Overview of Product Roles

Product Lead

• Business-orientation
• Develops strategic plan for product(s) –
  business plan, pricing
• Identifies target user/buyer personas
• Discovers & validates market problems
• Seeks new market opportunities (market, product, price, distribution) ​

Product Lead

• Oversight of strategy, technical &
  marketing aspects of products(s)
• Analyzes product profitability
• Positions product for market(s) and
  user/buyer personas
• Approves final go-to-market and ongoing marketing plans
• Involved with all stages of product’s lifecycle

Product Manager

• Creates user personas for the product
• Interviews existing & potential customers
  to understand market needs
• Maintains the product roadmap
• Defines market requirements & creates user stories
• Manages the development backlog ​

Product Manager

• Works closely with developers & QA
  during product development
• Packages features into product releases
• Monitors & incorporates industry
  innovations
• Analyzes competitive landscape
• Monitors product KPIs ​

Product Marketing Manager

• Defines buyer personas
• Converts technical positioning into key
  market messages
• Creates product launch plans
• Developers ongoing marketing plans for customer
  acquisition and retention
• Seeks new market opportunities (market, product, price, distribution) ​

Product Marketing Manager

• Works with marketing to execute
  marketing plans
• Provides information tools to help
  prospects through the buyer process
• Delivers thought-leading content via events,
  ebooks, etc.
• Facilitates channel training ​

Being Market Driven

Being Market-Driven

Pragmatic Marketing found market-driven companies are:

• Twice as fast to bring products to
  market
• Twice as likely to lead
• Enjoy 20% higher customer
  satisfaction

—From Pragmatic Marketing interviewing 45,000 alumni at 3,000 customies

Common Problems in Technology

• Guessing
  • Believing we know more than buyers do about what they want to buy
• Assuming
  • What current customers request is
    important rather than discovering an
    unsolved problems that potential
    customers will pay money for
• Telling
  • Trying to create a need by relying on expensive advertising or an army of salespeople

Problem With Only Talking to Customers

"IF I HAD ASKED PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANTED, THEY WOULD HAVE SAID:
FASTER HORSES..."

—Henry Ford

Being Market-Driven

Spend more time focusing on problems buyers are willing to spend money to solve rather than on what the competition is doing.

Other Fatal Flaws

• Pitching products & technology instead
  of market solutions to target buyers
• Trying to make up for poor products
  with major marketing campaigns
• Focusing primarily on getting new sales
  while ignoring existing customers
  ​

Becoming Market-Driven

• Find unresolved problems
• Understand buyer personas
• Quantify the impact
• Create breakthrough experiences
• Articulate powerful ideas
• Establish authentic connections ​

Becoming Market-Driven

Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant

The only thing that matters is the user's opinion

Customers don't care about products

They only care about solutions to their problems

Build Buyer Expertise

Understanding Target Buyers

• Understand buyer problems before creating any messaging or marketing campaigns
• Talk to non-customers to learn their unsolved problems
  • What are their goals & aspirations?
  • What are their pain points?
  • What are their unsolved problems they will pay money for?

Understand Your Buyers

• Best methods
  • ​Face-to-face interviews
  • Observing the user in their environment
• Second best are online video interviews
• Surveys are useful

qualitative + quantitative market data =
understanding your users

Recruiting Interviewees

• Interview customers who cancel
  • ​Why did they cancel?
• Interview brand new customers
  • ​Why did they buy?
  • Find out the process they went through to buy
• Request customers who fill out surveys if you can interview them
  • ​When interviewing customers, question them similar to a non-customer
• Use Ethn.io to find non-customers​

Interviewing Prospects

• Ask open-ended questions
• Ask how they do things today
• Listen, listen, listen
• Write it down, video it
• Probe:  "Tell me more" or "I'm not sure I understand what you mean"
• Go back and read your notes
• Look for hidden problems to find the pain & identify buyer motivation​

Sample Interview Questions

• What is your motivation for achieving
  this objective?
• Why would that be important to you?
• What steps would you take to achieve
  this objective?
• Where would you go to get information
  on how to do that?
• What is holding you back?
• Why are your biggest fears about creating a website?
• What are the most important factors that would go into your decision?

