Good Product Marketing, Bad Product Marketing
Inspired by the Ben Horowitz classic Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager
Product Marketing does not have a singular meeting. It’s been described as a jack of all trades, a marketing pinch hitter, a storyteller, or even the business-minded counterpart to Product and engineering. This lack of clarity - as opposed to roles where your job is to hit quota, ship code, produce financial forecasts - leads to confusion. But what makes a good Product Marketer, as opposed to simply being a marketer who wears a lot of hats, can be pretty well articulated with the Good Product Marketer / Bad Product Marketer paradigm. This paradigm is also helpful in defining what a good Product Marketing Leader is as opposed to a Bad Product Leader looks like, and what a Good Product Launch vs. a Bad Poduct Launch looks like.
Good Product Marketers behave as the commercial owners of the product lines they support. They work relentlessly to match-make between the people who have a problem they can solve and the product that they’ve helped develop. Good Product Marketers have knowledge of the market, the competition, and how the technology works. They talk to customers regularly, seek to understand what they are trying to accomplish in their day-to-day, and can pinpoint what stands in their way. Good Product Marketers never shy away from learning how the product works, and they know their role is to be the voice of the customer. Good Product Marketers are equal partners to Product Managers, and view their success as being directly correlated to how successful the product line they are supporting is. Good Product Marketers build campaigns and plans to meet those numbers.
A Bad Product Marketer sees their role as creating content from what Product tells them, and what Sales says they need. They don’t speak directly with customers, don’t interact with their target market through communities or meetups, and make top-down assumptions about what customers want and need. Bad Product Marketers hide behind marketing buzzwords and industry jargon. They hope the wall of words will shield them from being asked how their Product Marketing strategy is leading to real business outcomes: consumption, adoption, demand. Bad Product Marketers don’t take the time to learn the technology or what their audience wants to solve. Bad Product Marketers parrot what they think their bosses want them to say. Bad Product Marketers view their success based on tasks completed, such as the number of analysts talked to, the number of blogs written, and the number of landing pages created. Bad Product Marketers do not have a strategic vision they are trying to help build.
Good Product Marketers are curious about their customers and engage them regularly. They are disciplined about asking open-ended questions and listening closely. Good Product Marketers care about what customers care about, thinking about how they can help them achieve their goals, and never lead the witness. Good Product Marketers don’t see themselves as selling the product but know they can only help Sales and Product if they deeply understand the problem and how their solution solves it.
Bad Product Marketers hear “no” - you can’t talk to customers - and give up. They are willing to accept what Sales and Product tell them and tell themselves, without any validation or curiosity, that the problems those teams say customers are facing are what matters most. Bad Product Marketers don’t think critically and are willing to churn out content and assets for the sake of saying they’re doing their work. Bad Product Marketers are not viewed as partners to Product Managers and are simply their scribes. Or throughput channel.
Good Product Marketers think in terms of objectives. They ask themselves, “What are we trying to accomplish with this product?” Bad Product Marketers are scared to be held accountable and want nothing to do with how a product fares.
Good Product Marketers view themselves as GMs of a product - they create strategies to achieve outcomes, program manage launches and initiatives, and collaborate effectively with other teams within marketing. Bad Product Marketers view their role as creating content and speaking to audiences, but never collaborate. Bad Product Marketers can’t program manage an initiative to save their life and shy away from bringing the full resources of marketing to bear to support a product line.
Good Product Marketers can tell a good story. They rarely use marketing jargon and are excited by educating people - customers, prospects, the gas station attendant - about what their product does and the solutions they can solve. Bad Product Marketers can’t tell a story because they don’t understand their audience or the product.
Good Product Marketers get asked to come to their kids’ school for show-and-tell. Bad Product Marketers’ kids, spouses, family, and friends have no idea what they do, despite their many efforts to explain it to them.
Good Product Marketers are accountable. They celebrate their successes when their products achieve product-market fit, and they hold themselves accountable when their products lose their fit. Good Product Marketers are diligent - they study the market, they meet with customers regularly, and they make their point of view understood by Product, Sales, and, as needed, Executives. They are always respectful and polite, but they have a perspective that they know needs to be heard.
