Why the best marketers think product

Let’s talk about something that often gets overlooked: the deep connection between product development and product marketing. The best marketers I've worked with understand the customer inside out, the problems the product solves, and how the customer perceives this relationship. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s exactly what great product managers do too.

I’m definitely in the “Chesky Boat” when it comes to believing that great product people should be able to craft strong messaging and GTM strategies for the products they own.

In a similar train of thought, I believe that product marketers should understand the ins and outs of the product. In fact, they should be active users and, ideally, huge fans of it. This post will focus mostly on why product marketers should develop their ability to think product, how it benefits your core work, and how to build those “muscles”.

The Essence of Product Thinking in Marketing

Product thinking isn’t just a method; it’s a mindset. It enables teams to cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters—delivering value that deeply resonates with users. This approach emphasizes understanding the user’s journey and pain points, ensuring every feature and message meets their needs. While it’s very similar to design thinking, product thinking tends to differentiate by focusing on the end-user and not just the problem to solve.

For product marketers, this means going beyond traditional campaigns. It's about engaging systematically with the product lifecycle. Instead of just promoting features, they understand how different users will use new features and present them in actionable, relevant ways. They work closely with product managers, designers, and engineers to ensure the product’s value proposition is clear from the outset.

Whenever I launch a new feature, I start by explaining how we present it to our existing customers. Then, I move on to how and when we introduce it to new customers. Finally, I started thinking about everyone who might miss those paths.

Where can users discover it on their own? What will they be doing when it’s most relevant?

For example, when I was working to launch “Blaze” the ads platform that crosses Tumblr and WordPress.com, I started with a basic blog post announcement and landing page and then went through the platform to identify key areas where advertising would be relevant or even top of mind.

For example, the site stats screen where users would likely think about getting more people to their site.

Or for the users who are more focused on publishing content and less concerned with stats…

Becoming a Marketer with a Product Mindset

So, how do you become this kind of marketer? It starts with shifting your perspective. Instead of asking, "How do I get the user to take action?" think, "How do I get the user to understand the relevance and value of our solution?"

1. Immerse Yourself in the Customer’s World: Spend time with customers. Understand their challenges and listen to how they talk about them and your product. Data is useful, but face time is invaluable.

1. Collaborate Closely with Product Teams: Work alongside product managers, designers, and engineers. Understand their decision-making processes and contribute your insights about what will be most compelling to users.

2. Adopt a Problem-Solving Mindset: Don’t just focus on acquisition. Understand what happens after users are acquired. Are they using the product? Seeing its value? Converting and sticking around?

3. Experiment Regularly: Go beyond A/B testing on landing pages. Explore new channels, segments, and use cases. Take calculated risks, just like product teams do.

4. Pay Attention: Specifically, pay attention to what happens outside of your bubble. It’s great to have deep expertise in your industry and problem space, but many applicable strategies and tactics produce incredible results right outside your comfort zone. Study the brands and products that seem to consistently build momentum. Find the products with the most passionate advocates and find out what they are doing behind the scenes to earn that loyalty.

Integrating Product Thinking: A Task-Based Guide

1. Customer Research and Persona Development

Applying Product Thinking:
Instead of just compiling demographic data, marketers should immerse themselves in the customers' world. This means conducting in-depth interviews, shadowing customers as they use the product, and actively engaging with them to understand their day-to-day challenges and goals. By deeply understanding the customer’s journey and their pain points, marketers can develop more accurate and empathetic personas, leading to more resonant and effective marketing strategies.

Example:
Regularly speaking with customers to get firsthand insights into how they interact with the product and incorporating these insights into persona development can lead to more targeted and impactful marketing campaigns.

2. Positioning and Messaging

Applying Product Thinking:
Marketers should collaborate closely with product managers and engineers to fully understand the product’s features and benefits from the user's perspective. This involves aligning messaging with the actual user experience and the problems the product solves. It ensures that the positioning is not just aspirational but grounded in real, valuable benefits that resonate with users.

Example:
By understanding the engineering challenges and solutions behind a new feature, a marketer can create messaging that emphasizes the unique problem-solving aspects, making the product more attractive to potential customers.

3. Launch Planning and Execution

Applying Product Thinking:
Involve marketing early in the product development process to ensure alignment between the product features and the go-to-market strategy. This early involvement allows marketers to gather deep insights into the product, plan more effective launches, and create materials that accurately reflect the product’s benefits.

Example:
At a launch meeting, a marketer who has been involved from the early stages can provide feedback on feature prioritization, ensuring that the most marketable aspects of the product are highlighted in the launch campaign.

4. Content Creation and Strategy

Applying Product Thinking:
Focus on creating content that addresses specific customer pain points and showcases how the product solves these issues. Use insights from user research and customer feedback to create highly relevant and engaging content. This content should not only highlight features but also provide practical examples and real-world use cases that demonstrate the product’s value.

Example:
Instead of a generic blog post about a new feature, create a case study showing how a customer successfully used that feature to overcome a specific challenge, providing tangible proof of the product’s effectiveness.

5. Performance Tracking and Optimization

Applying Product Thinking:
Adopt a continuous improvement mindset, much like in product development. Regularly review performance metrics, gather feedback from customers, and iterate on marketing strategies based on what’s working and what’s not. Use data to understand how different segments respond to marketing efforts and adjust tactics accordingly.

Example:
If a particular campaign isn’t performing well, dig into the data to understand why. Is the messaging off? Are the channels misaligned with the target audience? Use these insights to refine and optimize future campaigns.

Advantages of Adopting Product Thinking

Alignment with Product Vision:
Product thinking aligns marketing efforts with the product's core objectives and user benefits, ensuring a unified voice across all channels. When launching a new feature, marketing can craft messages that highlight how this feature directly addresses user pain points, resonating deeply with the target audience. When that user makes their way into the product, they will be delighted to find that all of the copy (and microcopy) communicates what the product can do and how to do it in the same way.

Insight-Driven Strategy Development:
A product mindset encourages relentless curiosity about user data and behavior, leading to persuasive and personal marketing strategies. One of my favorite ways to segment customers is by using the Jobs To Be Done framework and focusing on “why” they use the product and what they hope to get out of it.

Proactive Market Positioning:
With a deep understanding of the product’s features and potential, marketers can quickly adapt what they already know about the product and its value to what the world is talking about, looking for, and excited about.

Let’s end with a collection of product marketing that has recently caught my attention:

Coda.io recently announced their “Brain” product and gave a really clear example off the problem it can solve and what makes it unique

When I logged into Canva today I was surprised when it asked me if I wanted to try the new “Glow”. Here’s what happened

I fully admit to being on the beehiiv hype train. Now that I’ve used the platform for a while, my energy behind it has fizzled a bit, but a couple of things remain rue:

1. This team ships product faster than any other product team I have been following over the past 2-3 years.

2. They are really good at marketing their new features and product updates. They make little updates sound exciting and keep the hype train constantly fueled up at all types.

Sometimes it’s their Linkedin posts, sometimes it’s their emails, sometimes it’s their employees trolling each other, and sometimes it’s the newsletter from the founder that is also written and published on beehiiv.

What actually convinced me to use this platform was the success stories from real customers like this one