Here's how you can enhance your strategic thinking skills in Product Marketing.

I like to start by gaining a deeper understanding of my product's vision, engage other departments... sales, marketing, product design, finance, legal, etc. to expand deeper perspective. Analyze the market and your customers to gain insights into trends, pain points, needs, and preferences. Set goals, KPIs, and OKRs so you can learn, track, and measure progress. Ask questions and learn from others and also look at best practices in other industries to see what might apply. Continue to be curious and create a framework and roadmap that allow you to see and track what is going on. Visibliity into your own activities as always served me well. I find understanding why, when, how, and where choices are made to be invaluable.

Embracing curiosity is the key to clarity and strategic thinking in Product Marketing. I always explain that Product Marketing isn't just a job title but a mindset. It's all about asking the right questions: What's the product? Can we actually code it? Why now? Who needs it? Does it solve a problem? How big is the problem? Will people pay for it? How much?

?? Drawing from the concept that "people don't buy a drill, they buy a hole in the wall," product marketers must grasp that customers seek solutions to problems or fulfill desires. Shifting focus from product value to customer needs offers a fresh perspective. To enhance strategic thinking, stay curious, prioritize understanding target audience pain points, aspirations, and motivations. This customer-centric approach fosters strategic thinking, guiding decisions to achieve long-term goals while forging meaningful connections with audiences.

You are either curious by nature or you are not. Look at the big picture....think holistically. Map our your target ecosystem...identify all the players and look at how they interact with one another...partnerships , collaboration. Take it down a level and look at LinkedIn connections you have in common....see who is connected with whom. Follow the LI connection "threads"....thats "curiosity"

Embracing curiosity is a powerful tool in strategic thinking, especially in the fast-paced world of product marketing. Curiosity prompts you to challenge the norm and explore innovative possibilities that can significantly differentiate your brand from competitors. How to Implement Curiosity in Strategic Thinking: Ask Provocative Questions: Begin with asking "What if?" and "Why not?" These questions challenge conventional wisdom and open the door to new ideas.

Data prevents us from getting carried away by assumptions and helps focusing on what has worked and what hasn't. It also provides validation for our hypotheses and can serve as a guiding compass to optimize and iterate.

Data is powerful at generating information. Caution: data can be skewed to confirm anything, truth is in the whole of it. Be careful to measure actual results based on specific ROI goals (money, time, processes, efficiency, etc.). Too often data can be misused to support outdated beliefs to confirm current status-quo within the system. This is an epidemic failure that is polluting everything from the science of medicine to beliefs in politics.

By leveraging data analysis, marketers can pinpoint emerging trends, consumer preferences, and anticipate market shifts, guiding us towards our next strategic move. Moreover, historical benchmarking empowers marketers to evaluate performance across different periods, unveiling patterns, successes, and areas for improvement. Customer insights serve as a compass that can steer businesses toward more effective strategies and optimized outcomes.

Being able to analyse data better than your peers, is probably the one characteristic that will set you apart. I have always had an aptitude for this. It is literally being able to "read" the trends in numbers like you would a language. Once you learn how to analyse data, you need to be able to figure out what it means. Being able to detect a problem or issue before anyone is even aware of it....means you can suggest a corrective course action to your boss, or bosses boss. They will be convinced you really do have a ????

The most import critique is on your own thinking. Listen to everyone who disagrees with you, first and foremost. Make a detailed argument to support their conclusions; based on the data. Trust the points in common to ascertain the most viable and accurate results. This requires that you, most of all, be willing to change your mind.

While all of the options listed are important for enhancing strategic thinking skills in product marketing, thinking critically is particularly crucial. Critical thinking involves evaluating information, identifying patterns, questioning assumptions, and considering alternative perspectives. In product marketing, being able to critically analyze market trends, customer feedback, competitor strategies, and internal capabilities is essential for making informed decisions and developing effective strategies. Critical thinking also helps product marketers anticipate challenges, assess risks, and identify opportunities for innovation and growth.

Do things outside of product marketing at your company. I've learned that taking on side projects, freelance writing, etc. immensely helps with bringing a fresh perspective to my work. There are so many analogies that surface, both consciously and unconsciously, that help me find new frameworks and ways of doing things.

In today’s marketplace every consumer requires new & creative recalls to be loyal. A product marketing campaign will become creative only when the marketer will talk to consumers, read their insights & understand them more deeply. This will help him in creating more better & market adjustable campaigns to highlight his brand

Creativity means letting go of what you like. Let everyone else determine what's creative. Start by investigating what your current network of customers and supporters think. We say, "Find out what the customer wants and give that to them." To state it frankly you're the problem, but the solution is in your hands too. So be courageous and let go, that's being creative!

Continuous learning is not given as much importance as it should. Learning through workshops, networking events with industry leaders, communities on slack, online courses and most importantly your peers and team members can be a great way to improve your thinking skills and be creative. P.S - Always take notes!

Study your competition since they're your most valuable asset. People are always the most important aspect in any venture. Learn from those who have spent a life-time thinking differently from you and your own. The more diverse your association with strangers the better. Everyone is eager to share their points of view, listen and learn. While others reject contrarian information you should embrace the diversity. Learning what others are thinking is the fastest way to climb the ladder of success. It's not so much the information they are willing to share it's their way of thinking about it that enhances learning.

In product marketing, fostering continuous learning habits is essential for staying ahead. Start by setting regular intervals for team learning sessions that focus on the latest market trends, customer feedback, and competitive landscapes. Encourage cross-functional collaborations to broaden perspectives and spark innovation. Leverage analytics to measure the effectiveness of marketing strategies and identify areas for improvement. Promote a culture of curiosity and experimentation, where learning from failures is valued as much as successes. This ongoing commitment to learning and adaptation ensures that our marketing strategies remain dynamic and effective.

The main piece of advice is to just 'start'. Many people put barriers in their own way when it comes to networking - it can be confidence or cost or time taken that puts you off (or all three) and before you know it the opportunities have passed you by and people have stopped asking you along. Be proactive and challenge yourself to seek out networking opportunities. Also devise a plan that helps you follow up with the people that you meet. This helps you start conversations and gives you something to talk about. Think about how you can help the people you meet: If you start your networking journey with the objective of being helpful to others you are more likely to be able to follow up with an introduction or a valuable piece of research.

Human centric Marketing approach, satisfying unmet needs of consumers in human terms emotionally & functionally to deliver them unbeatable values. Insights not just stop at your category or products understanding, it should go further into human aspects like desires, beliefs, fears, aspirations, values… and deep dive into local lifestyle, culture, behaviors and tension points to create opportunities for a blue ocean market.