8 questions product marketing should be asking themselves in 2024

Hi beautiful people,

Welcome to 2024 and the latest edition of Product Marketing Pulse. At first, I was going with the flow, trying to predict 2024 trends just like everyone else. However, I came across Tom Goodwin 's post where he questioned the usefulness of such predictions, given our struggle to forecast next week's weather. Honestly, Grace Baldwin ?? (my editor) wasn't a big fan of this idea either when we were editing this article back in December.

As Einstein once said, "the important thing is not to stop questioning." So, this article aims to raise crucial questions for PMM leaders, teams, or solo practitioners to ponder in 2024. Instead of providing all the answers (which aren't universal anyway), my goal is to inspire rather than prescribe solutions.

Let’s crack on!

P.S.: How do you like the new design of the cover?

Q1: The central question for 2024: How will product marketing drive revenue?

For years, Stanford University cited "no market fit" as the main reason for start-up failures, but recent research reveals a shift—companies now often fail due to running out of cash. The era of carefree spending, with VCs pouring money into anything shining, has ended. We're now in a new reality where 'camels' replace 'unicorns' in the VC world. Unlike fairy-tale creatures, camels thrive by conserving resources for tough times, thereby avoiding rookie mistakes that could be life-threatening.

This shift from endless cash burning was enjoyable, but it was naive to think it would last forever. As growth rates decline (borrowed below graph from ?? Hugo H. Macedo ?? 's presentation during Trailblazers), the theme for this year is how product marketers can contribute to generating revenue in this changing landscape.

Forrester predicts a 50% surge in AI impact on productivity and creative problem-solving across all IT roles. As engineers accelerate product creation and feature releases, the greater the impact on PMM's workload. This surge will be temporary until the dust settles.

Therefore, a crucial task for teams in the upcoming year is to tactically decline ad hoc requests, establish clear KPIs, partner with senior stakeholders, and focus on delivering value with an external perspective.

In larger organizations, implementing a clear process and criteria for requesting tasks from product marketing could be a helpful mechanism for prioritization. Maybe 2024 will be the year when product marketing is finally understood?

Q2: Building on the central question, how do product marketers ensure their revenue-generating efforts are both impactful and visible??

Product marketing, known for its collaborative approach and shared KPIs, brings both opportunities and challenges. The ongoing challenge revolves around making a noticeable and valued impact, a battle that is expected to persist into 2024.

Even when we put in the effort for revenue-generating activities, it feels like our contributions often go unnoticed. Legal, finance, and customer support always get credit when it comes to winning deals — but product marketing rarely does.?

Maintaining visibility is crucial, especially during challenging times like recessions when marketing is often the first on the chopping block.

If you're actively contributing to securing deals, it's crucial that your efforts are known beyond the sales rep. At my workplace, we use a custom CRM field to tag ourselves and ensure visibility.

In a product-led organization, constantly introducing new products isn't necessary. My experience shows that repositioning existing products and features while increasing usage gained more recognition.

However, attaching product marketing efforts to visible and traceable data points is just the initial phase. The real breakthrough happens during continuous reporting sessions with relevant stakeholders, where the data itself communicates the story.

Q3: How can product marketers take control of their career paths??

According to a PMA report 2023, 58.3% of Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) want to move up in their careers. This is often because PMMs work alone in a company or as individual contributors in a PMM team. They want to step into roles managing people, take on more strategic tasks, or move up the career ladder.?

The job market is tough right now. There's intense competition, with an average of 300-600+ people applying for the best PMM jobs (recently shared by ??Harvey Lee ?? on LinkedIn). It's crazy – a lot of people face disappointment from rejection.

At the same time, many PMMs struggle to see where their careers are heading. Only 20% aim for CMO roles, and surprisingly, 50%-60% of PMM leadership positions are still quite junior. (stats taken from Product Marketing Alliance summit in London, 2023).

These stats highlight that PMMs really need:

1. More career coaching
2. More opportunities to grow in their jobs?
3. To realize that their career path might not be straightforward. Instead, it could go horizontally into Growth, Product, Sales, or Marketing roles.

Q4: How will product marketing enable more sophisticated digital selling?

B2B sales is becoming increasingly digital, reshaping inbound experiences and buyer interactions. Now, the sales process often starts with inbound efforts, and practices like gating content are becoming less popular. Buyers like exploring product tours on websites by themselves. After they check things out on their own, there's a big demand for sales teams to enhance the experience with digital sales rooms and personalized microsites.?

Many product companies are using machine learning to collect and analyze user data. This allows for more precise targeting and dynamic audience segmentation, making proper B2B personalization a reality. If you already have these mechanisms set up, it becomes a competitive advantage, making it easier for PMMs to get insights.

Thanks to Google and Yahoo introducing stricter email spam filters in December 2023, the old strategy of winning by sending lots of messages is over. In 2024, success in reaching out to prospects depends on Signals, Triggers, Relevance, and Context. In simpler terms, the new game is about winning by providing value.?

Even though some reports say people don't want to talk to salespeople, the real story is more complicated. Buyers still want to know details about the product.

