In a world where traditional interrupt-driven, un-targeted, sales-oriented marketing is no longer effective, the nature of marketing has fundamentally changed. As marketing has changed, so has the role of product marketing. This webinar will discuss how smart Product Marketers are using inbound marketing, content, and social media. Can product marketing save marketing from itself?

1. Marketing is Dead*
*long live Product Marketing
April Dunford
rocketwatcher.com

2. My Background
• Big Companies
• IBM (Launch and growth of InfoSphere)
• Siebel (Global Marketing Financial Services)
• Nortel (head of incubation)
• Startups
• Infobright
• DataMirror (exit to IBM)
• Janna Systems ($1.4B exit to Siebel Systems)
• Solarsoft ($100M roll-up)
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3. Marketing Sucks
• Untargeted and
generic
• Interrupt-driven
• Way too pushy (most
marketing doesn’t care
if I’m ready to buy yet)
Marketers are yelling, and not even yelling at me in particular…

4. Plus There’s the Lying….

5. Nobody Believes Marketing Anymore
….and can you blame them?

6. The World has Changed
Vendors are no longer THE source of
Information
• Customers can broadcast to the world
• Prospects can easily talk to each other
• Product info is readily available
Prospects are far along the buying path
before vendors know about them

7. What Changes?
Buying vs. Selling
Earned vs. Bought Media
Customer Service
Visibility vs. “Branding”

8. Who Will Get us Out of This Mess?
You.
Yeah, Ms./Mr. Product Marketer, I’m looking at you.

9. Why Product Marketing?
• We get segmentation
• We understand the market
needs of our segments
• We have deep product
knowledge
• We know how those fit
together

10. A New Marketing Framework

11. Key Elements in this New Environment
Inbound
Messaging Marketing
and Content
Visibility

12. Messaging
Needs to answer 3
questions for prospects:
• What is it?
• Is it for me?
• Why should I buy it from
you?
Stories, stories, stories.

13. Paris Hilton Marketing
beautiful but makes no sense
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14. What You Do?
Netflix – Watch as many movies
as you want for one low monthly
price.
SalesForce.com – the world’s
favorite CRM software as a
service.
Wikipedia – A free encyclopedia
built collaboratively using Wiki
software.
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15. You do WHAT?
Sun Microsystems – Innovative
products and services that
power the network economy.
Sterling Commerce – helps
companies optimize and
transform their dynamic
business network to accelerate
revenues and reduce costs.
Any internet b2C startup –
Personalizes the Internet!!
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16. Step 1: What the Heck is it?
Keep it brief
Use simple language
Just come out and say it!
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17. Segmentation is not a Dirty Word
Market to Everyone, Sell to No One
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18. Explicit Targeting is Powerful
ThinkGeek: Selling geek t-
shirts for programmers,
linux hackers, and open
source geeks.
VS
Customink: your t-shirt
expert for companies and
individuals.
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19. Go Deep – The Janna Example
CRM for Investment bankers:
• Use cases, day in the life of a
banker
• Demos, example data
• Whitepapers, articles, opt-ed
• Sales Enablement: the IB
dictionary
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20. Step 2: Is it for Me?
Be explicit about who you target
Use their language
Go as deep as you can
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21. Why Buy From You?
The terrible secret they don’t teach you in
engineering school:
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22. Why Buy From You?
The terrible secret they don’t teach you in
engineering school:
Customers Don’t Care about FEATURES
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23. Why Buy From You?
Value Features
Make sales more productive Integrates customer data from
any source, show relationships
between customers.
Deploy new applications 20% Extract and transform data from
faster heterogeneous sources
Resolve IT issues faster Monitor cpu and memory usage in
real time.
Pay off your debt sooner View all account information in
one place, graph spending
patterns.
Sharper, more realistic images Megapixels
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24. (do that and you won’t need to lie)

25. Step 3: Why Buy it from You?
Value not Features
Focus on Differentiators
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26. Bring it to life with Stories
Go ahead April, tell them a story…..

27. Inbound Marketing
What it’s NOT:
• Broadcasting info about
products
What it IS:
• Attracting customers to
you by offering helpful
stuff

28. Content for Prospects
Content needs to be helpful
Provides the benefit of your
expertise in the market (not
necessarily about product)
Needs a programmatic
approach:
• Requires a strategy
• Map to steps in buying process

29. Visibility
How non-users observe
that others are users:
• Product features
• Shareable content
• Reviews/awards
• Independent analysis
• Success marketing

30. Thanks!
RocketWatcher.com
Twitter: @aprildunford
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