Often, short term deadlines for revenue demands from sales would take priority to the detriment of the company’s longer range issues of product and market planning.In the past, the sales team and the company’s advertising would educate buyers in the early stages of the buying cycle.Of course, despite all these changes, some basics never change.Product messaging is always about helping a prospect solve their business problem and address their needs, not simply describing product features.We are very fortunate that marketing experts from around the world took the time to share their insights on these very important topics.If you’re like us, when you read their rules, you’ll find reminders of fundamentals that we all need to remember as well as fresh insights and approaches to vital aspects of your job.So, how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?The value of Jobs’ contrarian approach for us ordinary mortals has several aspects.The first is the importance of having a deep passion for our products, with our marketing tools being a means to express that passion.We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent.Because this is our life.Life is brief, and then you die, you know?It better be worth it.Another aspect is the importance of deeply understanding our buyer personas to the point that they become living entities that drive our work.There are many other aspects of Jobs’ apparent rule breaking legacy that can help us, but one final one is the importance of interpreting market data based on the real, underlying customer needs and not necessarily on the customer’s ostensible requirements statements.So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what is the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right?He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse.’ That traditionally applies to product managers, but also applies to product marketing when we use customer interaction and understanding and research to develop winning messages.So, please enjoy and absorb the hard earned lessons that these rules represent, but never forget that the underlying driver is a passion to produce product messages that resound with our well understood buyer personas, as a key driver to marketplace success.Imagine you are at the end of the process and define what success looks like.Everyone knows strategy drives execution.But what drives strategy?And, what kinds of strategy drive the right kinds of action, at the right times?We are always very, very busy.When you can’t do everything, how do you choose?To think big is to dream big.Imagine you are at the end of the process and define what success looks like.What are you trying to achieve?What impact do you want to make on your company, your industry, or the world?For most big endeavors this means looking three to five years into the future, though some things might need a shorter time span.The important point is to make the time horizon long enough to let you dream expansively, imaginatively, and optimistically.Too often, we hold ourselves back from really thinking big.We get caught up in minutiae, we compromise before we even begin, we focus on the reasons our big ideas won’t work.Envision what might be true and different in the future.How would we like people to think about us, our products or services, our company?What different behaviors would arise?What new points of view?When you’re thinking big, define success in all the ways that matter, both quantitatively and qualitatively.Consider hard numbers like revenue forecasts, but also include the qualitative aspects that ultimately matter when you think deeply about success. Describe the vision in enough detail and with enough juice that everyone involved can understand the goal and why achieving it matters.Don’t try to boil the ocean.Pick a way to test the big idea and prove its value.Choose one aspect required for success and get it done.Start with something that provides early traction and credibility, gives you quick feedback, and allows you to build awareness and momentum.Of all the possible things to do, focus first on the handful that are most linked to achieving your big idea.The leftover things might be useful later, or maybe not.Avoid diluting your efforts by chasing too much too soon.Start small, with achievable actions, and build from there.Prioritizing and starting small doesn’t mean lollygagging, however.Big ideas don’t reach fruition without continuous wins, continuous progress.And they don’t happen if you lose traction or move away from your main goal.If you think big, start small, but then start over, you’ve ultimately achieved nothing of importance.To move fast, always keep sight of your big goal, and evaluate your small actions by how well they move you there.Remind people, over and over, of the goal you are aiming at.Start every meeting with the big idea, and for every activity proposed, ask if it is the most essential activity to move toward that idea.Then, reward and reinforce each small step that reaches closer to your goal.Today’s buyers are different than buyers a decade ago.Everything they need to learn about your company, your product, and your team, they can learn online.They are not out there learning by having your sales team educating them, they are learning by sharing perspectives with their peers, or getting hands on experiences with your product itself.This change leads to an interesting challenge and a great opportunity for today’s product marketers.The product itself is a key part of the education cycle.From free trials, to entry level products, to active usage of your main product, every experience a user has with your product is an opportunity to help you understand where they are in considering your offering, and you can guide your messaging strategy accordingly.The challenge for product marketers is to rethink a communication strategy around the buyer’s online experience.Buyers should no longer be segmented by demographics or firmographics, or communicated with in large outbound campaigns.Buyers must be understood in terms of the activity indicators and psychographics that tell you where that person is in their own unique consideration cycle.The data we now have on buyers is as broad as it is insightful.Have they logged in for the first time?Have they configured their account?Have they taken the first action that you want them to in the product?Have they tried to use a feature that was disabled because it was only available in a higher level version of the product?Each of these actions, the user’s digital body language, can give you insight into who is just kicking the tires, and who is likely to take a step forward and upgrade.Each communication path you have with potential buyers should leverage this insight by helping that individual buyer try more, learn more, or consider purchasing your product.Without this insight, using only the broad market segments that define industries and roles, you are left with undifferentiated mass communication and are merely hoping to connect the right message with a buyer at the right point of consideration.Taken one level further, the insights that the sales and marketing team gain on each person and organization who is considering your product could easily be fed back into the product experience itself and used to focus messaging, offers, and education within the product.It is also vital to the sales team, who can establish a strong working relationship by referencing the prospect’s activities such as white papers or free demos instead of having to make a blind inquiry and trying to extract information that the prospect has already provided to your company.For today’s buyer, the product itself is the core of the buying process.As a product marketer, understanding this point and building a messaging plan that leverages an understanding of where a buyer is in their consideration cycle, based on their actions, is core to product marketing that successfully guides potential buyers from the earliest stages of awareness and education through to consideration, purchase, and continued growth as a client.As a product marketer you’re responsible for your product’s success.This means consistent revenue growth.While there are many success factors to growing revenue, demand generation is certainly a key component.It is about guiding potential customers through their journey toward purchase.Holistically, it leverages the marketing toolkit, not just one facet.It is essential to provide prospective customers the information they need throughout their buying cycle, not just the sales cycle.Product marketers understand the sales cycle and associated funnel.What most don’t realize is that there is also a marketing funnel.Working the marketing funnel is crucial to effective demand generation, particularly for complex selling cycles where 50 percent of the leads in year two come from prospects generated by the previous year’s marketing activities, even when the sales cycle is only six months long.To accomplish this, you need software.There is now affordable software that automates the processes and everything marketing does to interact with prospective customers.Software provides the necessary qualitative and quantitative metrics the demand generation team needs to analyze and adjust, and be much more scientific about the process.Collaboration is essential.Create a plan with the demand generation team that maps to the marketing funnel and addresses prospective customer needs across the buying cycle.It’s about them, not your product.Sending too much or asking too many questions increases the risk that prospects disconnect.Demand generation results increase with more specific individual information.What time of day do prospects want information, how frequently, via what medium, bulleted or paragraph format?Until your marketing team better understands the individual, communicate less.They need to deliver the right message, via the right medium, at the right time to the right person.It must be easy for prospective customers to get the information they need.Is all content behind gated forms?What paths do prospects go through to get the information they need?Is content customized to the individual?How considerate are you of their time?Do they get asked questions you already have the answer to?