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Product Marketing

Intellectual honesty is the best policy

So I’ve had some great conversations over the last week and am having a great deal of fun with the Marketing IS in the Middle project.  I’ve had to connect on phone, via email and in person with key people I trust who do a little marketing which in and off itself has been very informative and rewarding.   This post is ultimately the synthesis of three key quotes from the project:

Did I get something to change and stay changed from when I started until when I left. – Chris Brogan

Being in the services industry (read: low IP) the value has to be defined at a very fundamental level – Vikram Singha

…honest self assessment of the firm’s realistic position in the competitive landscape is critical – John Mecke

If there is already a set of key themes in the feedback from the interviews they are culture and organizational alignment.   What is acceptable, what is required and where do you focus.   Another way to look at it is  –  What support does the greater organization provide, what contributions can you make and how can you impact sustaining change in an organization or for a given product/brand in a portfolio.  For some reason that takes many a marketer down the “we’re best and undifferentiated” path.

Not every product can be the best, but it may be the best for a very small use case and market segment, which doesn’t suck, but isn’t that exciting.  So we try and get a little creative and end up a little bland.  I’m not saying that marketers are dishonest, I’m more saying we are optimists and love our products.  To that end, some marketers optimistically position products as best in class, industry leading and other category killer references which are sure to drive explosive growth.

Being the best is the fun/easy, but isn’t really marketing.  Predicting growth is definitely the better side of product management and marketing, but not always like – sometimes you’re number 6 in the market with flat to declining revenues.  Ultimately buyers have problems and don’t necessarily care about your products, so if you could spend sometime figuring out what the problems are, rather than declaring your products the best you might be able to create a “behavior change” which is lasting and drives growth. To that end, perhaps a little intellectual honest about your product just might be the start.

I find that 9 questions will always help out when trying to gauge your position in a technology market:

3 Questions for your Sales Organization

  1. Who are the top 3 competitors and how do we rank?
  2. Why do we win against each of these competitors?
  3. If you could sell 2 of the competitor products which would they be and why?

3 Questions for your customers

  1. Who else did you consider in your search for a solution?
  2. Why did you select this product over our competitors?
  3. Will you buy more products from us? Please explain why

3 Questions for the Marketing organization?

  1. What is the reason you win?
  2. What is the clear differentiation against key competitors?
  3. How many sales calls have you gone on/customer visits have you had in the last 60 days?

If you extend a wide outreach into these stakeholders and look at the responses it might just tell a different story for your press release boilerplate, keep you honest and let you know the buyer just a little better.  The worst thing that happens is you find out your place for your product in the marketplace.

December 18, 2008 by
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Marketing IS in the Middle: Adam Shapiro

Everyone is in sales, especially marketing or at least marketing is in the middle of the business operations and sales.  Adam Shapiro is a long term sales leader and has spent the last couple of years building out market, product positioning and sales execution models for companies as the President of MS Strategies.  Adam also blogs at Sales Reform School, so check him out, since as a Lawyer turned sales leader he writes some interesting stuff.  Adam provides some interesting views on why Marketing is in the Middle in his thoughts/feedback below.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

I am a sales and marketing process consultant.  For the past four years, I have helped my clients translate their brand and marketing message into conversational tools and processes for collateral, web sites, and one to one conversations.  Most of my clients provide technology tools or services to their customers, but I have also helped consultancies and  more service-oriented businesses.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Most interesting to me is that so many successful people are “intuitives”; that is, they go about their careers working from the seat of their pants rather than a process.  This works well until they have to expand their responsibilities to others within or outside their teams.  Knowledge transfer, coaching, managing, etc. fails because there is no “playbook.”

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Integration with other teams that are stakeholders.  Too often, marketer’s efforts are either unappreciated, underutilized, or in the worst case, miss their mark because sales, customer service, product management, etc. were not involved or considered.


