaway?" And especially to your point about the 48, whatever features, a lot of those now may just be table stakes. So it might be worth just finding ways to say, "Yes, we also do this," because not mentioning it might disqualify you from somebody's consideration set.

You're worried about that, that's why you keep them.

But then also just picking the top three or four that you think really set your product apart.

And you filter basically in two ways. One, is this really relevant for my audience? Is this what they're looking for? And the other is to your point, is this actually special or does everybody else do this as well? But those are two ways to kind of cut down that list very quickly.

I like to think about it as the things that if you ask, would somebody decide to choose us over someone else? Is this one of those features that would help push someone over that threshold? If so, then it's probably something that is worth...

It's real differentiator.

Right? Yeah, exactly. Or is it something is not having this one feature

A disqualifier.

Right, exactly. Or will that essentially create a door for someone to choose someone else over us? And then that's a simple way to think about what's worth actually mentioning and talking about does the product marketing role look much different at a more mature company or in a more mature marketing organization?

Versus an early stage small company? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. And I think we touched on it a little bit earlier. If you don't have a team of marketers, you're probably, if you're the marketing leader, you're the product marketing manager. If you don't have a product marketing leader, it's the owner, the founder, the CEO of the company, who's the first product marketing manager. So that's kind of one part of the answer to that question. And when you have a team, and even if you have a real product marketing organization, now you can do things like market research and have people who just do analyst relationships or someone who does product launches. You can have all these very specific parts of product marketing turned into individual roles in a larger company. But let's go back to the early stage startup. So when you're the founder or you're the marketing leader, also owning the product marketing job, one of the things that I feel is very powerful if you are starting to do product marketing is to force yourself to learn how to write everything we just talked about up in one pager.

What is really the core value proposition of the product? How do you communicate that in a way that's relevant for that audience that you're trying to service? Right? So now you've answered both what is the positioning, but also maybe the packaging and the pricing that you have to talk about in that format, the people side, who it's for. So all that, turning that into a one page, you're forcing yourself to be succinct, to get the signal outside out of the noise. I think what an early stage product marketing matter needs to do first. And then when you have the one page, you're then creating a sales deck out of that, and the content for the website and maybe the launch communication, the press release, etc., becomes a lot easier.

So what's the true north star that's guiding everything, and then from there, you can kind of build out. Yeah, I feel like that's very challenging. It's not easy.

And first you force yourself to put it on one page, and then the next step is to make sure that that one page has 70% white space, right?

Sure. Exactly. There you go. So pare it down even further. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Any other thoughts on product marketing in general?

No, I think you also, I think mentioned when you hire your first product marketing manager, I do believe that most small companies first need, when they hire dedicated marketing, they first need someone to just manage the website, manage the HubSpot instance, get some content going on a consistent basis. And those are also more, let's call 'em junior roles. So hiring that in the form of an intern or a marketing associate who can become your more senior marketing team member over time is a little easier. And keep the product marketing for now as part of something that one of the executives in the company owns, or the founder. And then you typically, maybe after you hire your first one or two marketing team members, you get your marketing team leader who could have a product marketing background, or you start hiring a real product marketing manager as a full-time position. So that's kind of the sequence that I usually see.

Sure. Or hire a product marketing leader as soon as you're ready as a founder to relinquish control.

And honestly, this is the one part of marketing that a lot of founders should never completely let go. I think they should really deeply care when you think about positioning and yeah, absolutely. No, this's a great question. This was a great topic, Mike.

Cool. Thank you to Adriano Valerio for producing this episode, and of course, the Kalungi team for making this whole thing work. And of course to you for choosing to spend your time with us. Really appreciate you being here. As a reminder, if you want to submit or vote on a question that you'd like us to answer in this podcast, you can do that at klinky.com/podcast. Every time we record, we take one of the top topics and jam on it. And of course, if you find any of this helpful or insightful or you like it or you just want to help support us, we would love a rating from you on Spotify or you to just tell someone that you think would also benefit from it about it. Alright, thanks again for spreading your time with us. See you the next one.