One question that I get from my peers is “I want to get into tech, but I can’t code, and I’m not a founder”, what can I do?
In the tech world, it’s not all coding! Yes, understanding how software developers work, their language and the tools that they use is important, but if you want to get into tech but are not a software developer or a UI/UX designer there are other opportunities for you.
I’m going to be a little biased here, but my favorite position is Product Marketing. The second question that follows is “What is product marketing and what makes it different from marketing”? They go hand in hand in some aspects; however, think of marketing as marketing for the whole brand or company, whereas product marketing focuses on the specific product or products within the company.
In my opinion, it takes a special person to be a product marketer. You have to bring several skills to be a great product marketer. You have to be creative, a bit outgoing, and analytic, and you have to have natural empathy.
If you’re not creative you can “grow” creativity through deep thinking and strategizing when you dive deep into a product. Being outgoing is important because you’ll have to work in collaboration with different teams, and this ties back to what I mentioned about understanding the development team’s language even if you’re not a software developer. Because of where product marketers sit, you’ll also work with other teams across an organization. Most of the time, product marketers sit at the intersection of product, marketing, sales, customer success, and engineering. So most product marketers talk to members from different teams frequently, so being a bit outgoing can help you connect with others in different teams.
Having natural empathy is also very important. I have been an empath for as long as I can remember and that helps. The most successful product marketers have natural empathy. They don’t force empathy, and that matters when you’re building a product or have a product in the market. Understanding users and their pain points at a deep level is key. A big mistake that brands make is they try to force products and features on customers without understanding their “why”. If you have empathy it will be easy to understand your customers “why” and build a product that is for them that provides an outcome that they are going to your tool for.
Product marketing is fun, exciting, and challenging. There are many ways to break into product marketing if you’re new. One of the things that I advocate for which may not sound realistic to everyone, but if you want to dive into the deep end, create your own product. When I created my own products in the past, I didn’t know what product marketing was, but I learned that everything that I did was what a product marketer would do. This is more of a high-level way of entry that can give you the experience firsthand that will be valuable to you. If you are not entrepreneurial but want to get into product marketing, there are courses you can take online and there are books that you can read from some product market leaders. A few of the books that I have that I recommend are below.
- Obviously Awesome – April Dunford
- Product Launches – Mary Sheehan
- The Cold Start Problem – Andrew Chen
- The Lean Product Playbook – Dan Olsen
If you’re interested in getting into product marketing the books above will give you a headstart.
This is a very short breakdown on how you can break into product marketing but I packed it with some key insights to help you get going. I hope this brought you some insight into how you can break into product marketing. Now it’s time for you to get started. I won’t say good luck, because if you believe in yourself, everything is possible!