If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

Sales, marketing and product management are on the same page about what the market needs or wants and how the company’s offerings help with those needs or attain those goals.  There’s a feedback loop between business teams so marketing plans are embraced and there’s follow through when input or output is necessary.

How far is this from reality?

Close for my clients; not so close others.  That’s why I am in business.

December 18, 2008 by
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Marketing IS in the Middle: Jeff Schroeder

The next marketer is Jeff Schroeder, a person I have worked for and who has definitely helped me understand the importance of brand, product and an integrated approach to attacking the market.  Jeff currently is the President of CulinaryPrep and working in the consumer space now, but has extensive B2B, Financial Services and software market knowledge as well.  At the end of the day, product needs to move and that’s one thing the Jeff taught me.  I’m definitely appreciative of his interview below as this is his busy season shipping product.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

My most recent marketing roles have been as the head of the marketing department.  This has included responsibility for product, pricing, brand and marketing communications.  I have been CMO or head of marketing in several business sectors, including Information Services, Financial Services and Consumer Products.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

My two greatest challenges are moving from consumer products to financial services and then launching a new consumer product; CulinaryPrep.  The first, moving into financial services required me to reapply all the discipline and process from consumer products to a new business sector.  The challenge was doing this while learning a new sector, customers and company.  The second, launching the CulinaryPrep has been the ultimate test.  We had to build the brand, the positioning and go-to-market plan while we were starting up and building a new company.

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

I believe the single most important component is a quality product.  With a quality product you can build your brand and develop the positioning and messaging that the consumer will respond to.  A quality product will also give you the repeat and referrals you need to be sustainable.


If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

It would allow the marketer to make the critical decisions that are necessary to manage a P&L and build a great brand.  This means everything from product, brand and advertising to key business partners.

How far is this from reality?

Today, for most companies still pretty far away.  Marketing is one of those functions that gets a lot of help from other departments and executives.  Everyone believes they are a great marketer and can do the job of CMO.

December 17, 2008 by
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Marketing IS in the Middle: Mukund Mohan

With a technologist, operations expert, a development leader and an MBA out of the way in the series, the next participant is Mukund Mohan.  Mukund is the CEO of BuzzGain proves and continues to look for the next big thing as an entrepreneur.  Many thanks to him for participating and providing his take on why marketing is in the middle.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

A bunch – Product Management, Product Marketing, VP Marketing and CMO.  Mostly in software (high technology) and now I’m working on my own thing, which is marketing+other stuff+fun+a bunch of work.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Actually interesting and challenging both require an answer: Most interesting: Market research and competitive analysis Most challenging: Lead generation and sales enablement for a large sales force

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Great products make marketing easier than trying to market a so-so product.  Good products create loyal users and positive word of move.  If you have great positioning then a great product irresistible.

Since you selected Product, how have you see that contributed to revenue?

Great products appeal to the customer in a uniquely satisfying way, making marketing’s job to only create awareness.  Satisfied customer’s allow for faster product adoption and provides quicker time to revenue.

What experiences brought you to this conclusion?

At Mercury (HP) we had a product called Application Discovery and Mapping, which solved a very unique problem in automatically discovering components of your IT infrastructure in a quick, simple way, eliminating tedious manual processes.  Typically this was the writing and drawing maps of your infrastructure over and over again – not fun.

This was a breakthrough product in several ways – it appealed to the IT infrastructure owner because it worked, was quick and also solved a big pain point.  Marketing it was simply a matter of identifying the key infrastructure head and showing them a demo.  Real problems and real products mean easy marketing.

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?
The right organization.  An engineering team that’s willing and happy to listen to customers and make rapid changes to product to facilitate adoption.  Sales team that’s providing custom pitches to prospects instead of cookie cutter product demonstrations. Marketing teams that are more agile and nimble to adopt new means of lead generation.

How far is this from reality?

Not very far for certain types of teams, but for the traditional corporations, this is more of a dream than a reality.

December 17, 2008 by
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