In today’s world, building a great product isn’t enough. You have to master your go-to-market strategy by telling a story that will leave a lasting impression on your audience. Product marketing gets you there, according to long-time product marketer and Costanoa Ventures partner Martina Lauchengco. 

Martina is the author of the latest book from the esteemed Silicon Valley Product Group, LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products. Alongside Tina and Leanna, she explores how her career start as a product manager equipped her with the product curiosity and technical competence needed to thrive when marketing digital products. She shows us today how to think about product marketing as the discipline it is and how companies should be leveraging it if they want their product to be recognized and adopted. 

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Takeaways

• Product marketing tells the world why your product matters and why it’s distinct from something similar. 
• Product marketers must be genuinely interested in what products do and why the product exists to make it meaningful for the market.

Things To Listen For

• [0:30] Introducing our guest hosts, Innovatemap’s Tina Hafer and Leanna Adeola
• [2:00] Why did we create the Unlock Product Marketing series?
• [3:00] Icebreaker: If you had the time to write a book, what would it be about?
• [4:00] Previewing our conversation with Martina Lauchengco
• [10:30] An introduction to Martina Lauchengco, starting her career in product management at Microsoft, and the evolution of product marketing
• [15:00] Why Martina wrote LOVED: companies need a template for PMM
• [15:30] Product marketing’s evolution: it’s now a discipline central to organizations
• [16:30] Introducing Martina’s four fundamental roles of product marketing:
  • Ambassador — product marketers connect customer and market insights 
  • Strategist — product marketers direct a product’s go-to-market 
  • Storyteller — product marketers shape perceptions of product
  • Evangelist — product marketers empower others in your company to represent and share the product 
• [17:30] “You do not need the title ‘product marketer’ to be driving forward the most important product marketing”
• [18:30] In early-stage companies, founders tend to lead product marketing
• [19:00] Growth requires using product marketing to shape markets
• [20:00] The importance of product curiosity and technical competence
• [25:30] Why good product marketers share many qualities with good product managers
• [29:00] Data is essential to finding your product marketing focus, especially as you enter your growth stage as a company
• [30:00] There’s never just one obstacle to growth, and PMMs give us the high-level perspective we need to see where problems intersect