Do we need product marketing?

Introduction

Product marketing as a function is not new. In fact, it’s almost as old as marketing itself. For example Unilever has Product Marketing Managers leading toothpaste, with different brand managers for Pepsodent, Closeup and Sensodyne reporting to it. This functional definition of product marketing went thru a sea change when it came to B2B SaaS products and my article is an attempt to state why a SaaS organization can’t live without it. The article does not endeavor to explain what product marketing is but only give reasons why a SaaS organization need product marketing, perhaps more than any other marketing function

?A brief history of SaaS Marketing

In the early days, the main goal of any marketing function was to either create or influence the sales pipeline. Most new products played in an empty field with little or no competition and marketing was tasked to build awareness about the benefits if the product category rather than the product and keep the leads flowing in. When Salesforce was first launched, the only competitor they had was Siebel and it was not even known as a CRM software. There was hardly any felt need for differentiating or having competitive attack programs. Within a few years almost every product category that you can think of has multiple players. For example there are over 150 software vendors in procure-tech, 200+ in insure-tech and every day 5 vendors are added to the conversational AI space. With such a competition, just pure lead generation was not enough. This gave birth and then the rise to SaaS Product marketing

?My experience in setting up product marketing functions

I remember when I first approached by then CEO at Zycus to start the product marketing function in 2017 I was shot down. This was good 3 years after I joined the firm as their CMO. Till then, we had two demand generation teams, for the US market, whose number one objective was to build the marketing pipeline. But guess what, they were also responsible for product marketing, to whatever extent it was possible. Given the fact that their main internal customers were the inside sales and field sales function, product marketing was reduced to creating decks and sales collaterals on demand for them. To fix this anomaly, I had proposed setting up an independent product marketing function but was vetoed. It took me nearly 6 months of showing the value of product marketing before my boss agreed.

?To my surprise, I found that there were hardly any SaaS companies that I could learn best practices from, both domestically and internationally because very few had this function and in those few that did have were either reduced the function to content creation under marketing or worse it reported into the product management function which used it as its product content creation arm. ?I wont name these firms, but some of them are real big names

?Even today I see many decent sized SaaS companies paying only lip service to this vital function of marketing. Last year, a fintech major became a unicorn. It is one of the more well-known names in SaaS. It had set up its product marketing function just about a year before it became an unicorn, nearly a decade after making its first marketing hire. I also see many early stage startups and sub 5 million dollar ARR firms mostly hiring for the growth or demand generation function which I feel is a big mistake. The main reason for this is that they are unable to grasp why do they need this function in the first place or if they do, why do they need it now? My article is an attempt to explain why organizations need a product marketer

?So why product marketing?

?Product marketing integrates all marketing together, removes silos

Product marketing brings all marketing functions together and ensures that there is consistency in messaging, value propositions, market definitions, understanding of competition etc. Without it, there is a very high chance that the growth marketer for US market will write and sound different from that for Europe.

?It is product marketing that defines the market, the customer and what you should sell to whom

At Zycus, we launched an e-invoicing product, named Invocus, to be sold independent of its other source to pay products. The idea was to set it up as a different business unit within the company and later on when it got some traction in market, even spin it off as an independent company. We made one person from the marketing team to lead the marketing for this business unit. She was responsible not only to define the go to market but also identify the segments that we would target, the pricing, product packaging besides messaging and positioning. That was not all, she was also responsible for building the marketing funnel. All this was done before we even had an independent product marketing function that I alluded to earlier. None of these outcomes were possible if we hadn’t worn a product marketing hat before and after launching the product. This was a classical product marketing outcome and successfully carried out. It’s another story that after getting our first customer, this unit was winded up and the product became another module within the S2P Product

?Product Marketing adds creative flair to demand generation

My friends in growth marketing and demand generation won’t like me saying this, but today demand generation is reduced to numbers and analysis of numbers. The rapid automation and mechanisation of the function has reduced the creative component. When demand generation works closely with product marketing, you will be surprised how few of them do, they can decide tactical activities like what headlines to push, what kind of messages to send to senior leadership and what should be consumed by junior management etc.

?Who will enable sales? You got it, its product marketing

Sales needs and wants various types of ammunition to successfully compete and win in the market. It is only product marketing which sits at the cusp of marketing, product management, customer success and sales, that anticipate and proactively create all the arms needed. It keeps close tabs on the competition and hence can also create collaterals like battle cards, FUDs, win/loss analysis which only sharpens the sales attack

?How can we sell different products to different ICPs? Product marketing will show you how

The classical definition of product marketing is to act as the voice and conscience of the product. For example, Salesforce, which is known for CRM can easily sell products designed for marketing or analytics because it is their product marketing that clearly compartmentalizes each product, solving different problems for sometimes the same ICP and thus helps them engage with their customers. It is product marketing that allows Zoho to sell software meant for HR as well those designed for sales, with no dissonance in the mind of the customer

?Product marketing is way beyond content creation

The biggest single complaint that I have received from product marketers is that they are often reduced to content creators. Be it thought leadership or product related. But while, one of the key KPIs of product marketing will always be to create relevant content, as content is what makes your customer engage with the product, the function is a lot more than that. If there wasn’t any product marketing, your content would suffer from the following

·??????Repetition

·??????Lack of relevance

·??????Talk about product features which are not part of the roadmap

·??????No integrated story about the product

·??????Inability to distill that one benefit that allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition

·??????Inability to identify the key problem that the product is trying to solve

Trying writing a piece of content without all of the above by briefing a content writer without the presence of product marketing and you will know that I am right

Support Analyst and Influencer Relations

If I was writing on this point, 2 years back, I would say that product marketing is not a support for analyst relations but actually drives it. But over the past 2 years, organizations have realised the critical importance of analyst relations (AR) and more and more organizations have AR report to the head of marketing directly or even outside marketing. However, AR is handicapped without the active support from product marketing. While product management will talk about features, it’s marketing which will translate them into benefits and more importantly zero in on that one benefit that needs the spotlight and will resonate best with the analysts. Today, AR, usually works only with senior leadership, thus communicating the organization story rather than the product one. With product marketing support, the product will become the hero, which is the ultimate aim of any B2B SaaS organization

?So in a nutshell, when you make the next hire in marketing, make sure, it’s a product marketer.

?