Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.
Alicia and I run a course WTF is Go-To-Market? – and one of the first things we do is answer that question. What is go-to-market?
We spent a long time discussing, researching, validating, and wordsmithing the concept and definition, and this is what we ended with:
Go-To-Market is a collection of processes, programmes, and human mindset that delivers customer-focused products out into the world, and drives the continual creation of their unique value for real people – and businesses – over time.
WTF is Go-To-Market?
If you compare this to every other definition of go-to-market, you’ll get some generic definition that just talks about creating a plan. Utilizing resources. Achieve competitive advantage. Enhance customer experience.
But we purposefully included how mindset is a huge piece of the go-to-market puzzle. The mindset that we approach our go-to-market process with (both personally and as an organization) can have a huge impact on the outcomes we can deliver.
And having the right mindset across product marketing is important too. I’ve written before about tips to hire product marketers and three product marketing interview questions to ask, but in this post I want to touch on some of the mindset traits that I think make successful product marketers.
(And of course, this is my take. Your mileage may vary, and you’ll have different opinions and experiences.)
In this post:
Empathetic
Being able to understand the feelings of another, whether a colleague or customer, is the bedrock of product marketing. Only when we can sit in our customer’s shoes can we effectively understand who they are, their context, and how we can help them. And we need to activate this external-in, customer-centric mindset in nearly every thing we do.
Growth mindset
We’re 100% human, not superheroes. We’re not going to get everything right on the first go (and if we do, we weren’t aspirational enough). Ask ‘how can we do better?’, roll with the punches when things go wrong, and actually learn from mistakes.
Adventurous
Nothing is impossible. Of course, some things are, so let’s be realistic about them. But nearly everything else is doable.
Want to do something really huge and outrageous? Let’s do it. In a short space of time? Might be tricky, but let’s try. Will it have the right impact? We think so – but let’s see how it goes.
Playing it safe is comfortable, but not exciting. Not everything can be planned, de-risked, calculated, verified. We can’t protect against every eventuality, even the most likely ones. Let’s be prepared, but sometimes we’ve just gotta see what happens.
At the end of the day, we can cope with almost anything.
Strategic
I’m convinced that most people haven’t really considered what a strategic mindset is, so here’s my take.
Having a strategic mindset is like playing chess. You have the tactics you can play. You’re competing against the market (competitors, customers, and other forces). But if you play one move, then what? How will the other side respond? What will your next move be? What do you think is your overall path to victory right now – and what other paths are there?
This should be visible at every level. Planning an entire GTM strategy? Think strategically. Writing an overview sales collateral? Think strategically.
Mindset needs confidence
Having the right mindset needs you to also have the confidence to put them into action. You might come up against obstacles, like bosses who disagree or a business culture that just isn’t a match – but at least try.
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