There’s an age-old question of where product marketing stops and solution marketing begins. Fine, maybe not “age-old” but do a quick search on “product vs solution marketing” and there are plenty of opinions. My goal is to share some of my experiences and help CEOs, sales, marketing, and product leaders determine if and when the distinction matters to their business!
For personal context, I managed both “product and solutions marketing” and “industry content marketing” during my time with Informatica; I partnered closely with a separate solutions marketing team when I led a product marketing team with Okta; and most recently I led “product and segment marketing” with Lattice. While all three businesses had distinct definitions and business priorities for their solution (or segment) marketing teams, there were two goals they all shared:
- Build relevant messaging and content to drive GTM strategies to an expanded definition of their ICP (ideal customer profile). For example, Mostly known by IT managers? How to get to CIOs. Mostly known by marketers? How to attract sales. Mostly known in the US? How to be relevant in other countries. Mostly known in 1-2 industries? How to increase awareness in new verticals.
- For this expanded ICP, focus on top customer business challenges and use cases with value-driven, buyer-centric messaging.
But here’s the thing – as a product marketer, I always felt it was my job to research and evangelize the relevant personas, use cases, regions, and industries for our products. And I always felt the only way to truly differentiate product capabilities was to tie those capabilities to the business value delivered. So really – what’s the difference between product and solution marketing?
Marketing up and down an organization
A former CMO of mine once shared his perspective on the difference between selling products and selling solutions – and it really stuck with me. To paraphrase, he said something like
“Sell a product for one price by highlighting how great and differentiated it is, but charge 3-5x more for that very same product if you can prove it’s the best way to solve a very real, high-value business challenge.”
For many B2B software companies – especially those selling into larger midmarket or enterprise-level companies – you need to influence a variety of stakeholders to close a deal. Gartner once estimated a complex enterprise deal could involve 6-10 decision-makers. Translate that to your GTM strategy – that means you need different messaging for different influencers to close a deal.
Some of those decision-makers are going to focus on the products and services offered. Will it meet their requirements? Will their employees adopt the software? Will the technology be compatible with the rest of their technology stack and corporate policies? Other decision-makers will be accountable for the business results expected from the purchase. Will it help to increase productivity? Reduce risk? Drive business results?
In my kludgey graphic below (Have I mentioned that graphic designers are PMM’s best friends?), I wanted to illustrate a spectrum of needs for some different decision-makers within a prospect account.
- Decision-makers closer to the Products side require as much information on the product as possible to help them decide why to buy your product (or service) vs the competition (which could be another company, a build in-house, or even ‘do nothing’).
- Decision-makers closer to the Solutions side are increasingly agnostic to the actual technology solution – they just need confidence that it will work and generate whatever value they’re on the hook to deliver.
Crafting the right message for the right decision-maker
Solution marketing for SMB and midmarket
Many B2B software companies don’t target larger enterprises. Not when there’s such a huge addressable market of millions of small and medium businesses around the world. Depending on the software costs and implementation complexity, an SMB or midmarket sales cycle may only have one to three decision-makers involved. And for a lower cost and less risky investment, you may just be selling to a single front-line manager who has budget authority to serve a specific set of end users that will get the most use from the solution. So you’ll likely require less messaging variety, but you still need to know your audience and based on what you’re selling determine if a product-centric or solution-centric narrative will win the business.
When a product-centric marketing focus makes sense
One very hot go-to-market strategy today is product-led growth (PLG). Many software companies are investing heavily to ensure they can enable their products to drive customer acquisition, adoption, expansion, and retention. And there are plenty of examples of high-growth software companies that have been able to rely on product-centric marketing to technical end users to sustain their growth.
But over the past few months I’ve also spoken with a number of marketing leaders for companies driving PLG strategies and focusing on front-line, technical buyers and many of them are saying that they’re either hitting an inflection point – or see one coming over the horizon. Their ability to upsell and cross-sell their solutions within their install base is facing headwinds. They feel they need to introduce more buyer- or value-centric messaging to get the attention of more senior decision-makers in the organization to try to grow their business and reduce churn risk.
Define your own product marketing and solution marketing roadmap
I feel certain that product and solution marketing must be two sides of the same coin. You should never pitch product features and functionality without explaining “why it matters” and “who cares.” That’s the value PMMs must prove, otherwise, your GTM strategy is “if we build it they will come.” It also doesn’t make sense to discuss how your software company can solve a variety of business problems without mentioning how your software and services contribute to those solutions.
But should you have distinct product marketing and solution marketing teams? That is a simple question of resource bandwidth and business prioritization. But do these roles require different skills? As Mr. Miyagi once said, “Different, but same”
- Product marketers must be extremely comfortable working closely with product management, user experience teams, presales, customer service, and support – as well as talking at the product level with customers.
- Solution marketers must be provocative storytellers and would work closely with demand gen, corp comms, events, and sales to recommend compelling GTM campaigns. They will also help create high-value top- and middle-of-funnel (TOFU/MOFU) assets and customer stories with content marketing and customer advocacy partners.
I’ve been fortunate to have worked with so many PMMs that can effectively walk this line and deliver on both sides based on what the business requires. But not everyone is equally as passionate about products and solutions. And asking someone to wear multiple hats runs the risk of delivering less-than-stellar results everywhere. Once you have a compelling business need to talk solutions – consider adding a solutions marketing role to your product marketing team!