Five Ways to Increase Efficiency in a Marketing Launch—Besides Using Artificial Intelligence
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Five Ways to Increase Efficiency in a Marketing Launch—Besides Using Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is all the rage for becoming more efficient in a variety of professions. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was recently quoted by CNBC as saying that 20-30% of the company’s code comes from AI. I have been interviewed by AI chatbots and virtual recruiters, including human-like avatars, that provided feedback on my responses in real-time.
AI has also impacted the marketing profession. If you have been following the Aventi Group blog, you have learned about several exciting applications of AI to the art and science of marketing. One example was VP of Marketing Jennifer Kling’s entry on Prompting Like a Pro: Generate Event Follow-Up Emails in Seconds. Zoe Quinton blogged on Prompting Like a Pro: How to Speed Up Win/Loss Analysis with AI. Dave Panek, Aventi Group SVP of Product Marketing, also blogged recently on Making AI Matter: Best Practices from the CMO Roundtable. I highly recommend reading all the recent AI-related entries on the Aventi Group blog.
As promising as AI is for marketing efficiently, it’s not the only way to increase efficiency as a product. Peak efficiency can be the difference between delivering a marketing launch on time—or letting the organization down. This blog discusses five ways—besides using AI—to help maximize efficiency in executing a marketing launch. Some of these principles apply to individual contributors, while others provide guidance for management. There is something in this blog entry for both individual contributors and their leaders. If you are a people manager, consider sharing more detailed advice with your team.
For Product Marketers: Engage Proactively with Product Management
Collaboration with product management is core to the effectiveness of any product marketer. Along with sales, product management is the most essential functional interface in the organization for product marketing. It’s critical that product marketers engage early and often with your product management counterpart(s) on any product launch. The most fundamental thing you need to understand, and as early as possible, is what the product is. You can’t begin to message and position a product without crystal clarity on what it is, what it does, and its core features. That wisdom comes from product management. They are the single source of truth on all things related to the product. When you engage proactively, you lay the groundwork for efficient execution of the launch.
Presumably they have based their engineering specifications on a deep understanding of customer challenges, needs, and preferences. They probably have an idea of the benefits that flow from product features, but it’s up to product marketing to fully flesh these out. The benefits are the “so what” for the customer. The sooner you engage with product management, the sooner you will be able to define the “so what” for your target audience.
For Product Marketers: Refine Your Processes
Process orientation is not the enemy of creativity. Having tight, highly refined processes for completing work will make you more efficient. Efficient processes also give you breathing room for when something goes wrong or changes at the last minute. This allows you to absorb unexpected developments and still deliver on time at the highest quality.
Be sure to give the review team ample time to turn around their reviews. Set clear expectations regarding the type of review you are requesting—and specify the deadline. Ideally the organizational norm is that product marketing serves the role of wordsmith in chief. Product management is the arbiter of technical accuracy, and I always defer to that function within that realm. It’s also helpful to get an authenticity reality check from reviewers. Your manager will likely have a few suggestions as well. Decide up front whose review is a “must have” and whose review is optional. If it’s optional, ensure they understand that you will proceed if you don’t hear from them by the deadline.
Also, consider the mechanics of completing the work and maintaining organization. It’s helpful when sending out a piece of collateral for review that each reviewer tracks their changes in the document and sends it back with a file name that includes their initials at the end. Please note that this is not within your control so that some education may be required. Cloud-based tools for document creation offer some process benefits, such as eliminating the need to merge edits from multiple documents. But the change tracking might be less effective.
Make life easy for your web team and designers by sending only the final content into production. This makes life easier for them and makes everyone more efficient. If you show this consideration, they are more likely to say “no problem” when an unavoidable last-minute change creeps in.
Leverage Outside Resources
You can also increase efficiency by using outside third parties to amplify your efforts in executing a product launch. Instead of creating that white paper internally, consider hiring an industry analyst firm to make it for you.
If you don’t have in-house resources in a particular area, don’t hesitate to hire those externally. I have had success with outside firms that provided social media, web, and video services. If you are short-handed in the product marketing function itself, and you are a B2B technology company, you can also reach out to the Aventi Group, who can supply you with resources in that area. They have over 250 product marketing experts working as consultants who can help you achieve your goals.
Investing in an outside proofreader is also a wise choice. A professional proofreader frees the product marketer to work rapidly without worrying about introducing errors. These services are very economical.
For Marketing Management: Hire Highly Experienced Product Marketers for Pivotal Roles
Product Marketing is, by nature, a leadership role in the organization. We drive marketing launches in support of the products that product management and engineering deliver. Every organization that wants to succeed needs to have product launches as a core competency. Every product marketer was once new to the role, including myself. In 2004, a certain Vice President of Marketing gave me my big chance, after I had spent several years in more analytical roles within the marketing function. I won’t name the person or the company, but I was grateful for the opportunity to expand my role.
One thing I have learned since then is that experience matters. I wasn’t given the most pivotal projects right away, but it was a foot in the door of my dream job. I grew much more adept and efficient over time, and I think most product marketers would tell you they are better at the job now than they were early in their product marketing careers. I suggest that marketing managers seek to hire experienced product marketers for pivotal roles in core products, while also giving more junior-level contributors a chance. A highly experienced product marketing manager knows how to deliver on product launches and work efficiently toward the organization’s goals.
For Marketing Management: Empower Your Front-Line Product Marketers
In keeping with the fact that product marketing is inherently a leadership position, if you have product marketing individual contributors under you in the organizational chart—where they are direct reports or further down the reporting chain—you will see them do their best work if you empower them to make things happen. The organization’s culture needs to support this.
One example of this is the review circle around marketing content. Some companies have ten to twelve individuals in the review circle for every single piece of content. Others limit reviews to technical review from product management and a general review by the product marketing manager’s direct manager for most pieces of content. Guess which model is more efficient? That’s not to say the right model is some version of the Wild West. It is a good idea to create a messaging document that is reviewed more broadly.
Once that is improved, empower your product marketing individual contributors to execute on that document without having a dozen stakeholders review every piece. An experienced product marketer knows how to remain true to the approved messaging and will be much more efficient with a longer leash. Of course, this needs to be managed in the context of organizational norms, and the right approach may vary depending on the company.
Conclusion
While artificial intelligence is a valuable tool for enhancing efficiency and maximizing results with limited resources, optimizing marketing launches for B2B products requires a range of complementary techniques to ensure success. Hopefully, this edition of the Aventi Group blog has provided some ideas on how you can improve efficiency in your next product launch.