For example, two out of five Millennial buyers want to talk to b2b product experts early on (Forrester report). This means Product Managers need to be more customer-focused, especially considering generational differences in buyers.??

This trend also lines up nicely? with the whole wave generated by Brian Chesky , Airbnb’s CEO), last year. He transformed the role of product management at Airbnb to be more customer-focused, similar to Apple's approach. I doubt you missed it, but in case you did, I highly recommend checking out Lenny Rachinskiy’s podcast with Brian on this topic.

All in all, these movements are good for Product Marketing. The more product managers are outfacing, the more spare hands PMMs have to concentrate on positioning the product effectively, succeeding in the market, and the necessary Go-To-Market (GTM) efforts. Instead of explaining things internally.?

Q5: What will product marketers do to help the b2b buying experience to be more exciting?

Last year, while conducting internal research on buyer and sales challenges at my company, I interviewed one of my sales directors at TomTom. When I asked about his wish list, he amusingly expressed a desire for our B2B sales to be completed in a single day. Initially, I laughed hard, but as he elaborated on the idea, emphasizing the seamless and speedy buying process in B2C, my perspective shifted.

We can all agree that buying in the B2C realm is more enjoyable (though sometimes frustrating) than in B2B. The scale, risk, complexity, and lengthy processes associated with many B2B purchases contribute to this disparity. While B2B purchases may never match the ease of B2C, there's much we can learn from our counterparts.

Two evident answers emerge—buyer education and self-service. When observing consumer and B2B buyer behavior, there are obvious similarities. Both invest time in independent research, seek inspiration from peers and influencers, explore community sites like Reddit and Quora, and prefer trying things before making a purchase at their own pace (cue freemium options and non-time-boxed trials).

There's a significant opportunity for product marketing to excel in this realm, particularly in creating more relevant and buyer centric content (something that currently costs B2B businesses $2.3ml in lost revenue every year - G2 blog).?

Q6: Given that the # of SaaS doubled in the last years, what will product marketeers do to stand out in the crowded markets?

We're in a fortunate era where creating and delivering a product to customers is easier than ever. However, this convenience comes with a downside – the market is flooded not just with products but also with nearly identical messaging.

In the quest for engagement, marketers will face the challenge of maintaining authenticity and humanity in their communication.

While AI proves to be a powerful tool for data analysis and copywriting, it’s crucial to recognize that audiences value real, genuine, and authentic human conversation more than ever.?

In her book "The Sales Pitch," April Dunford discusses the structure of a sales pitch that resonates with buyers. But before we even get a chance to pitch, we must navigate through a lot of noise. One of the ways to do so is to revisit your marketing funnel, which many in 2023 claimed is dead. The key takeaway is that marketing teams must transition to strategies embracing diverse touch points, interactions, and experiences (according to Forbes). ?

For PMMs, this means dedicating time to map the buyer/user journey and extensively using data and research. (Surprise surprise ;) ) ;) ) Exploring Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and investing time in SEO are also crucial strategies. SEO remains vital (increasingly on platforms like TikTok), especially as B2B customer journeys often start or get validated through online searches.

To excel, marketers need to establish their companies as primary sources and industry experts, which is particularly crucial for navigating competitive markets.

Buyers typically assess the top 3-5 vendors. Thus, being present in AI training data sources, specifically Large Language Models (LLM), increases the chances of ascending to the top of search results.

This move is strategic in the age of Generative AI, excelling at parsing unstructured data from various sources, including those overlooked in the pre-AI era.

Q7: What niche PMM communities will we see emerging in 2024??

With product marketing slowly maturing in its form, the demand for niche PMM communities is on the rise.? For example, there is already a rising community of French speaking PMMs ( Carlota Güell , my French is non-existent but I heard good things about your podcast Product Marketing Stories). I can also see the need for product marketing leaders (VP & Director levels) to have a forum to share leadership challenges and discussion on team growth. There's also potential for niche groups based on company type or industry specific type. For instance, PMMs who deal with single products versus complex portfolios, acknowledging the distinct challenges faced by PMMs in each scenario. It will be interesting to see how these communities form over 2024.?

Q8: A not so distant future question -? if we are on the verge of rethinking screens, how will product marketing redefine experiences to engage with their audience??

In 2023, the market witnessed two notable innovations. Initially, futurists anticipated a future where computers adorned our faces with the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro. Subsequently, the Humane pin emerged, suggesting a move towards a world with fewer screens. While phone screens aren't disappearing, they are diversifying onto other screens and platforms. The transition in 2024 may be gradual, yet it promises an exciting perspective on exploring apps, products, and services.

This development not only profoundly influences product development but also provides Product Marketing Managers with fresh opportunities to activate and engage with their audience in the dimensional way e.g. virtual tours, immersive storytelling & narration, interactive content etc.

Frankly, it makes me quite excited because opportunities for creativity will be endless.?

In pursuit of the answers and more questions….

I have to admit, this article ended up a bit weighty. But that's the consequence of choosing the unconventional route instead of following the herd. Here's another bonus question that you'll likely ponder in 2024: What new product marketing memes will emerge in the PMM community? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! ??

May the PMM force be with you and have a great start of the year!

Yours, Anna