Other Ways to Get to Know Your Buyers

• Live in the prospect's world
• Join industry associations
• Attend conferences they attend
• Read the same blogs and publications they read
• Read their blogs

Affinity Mapping

• Sort user issues into categories
• Look for common threads
• What are the biggest pain points?
• What problems if solved would get the biggest traction?

Find Out

• What words or phrases do buyers
  use to search for solutions?
• What blogs, forums, online news
  sites do they use?
• Are they open to viewing audio or
  video content?
• Do they attend conferences in person or online events? ​

Buyer Personas

• Buyer personas are potential customers with common market problems
• Personas are short descriptions of an archetypical customer
• Personas provide clarity to help with
  • Identifying common problems
  • Creating the right messaging stories
  • Understanding how to reach this type
    of user

Catalog What You Know

• Create a written document for each persona
• What are their problems?
• How do they along without your product?
• How can you solve their problems?
• How can you reach them?
• Where do they go for answers?​

Create Buyer Personas

• A typical product will have 2-5 personas
• Create a persona definition for each type
• Provide an example person – photo, name, age, position, company, attributes, story, information sources and more
• Post these personas where team
  members can see them

Our Target Personas

Sample User Persona

MailChimp Personas

Identify the Buying Process

• What phases does the buyer go through?
• What key actions does the buyer take through each phase?
• What needs and emotions does the buyer have through each phase?
• What questions & objections?
• What will help the buyer take the next step?

Information Needs

77% of users want different content at each stage of the buying process

—Blueprint of Modern Product Launch Marketing

Sample Content

Develop the Right Messages

Develop Messaging for Each Persona

• What criteria do buyers use to make
• Identify what else a buyer is looking for besides a product
  • Comfort?
  • Simplicity?
  • Security?
• Choose the most important criteria
  for each buyer type ​

• Map out each pain point
• Describe how the product solves the buyer's pain points
• Translate that description into phrases
  or concepts
• Create a positioning statement

Develop Messaging for Each Persona

Positioning Statement

A positioning statement is a concise description of your target market as well as a compelling picture of how we want that market to perceive your brand

Position Statement Guidelines

• It is simple, memorable and tailored to your market
• It differentiates you from your competition
• It is credible, something you can deliver
• It is something you can "own" for
  your market
• It becomes a tool to evaluate your
  marketing decisions

Positioning Statement

For (target buyer) who (needs/cares about), (product) is a (category/solution) that (provides benefit). Unlike (competition), (product) is (unique differentiation).

Example

For web users who enjoy books, Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides instant access to over 1.1 million books. Unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon.com provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices, electronic editions and comprehensive selection.

Articulate Powerful Ideas

• Powerful messages rarely have anything to do with describing a product or service
• Express to each buyer person what you want them to believe about your organization
• What will resonate?

Reaching Your Target Buyers

"Tell me how you solve my problems."

Reaching Your Target Buyers

• Your messages need to:
  • Show how you solve their pain points
  • Use your buyer's language
• Develop your website and marketing messages around your target buyer personas
  • ​Not around products

Messaging Test

Conduct a quick test of your messaging with people who represent your buyer personas

• Does this explanation make sense?
• If you heard this, would you be interested?
• Would you want to buy or at least evaluate this solution?

Website Content

Does your website focus more on your buyer personas, their problems and solutions to those problems than it does on your products, technology and your company?

Remember: Your buyers only care about solutions to their problems

Example

Example

Example

Identify the Buying Process

• What phases does the buyer go through?
• What key actions does the buyer take through each phase?
• What needs and emotions does the buyer have through each phase?
• What questions & objections?
• What will help the buyer take the next step?

