Marketing is Easy

OK, so there was a little bit of clickbait in that title. Marketing is never easy, but there is one thing that can make it a whole-lot easier.......a great product.

If I look back to my least satisfying years as a marketer, they correlate to when I have had the worst products from a 'product-market' fit. We've all be there to some degree, and at different times. Development builds the product that they think is cool, without listening fully to the market, or the market has moved on and insufficient investment has been made in the product since, in order to keep it ahead and at the forefront of buyer consideration.

But you're a good marketer, right? You know what the market wants to hear, so you happily go ahead with great campaigns and messaging that tells the market that you have and what they want. And therein lies the problem....you don't; have what they want, I mean. You've said what they want to hear, and you've got top-of-the-funnel leads, but you struggle to convert them; prospects struggle to see the value as you try to move them through their journey.

So, one of the simple foundations of a truly effective marketing strategy (and why I believe product marketing to be an often under-appreciated cornerstone of marketing) is to build a product, that meets an unmet need for a clearly identifiable persona. If you do that, the rest of marketing is simply about getting in front of that persona, educating them on how you meet that need, then getting the basics of price and packaging right so they have a clear ROI.

Simple. See, marketing is easy(er).