259: What is Product Marketing

The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten

In today’s Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about product marketing (the cross-section between sales, marketing and product) and discuss how this business function is defined differently across different organizations. Steli shares his approach to product marketing and how he is ready to step up his game in this department. Tune-in and get insights that will help you determine how to integrate this important function into your organization.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:03 – Today, we are going to talk about Product Marketing 101
• 00:43 – Send out an email to Steli if you feel that you are the right product marketer for his organization
• 01:15 – Product marketing has different definitions

• 02:00 – It’s in a weird position that crosses sales, marketing and product
• 02:23 – “Product marketing is the art and science, conveying to people what your product can do for them with the goal of engaging, conveying and retaining”

• 03:04 – Difference between positioning of a company and product

• 03:11 – Often brand and company positioning is done through marketing while product positioning is done through the product
• 04:13 – All domains of a business: sales, marketing and product end up suffering if product marketing is neglected

• 04:46 – Steli has been indirectly marketing products to customers through content marketing

• 05:46 – Prospects end up reading relevant content and falling in love with the brand
• 06:08 – Whenever the prospect comes to the market wanting to purchase a CRM, they consider Steli’s organization first
• 06:31 – Has not been targeting customers who want to purchase a CRM immediately
• 07:55 – Has built up a strong brand, but has not focused on product positioning

• 09:19 – Some organizations think of product marketing as a top of funnel function

• 10:00 – The initial launch is done with the intent of driving traffic and trials
• 10:20 – Think of increasing adoption rates among existing customers

• 10:51 – Some people think of product marketing as a function spread across the entire lifecycle—from driving traffic to retention
• 11:24 – Product marketing can be concentrated on the top of the funnel, end of the funnel or across the entire life cycle

• 12:00 – While organizations generally research the pre-market launches extensively, there is a need to concentrate on the post-launch metrics
• 13:00 – Today, product marketing is concentrated more on the product team and less on the marketing; historically, it was otherwise
• 14:04 – Hiten prefers that product marketing remain a part of the product team which makes it more customer-centric

• 14:29 – Product marketing team should delve into case studies, take up research and customer development, coordinate with different teams and be involved in updating website assets
• 16:16 – As companies get larger, product marketing acts as a bridge between different departments
• 16:56 – Product should be closest to the customers—learn what their needs are
• 18:30 – Hiten has hired product marketers who ended up becoming part of the marketing team
• 19:34 – The structure of your organization determines how you approach product marketing
• 20:15 – While some business functions are very well defined, there are other new positions that are not clearly defined
• 21:27 – Send out an email to Steli if you feel that you are the right person for this product marketing job

3 Key Points:

1. Product marketing is the art and science that conveys to people what your product can do for them.
2. Product marketing can be concentrated on the top of the funnel, end of the funnel or across the entire life cycle
3. Product marketing is the cross between sales, marketing and product.

Steli Efti:

Hey everybody this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti:

And today, the sound track, we’re going to talk about Product Marketing 101. What is product marketing? How do you hire somebody for product marketing? How do you successfully do product marketing? Here’s the reason why I want to talk about this with you, Heaton, because surprise, surprise Close.io is hiring our first product marketer. By the way, if you listen to the episode and by the end of it, you still think that you are the right person, please shoot me an email at steliclose@io. I want to hear from you. But as we’ve been in the process of hiring our first person in product marketing, I have just been in this fascinating world of interviewing people for this role, interviewing other successful SaaS founders that have great product market teams, figure out how they do it. And it’s just a funky, funny space where there’s a lot of confusion. I feel like there’s very different definitions of even what product marketing is, how to do it, what to do and how to do it right. So like I need to talk to my main man, Heaton about this because it seems to an area that’s fascinatingly blurry to most companies. So, first let me ask you a question that I asked a lot of people that I’ve interviewed for this position. Which it seems to be such a basic question, I shouldn’t have to ask it. What is product marketing and how is it different from other marketing functions in the team? What’s your definition for that, Heaton?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. It’s a really good question. Product marketing is a really weird role. It’s almost weirder than product, although a lot of product people are also product marketers. And the reason the role is weird is it crosses sales, marketing, and product. And often times, executives, leaders, CEOs are also involved. Those stakeholders really care about the messaging and what the product is. And so for me, my definition of what it is, and I’ve said this a while ago actually but I’m going to lay it out, is basically: product marketing is the art and science of conveying to people what your product can do for them with the goal of engaging, converting, and retaining. And that’s really it. And you know it’s very product centric because it’s got product in it, so it’s one of my like my topics of choice. So I’m assuming, and I wanted to ask you a question, but I’m going to just make an assumption and see what you think. I’m assuming you folks are ready to basically start thinking a lot more seriously abut the positioning of your product in the market. Not the positioning of your business or brand because I think you’ve got that from a marketing stand point. But more the positioning of your product. Is that correct?

