Not trying to resonate

Description

  • The problem with your users is that they ‘just don’t get it’? That actually sounds like a you problem

Disproof

  • A document that all teams have actually read which describes psychologically why customers value your product and how they become aware of that fact

Consequences

  • Best case scenario, all that time and effort you sank into doing everything else right goes to waste
  • Teams become unsure whether they are actually targeting the correctly customers wrongly, or the wrong customers correctly and can lead to even worse overcorrections
  • Embarrassing doubling down on marketing/communications that go from tone-deaf to cringe and irritating
  • You get buried under competition with a bad product that shouts better, the team gripes about fairness all the way to the job centre

Causes

  • Hot take: product teams attract people who consider themselves builders/makers/creators. Tends to lead to such groupthink as:
    • "The product should be so good it sells itself!"
    • "If it’s not popular it’s because we just need to keep improving it until everyone recommends it!"
    • "Talking about your product is gross and dishonest, we’re cooler than that!"
  • Sometimes the existence of a particularity opinionated standalone creative/marketing team creates a learned helplessness. Positioning thinking is then not done by the people who are supposed to care about the user
  • Sometimes, people even do think about the positioning. The problem is - they don’t talk to each other
    • You may see different teams talking about the product in entirely different ways which becomes especially confusing in longitudinal situations
    • You marketed it one way, sold it second, billed it a third and supported it a fourth
  • Moderate success and complacency that doesn't hold up in a shifting market

Approaches

  • There are volumes written about the practicalities of this by some of the greatest minds in advertising. Go read one - I recommend Sutherland's Alchemy
  • If bad product management is the failure to identify and build for value, bad product positioning is to fail to connect users to the value, effectively snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
    • More structurally, if you’re not engaging with how your product is making your user feel, you might as well just be banging rocks together
  • If the organisation of your company is preventing this thinking from a) happening and b) being joined up, work on that first