How Secrets from Journalism Unlock Breakthrough Product Marketing

Perhaps you’ve noticed: New customers are harder than ever to come by. Over the past two years, the technology sector has reached a new state of maturity characterized by increased product parity and longer customer lifecycles.

Product marketers are finding incremental growth less by capturing unclaimed market share and more by demonstrating value through relevance, driving engagement, retention, renewal, and loyalty—and by reducing churn.

It’s a quiet revolution in enterprise technology marketing, from feature-driven, engineering, and product-led GTM to a renewed focus on what’s been, in the most innovation-dazzled marketing organizations, the neglected party—that inconveniently human, unpredictable marketing X-factor: The Customer.

Harnessing the Power of Customer-Centric Marketing

This is great news for product marketers. It reaffirms that your curiosity, empathy, creativity, and storytelling chops matter. “Your blend of human insight, technical understanding, data rigor, taste, judgment, and expertise in marketing channels and tactics is indispensable,” explains Matt Hansink, Solutions Director. “Your unique ability to champion the customer is indispensable. You care about and are interested in people, and it turns out that quality, which might be why you got into marketing in the first place, is central to your success.”

Those of us who love product marketing understand the secret strength of marketers is our ability to work across disciplines, a Renaissance intelligence bridging creativity and sound reasoning, connecting the variable and ever-shifting dots between the competitive environment; the brand, and product; and the customer’s environment, need states, preferences, and aspirations.

For nearly two decades, Bridge Partners has worked with the world’s largest and most sophisticated marketing organizations. During this time, we’ve observed a key trend: “As marketing leaders increasingly focus on customer industry verticals as an organization principle in their go-to-market strategies, we’ve witnessed how the best product marketing teams relentlessly elevate the customer and continue to drive growth, even as the dynamic tech industry environment challenges them to adapt,” emphasizes Matt.

And, he reveals a common thread:

“The best product marketers become experts in the idiosyncratic use cases, norms, cultures, and constraints of their customers’ industries. They investigate the big truths, ask follow-up questions, and listen to understand not just what happens in their customers’ worlds but why it happens—and why it matters. They think like journalists.”

Embracing Journalistic Methods in Marketing

How to Think Like a Journalist

The best product marketers immerse themselves in deep investigation to build a journalistic understanding of their customers. With this insight, the ability to create an authentic customer-centric connection is an activity product marketers are uniquely equipped to do well.

Great product marketers share five key traits with journalists:

1.    Deep Curiosity

“Great journalists are more than mildly curious—they are fascinated, perhaps obsessed,” Matt humorously observes. The real story is never in the answers to the first questions. Journalists ask follow-up questions, especially questions starting with “why.” When they hear something, their instincts tell them is important, they dig deep to fully understand it.

2.    Establishing High-Trust Connections

Critically, journalists form high-trust relationships with their most valuable sources, and they give those sources a disproportionate amount of their time. Similarly, by engaging deeply with their most collaborative and eager customers, product marketers can quickly start to see the product through their eyes and speak with greater authenticity. Disciplined marketers often work closely with field and partner teams to create customer advisory councils, but the best are on the lookout for the one or two special customers willing to go deeper, have fun, and make big things happen.

3.    Gaining Comprehensive Perspectives

The best product marketers don’t settle for reading overviews or reports about their customers’ industry. They talk with as many customers as they can, building relationships and earning trust. They immerse themselves in their customers' environments and listen carefully for the spoken and unspoken themes, consistent and divergent, that point the way to real insight about unrealized product value.

4.    Pursuing Facts—and Truths

Journalists know that facts matter. You need to know the rationale underlying your GTM strategy is grounded in true beliefs. You need data, not just anecdotes, to know your plan is going to work on a material scale.

However, journalists know something else useful: Not everything that’s true matters equally. “Simply reporting facts never won anybody a Pulitzer. It’s the ability to connect facts in surprising ways and uncover capital-T Truths that distinguishes great journalism,” Matt points out. Similarly, breakthrough product marketing triangulates facts about the technology, the marketplace, and the customer’s world to uncover these Truths. This approach sparks product storytelling that resonates, that drives action, that’s memorable because it genuinely matters.

5.    Crafting the Perfect Hook

Journalists, like product marketers, must capture attention instantly and lead with a reason to engage. There’s more than one way to do it, but crafting a sharp hook usually involves an intuitive understanding of what in the story will make the audience want to learn more. Sometimes it’s a surprise twist. Sometimes it’s a statement of fact that challenges convention or affirms an unspoken but widely-held belief. Sometimes it’s a cliffhanger. Sometimes it’s the simple declarative statement that, if true, holds broad and deep implications. Sometimes, it’s a simple statement of the unacknowledged obvious.

“Whether creating a hook to grab attention or call-to-action to convert, great storytellers of all kinds are grounded in a visceral understanding of their audience, an understanding that’s rich, layered, and contextual,” concludes Matt. “And the best of the best quickly capture and hold the most valuable, rarest, and limited of commodities: Their customers’ attention.”

Real World Application: Transforming Customer Perceptions through Refined Storytelling

In one Bridge Partners engagement, we helped uncover a truth that was standing in the way of success. Our client was customizing their products for a priority industry—automotive manufacturing. Engineering and product teams created innovative and meaningfully differentiated solutions, but field teams were meeting resistance. Their storytelling did not land as well as they had expected.

Through a series of frank conversations with customers, we learned the friction had nothing to do with the technology. More than a decade earlier, our clients’ company had abruptly left the automotive industry, hanging customers out to dry. Customers needed to believe our client was committed to the automotive industry for a good reason.

Armed with this knowledge, we were able to refine the story to subtly make the case that this renewed emphasis on the automotive sector was aligned with the long-term, strategic vision of the company. Only after this carefully crafted new storytelling was in place could the product and field teams engage more effectively, meeting their customers with humility and respect, and backed by awesome technology.  

Deepen Customer Relationships with Bridge Partners

Shifting to a customer-centric approach is more than just a trend; it's a necessity for sustainable growth. By adopting journalistic curiosity and fact-based strategies, you can create powerful connections with your audience. Leverage our collective knowledge and experience working with the world’s leading tech and cloud organizations to drive your marketing initiatives forward.

We assist businesses in integrating customer and marketplace insights to drive industry pivots, update positioning and messaging, and much more. Bridge Partners is dedicated to supporting your journey with proven practices and valuable insights, ensuring that your efforts resonate and make a lasting impact in your industry. Contact us to learn more.