Product Anon - Marketing does USPs part I

Editor's Notes

1. I think it’s always important when conveying an opinion to insert appropriate disclaimers, for emotional and legal reasons. Consequently I’d like to assert that the following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to facts, actual or contrived, was entirely coincidental. You should always form your own opinions through vigorous research, or in the absence of evidence, dogmatic adherence to a conspiracy theory. *
2. Now, with that our of the way Let’s set the wayback machine to the year 2000 *
3. The Y2k bug was a fizzle *
4. The original X-Men movie was at the cinema *
5. Ricky Martin is banging all over the charts. It was a more innocent time. *
6. I had just switched Unis Switched courses and enrolled in a marketing subject. So there I was, Year 1. Semester 1 Lecture 1 * Marketing 101 *
7. I walked into that lecture with only the most transient notion of what marketing was. Something to do with markets. Something about customers, Sales Advertising Something business. Now, the reason for my trip down memory lane is simple I’ve learned that most people are like me before I walked into that lecture theatre. *
8. They don’t know* what marketing does Designers, financial modellers, product developers, coders. Most people, and this includes people who work with marketers daily, seem to hold this ethereal belief about what marketers do, and in most cases what they think is a bit like a David Lynch movie. Some of the things they think we do are spot on. * Other parts just create confusion * and make you question what the hell is going on. *
9. So, for our journey we’re going to go back. To that first lecture. Back to first principles. Back to the core of what marketing is, and hopefully this will leave you with more answers than questions (unlike a David Lynch movie), But also equip you with the tools, language and understanding to build more effective relationships with marketing teams. *
10. Which will lead to better outcomes * fewer tantrums * overall happiness * World peace. * You get the drift. *
11. So back to that question of what marketing does… * Most people group marketing in with sales. * After all the two labels are often used together. Sales & marketing. *
12. Marketing is sometimes considered to be advertising. Everything from adwords to billboards *
13. Or maybe marketing is about brand messaging creative slogans Taglines *
14. All of these are right, but kind of for the wrong reasons. There’s a quote which I think perfectly sums up marketing, It captures the foundation upon which all marketing operates. If we had a mantra that we repeated while trying to hold a lotus pose, this would be it. * “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” This quote was made by Peter Drucker * a rather famous American management consultant and author who was known to wax lyrical on the topic of business philosophy. And I think in relation to marketing, he hit the nail on the head. *
15. Marketing is the art And science Of understanding customers * And then trying to get them to buy your stuff. *
16. Customers This by the way is what google image searching thinks customers look like.   Entire books, theories, courses have been dedicated to this one thing. Customers How to measure relevant metrics about customers. How to define relevant metrics about customers. How to define customers. How they think. What makes them tick. Do they want to buy something that ticks?   Ultimately we do these deep dives and ask all these questions so we can do what it says in that quote: create products that essentially sell themselves. *
17. This is a lofty idea, and at its core is a proposition: a * Unique Sales Proposition *
18. So there you go. Marketing does USPs. Cue the confetti. Except, as you probably know. * That’s not the whole picture. *
19. A USP is the answer to a problem that the customer has with the universe. This is a really easy notion, because just like in a country music song *, we all got problems. Our beer has too many carbs.* Our car insurance costs too much.* We don’t know what to watch on TV.* Face masks are uncomfortable. * But, marketing tells us that if we come up with unique, attractive answers to these problems, and present them to our customers, they’ll buy our stuff. *
20. Our lower carb beer. *
21. Our cheaper insurance. *
22. Something to binge. *
23. Something to distract them from their uncomfortable masks. *
24. As marketers, when we say product *, we don’t mean it in isolation. *
25. It sits up there with other notions we have, and collectively it builds a kind of holistic quartet. This is the holy Who* What* Where* and how-much* of marketing.   And we need you to know this. Because when we say build it, what we mean is build to fill the proposition that sits at the centre * of this holy alliance. Build to fit that USP *
26. Often Product Managers are chasing Product market Fit But what we really need is *
27. Product marketing fit A consistency between what all our messaging says our product can do, and what we ultimately deliver. *
28. Perhaps the greatest irony is that sometimes these two things can be worlds apart, but products will succeed. loop Or they’ll be perfectly aligned *, and fail. In a successful misalignment this means that something was wrong in the mix. Either we as marketers read our customers wrong, or you as creators built the wrong solution. But if the product has succeeded, that means we need to adjust, iterate, reorient our position, and our chakras, and move forward. The real challenge is when it seems we did everything right… but then sales don’t materialise. This is where it’s important to realise that sales is like a toddler. It needs instant gratification. Sales can only deal with immediacy. Sales can’t do slow burn, and it can’t do long-term vision. But product and marketing can. We can see that sometimes things fail, then you fix them, then they fail less. And since we both have that same vision, surely it’s ok that *
29. Marketing does Usps * And product doesn’t