Landing Pages

• Appeal to different personas with customized landing pages
• Single focused purpose
• Often contains no navigation back to the main site

Identify & Execute the Right Go-to-Market Strategies

Marketing Strategy

• Many marketing campaigns are interrupt-driven
  • Ads, email
• Buyers are not very receptive with interruptions
• Buyers are more receptive when they perceive they have a problem

Marketing Strategy

• Where do your buyers go to get information?
• What marketing programs will help buyers make decisions?
• Identify opportunities to create awareness & credibility

Marketing Campaign Planning

• How do you know which programs are the most cost effective?
• Measure, measure, measure
• What are the best metrics to
  use?
• What pushes buyers along
  the buying path?
• Calculating ROI for each campaign gives you the data to decide what works best

Measuring Effectiveness

Lifetime value of customer –

Cost of customer acquisition =

Effectiveness

Use Strategic Metrics

• Not all metrics are equal
• Customer acquisition costs
• Customer retention/churn
• NPS ​
• Lifetime value of customer

Be a Partner

• Stop being a vendor
• Show through all customer-facing function you are a problem-solver and solution-seller
• Formalize customer engagement
  • ​Frequent content
  • Early access to products
  • Loyalty programs
  • Customer advisory councils

Identify Customer Churn

• What causes churn?
• Allocate market budget to
  • Customer loyalty
  • Customer retention

Create Thought Leadership Content

Developing Thought Leadership

How do you develop thought leadership?

Through content marketing

What Is It?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

—Content Marketing Institute

Why Content Marketing

• Communicating without selling
• Non-interrupt marketing
• Helps your buyer to be more intelligent
• Your buyers will see you as producers of valuable content
• Develops trust with your brand

Why Content Marketing?

• Banner ads have .12% click through rate (eMarketer)
• Adblocking is growing 41% year over year (PageFair)
• 56% display ads are only seen by robots (AdAge)
• 86% consumers exhibit banner blindness (Adotas)

Why Content Marketing?

• 74% readers trust educational content from brands that do not push a sale (Kentico)
• 75% marketers generated positive
  returns from content marketing
  (AdAge)
• 78% CMOs think custom content
  is the future of marketing
  (Demand Metric)

How to Do Content Marketing

• Think like a publisher
• Create compelling content
• Create an editorial calendar that hits topics your buyers are interested in
• Write the content from the buyer's perspective

Unlearn What You Have Learned

• No need to "pitch products"
• Eliminate buzzwords &
  acronyms buyers won't
  understand
• Unlearn spin—buyers want
  authenticity & transparency
• Don't make buyers "buy" content—give it away & hope it goes viral

Study Other Vendors

Who are great at Content Marketing...

Social Media Marketing

• Get others to spread ideas for you
• Tweet & blog about content you create
• Use social media to drive buyers to targeted landing pages
• Invest in 10 content ideas with the hope that 1 iwll go viral

Reaching Strategic Influencers

• Target anyone what has above-average impact on your personas
• Find influencers who will promote your product or service
• Good ones become your evangelists

Reaching Strategic Influencers

• Find the right influencers
  • Digital tools (SocMetrics or Appinions)
  • Only follow bloggers & tweeters who can understand your product
• Go after smaller, niche-specific blogs
• Take time to develop relationship
• Follow them on social media
• Make comments and show interest in what they are doing

Product Launch

Product Launch

Only 38% of companies rank their launches as highly successful.

—Business-to-Business Launch Survey Executive Summary, Schneider Associates

Product Launch Plan

• Create a launch plan
• Base it on market data
• Identify launch goals
• Determine deliverables
• Insure deliverables are realistic
• Identify company readiness
• Assign a launch owne

Product Launch

• Avoid mimicking a competitor
• Use a deep understanding of the buyer & buying process
• Focus everything around meeting the needs of your target persona

If you mimic market leaders, you'll only add to their dominance.

—Jon Spoelestra

Sample Launch Plan

OUTLINE:

• Target buyer personas
• Persona messaging
• Tools that help the user through the buying process
• Potential impact on existing customers
• Changes to website
• Marketing campaigns to launch
• Content to develop (editorial calendar
• Sales & support training

Product Sales Training

• Most product sales training focuses on new features
• Outline the problems buyers have
• Demonstrate how the product solves
  these problems
• Identify what criteria buyers use to make a decision
• Show how new features solve buyer problems

Product Launch Questions

• Were you happy with the results of your last product launch?
• Is your team clear about launch goals and responsibilities?
• Are your launch goals established and communicated?
• Do you have a designated launch owner?
• Is the approach to product launch a team effort?
• Do you include shared teams into the planning process?
• Do you consider different launch strategies for each product launch?