Product Marketing's Blind Spot

The fundamental difference between product messaging and solution messaging is the process of breaking down a customer’s problem into its underlying causes. Sales people have been taught this concept for several decades now, yet over 95% of business oriented marketing organizations fail to reflect this fundamental aspect of a solution strategy in the content they produce. 

This reduces the relevancy and impact of three key deliverables:

1. Customer facing collateral
2. Lead generation and nurturing initiatives
3. Sales enablement  tools 

Unfortunately product marketing professionals have difficulty discarding product-feature-benefit thinking and making the transition from a seller-aligned value model to a buyer-aligned value model (see diagram below). As a result they rarely think about or communicate their company’s value and differentiation from the customer’s perspective in terms of problems, causes, and capabilities.

Instead when management decides that “We’re going to sell solutions.” most product marketing organizations adopt a Hybrid Model. This drives a messaging strategy that goes something like this “You have a problem, we have a solution, here’s its features and benefits and here’s how it’s different… what do you think? “

Unfortunately, this doesn’t build buyer confidence, reinforce the way sales people have been taught to sell, or lay the groundwork for translating benefits to value and establishing customer relevant differentiation.

So if you’re a marketing organization that’s serious about supporting a solution strategy, you need to start breaking down customer problems into their causes and formally adopting a Buyer-Aligned-Value Model. It will immediately improve your ability to:

1. Demonstrate your  company’s understanding of the customer’s problem
2. Translate benefits to value, and intelligently discuss that value and differentiation from the customer’s perspective
3. And finally, if you properly define the key causes of the customer’s problem so they leverage and reinforce your company’s strengths you will automatically create sustainable competitive advantage

For more information on Buyer-Aligned Value Models you can listen to our Audio Visual Summary of the white paper.