Martina Lauchengco - Loved : How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products

1. Chapter 6
2. Chapter 17
3. Chapter 19
4. Chapter 22
5. Chapter 24

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 12
3. Chapter 15
4. Chapter 19
5. Chapter 23
6. Chapter 25

LOVED is a supremely practical book and a must-read for anyone wanting to do great product marketing. Martina's stories from the trenches bring everything to life. I'm telling everyone at my company to read it.

Sarah Bernard, CCO Greenhouse, former VP Product and Design, Jet.com

The world is filled with great ideas and products that go nowhere. The difference between nowhere and greatness is product marketing, and Martina is the master. Every tech CEO needs to read this.

Amanda Richardson, CEO CoderPad, former VP Product, Chief Data, and Strategy Officer, HotelTonight

I lived the difference great product marketing makes for a business. Martina's unique expertise on each function in a business makes her advice invaluable. LOVED is a book truly worthy of any shelf.

Leyla Seka, COO, Ironclad, former Partner, Operator Collective

INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, 2nd Edition (Marty Cagan, 2017)

EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Marty Cagan with Chris Jones, 2021)

LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products (Martina Lauchengco, 2022)

MARTINA LAUCHENGCO
Silicon Valley Product Group

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Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Author Photo: Courtesy of the Author; Gary Wagner Photos
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To everyone who asked me to recommend a book on product marketing, this is for you.

And to Chris, Anya, and Taryn, thank you for supporting me while I wrote it.

All my royalties from this book are being donated to organizations supporting the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in tech. Our world is better when tech products are built by the people they serve.

In INSPIRED, I argued that the single most important concept in all of product is the concept of product/market fit.

For startups, achieving product/market fit, including and especially the go-to-market strategy for that product, is really the only thing that matters.

But the reward for reaching product/market fit is growth, and growth brings its own challenges.

Moreover, as the company grows, we typically evolve our product to address the needs of additional markets, and usually we soon begin work on new products as well, so the critical concepts of product/market fit and growth remain at the heart of product work for the life of a technology-powered company.

INSPIRED described the techniques we use to discover a product that is valuable, usable, feasible, and viable, and the book discussed how this requires an intense collaboration between product management, product design, and engineering.

But while discovering a winning solution may be necessary, it is not sufficient.

We have all seen countless examples of products that go nowhere because:

• the product doesn't address real customer needs
• or, there aren't enough customers with those needs
• or, those customers do exist, but not enough of them learn your product exists
• or even if they do find you, they don't see how what you provide aligns with their needs

To avoid this fate, as the name implies, there is another dimension to product/market fit, and that is the market.

When we talk about a winning product, we are referring to a strong solution for a specific market.

A product manager's partner in achieving product/market fit and getting this product to market is the product marketer.

While the product manager focuses primarily on the product side of the equation, the product marketer focuses primarily on the market side, including the go-to-market strategy.

But it's important to realize that pursuing the product and pursuing the market are not independent activities. They are happening in parallel, and they are very much intertwined.

Which is why the product manager/product marketer partnership is so important to get right.