Steli Efti:

What’s the difference between the positioning of the company and brand and the positioning of the products specifically?

Hiten Shah:

My blunt answer is that there should be no difference. My more honest answer is, companies reach a scale where brand and company positioning is done through marketing while product positioning is done through product. And through meeting what’s the part of the business that’s communicating that, what’s the part of the business that’s responsible for it. So companies often hit a scale when their company positioning, their business positioning, their marketing position, like how they’re viewed in the outside world is not aligned with their product. And the reason for that is the business gets to a point where it’s working. And all of a sudden you’re like wait, are we considering what our product does? Are we considering the people who are using our product when it comes to all communications with the outside world? Are we updating our website enough? Are we launching at a higher velocity new features? Is there much more competition? But the truth is, all parts of a company’s sales, marketing product end up taking the brunt of this problem without knowing it. Until you’re at this point where like, product marketing becomes a thing that you need to address and think about. So like I said, I made a bunch of assumptions but my first question is actually, “Dude, why are you hiring a product marketer. What made you come to that conclusion?”

Steli Efti:

Yeah. That’s a good question. So here’s how we thought about this right, and why we came to the conclusion we want to hire somebody there. The one core reason is that all of our marketing up until this point has been very indirectly marketing our product to customers, right. So all of our marketing has been content marketing. And our content is very like kind of sales, thought, leadership, teaching our future customer how to do their job really well and how to succeed in the market place. And it’s never been directly marketing our product to them. Right? So we teach people how to sell and we teach companies how to do sales successfully. These people read our content because they have these questions on how to hire sales people, how to scale sales, how to do sales well. We have answers for them and they start becoming … Falling in love with our brand, falling in love with our content, becoming our audience and our readers. And down the line, this might take six months. This might take 12 months of them engaging with our content. Eventually, there’s a moment, there’s an infection point where they either, for the very first, time need a CRM or enough has happened to make them so unhappy with their current CRM that they’re in the market for a CRM. And the moment where they are in the market, we are top of mind and they’re like, “I want to check out Close.io product.” I know they have a CRM. I’ve been reading their stuff and their content is so great that I want to give their product a shot. That’s half of all our trials come from that kind of journey. We have never done up until this point is to think about the person that is in the market today that is like, “We need a CRM right now or we need to switch CRMs right now.” And they go out online and they try to research what are CRMs for unique case, for our specific needs. And they do a bunch of research, they find a bunch of solutions and then they compare these solutions trying to boil down to the right one for them. So people that are just in the market right now, we’ve never marketed to them because we never do marketing around our product. All our marketing up and to this point was around our content and then people discovered and fell in love with the product as secondary step. That’s one big reason why at this scale of the business, we started thinking okay, it’s increasingly irresponsible for us not to have somebody that worries about marketing the product, positioning the product in general. But also specifically to people that are in the market for our product right now. Independently from if they’ve ever heard of us or not. Does that make sense?

Hiten Shah:

I really like the … Yeah is the Company going more outbound from a sales perspective, yet?

Steli Efti:

No. It’s still all inbound.

Hiten Shah:

Okay. Cool.

Steli Efti:

