Author: Juliet Rizek

Product marketing is awkward

Posted on by Juliet RizekPosted in Product Marketing

Ya know the Venn diagram that shows product marketing at the intersection of product, sales, and marketing? This diagram doesn’t explain ANYTHING:

PMM Venn Diagram

Especially not the awkwardness of being in the middle.

It doesn’t explain tricky situations like:
🤹‍♀️ Juggling many internal teams or stakeholders
💀 Tiptoeing around stakeholders who are too powerful
🛑 Managing change against the grain of orthodoxy, resistance, or hesitancy

As a PMM, you have “soft power.” You influence the product roadmap, GTM, marketing narrative, pricing, and so much more. It’s an enviable position, but…

🫱🏽‍🫲🏿 More than half of the job is building trust with stakeholders.

That’s how successful go-to-markets happen. Yet PMMs spend hours skilling up for the technical aspects of the role. As if another framework will help you.

👏 The hardest part is the human element. 👏

Customers don’t care about your products

Posted on by Juliet RizekPosted in Product Marketing

What do your customers want? Let’s make this simple:

✅ They want you to address their biggest challenges, fears, and ambitions.
✅ They want you to use language and context that makes them feel seen. Heard. Understood.
✅ Most importantly, they want solutions that make them incredible.

Repeat after me: The customer is the hero of the story. 🦸🏼 The customer is the hero of the story. 🦸🏽‍♀️ The customer is the hero of the story. 🦸🏻‍♀️

✈️ If your customer is Wonder Woman, your product is the invisible jet.
🦸🏻 At its best or worst, your product is Doctor Strange’s powerful yet unruly cape.  
🧠 That’s the space that you occupy in your customers’ minds (if they even think about your product at all). Ouch.

Your best product story? Your customer’s story. No one wants to hear about your nifty, nitty-gritty features. They want to hear an authentic narrative of real people empowered.

AI: Is it salt or magic?

Posted on by Juliet RizekPosted in Trends

AI. AI. AI. Ai yai yai! Since last November, the chorus for artificial intelligence has grown louder and LOUDER. 📣

And, I’m not sure if it’s because technology companies understand what to build with it or if it’s an attempt to weather the current economy. “Hey, AI is trendy. Let’s ride this wave. Sell it while it’s hot.” 🌊

Yes, I’ve used ChatGPT. I’ve seen what Adobe Photoshop can do. Midjourney is cool. I even tried to get RoomGPT to help me redesign my house (spoiler: sorry, no). I see the potential there. And, yes, it’s limitless.

But is it disruptive yet? 👊

Here’s my product marketing take:

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, it became the fastest-growing app of all time. And a new bar was set for successful product launches everywhere. Eat your hearts out, PMMs! PLG for the win. 🤓

A subtle change happened, too. AI transformed from an add-on feature into a product. And OpenAI became the leader of a new market category. In other words, AI used to be the seasoning you added to the entrée. Now, it’s the main course. Or at least, an à la carte item. 😋

Yet companies are still treating it like a feature. Let’s add generative AI to this. A sprinkle of LLM here. GPT it. And who can blame them? It’s too new. The cost to build your own AI innovation is astronomical. To remake a dish as “AI-first” when you already have real breadwinners… well, that’s more reasonable but also tough. Especially now. 🥖

So, what’s changed? Everything and nothing. Product teams are reimagining. Product marketers are still adding the current flavor of “with AI” to sentences.

Is this the beginning of a new Iron Age? No one knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The latest AI tools are novel. But, to me, they are more distracting than disruptive. At least for right now.