3 Habits of Highly Effective Product Marketers

Product marketers play a critical role in any company’s success. They’re conduits of information and the connective tissue between product developers, the marketing team, and the sales force.

They monitor go-to-market programs, develop product strategies, research competitors, keep analysts informed, document the buying process, craft sales collateral, train sales on how to sell products, and much more.

If you’re tired just reading that list, imagine how product marketers feel.

To accomplish all those things—and still have personal lives—product marketers must work efficiently. They don’t have time or energy to waste. In talking with high-performing product marketers, we’ve discovered they have developed habits that allow them to streamline processes and be as effective as possible. Here’s a look at three of them.

3 Habits of Highly Effective Product Marketers

1. They Align Sales and Marketing Teams

When marketing and sales teams are aligned, marketing is better able to create content that sales reps will use. This minimizes the risk that sales reps will waste time creating their own off-message or off-brand content—time that should be spent on selling.

What top product marketers do:

• Create a sales advisory board: You want to find a champion from each sales team (regional managers, enterprise reps, mid-market, account managers, or however your company organizes your sales force). Invite them to be the voice of sales and give feedback to marketing. Each month meet with the group, share your content ideas, and get feedback from your sales champions. Your champions can also share in-field observations and competitor intelligence. The goal is to build relationships, share ideas, and collaborate.
• Listen to sales calls: Using a conversation intelligence tool, listen to sales call recordings to get closer to the voice of the customer. You’ll be able to hear how product messaging is resonating (or not) and hear first-hand buyer objections and pains.
• Ask sales to provide feedback on content: Before releasing a piece of content, such as a sales deck or a talk track, involve sales early and get their feedback. Their real-world expertise ensures content is on target.

Sales Enablement Empowers Product Marketers

Download The Product Marketer’s Guide to Sales Enablement to learn how forward-thinking product marketers use sales enablement to close more deals.

2. They Create Sales Content that Sellers Love

Product marketers cannot create content in a vacuum. Collaboration and communication are essential before even one word is written or one second of video is shot. Creating and activating the content is a cross-team effort.

What top product marketers do:

• Collaborate pre-release: Meet with the product managers, developers / engineers, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand the technical aspects and benefits of the new product or feature. Ask the group for input on the problems the new release solves and how it compares to competitor offerings. Develop a checklist of product release content for SMEs to choose from.
• Share content with context: Using a sales enablement platform, add the content to your sales content library and include an explanation of what it is and how sales reps should use it. Use internal channels to announce the content and provide further explanation. This can include Slack, a product newsletter, a weekly marketing update email, and sales team meetings.
• Give best practice examples from sales call clips: Use a conversation intelligence tool to identify real-life sales conversations in which the sales rep expertly uses your content. Clip that segment and add it to your sales content library as a best-practice example.

3. They Manage Sales Content Like a Superhero

One of the main responsibilities of product marketers is to arm sales reps with best practice messaging and content. To do that, they need a place to store that content, organize it, make it easy to locate, and track its usage.

What top product marketers do:

• Invest in modern sales enablement technology: You want quality over quantity when it comes to sales technology. If sales reps have too many tools, they may get overwhelmed and stop using them. Implement a platform that’s easy for sales reps to use, is comprehensive, and facilitates every critical sales enablement initiative, including learning and content.
• Make content accessible in the flow of sellers’ work: Dynamically deliver content to sales reps in the tools they use. Modern sales enablement platforms allow you to serve up content specific to a particular buyer while a sales rep is using the CRM. You can also use software plugins to suggest content while sales reps are using a web browser or writing an email in Microsoft Outlook.
• Provide on-demand access via mobile devices: Sales reps should be able to easily access content while on the road via their phone or tablet, as well as via their laptop or desktop computer.

Good Habits Key to Success

A product marketer’s responsibilities are vast and demanding. High-performing product marketers have discovered, however, that with the right habits they are more efficient and effective. Ultimately, these habits can make all the difference in the success of their sales team and the company.

Learn More:

Download The Product Marketer’s Guide to Sales Enablement to learn how forward-thinking product marketers use sales enablement to accelerate the sales cycle, drive higher win rates and contract values, and boost profitability.