You can't Convert without a Concept

A product marketing pro shares her POV.

There’s endless ways to slice marketing: brand, digital, paid; strategic, consumer, guerrilla; B2B, PR, GTM. I won’t keep going because you’ve heard them before (and also that would be boring,) but I will dive into one area specifically - product marketing - to explore how that’s defined and different from others.

I talked to Keiko Tokuda, a product marketing expert and exec coach. Keiko and I worked together years (years!) ago at Eventbrite. I wanted to hear her take on the intersection of creative, brand and content with product marketing.

How do you define product marketing?

Product marketing sits at the hub of sales, product and marketing teams. It’s their job to understand the target audience and establish the overall marketing goals.

There’s all different ways to market a product. There’s a launch, where you’re asking, “How do we generate excitement about this product when it’s new?” Or with an existing product, “How do we drive adoption?” It’s our job to clarify that approach.

Where does creative and content come in?

If Product Marketing is a hub for marketing, sales, and product teams, Creative is the thread that goes across all teams and the brand. Creative will ensure the consistency is there, regardless of where the message shows up, and help establish the strategy.

You can have the best messaging but it’s how you deliver the message that makes the difference.

A product launch on social media might not make sense for a technical product where the customer is a c-suite professional looking for a 30-page white paper.

Likewise, that paper won’t make sense for a product that could be highlighted with a slick one-minute video on digital channels.

Having that partner to think through not only what’s the message but what’s the medium is essential.

Where have you seen this work well?

How and when you insert Product Marketing into the process, how and when you insert Creative into the process differs at each company based mostly on the talent and resources they have.

When you have two seasoned two very seasoned Product Marketing and Creative leaders that get along, they're going to be constantly collaborating from the get-go, assuming they each are not too strained in resources. That’s when you see some of the best work.

What examples do you admire?

B2B marketing has leveled up in the past five years. It used to be viewed as cut and dry, with white papers and presentations.

A lot of B2B companies are more practiced and intentional with their marketing now, with inspiration coming from B2C. Companies like Notion, Monday.com, Slack are all great examples of B2B messages that are adopted in a consumer-friendly way, like easy, free sign-ups.

Then there’s the storytelling. The people involved - from daily users to the CFO or CEO - will have different reasons for wanting the product. So the content and messaging the marketing and sales teams use need to be developed with that in mind.

B2B purchases are huge numbers and contract-based, so the marketers need that deep arsenal of content - all based on a specific, target audience.

What questions should creative leads ask product marketers?

Make sure you always know the objective of the product. Why did we build what we built? Who is the audience and what are their needs? What are the goals? These are basic and it’s a red flag if teams don’t know it.

What could creative do to make product marketers jobs easier?

As a marketer, I often don’t know what’s possible. I’ve kicked off projects saying, “I want a landing page that looks like this,” and software engineers or designers will say, “That’s not possible, but this is.” We get something stronger than I ever knew possible.

To get there, it’s critical everyone knows the goal. Taking the time to understand the goals and apply creative strategy to drive that is key.