Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Hello, I'm Carlotta. Welcome to Product Marketing Stories, the podcast that decrypts methodologies, shares advice and concrete learning to make product marketing understandable and accessible. And do you see or observe specific skills or behaviors that really stand out when you see what's the best in class, like PMMs or...

• Speaker #1

  pmm organizations in uh in companies in europe um yes i mean i think i think the one that's like unique to europe is an ability to um go in and deeply understand the business and the product and and everything associated with that and the customer to fully run through your um uh set of like your product marketing encyclopedia of everything you know and all the tools that you have, but then to go like, cause to then assess the situation and go, right. What is the, what is the best solution for this business with the knowledge that you can't do the perfect version? I think like, I think like there is a, there is a maturity level stateside and product marketing, but also on the, on the whole, like. You're better resourced. Um, I over there, there's like, there's, there's more roles. There's like, you can, you can, you can do more. There's more specialisms. There's more people that like, you know, are specialists in analyst relations or. competitive intelligence or you've got teams you can lean on and and so like i think in a european pmm has to assess the situation go what is the the like the the best version of this that doesn't see us going down a three-month rabbit hole when we don't have the time to um to do something like that so um how do we find that that balance between high quality and faster execution and so So I think that's really important. And then... I think I think I think this is just true for any product marketer you know it's clarity it's like that's that's what makes a good product marketer you know are you finding that the clearest way to communicate something internally or externally about the value of your product and are you are you being like brutal about that like say one principle I talk about in my consultancy um work like and this was like coined by a client um like that I was working with, who described sort of used as a description of me is like radical simplicity. So like, to the point, it feels uncomfortable to the point, it feels like, like loss, you know, that you're, you're, you're losing something good that you, that you, you love about, like, either the product or you love about your messaging, but that, that, that knowledge that anything that doesn't need to be in. in that message at that point in the funnel or the journey risks adding confusion or risks diluting a more powerful message um and that that that sort of that tough part of the job of making choices to boil something down to to the simplest form um is is something that like not everyone's got the stomach for or or it can it can make you fairly unpopular a lot of the time do

• Speaker #0

  you have some advice to to achieve this like extreme simplicity clarity um yeah because i think it's uh easy to understand why it's important and why what it is but then in reality when you are in a project it's it's much more difficult to actually do it and make it real for sure i think i don't know if I've got like any because I'm a bit of a like PMM

• Speaker #1

  it's quite like famous for it's like frameworks and stuff isn't it and you know it's a framework for this whereas i'm i'm sort of a non-framework product marketer uh because i guess it comes down to my belief that you know every business is different so like let's i've got like kind of loose ideas in in my head when i approach a new um a new project but like a new client but like you know let's let's let's do it right for that business and and do the the right treatment for then. But like, I think I have a few guiding principles. And one of them, it's like a quote from the US president, like Ronald Reagan, of like, if you're explaining, you're losing. And I default to that one quite a bit. If you're finding yourself even remotely explaining the product in kind of that messaging that shouldn't. You know, obviously, like... there's there's a how it works section of your your website or there's your explainer videos and so on that's different but if that's creeping into your your high level messaging like that i think that's like that's one thing i try and err away from i also I think a trend at the moment is like companies thinking that they are very complex and going, oh, well, you know, we're a very complex technology. And I think this is getting even more pronounced with AI because even technical people are being incredibly impressed by what they're now able to do and deliver in the product. and I think yes like It's complex, but it's only as complex as like, um, I like the customer needs to know about. And it's like, when you go and buy any kind of product, be it, you know, um, a washing machine or a new mobile phone or whatever, there's, there's a bunch of like incredibly clever technology behind those, those products, but no one's trying to explain that to you in the process of you buying that. And it's, and if we reflect like, why is that is it's because someone's gone, you know, it we'll park all of that and we just need to talk about can it can it do xyz use case and here are the benefits of that thing and or here's like one thing you can do with this product like really well and then everything else can get introduced like with time and stuff and so i think i think with complexity there's a temptation to explain and there's a temptation to tell you everything that a product can do like straight away let me Like, let me show you everything amazing about it. Because, you know, you're in a business, slightly drinking the Kool-Aid, you're incredibly proud of the team and the work. And it is impressive work that's happening at so many places right now. But the hard thing, back to that product marketing being a little bit unpopular, is going, does the customer need to know about this right now before they've become a paying customer, for example? Or is it something that'd be way more valuable once they're actually settled in, understand the basics, are familiar with your dashboard? or your home page, your home screen, and then introduce that idea. And so, yeah, so I think those are like, be it mistakes or risks that companies are taking right now. And so I think product marketing is there to try and force those difficult conversations around making choice.

• Speaker #0

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