Product Marketing Archives - Making Every Word Count

The Need for Customer Focus: Why Not Every Prospect Should be Your Customer

The Growth Problem Most Teams Misdiagnose

Growth problems are often framed as execution failures. The campaigns were weak. The messaging missed. The pipeline was inconsistent. In many cases, the real issue sits higher up the strategy stack. Before tactics, before automation, before AI-generated content, there is a foundational decision to make: what is the right customer focus that your company is truly built to serve?

This is the discipline of customer focus. It is one of the most overlooked fundamentals in modern marketing, and it is one of the most powerful. As a fractional VP of Marketing, I often see teams trying to fix performance with more activity. More content. Run more ads. Do more outreach. Volume feels productive, but volume cannot compensate for a lack of focus. If you do not clearly define your Ideal Customer Profile, every downstream effort becomes diluted.

Unlock Better Results with Clear Marketing Personas

What Is a Marketing Persona?

Marketing personas sit at the heart of an effective marketing strategy. If you have ever asked, what is a marketing persona, the simple answer is this: a marketing persona is a detailed profile of your ideal buyer. It describes who they are, what they care about, and how they make decisions. Strong marketing personas go beyond demographics and capture motivations, objections, and priorities.

From a Product Marketing Manager’s perspective, marketing personas are not optional. They are foundational tools for positioning, messaging, and product strategy. A PMM must understand the buyer deeply to shape features, benefits, and go-to-market plans. Without that understanding, marketing becomes guesswork dressed up as creativity.

How Effective Are You at Innovation In Today’s Relentless World of Accelerated New Product Introduction?

Most product leaders say they want innovation. Fewer leaders build it into their daily work. Many fall into a quiet routine. You hit deadlines, deliver launches, and show up at meetings. You get solid marks that feel productive. Yet productivity is not progress. Not anymore.

AI is shifting every market. New competitors rise fast. The gap between early movers and late movers grows wider every month. The rules are being rewritten. The pace is punishing. You cannot rely on the same systems that served you last year. You cannot expect current processes to keep up with new expectations. Innovation is no longer optional. It is the core requirement of modern leadership.

So the real question is simple. How do you bring new ideas, new approaches, new partners, and new technologies into your work? What pulls you into those new adventures? What signals tell you that you should change your habits?

Rock & Roll in Tech is When Hardware Meets Software

Picture the modern IT ecosystem as a stage under blinding lights. The crowd’s roaring, the amps are humming, and the show’s about to start. But before the first note hits, every musician must be in sync. That’s how hardware and software must work together today – not as separate parts, but as members of the same band, feeding off each other’s rhythm, tone, and timing.

Why Storytelling is the Secret Weapon Product Marketers Need

People remember stories far better than they remember facts. That’s not just opinion – it’s science. Studies show the brain engages more areas when listening to a story than when hearing data alone. I recently attended the Product Marketing Alliance Positioning, Messaging, and Storytelling Summit held on July 10th this year. It was a great conference and a good reminder of the importance of storytelling.

In 1993, cognitive psychologist Roger Schank, a scientist who made influential contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and focused much of his research on how people learn, explained that human memory is story-based. We recall life as episodes, not as bullet points. In another study, researchers at Stanford found that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. That’s why anecdotes beat slide decks.

When someone hears a list of specs, they might nod politely. But when they hear about someone like them solving a real problem, they lean in. Stories light up the brain’s sensory regions. They create empathy, emotional connection, and recall.