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Marketing is a product

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I’ve worked as both a head of marketing and a product lead, but sometimes the two are absolutely separated and viewed as completely different domains and disciplines.

This is a fallacy.

Marketing is a product.

Your marketing strategy/rollout is a cohesive creation, including brand, messaging, content, etc., but also built on top of multiple platforms: CRM, email engines, analytics, optimization tools, content platforms, and so on.

Products are a mix of feel, form, and function. Like any product, your marketing is designed to reach and please a customer, to bring them into your world, and to be useful. Every human who’s reached by your brand anywhere is using a product from you already. When you find a feature that doesn’t work, you adjust that feature.

Marketing is a product.

Get uncomfortable with your tools

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This seems so obvious but it’s one of those things, like healthy habits, that we forget to do in the rush of daily responsibility.

We spend a lot of time getting systems and tools together that work seamlessly for us. Now, get uncomfortable. Get splinters.

Spend a day, preferably more, dependent on a platform/product that’s not your daily go-to.

Hide your laptop and only use your phone. For everything. Like most of your audience.

If that phone’s an iPhone, get an Android device. Like most of the world.

Go on a trip with only one device.

Use only Internet Explorer for a few days (I know, I know, ow, I said uncomfortable).

“I can’t use IE, I only have a Mac and the simulators don’t work.” USE A PC FOR A WHILE. USE WINDOWS. Apple is fifth or sixth globally in desktop market share this month, depending on whom you listen to.  (I am 1000% guilty as charged on this one.)

Do all your designs/approvals on a triple Thunderbolt display? (I’m guilty of this, too.) Don’t look at them in a big, glossy, pricey format for a few days.

What’s important is to do this not only in product testing (“does it work on IE?”) but in daily life, to understand the real experiences of your real consumers.