I am not a product marketer but I learnt something about product marketing from Bhavish Sood (see their LinkedIn) in one of my contracts, in 2018. Coming from product content strategy and UX background, I always believed that content and design are the key drivers in the product onboarding-retention cycle. Later I realized that product marketing also plays its role in the onboarding.
While working with product teams, I proactively encourage the product and sales alignment as I have been saying it in my workshops and on Twitter. I also remember this excellent post by Intercom on the alignment between sales and product.
Product marketing is nicely poised on the intersection of marketing, product, and content strategy. I enjoyed my small stint with Bhavish and I quickly noticed how brand content strategy, product content strategy, product onboarding, product management, and of course product marketing are so interwoven into one another, in different layers.
I thought of exploring it deep and searched SVPG, and found this epic post by Marty Cagan on product management vs product marketing.
Hubspot defines it as—”Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to market, promoting it, and selling it to a customer. It involves understanding the product’s target audience and using strategic positioning and messaging to boost revenue and demand for the product.“
Since I have a strong background in content strategy or you call it content design or UX content, I cannot take content out of any other function whether it is product, design, or marketing because it is easier for me to see all these in the content strategy lens. I wrote about how product content strategy informs product marketing for sales enablement.
It also makes me think how people can afford to not to work closely with each other—the functional leaders in products, marketing, design, or content. We see the need-to-work-with-each-other-more-closely talks all the time. After working on that product marketing contract, I cannot take the product marketing perspective out of any of my other contracts in product UX, or product management, or in product content strategy.
A product sells itself and design enables this transaction, onboarding, and retention. All the functions by-default support each other—including product marketing.
