Winning Over Customers: How to Turn Your Product Into a Must-Have
Product marketing is one of the most important roles at a technology company, and the stewards of a product launch — most often product marketing managers (PMMs) — are responsible for customer adoption. And what’s more important than the customer adoption of your product? The success of any product company hinges on its reception in the market, and there are many cautionary tales of what not to do.
But going to market, whether you’ve done it 15 times or you’re building your first plan, is not simple; there is no one-size-fits-all. Socrates famously said, “I know that I know nothing.” This truism serves as a daily reminder while navigating the go-to-market launch process, and it’s a philosophy I reflect on as a starting point for all conversations when working on an evolving product roadmap and go-to-market launch.
Launching a product is, in many ways, similar to cooking an elaborate meal without a recipe. You have ingredients and an idea of the outcome, but it’s up to you to test the ingredients and find the right mixture to create a product that users will love. Hopefully it’s something delicious and tasty for your guests, so they’ll come back for more. But we’ve seen enough fails in the kitchen to know that’s not always the case. Corporate rules usually don’t apply at startups. Oftentimes there are no comparable products or even industries that exist when taking a brand new idea to market. In other words, there is no exact — or secret — recipe for success.
This point here is that being able to think creatively, while understanding the greater business goal and mission for a company, is an important way to approach product marketing. There are basic cooking techniques, so to speak, but you have to create your own recipes based on where your product is today and where you want your product to be years from now.
The go-to-market framework in my book Product Marketing Debunked: The Essential Go-to-Market Guide can be applied to a number of products, verticals, and industries, but it would be impossible to speak to every single situation and scenario in a single piece of literature.
My book is most useful for the business to business (B2B) world, but it can be applied to business to consumer (B2C) companies as well. My suggestion is to use this framework as a starting point and add and remove things that make more sense for your industry and growth stage. (A little extra salt here, a little less there.)
Products Don’t Sell Themselves
The idea that a great product sells itself is not only the worst advice you can get from an engineer or founder, it’s a big reason why nearly 90% of the companies and products in Silicon Valley fall flat or fail altogether. If your customer doesn’t understand your product’s value or how to use it, it doesn’t matter how “great” the product is from your perspective. The only perspective that matters in the adoption of your product is that of your customer.
Customer Research Pitfalls To Avoid
If you ask most founders or product managers, they’ll say they have plenty of research and that they’ve talked to potential customers and that there’s an interest in the product. But upon further prodding, I’ve discovered that often there is not enough aggregated or collected data on key insights. Talking to one to three customers for 20 minutes is not going to provide you with the statistically significant data you need to understand the importance of your product or feature and whether or not it makes sense to move forward.
Many companies hire UX researchers or outside agencies to create buyer personas, but those profiles only provide a glimpse into purchasing behavior, and they only answer a small part of the questions you could ask during the discovery phase, namely on the product. But there is far more to the discovery process, including business objectives, cost, analysis, and more.
Until recently, there hasn’t been an internal role responsible for this type of full ecosystem market discovery. Today there are some founders, product managers, product marketers, and go-to-market consultants doing this type of research, but not consistently — and frankly, it’s fairly obvious when it’s not being done.
Ideally the person running this research will be able to aggregate feedback, understand common themes, and disseminate the information into strategic product insights and their impact on the product roadmap. In this role, the person must possess both high IQ and EQ, and what I would call “visceral intelligence” — an ability to really listen and “feel” customers. A great PMM hears what customers are saying and also understands what they’re not saying, all while remaining objective.
I cannot stress the importance of the discovery phase enough. Without talking to your customers, your input is comparable to driving in the dark during a snowstorm with broken headlights. If you’ve been down the road before, you can depend on instinct coupled with searchable market data, but you’re likely going to move forward with major blind spots.
If you found this useful, and you’d like to learn more about Product Marketing, stay in touch!
I also wrote the book “Product Marketing Debunked. The Essential Go-To-Market Guide” which you can purchase on Amazon.
If you are serious about learning about the go-to-market process, check out my next live class with another seasoned Product Marketing Executive here. On September 17th, I will be co-hosting a 1-hour webinar on “How to Understand Your Customer” with another Product Marketing leader.
In today’s competitive landscape, understanding your customers is more critical than ever. This 1-hour webinar is designed to equip you with the essential skills and insights needed to truly understand your customers’ needs, behaviors, and motivations.