My Top Two Product Marketing Predictions for 2023
On December 8th 2022, Product Marketing Alliance officially launched the 2022 Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers report. I am really honored to have been featured on the list being the only Product Marketing Manager from Africa.
In the report, I share some of my 2023 Product Marketing Predictions, tips to help other Product Marketers be more customer centric and why I love the PMM function.
This medium post is a highlight of that. I’m really excited to have been featured next to some amazing Product Marketing Managers that I love and respect such as : Phill Agnew - Senior Product Marketing Manager at Buffer, Marcus Andrews - Director of Product Marketing at Pendo.io, Mark Assini - Product Marketing Manager at Jobber, April Dunford - Founder of Ambient Strategy, Tamara Grominsky - VP of Product Marketing & Lifecycle at Kajabi, Susan “Spark” Park - Head of Product Marketing, VR Fitness, Media, and Work Quest at Meta, Mary Sheehan - Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe, Yoni Solomon - VP of Product Marketing at Gympass, Julien Sauvage - VP Corporate and Product Marketing at Clari and Jeffrey Vocell - Head of Product Marketing at Narvar (to mention but a few :-))
Take time to explore the other featured Product Marketing Managers in the ‘2022 Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers’ report by Product Marketing Alliance here
Question 1: Why is product marketing important to you, and what does a good product marketer look like?
My journey into product marketing was a bit unconventional (as it is for most PMMs). In 2019, while at the Safaricom Innovation department, I held weekly customer feedback sessions for a B2B/B2C app we were building. It’s during one of these sessions where one of the business women who was a member of the Pat’s Biashara Circle — a community of women MSMEs we were working with to beta test the product, pulled me aside and told me how she wouldn’t have discovered the app and the solution we were building were it not have been for the way we simplified our communication highlighting the value we provided. This sparked something in me.
Through product marketing, I’m now helping startups identify their correct customer segments and showing them how to articulate the value they offer customers. I’m passionate about serving New Internet Users (NIU) in frontier and emerging markets in Africa and continue to work with teams to place their tech enabled solutions in the right hands so that they can meet their business objectives.
I like to look at Product Marketing Managers as co-owners of the product. This means, together with the product manager, they’re responsible for the success of the product in the market. From the ideation stage all the way to the sunsetting days of the product, the PMM has to be all in. With this view, a good product marketer has to be curious, empathetic, a great team player and great at project management. Being curious helps a PMM to constantly question the status quo which helps in discovering opportunities, uncovering risks and trends. This is how we support the development of the product by contributing market-driven requirements and insights. Having the ability to manage projects will help you as a Product Marketer to align your launch/GTM cross functional teams and resources to ensure success.
Question 2: What’s your product marketing prediction for 2023?
1st Prediction: Companies will invest more in competitive intelligence.
Properly positioned and differentiated products win in the market. As more products enter existing markets, companies are seeing the importance of investing heavily in competitive intelligence to maintain their market share. I see more companies investing in competitive intelligence tools, and hiring CI talent to help sales cut through the noise in a wildly competitive space with clear competitive positioning to ensure companies stay ahead of the game.
2nd Prediction: Product marketers moving from being generalists to specialists.
All through the year, I’ve been listening to other PMMs and the idea of owning a key product marketing deliverable and running with it seemed appealing to some. I’ve seen PMMs deciding to be sales enablement specialists, CI specialists and customer marketing specialists — I see this trend growing in 2023 and onwards.
Question 3: What are your tips for customer-centric marketing?
Tip 1: Really Listening to Customers and Users
I mean really listening to the customers and users. Not sitting in customer calls with ideas you want to justify or verify but rather, laying aside those notions you’ve held and entering your customer’s world through the narration of their challenges, frustrations and setbacks. Dig deeper into their problems and how your product is uniquely made to meet their needs. This is how you win.
Tip 2: Having empathy for your customers and your cross-functional teams
As a product marketer having empathy for your customers and users is given. Take it a step further and extend that empathy to your sales team, product, engineers, marketing, customer success team and other cross functional teams you work collaboratively with. You’re all working towards serving your users and being empathetic towards each other as you deliver value to your users will help you be more aligned.
Conclusion
Looking back at how far I’ve come in my Product Marketing career in the tech space, I’m really thankful for all my previous experiences from past roles (brand management, sales, digital marketing, communications and PR). Each role I held and the industries I served ultimately helped shape the professional I am today.
If you’re starting out in your PMM journey, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I credit my success so far to the support and mentorship I have received from those who went before me and I would like to extend the same to other new PMMs in Africa.
Be sure to checkout my Podcast : and reach out if you would like to be featured!
That’s it folks. Have a fantastic 2023! :-)
