3 Product Marketing as a Service Lessons

I’ve had the pleasure of working with both existing and new clients over the past two years of my product marketing as a service business. During my collaborations, there have been many great learning moments too. Sharing a few of these moments around 3 best practice stories from both the client and product marketing supplier point of view.

"Learn from everyone, being the smartest person in the room means you need another room."

Please feel free to jump in and share your own experiences too.

1.      Build an actionable plan, execute it and audit results every month. My first two clients were larger public firms that wanted a detailed strategy, accompanying execution timelines and help writing the competitive Go To Market (GTM) content. No problem. One plan flawlessly executed only to see the entire $200m product line merged/divested over the following 3 month period. The second plan, for a separate client, was great and a fun challenge. Working with former co-workers, we built out a GTM plan and started executing it globally. The client liked the plan so much they staffed it full time with 2 full time hires. While happy to see this success, it was bittersweet to see my consulting time on the project end.

2.      Know your solution, complete the competitive research, help enable all facets of your GTM to stay ahead of competitors. Starting back at Cisco, I could never understand why many sales and marketing teams didn’t understand the product they sold. You don’t need to be an engineer, take the time to learn the competitive playing field, how the products work and what problems they solve. One start up I worked with wisely had all new hires perform a demo within their first month. Buddy up with a sales engineer or developer to learn more about how your solution compares to competitors too.

3.      Never stop learning. Learn from everyone, being the smartest person in the room means you need another room. Age-old advice that never goes out of style. It is important to have a functioning team with open communication give and take. Controversial, but don’t be fearful of confronting peers or execs professionally with facts. For example, if a marketing strategy isn’t working explain why. Regardless of who created the strategy. Then, suggest an alternative approach. If peers, a manager or sales exec will not listen, get them all in a room to brainstorm a better approach where they feel ownership. When that fails, try the CEO or perhaps it’s time to keep learning at another employer.