2022 product marketing predictions
Top tips for effective customer marketing from a Product Marketing #Influencer 😎
👋 Heya! It’s Alicia. Welcome to Finding Customer Focus - a newsletter to help you accelerate growth by putting your customers at the heart of your business.
🎉 Applications are now closed for WTF is Go-To-Market - a 6-week short course designed to upskill marketers into scrappy and confident product marketers. Cohort & scholarship recipients to be announced soon - they are INCREDIBLE people.
Well folks, it’s the end of 2021.
I started the year burnt out, deeply homesick, depressed, and unvaccinated.
I’m ending it safe, warm, and triple-vaxxed in the guest room of my mom’s new house in Sonoma County, after spending 4 cumulative months of the year at home with family. This holiday season, my partner Conor joined too.
Five months ago I started my dream role leading product marketing for Lune with colleagues who deeply care about fighting climate change and customers who genuinely love what we’re doing👇. It feels so good.
So from the bottom of my heart, thank you, dear reader, for being here!
I started this newsletter in March 2021 as an outlet for my voice when it was at a breaking point of feeling crushed and perpetually stepped over. It’s a terrible feeling, and one that I know everyone knows deeply and viscerally at some point in their lives.
And yet, it’s still surprising to me that anyone really values what I have to say enough to subscribe here. So again, thank you for listening and letting me share my voice with someone. I am really grateful that we’re here.
Without further ado, I’m pleased (and again, confused/surprised) to be featured as #26 on the PMA’s list of 2021 Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers!
This year, Product Marketing Alliance researched some of the trending themes and topics around product marketing in 2021 and asked the members of this outstanding lineup their thoughts on:
PMM predictions for 2022
Tips for effective customer-centric marketing
What makes a great PMM
Advice for PMM newbies
Download the full report of 2021’s Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers or read my featured section below:
Alicia feels innately passionate about product marketing. Advocating for elevated, strategic product marketing - firmly rooted in empathy for all types of people - is something to always be excited about, and to share with others.
What are your tips for effective customer-centric marketing? 🌟
Find the courage to speak up for your customers. Earlier in my marketing career I was convinced that everyone a) knew what they were talking about and b) was naturally putting the customer at the heart of their decisions (ie. product direction, company strategy, marketing campaigns, etc).
It took me years to work up the confidence to realize that neither is the case - at least, 100% of the time. A HUGE way that you can add value to any team (tech, marketing, senior leadership) is to become the voice of the customer - and to speak up for them even when it feels uncomfortable to do so.
Carve out a path to customer focus. A common question I get from startup product marketers is “How do I become more strategic and where do I begin?” Start by zooming out and observing the end-to-end customer journey.
Where/how are people finding you? What sales materials are being shared with leads that convert? And the ones that don’t? What will the first three weeks of their experience with the product look like?
Once you put yourself in the shoes of your customer, you start to find the gaps in your feedback loops, and you get an immediate injection of prioritization based on what’s missing. For example, could you create more needs-based case studies that are designed to accelerate that sales cycle? Could you work with product/tech to redefine product/market fit with a lens towards customer lifetime value? Is customer satisfaction/sentiment even valued as a commercial metric in your business?
There are infinite ways to become more strategic, but the most important thing to remember - start with building feedback loops to listen to your customer, and shape your priorities based on what you hear back.
What’s your product marketing prediction for 2022? 🌅
Access to more diverse product marketing paths. I want to see a more diverse and inclusive community of product marketers - especially in Europe and the UK. Unlike the folks leading FAANG giants and hypergrowth scaleups, startup product marketers know what it takes to build a product, a brand, a GTM strategy— from scratch.
In 2022, I hope to see more paths for marketers to grow and deepen their product marketing expertise, and I hope to see my fellow scaleup peers leading the charge to increase access to opportunities for the next generation of product marketers.
Sending love, light, and hope for speedy booster vaccination queues your way.
Here’s to growth,
Alicia
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