And the interesting thing … So I like what you were saying. I didn’t think about it that way, but I do think that in a brand-wise and company-wise we have a very clear idea what our positioning is in the market and we have a very strong position. And a big part of the brand we’ve been able to build has directly contributed to our success in the market but we’ve not thought as much about the product positioning, especially in relation with everything else that’s going on. And also as the products that are competing with us have vastly changed and shifted. And there have been a lot of new entries in the space and some old that have entered our space. The companies and the products that we were competing with directly four years ago, it’s not the same space anymore. And it’s been a lot more crowded, a lot more differentiated. A difference of of features and the way people put together their sales stack and all that and think about how the product and our features and future work, like how that compares in positions within the greater market. I think that at this size of our business this becomes a more important question that we just didn’t care about back in the day when first launched. One interesting thing that I’ve seen asking people for their definition of product marketing is that I’ve gotten like … There’s not a single definition for this and there’s like this wide range of answers that I’m getting. And it seems like some people and companies, they think of product marketing as a topa funnel function, right? So we’re thinking about like we’re launching a new significant feature every month, coordinating the launch of that feature, finding partners to promote this with, writing all the content essence around that on the website and the block on the support desk software. Coordinating within the new team on how to communicate this new feature to new people. Creating landing pages for the feature. Thinking about the new competitors and how their feature is related or compares with this feature. And just doing just a bunch of positioning around a new feature or product and then doing the initial launch with a big focus on driving adoption and driving interest and driving trials and traffic. Versus some people and companies they think of product marketing much more in kind of mid and end of the funnel. Of like, any time we launch something new, how do we communicate this with our existing customers? How do we make sure that our existing customers adopt and use this new feature or product? How do we make sure that people that are already trialing product know about all the different important key features related to their interests or their customer profile and we convert them from a trial to an engaged trial and from an engaged trial to a operated customer. And some companies and people they think of product marketing as something that’s kind of like the entire life cycle. From driving traffic, to helping onboard and engage to retain, retention right? How do we make sure that customers that wanted certain things as we roll out these things they know about them and they stay happy and stay kind of long term successful. How do we make sure that we do a lot of customer training and education on our new features and our product and all that good stuff. So there’s three kind of distinct definitions where one is very heavy at the top of the funnel, the other’s very heavy at the end of it and then there seems to be one definition that just takes just the entire life cycle and adds responsibility. Do you think that all three could be good? I mean it really depends on the company. Do you think that some of them are confused and are actually kind of counterproductive? Thinking about product marketing, where do you sit in terms of what part of the funnel and customer journey, the product marketer or the product marketing team should own and care most about?

Hiten Shah:

I’ve seen the role differ a little bit here and there. The way I think about it is pre-launch in the future there’s a lot of communication and research that can be done, typically product marketers end up doing that research, so that’s one really strong angle I would consider. And then post-launch, there’s a whole bunch of work that needs to be done that’s more around like helping the sales team. What typically is called sales enablement. You know, essentially as I mentioned like earlier, making sure people are retained and engaged. And so, one way to think about it is product marketing owns the communication throughout the whole life cycle. But it’s all very customer-centric, not necessarily like what marketing would do, which is demand generation and things like that. We’re just getting into like, in my mind, a lot of formalized roles and formalized disciplines. Like demand generation, it’s a discipline of marketing. Product marketing depending on the company is either, it’s turning into being more on the product team, less on marketing. But historically it was more on marketing, less on the product team. Just because how the world was and how people had a different viewpoint on some of this stuff. So in my mind like I look at this and say okay, if our company is not doing as much customer development or learning about messaging for features that we’re building then, then product marketing team or person can really help with that. And they should be really good at interviewing customers, customer development. They may even creating a lot of the case studies, depending on how your business is set-up and teams are set-up. And they’re also communicating with sales and marketing and product to basically figure out what’s coming, what are those teams need to support what they need to do? And if product marketing is inside a product, how can product support it? And so I found that more recently companies are pushing for product marketing being inside a product, but I’ve seen people debate that it should be a part of marketing. But reason I like … Yeah go ahead.

Steli Efti:

No. Go ahead.

Hiten Shah:

I was just saying the reason that I like it a part of product is cause it’s very customer centric and it isn’t just about pre-sign-up.

Steli Efti:

I like that, that’s cool. I never thought about like product marketing sitting with the product team versus the marketing team. Independently from where the position sits, talk a little bit about basic assets that a product marketer owns and activities, like one on one what your product do all day, right? You mentioned case studies. We mentioned research and customer development. We mentioned coordinating with different teams, the product team the support team the sales team on how to launch and communicate a feature and make sure that everybody within the company is aligned on this new feature or this new product that is being launched. We mentioned the website, you know? Updating assets and that nature. But I also heard from some really successful SaaS companies that the product marketing team owns the email list and all email communication with customers, trial users, marketing leads, whatever it is. What’s kind of like, on a practical level, what is top of work that product marketing in your opinion should own and do? And what are some of the essence that you seen is best when product marketing owns these types of essence of channels versus it’s actually not that great if they do all these types assets or channels?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. I think the simple question is, how close to the customer is it, the channel?

