7 Big Product Marketing Mistakes

Dekker Fraser has over ten years’ experience in product marketing for tech companies including Sony and the Google-backed startup Rocket Lawyer. He is the author of Product Launch and How to Become a Product Marketing Manager. Dekker holds an MBA in marketing from the Kellogg School of Management.

1. Choosing a customer before you’ve set a goal

Choosing your target customer is the most important strategic marketing decision. Strategy, however, is just a chosen pathway towards reaching a goal. Without first setting a goal, your targeting decisions are aimless.

Many marketing managers assume that the ideal customer is the one who derives the most value from a product. It is more accurate to say that the ideal customer is the one that is most likely to help you reach your goal.

When I worked for Sony, I was charged with choosing the target customer for a new, highly innovative product. I thought I had found the perfect target as the product delivered on everything this segment wanted. The product-customer fit was perfect. There was just one colossal problem: that segment was incredibly small. Even if most of that segment bought the product, they would barely have made a dent in Sony’s financials. I had to pursue a larger segment — not because it aligned most with the value proposition — but because it was the only realistic path towards reaching the financial goal.

When you make strategic decisions, distinguish the forest from the trees by remaining focused on your end goal. Usually this goal is a specific financial target with a time constraint. For example, the goal of generating $X million in one quarter constrains who you must target and what tactics you must employ to reach that audience quickly.

2. Not estimating demand early enough

I know companies that spent years developing products that flopped completely when they went to market. Only then do they discover that there was never really much demand for what they were building. This problem is very common with software products that mimic what’s already on the market. This problem is also common with unique products that have little competition but also little demand. Amazon sellers, for example, often sell creative products that generate no search volume. This “white space” or “blue ocean” strategy only works if you supply a market that has adequate demand.

There are four key ways to avoid this problem:

1. Study products that are already selling well and improve on their deficiencies. Look at product reviews to see what new positioning your product can take. This approach is popular among ecommerce sellers. It is also very common in publishing where “comps,” comparable products, form the basis of sales forecasting.

2. Estimate demand using keyword research tools and sales-estimate tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Junglescout.

3. Borrow total addressable market (TAM) data from investor relations presentations for leading companies in your industry.

4. Conduct your own primary research, such as surveying a sample of prospective buyers to estimate demand.

3. Not giving partners strategic importance

Most product marketing managers equate “target market” to the target customer. But the target market includes more than just customers, it also includes target partners. Choosing the right partners is more important than choosing the right marketing tactics. A single contract with a large partner, for example, could generate more leads than ten years’ worth of demand generation. The challenge with partner marketing is that results are delayed. Partner programs and affiliate networks take time to build with tangible results realized in months rather than weeks. It is essential to get buy-in from the rest of your company as the ROI will not be immediate but will most certainly be significant.

4. Not quantifying your value proposition

It’s not always possible to quantify your value proposition, especially when your product’s value is mostly psychological rather than financial. In many cases, however, the value you create can be measured quite precisely: each benefit can be quantified. For example, you might sell light bulbs that generate $X in energy savings, $Y in labor savings, and $Z in maintenance savings. If 90% of the value comes from energy savings then avoid positioning your product around labor and maintenance. Assessments like these may make you realize that your positioning decisions were wrong all along. You weren’t emphasizing the benefits that mattered most. Moreover, you may even discover that some of your “benefits” were actually destroying value.

5. Assuming benefits are more important than features

Common marketing wisdom will have you believe that you should focus on benefits rather than features. This isn’t universally true. Customers are often seeking specific features to solve immediate pains. Mapping out the customer journey will help you avoid this common mistake. Pay particular attention to “triggers,” the events that motivate people to start seeking a solution. That trigger, for example, might be a feature deficiency in a competing product. You cannot assume that the higher you move up in the value ladder the better your messaging will be. If this were true, all B2B marketing would center around the message of “make more profit,” which doesn’t communicate anything of value. Quite often features should take center stage, particularly when addressing technical audiences who balk at sales speak.

6. Using formal copywriting

Formal, grammatically correct language is great if you need the respect of academics, but the best copywriting is conversational. Most of the leading copywriters including John Caples and Bob Bly advocate a casual, conversational tone of voice. You should speak directly to your audience as though you were speaking to them face-to-face. Colloquialisms, cheesy lines such as “but wait, there’s more!” and gimmicks such as the ellipsis are all effective tactics. Demand generation legend Howard Sewell defends these tactics in his article “But Wait, There’s More! Why Cheesy Copy Still Works.”

7. Testing inconsequential tactics

Marketers have a peculiar fixation with testing tactics that generate very little lift. One common example is email timing. Managers agonize over whether an email should be sent Thursday afternoon or Saturday morning. Sometimes timing is crucial, such as when you release a movie and spend 90% of your budget over a two-week period. In most cases, however, email timing just does not matter. What was true of direct mail in the 1980s is true of email today: you should test (a) the list (b) the offer and © the creative.

Excessive optimization also occurs with websites and landing pages. A popular ethos today is that you should “test everything.” In reality, whether your CTA is purple or green will make no material difference. Tweaking your website for minor conversion increases may be distracting you from other decisions that could double or quadruple your customer base.

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