How can product strategy and marketing collaborate to drive revenue growth?

Product strategy triangulates (market, customer and competitor feedback). These insights are turned into a product strategy brief for every stakeholder to understand [Why, Who and What]. In addition, this document should also include the goals, investment and P&L statement. This brief becomes central to enabling the marketing team to deliver on [How, Where and When]. Both groups are owning critical elements of the overall strategy. Often skipped, but in my experience and leadership, I have created the path for product strategy and marketing to have working sessions with sales and customer success to inclusivity and uncover any blind spots or new ways to target the intended audience.

As marketing brings a product to the marketplace, it should build on the established product strategy plan by developing marketing programs to build awareness, convert sales and boost revenue growth. Both teams have to: - Plan together - Stay connected - Collaborate on content creation - Harness content analytics to optimize and improve

The marketing team serves as the bridge between the intricacies of product development and the dynamic landscape of customer expectations. Understanding the product strategy is paramount for marketers as it shapes the narrative they convey to the target audience. A profound comprehension of the product's unique value proposition, key features, and competitive differentiators empowers the marketing team to craft compelling messages that resonate with customers.

Product strategies are based on available data that should be aligned with organizational Goals. Marketing plays a pivotal role to achieve those goals.

Align product development with market needs identified by marketing. Develop compelling messaging that highlights product value. Leverage marketing channels to promote product launches effectively. Gather customer feedback through marketing channels to inform product improvements. Ensure consistent communication between teams for agile adjustments to market trends. By integrating product and marketing efforts, companies can create a unified approach that maximizes revenue and meets customer demands.

Marketing can provide valuable customer insights to the product strategy team to refine the product features, functionality, and pricing. This collaboration helps create a product market fit, increasing the chances of customer adoption and revenue growth.

Firstly the product should be addressing the pain points of its T.A, Marketing then will articulate the product features and it's USP to the T.A, inducing demand, gather insights from the users that can be used to re-strategise or improve the product features.

At this stage, product strategy and marketing should be expanded to include sales and customer success leadership members. Product Strategy communicates the why and provides messaging, positioning, value prop, key benefits and feature sets. Marketing leverages this data to build the demand creation and demand capture strategy and execution. Marketing also transfers their speak into sales plays and playbooks to help sales create conversational stories and outreach. The CS team creates an onboarding approach to deliver confidence to internal teams and customers. Their sole job is to maximize ROI. By bringing all these pieces together, the customer lifecycle is formed with expertise across the lifecycle, equipped and understanding their roles.

Product marketers have the ability to influence the product roadmap through our competitor, market, and customer research. Product teams conduct a lot of customer research, but PMMs bring insights about the buyers as well. If you can share with your product team what motivates the buyer to make a purchase decision, you can collaborate in driving revenue growth both from new customer acquisition and improving engagement and adoption of existing customers.

Product management and marketing teams can both collaborate on strategy, especially during roadmap planning. Together, they may satisfy users’ demands and remain competitive in the industry by proposing new solutions for persistent pain points. Product managers and marketers can meet the needs of existing users by implementing feature requests or suggesting new capabilities based on customer feedback. Additionally, marketers armed with competitive intelligence would be able to identify opportunities to develop market alternatives by comparing one’s own products or features with other contenders. Product managers and marketers should routinely review this backlog and prioritize each user story to determine what to develop, and when.

When marketing and product teams work hand-in-hand it reinforces the brand's messaging and creates a synergy that leads to increased customer engagement and loyalty. Marketers can articulate the value proposition in a way that aligns with the product strategy, making the communication more compelling and believable to the target audience. Simultaneously, the product team can leverage marketing insights/ customer feedback to refine the product for optimal market acceptance.

Many people have talked about SMART goals and metrics. What is often overlooked is that if the PMM team is built right, they are equal stake holders and co-creators of the value proposition. However the fundamental problem in most SaaS/PaaS/IaaS companies today is that Product Management sits within engineering and therefore the expectation from PM is to be semi - Solution architects and TPMs. On the same note PMM sits in marketing and leans more towards pure marketing. For success the strategy organization needs both PM and PMM.

By creating launch pods comprised of product strategy, marketing, sales and customer success, you are co-creating value propositions from different POVs. By allowing for these types of pods to unfold, you create synergy internally across customer lifecycle teams and joint missions to attain the product objectives and goals. Additionally, using this pod method, you can ingest insights faster, leverage the collective expertise and react faster to market, customer or competitor change. In my experience leading these pods, we have been able to benefit from insights that allowed us to create micro-segments within our overall segments to better target and win faster.

Wherever your product sits on the BCG Matrix & whatever your technology, being able to clearly articulate its value to your customers is critical for success. It's hard to do that in a vacuum. Early collaboration with your launch/messaging/other marketing teams can provide important insights that are great for tweaking products. It also ensures that marketing teams understand the 'why' of your product - making it much easier to articulate to customers. I often find it helpful to think of internal marketing teams as the first real customer test bed. If you can't convince your marketing team its a killer product - how will they (or you) convince a customer?

Product and marketing need to work in lockstep for maximum-impact launches. Just because a product is GA ready doesn’t mean it’s time for a launch. Think about bundling features around a theme, tying your launch into current trends, and even holding off on announcing features until you have a big event or occasion to speak with prospects and customers.

Announcements & launches are some of the most impactful moments in a products life. Schedules should be planned, not just around product readiness, but considering where you'll get maximum reach/visibility/PR. What regional events & awards are most important for your customers? Ideally your launch/campaign calendar for the year should be premeditated & aligned with your stakeholders.

Timing is critical. As mentioned, the pods are crucial in bringing insights to the team that combine internal and external elements to factor in. There are times when your launch can ride a particular media theme or event to get added exposure, and other times, other competing priorities internally force a delay but for the right reason. The internal organization as a whole must be prepared and educated in advance of the launch. Three insights: (1) create a "why me" digital memo of only one page and send it to all employees; (2) invest in a 30-minute launch presentation, record it, and send it to all employees; and (3) create a launch circuit where employees can drop in virtually to get a demo or ask questions to be further educated.

Your product team will likely set the engagement metrics that determine a successful launch. As the PMM, your job is to ensure you reach and convert the right audience to meet those engagement goals. Develop a measurement plan that maps the customer journey and customer actions. This allows you to measure progress toward the goal, as well as make adjustments as needed to ensure both product and marketing teams are successful in their launch strategies.

Having a clear vision is a pillar of trust and collaboration. But it's important that the vision is also understood in the same way by everyone's involved. Marketers are the masters of communications, and in many cases the product marketing are those who help craft and share the vision. This vision is later taken to the product messages as well.

Communicate frequently. Your product manager depends on you, so work on ways to refine internal communications so everyone is aligned around product strategy and results.

The whole process starts with a manager that encourages input from those they manage. I have worked for too many managers over the years that tell those they manage how to do instead of what should we do. The old adage that more minds make better decisions seems lost in todays world. Top down management rarely works well. Remember as well that growth should always be focused on how to delight your customers.