Review
I didn’t enjoy reading this book. I found it to be a bit of a slog. I felt it repeated itself in places and tailed off towards the end. Yet it delivered on demystifying the Product Marketing Manager (PMM) role – which is why I picked it up.
The book recommends a Product Manager (PM) to PMM ratio of between 5:1 and 2.5:1. In reality I have never seen or experienced this, maybe we are only figuring out out as the industry and, over time, that ration will be reached.
Before reading this book, I would have expected the PM to be doing much of what the author describes as the PMM role. If you’re scaling a team beyond 3 PMs, I can see value in creating a PMM role. Most ‘full-stack’ Product Managers struggle to do everything well. It often makes us feel like we’re not doing a great job. If you’re a PM, I wouldn’t feel threatened by a PMM, they’ll likely raise the quality of your team’s execution.
It didn’t cover Product marketing metrics in any depth. That was a big disappointment. I was hoping to see more applied examples of CAC, LTV and HEART metrics.
Loved isn’t a classic. It’s only worth reading if you’re curious about the PMM role, or how Product and Marketing overlap.
Key Takeaways
The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.
- A product manager needs to get product/market fit and get the product to market.
- The Product Marketer (PMM) focuses mainly on the market side, including the go to market strategy.
- PMMs can bring strategic intent and product insight to all market-facing activities. Working with product teams to make better decisions affecting market adoption
- PMMs think about:
- Reach – how to target the customer
- Awareness – how and when to drive awareness
- Positioning – how a customer thinks about you
- Messaging – how they connect to customer needs so they see value
- Evaluating – helping the customer evaluate your product
- Purchasing – who and how the customer will make the decision to buy
- Evangelism – how can customers spread the word
- PMMs need to be the:
- Ambassador – connect customer and market insights
- Strategist – direct your products go-to-market
- Storyteller – shape how the work thinks about your product
- Evangelist – enable others to tell the story
- PMMs come up with compelling positioning
- Their tools → Launch plans, equipping sales, customer testimonials, product pricing, eProduct Launch, sales tools, customer testimonials, influenced pricing, enabled product evaluations, educating partners, working with advertising teams
- Ground your GTM plan in strategy. Start with the why (strategy) and the when (plan) before defining the how and the what. Don’t start with a list of to-dos. Every activity should have a ‘why’
- Questions to help think through your strategy and decide on tactics
- Is 3rd party validation important for credibility?
- What kind of customers are you trying to acquire and how fast?
- Where do those customers spend time in their professional or personal lives?
- Are you trying to educate the space?
- What are the products strengths?
- Are there particular trends that present opportunities in your category?
- Does someone else already have established relationships with the customers you’re trying to reach?
- What is the preferred way to adopt new products or technologies for your customer?
- Positioning is the place your product holds in the minds of customers. It’s how customers know what you do and how you differ from what’s already out there.
- Messaging includes the key things you say to reinforce your position, making you credible so people want to learn more
- We’re moving away from positioning formula statements like this:
For [target customer] who [statement of need or opportunity] the [product name] is a [product category] that [statement of key benefit]. Unlike [primary competitive alternative] our product [statement of primary differentiation].
Formulas create derivative, dense and jargon filled messaging. They focus teams on want they want to say NOT what is most important for customers to hear.
- The key to good messaging comes from knowing what your audience wants to hear – use CAST approach
| Make it.. | Think about.. |
|---|---|
| Clear | Is it clear what you do? Is there a reason to be curious? Tradeoff (clarity vs comprehensiveness) |
| Authentic | Is the language evocative and meaningful to your customer? Does it make them feel known? It needs to be concrete enough to be credible to technically savvy. |
| Simple | Is it easy to understand what’s compelling and different? What’s better? |
| Tested | Has it been tested and iterated in the context customers will experience it? |
- Lead with what makes people care. Stories on how existing customers have recently solved a big challenge using the product
- You have market fit when you discover market pull (customers need or want your product enough they take action to learn more, try or buy). Product growth is often only sustainable when you have market pull
- Practice Agile Marketing
- Respond to changes versus following a plan
- Rapid iterations over big-bang campaigns
- Testing and data over opinions and conventions
- Numerous small experiments over a few large bets
- Individuals and interactions over large market segments
- Collaborations over silos and hierarchy
- Metrics for Product Marketing
- HEART – Happiness, Engagement, Acquisition, Retention, Task Success
- Customer funnel metrics
- Customer journey engagement – which content, pages and websites prospects engage with
- Marketing qualified leads – PQLs (product qualified leads) – refine and engage target segments
- Inbound discovery – inbound organic search, direct search as a % of visitors (indicator of brand awareness, market position)
- Sales cycle time – want them to be as predictable as possible
- Win rates
- Conversion rates by product
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Lifetime customer value (LTV) – your CAC to LTV ratio should be healthy.
- Retention – important but lagging indicator if customers are getting enough value
- Price on value and willingness to pay (not cost)
- Price on a single unit of measure that’s easily understood by the customer
- Use a metric that reflects the value of your product AND grows as your product provides more value
- It must be simple enough for customers to do the math in their heads
- It must be easily measurable
- It must be something a procurement person will understand (and be comparable to others)
- Price on a single unit of measure that’s easily understood by the customer
- Campaign = specific collection of coordinated actions to address a specific market opportunity or challenge
- Examples of campaigns that aren’t linked to product
- Leverage a black-swan event
- Target a particular micro vertical
- Amplify a singular company event
- Activate a dormant or existing customer segment
- Shift brand perception
- Convert users of a competitive product
- The Product GTM Canvas
- A product GTM is strong and strategic when all its activities line up to achieve larger goals that incorporate current market realities.
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer / Outside environment | · Event | · Event | · Event |
| Product Milestones | · Event | · Event | · Event |
| Goal 1 | Activity Activity | Activity Activity | Activity Activity |
| Goal 2 | Activity Activity | Activity Activity | Activity Activity |
| Goal 3 | Activity Activity | Activity Activity | Activity Activity |
- Shows misalignment, keeps focus, helps communication (even without being comprehensive)
- Helps all activity have a purpose
- Making better marketing plans:
- Set the strategic frame → Identify key important actions → Be clear on what to measure → Align goals to the business goals → Keep an eye on quality (not just quantity)
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are not the whole story. What’s flowing into the pipeline?
- Define the playing field – and your position in it – keep an eye on the competition
- Beware of the allure of paid marketing and big budgets – it can mask poor organic growth
- The One-Sheet Messaging canvas separates messaging elements into building blocks – you don’t use all of them all the time, just what you need at the right time.
- The canvas builds the case for why people should believe a product is a good one. The product’s market position should also be clear.
- PMMs can build trust with PMs by showing their research and customer interaction process – inviting the PM along. If impressed, it will make for a smooth relationship
- Things anyone can do that can make a difference
- Ask for the customer point of view in product and GTM meetings
- Learn what’s working well in marketing
- Share more stories
- Revisit messaging (CAST, Clear, authentic, simple, tested)
- Use the GTM canvas to create alignment between GTM teams and product
- Use the messaging canvas to improve what marketing and sales teams say
- Use a release scale to develop shared expectations between product and marketing
- Use agile marketing practices
