Why Product Marketing needs a seat at the Product table

A few weeks ago, Paul Graham’s short essay on ‘Founder Mode’, based on a talk by Airbnb founder Brian Chesky, went viral. Well, viral if you work in tech.  

I couldn’t take too much away from it as I’m not a VC-funded founder struggling to get a grip of my company. But it did remind me to listen to Chesky’s interview on Lenny’s Podcast, which had been talked about a lot at the time of release. 

Chesky isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but, for me, he really gets the value of Product Marketing. Hearing him talk about the function was more energising than most content I’ve read on the topic in the past year, and he succinctly and clearly answers a question that product marketers are faced with on a daily basis.

Why does Product Marketing need a seat at the Product table?

There’s been a shift in Product Marketing over the past decade, seeing the role go from ‘mouthpiece of the product team’ or ‘the general marketer for all things product’ to a more strategic player that brings teams together, aligning strategies and - most importantly- representing the voice of the customer and the market. 

One of the outcomes of this is that Product Marketing ends up having more of a voice in the product development cycle, and not just at the point of Go-to-Market.

But introducing this as a new behaviour can be difficult if your Product team hasn’t worked with Product Marketing in this way before. So we need to make the case for why we should get an invite to the party.

Because it’s not just for the fun of it. Or because we want to feel included. And it’s definitely not because we don’t have enough to do. 

In the podcast, Chesky sums it up in two neat sentences. 

1. You can't build a product unless you know how to talk about the product. 

2. You can't build a product unless you're an expert in the market of it. 

These points resonated so much for me.

Over the past decade, I’ve worked on many products and features where the team was trying to retrofit a story onto a product that was built without the positioning, value prop or distribution strategy fully thought through.

Before a line of code is written, you should have a strong sense of who your customer is, what the problem you’re solving for them is, what the launch story looks like, and what a value prop outline might look like. (The Amazon press release method is the best known approach to getting ahead of this)

For your product to have an answer to ‘Why should I choose X over Y?’ it must be differentiated in some way. And to differentiate, you must deeply understand the market - and competitor landscape - you’re operating in. 

And then there’s distribution. How you’re actually going to get it in users’ hands. What you build, the features you include in a V1, and what’s available for free has a huge impact on your ability to market it and reach the right audience. 

All of this is exactly why Product Marketing needs to be in the room. The team responsible for telling the story and reaching the customer should be involved in shaping the product from day one. It’s surely hard to argue with that… 

So, when you're trying to get an invite to the next product planning meeting, remind your PM that building a great product isn’t just about what you build - it’s about how you tell that story, who you're building it for, and what you’re differentiating against. All of which can be answered by your friendly neighbourhood product marketer.