The Invisible Made Visible: Strategic Product Marketing

A Product Marketers' core activity

In the fast-paced world of tech and deep tech, where products jostle for attention, the product marketer’s job is not easy. Product marketers need an uncanny ability to unveil the unseen and transform the invisible into narratives.

Fact: According to a study by the Product Marketing Alliance, companies with dedicated product marketing teams experience at least 19% higher revenue growth compared to those without.

Uncovering the gems of Differentiation

Unveiling the subtle nuances and invisible advantages that resonate with a target audience is not an easy task. After talking to prospects it’s important to communicate what resonates with your target buyer. This is an ongoing exercise because both the market and your product change over time.

Visualizing the Invisible

I can increase a product's perceived value by 10% to 30% with this ONE tool. It's called the Wardley map. It may look messy at first but - trust me - it works wonders.

A Wardley map is a tool I use for strategic planning and visualizing the competitive landscape within an industry or domain. It can help with product positioning in the following ways:

1. Mapping components: A Wardley map breaks down a product or service into its various components, highlighting their dependencies and relationships. This visibility helps identify the core components that provide competitive advantage and differentiation.

2. Understanding product or service evolution: Wardley maps show the evolution of components from genesis to commodity over time. This helps determine which components are ripe for commoditization and which ones need to be the focus for innovation and differentiation.

3. Competitor analysis: By mapping out competitors' offerings on the same map, it becomes easier to identify areas of direct competition, potential threats, and opportunities for differentiation or disruption.

4. Value chain analysis: Wardley maps can reveal the flow of value within an industry or for a specific persona (see below), helping organizations identify their position in the value chain and potential areas for capturing more value.

5. Strategic play: Based on the insights from the map, product marketers can devise strategic plays or moves to improve their competitive position, such as investing in specific components, forming partnerships, or exploring new markets.

Here is an example of a Wardley Map I recently did at Pathway where we are building a contract risk management tool on our AI pipelining platform

As you will see above, the user interacts with a RAG application. At the time of writing this post, these types of applications are becoming a commodity.

As a product marketer, you have to work very closely with the product team and ensure you understand what the offering is and how you break that down into a value chain.

The kind of questions you want to ask as part of this mapping exercise are :

1. What are the implicit expectations of a user?

2. What features do you want to differentiate on and why?

3. Are there opportunities to communicate our product's unique value proposition more effectively?

4. What components of the product should be commoditized or outsourced?

5. What adjacent markets or value chains can we explore?

6. What constraints or dependencies will affect product marketing campaigns?

7. What are the potential threats or disruptive forces in our industry?

This exercise helps a lot with leadership alignment and ensures that you invest in the right areas of your product as the market evolves.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to reach out to me.