Steli Efti:

Well what do you mean by that? How close to the customer is the channel? I mean obviously the website is probably an asset that is further away from the customer because a customer will not typically visit your website every day to read things about you, right? Is that the definition of thinking process here?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. Cause a formalized approach is like okay parts of the website, marketing owns parts of the website product owns. And the truth is like historically, product marketing has been a big company role. It’s just something that as you get larger as a company or you’re in a big company, you have all these product marketers but what do they really do? They’re just some form a bridge type of person between different departments. That’s usually what products should be doing. So the absolute truth for me is like, and again I come from a place where like I believe product marketing should sit in product, not in marketing. So if I come from that place, I’m like well product’s not doing their job if they need a ton of dedicated product marketers versus just a few. Or just like it ingrained in their processes. But then that goes back to how does product determine messaging if the skill-set doesn’t lie in product for messaging? I would argue that skill-set should lie product because product should be the one closest to customer in terms of learning what their needs are, learning how to make the product better, and more importantly learning the positioning in the market that the company needs. Now this can be super debated because if you’re a great marketer, you’re thinking about positioning all the time. So then it’s like wait, like who’s actually responsible for product positioning and value proposition and also like how we communicate, what we do and who we do it for? And this is why I like, I think people invented product marketing, you know. It’s like wait, like this is … To me this is one of those topics that get so freaking confusing simply because it’s like one of those roles I think was made up because there’s a bunch of deficiencies between the teams. And so this is like a role that crosses … It’s a marketing discipline to determine positioning, historically. Right? If you look at the history of this, but it’s a product discipline to talk to customers. But yet if you’re doing positioning well, you’re actually talking to market and customers. So, I just go back to the question to like the places that actually touch the actual customer or someone when they’re close to buying or close to like signing up is probably more a product marketer role. While marketing is responsible for topa funnel, acquiring customers, right? But now I’ll throw a freaking wrench in this by saying, “Well what about growth?” What about the growth people or the growth key? How does that impact all of this. So to me, it’s like a fascinating topic.Number one, my friend Steli wants to hire product marketing. Cool. That’s fascinating to me. Number two, I’ve hired people who you call product marketers and they usually sat on the marketing team because they were great at copy and we thought as a team copy was a marketing thing. But when you looked what they did, they did a lot of things that overlapped with what the product team did too. And you could think of it as a hand-off and where it’s once product has figured out a bunch of stuff about the feature, the copy side of it goes over to product marketing. So they may be helping to run the early access process of a feature to understand what really matters. But then they still have to work product to inform the roadmap right, if that’s what they’re going to do. So I would say that just hearing like what you’re saying, I think you want someone more on the copy side of it that probably will sit more in marketing and that’s totally cool. But then how do they determine the right copy for different parts of your website and different parts of the customer life cycle. Well they’re going to have to talk to the customers, right?

Steli Efti:

Everybody has to talk to the customers-

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, but like-

Steli Efti:

But yeah, I mean absolutely.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah so, to me, I personally think that a lot of this of where they sit and what they do depends on how your organization is structured.

Steli Efti:

Yeah, and that’s why probably this varies so differently between different companies because companies are differently structured, right? I’m not going to even feel … I think that this was a fascinating little like deep dive in what is product marketing but also I think it’s clear that there’s not one definition that will fit for everyone. I’m not going to even throw in there the question of how does product marketing and product management, what are the real differences and how do they interact with each other because that’s going be another 20 minutes of us talking about all kinds of possibilities. But I do think that it’s fascinating to see some roles that you hire for some functions within a team and a company, are kind of like been around for every, very well defined and it doesn’t really … There’s always some difference but 80/20 almost every company is thinking about this one role or this one position very similarly. But there other positions and things that are kind, as you said, they’re inventions because there were deficiencies between teams and the handoff of teams as things are evolving, like the product team now has … Talking way more to customers and taking more and more of the communication positioning responsibilities. Where, back in the day, they had none of that and it was all on the marketing team. So as the world changes, there’s kind of these new positions that are being created that are not as clearly defined and that are still, I think, being defined and shifting around as companies try to figure out how to do this stuff really well.

Hiten Shah:

Yup, totally, still new stuff.

Steli Efti:

Awesome. Still, new stuff. Alright that’s it from us for this episode. If you listened to all of this and you’re like, yes I’m the right person to work with Close.io and to help. And I could be amazing, shoot me an email: steliclose@io. Sorry about the shameless plugging of this position.

Hiten Shah:

Do be sorry shameless plugging, like you have an amazing company and I’m sure there’s a ton of people that would want to work there. So seriously, if you think you can be a product marketing at Close.io. They are a remote team and they have an awesome company culture. They do these great retreats and what not, as well as you get to work with Steli. So, what’s up?

Steli Efti:

What’s up. There you go.

Hiten Shah:

You should have pride.

Steli Efti:

My man. Thank you for the pitch.

Hiten Shah:

Of course

Steli Efti:

That’s it from us. We will hear you guys very soon.

Hiten Shah:

Bye.

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