Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough...

CMOs need to reinvest in their product marketing capabilities

It’s time for the technology industry to reinvest in the disappearing art of product marketing. All too often we fall in love with what we do – making products – and then romance every specification of what we’ve built when we go to market: our beautiful new product has a B7 CPU, renders up to 4K video at 60FPS and has dual 802.11ac radios. 

Will anyone be interested in this product other than its proud parents?

The mistake here is forgetting to pivot from what we’ve built – a technology product – to what our customers are looking to buy – an experience in B2C or a business outcome in B2B. This is the art of product marketing: marrying product insight with customer insight to create marketing that drives results.

This sounds easy on the surface, but it requires someone who understands two languages – engineer and customer – and can create compelling content from this knowledge. There aren’t a lot of people that can do this well, and some companies do not have product marketers at all. In the most common scenario, the engineering or product management team does their best to create marketing content and hands it to an agency. But the marketing comes out as specs and doesn’t engage customers. In the second most common scenario, the company has great marketers, but they are not technical enough to understand the product. So, the marketing comes out as generic and performs poorly. 

In either scenario, I call this gap between product and customer “signal loss” that comes from not having strong product marketing. Signal loss is expensive. For example, imagine you are working for a large company which has invested $250M in an innovative new product. What happens if 50% of the “signal” is lost between what you invested to build and what your customers understand about it – i.e., if you’ve built a Ferrari and customers think it’s a Fiat? How much of your investment is wasted? And how much revenue upside was missed?

Product marketers create value by eliminating "signal loss" between product and customer.

Signal loss between product and customer is still too common. This article was inspired when I was helping a friend shop for an outdoor security camera and I kept finding spec-based marketing. Let’s look at two leaders in the space. 

Ring is a relatively young company born out of a customer-focused mission: to reduce crime in communities. And when you look at their marketing you can see them engaging with customers on an experience and benefit level: See, hear and speak with anyone at your door from your smartphone, tablet or PC. Or: Never miss a visitor. With Ring, you’re always home. If you want to dig deeper and understand specifications, the content is available as a proof point that the product delivers. But Ring starts their customer engagement at the right level.

Next let’s look at the Arlo Pro camera from Netgear. It’s a great product from a long-established technology brand. But look at how it starts customer engagement at a specification level: The world’s first and only 100% wire-free, weatherproof, rechargeable HD smart security camera with audio and a 130 degree viewing angle. It’s a mouthful of specs even if you're an engineer or technical. But if you’re not, there isn’t a high level benefit to engage you. Many of the specs are unclear to the average customer (is 130 degrees good or bad?) and some, like “world’s first,” are corporate bragging that don’t belong in consumer marketing. To be fair, Arlo does have benefit language in other parts of their marketing, but the tendency is to start with specifications.

The Arlo Pro is an example of a great product that is experiencing “signal loss” between how good it is and how it’s being marketed. At least to me, it shines around a benefit like: See your home is safe with cameras you can put anywhere in under two minutes. Works inside or outside without wires, plugs, or drilling required. (A real copywriter would do much better than me, but I hope the point is clear.)

What’s the marketing lesson here? For me, the simple act of helping a friend shop for a camera reinforced that we should always make sure our teams have strong product marketing capabilities. When my teams have this, I know all the resulting outbound marketing (e.g., PR, advertising, social) will be built on a solid foundation. If there isn't a strong product marketing capability, I consider pausing spend until I can fix this because even the world’s best outbound marketers can only do average work if it’s built on a weak foundation.