How to Think Like a Product Marketer

 As product marketers, we sit at the intersection of what gets built by the product team and how this is shared with our users and the wider world. Our job is to make users aware of new features and encourage adoption in a way that best suits their needs. This tutorial will guide you through the process of thinking like a product marketer to effectively drive feature adoption.

Step 1: Develop a Deep Understanding of Product Design 

To excel as a product marketer, it's crucial to invest time in learning about product design, including UX and UI principles. Just as a translator needs to understand both languages they're working with, a product marketer needs to understand both the product and marketing sides. By deepening your knowledge of product design, you'll be better equipped to communicate ideas effectively to product teams and translate product features into compelling user benefits.

Before joining Uxcel, I realized I needed to enhance my product design knowledge to become a better product marketer. I used the Uxcel platform to learn about UI and UX design foundations, which proved invaluable when I started working with the product team.

Step 2: Identify the Core Problem Your Feature Solves

A key aspect of successful product marketing is clearly articulating the key problem your new feature addresses for users. Users are more likely to adopt a feature if they understand how it solves a specific problem they're facing. Think about the pain points your users experience and how your feature alleviates them.

Here’s an example of how we put this approach into practice at Uxcel for our revamped Profile experience. When deciding to improve this feature, we identified that designers struggled to create a holistic picture of their career, often juggling multiple documents and portfolio links. The updated Uxcel profile experience solved this by combining elements of a traditional CV, design portfolio, and learning accomplishments in one place. What’s more, everything you do on Uxcel — the courses you complete, the certificates you earn, the skills you build — are all automatically added to your profile. This makes it much easier for a designer to build and maintain an accurate picture of their career progression.

Step 3: Don't Just Tell, Show!  

When introducing new features, it's important to demonstrate their value rather than simply describing them. People often understand and appreciate the value of something new when they can visualize or experience it firsthand. With Uxcel Profiles, we knew that users loved how their accomplishments were automatically added to their profile. However, we knew we needed to actively show users this process happening, rather than just telling them about it.  

Step 4: Visualize Your Strategy 

Using visual tools is a great way for product marketers to explain ideas to the product team. Visual representations of ideas can often convey complex concepts more effectively than words alone.

To convince our product team of my strategy to increase Profile adoption, I created several visual aids:

 User Happy Path Diagram

This diagram illustrates the ideal journey we want our users to take. It shows a clear, step-by-step process:

1. User completes a profile-building activity
2. User is given feedback that their accomplishment builds their profile
3. User views accomplishment on their profile
4. User is encouraged to continue building their profile

This simple flow helps the product team understand the key touchpoints where we can encourage Profile adoption and usage.

Current User Flows  

This diagram shows two current user flows: one for completing an assessment and another for completing a course. By mapping out these existing flows, we can identify opportunities to integrate Profile promotion seamlessly into the user experience. The yellow note highlights our focus on the course completion flow, as it's the most common path for our users.  

 Lo-fi Mockups of Proposed Changes 

These mock-ups demonstrate specific UI changes we can make to encourage Profile usage:

• Replacing the current button with a more prominent link to view the certificate in the user's profile
• Adding an additional "View profile" button to give users multiple opportunities to engage with their Profile

By creating these visual representations, I was able to communicate my ideas and their potential impact. This approach helped the product team understand the proposed changes in context and visualize how they would enhance the user experience while promoting Profile adoption.

Step 5: Integrate with Existing User Flows

A successful approach to introducing new features is to leverage familiar user journeys. Users are more likely to adopt new features if they're introduced within flows they already know and use. This reduces the learning curve and makes the new feature feel like a natural extension of the product.

At Uxcel, we focused on integrating Profile promotion into the course completion flow - a journey that is commonly undertaken by our users. This allowed us to showcase how their learning achievements automatically contribute to building their profile.

 Wrapping up  

Good product marketing brings immense value to both the product team and the organization as a whole. By following these steps and thinking like a product marketer, you can ensure that user insights are part of the product development process, leading to features that users love to discover and adopt.

Remember, as a product marketer, you're uniquely positioned to understand both user needs and product capabilities. Use this perspective to influence how features are developed, discovered, and adopted by your users.