3 Secrets of Highly Effective Product Marketers

Are you a product marketer? Bravo! You play one of the most important roles in your company’s success.

That’s because product marketers are conduits of information between your product developers, marketing team, and sales organization.

As the connective tissue, you monitor go-to-market programs, develop product strategies, research competitors, keep analysts informed, document the buying process, craft sales collateral, train sales on how to sell products, and much more.?

You are the eyes and ears of your company, tapping into the voice of the customer to position your product in the market and the voice of the seller to develop messaging that resonates with buyers.

To accomplish all those things—and still have personal lives—you must work efficiently. You don’t have time or energy to waste.

We spoke with some high-performing product marketers and discovered tactics that allow them to streamline processes and be as effective as possible. We found that these product marketers:?

1. align sales and marketing teams?
2. create sales content that sellers love
3. manage sales content with ease

Now we’re passing along that insight to you. Here’s a look at three secrets of highly effective product marketers.

3 Secrets of Highly Effective Product Marketers

1. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

When marketing and sales teams are aligned, marketing can create content that sales reps are much more likely to use. This minimizes the risk that sales reps will waste time creating their own off-message or off-brand content—time that should be spent on selling.?

• Create a sales advisory board: Find a champion from each sales team (regional managers, enterprise reps, mid-market, account managers, or however your company organizes your sales force). Invite them to be the voice of sales and give feedback to marketing.
• Meet regularly: Each week (or month) meet with the group, share your content ideas, and get feedback from your sales champions. Your champions can also share in-field observations and competitor intelligence. The goal is to build relationships, share ideas, and collaborate.
• Listen to sales calls: Using a conversation intelligence tool, listen to sales call recordings to get closer to the voice of the customer. You’ll be able to hear how product messaging is resonating (or not) and hear first-hand buyer objections and pains.?
• Ask sales to provide feedback on content: Before releasing a piece of content, such as a sales deck or a talk track, involve sales early, get their feedback, and iterate. Their real-world expertise ensures content is on target.

2. Create Sales Content that Sellers Love

Product marketers cannot create content in a vacuum. Collaboration and communication are essential before even a word is written or a second of video is recorded. Creating and activating the content is a cross-team effort.?

• Collaborate pre-release: Meet with the product managers, developers / engineers, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand the technical aspects and benefits of the new product or feature.
• Differentiate: Ask the group for input on the problems the new release solves and how it compares to competitor offerings. Develop a checklist of product release content for SMEs to choose from.?
• Share content with context: Using a sales enablement platform, add the content to your sales content library and include an explanation of what it is and how sales reps should use it. Use internal channels such as Slack, weekly marketing updates, and sales team meetings to announce new content.
• Give best practice examples: Use a conversation intelligence tool to identify real-life sales conversations in which the sales rep expertly uses your content. Clip that segment and add it to your sales content library as a best-practice example.

3. Manage Sales Content With Ease

One of the main responsibilities of product marketers is to arm sales reps with best practice messaging and content. To do that, they need a place to store that content, organize it, make it easy to locate, and track its usage.??

• Invest in modern sales enablement technology: Implement a platform that's easy for sales reps to use, is comprehensive, and facilitates every critical sales enablement initiative, including learning and content. You want quality over quantity when it comes to sales technology. If sales reps have too many tools, they may get overwhelmed and stop using them.
• Share content in the flow: Deliver content to sales reps with the tools they use. Modern sales enablement platforms allow you to serve up content specific to a particular buyer while a sales rep is using the CRM. You can also use software plugins to suggest content while sales reps are using a web browser or writing an email in Microsoft Outlook.
• Provide on-demand access: Easy access ensures adoption of new content. Make sure sellers can access content just as easily while on the road with their phone or tablet as they can on a laptop or desktop computer.

Good Habits Are Key to Success

Sales teams are under intense pressure to generate revenue and hit their numbers. Meanwhile, today’s economic uncertainties, buyer hesitancy, and increased competition make it harder to win deals.

Sellers need help. Product marketers can be their champion. And sales enablement can help both teams win. Use these tactics to be more efficient and highly effective. You can make all the difference in the success of your sales team—and the company.

?Learn More

Download The Product Marketer’s Guide to Sales Enablement to learn how to accelerate the sales cycle, drive higher win rates, and boost profitability.