As B2B marketers, we have spent in recent decades with optimizing channels, refining cherishing flows and automating campaigns. But something has shifted in this new AI-driven GTM world.
Growth is no longer just a distribution game. It is a product game. The most effective marketing teams today do not only carry out campaigns. They operate more as product managers than traditional campaign marketers.
What is the product thinking?
Product thinking includes solving real user problems through structured, iterative, value -driven systems. Instead of asking which campaign is to be carried out, product thinkers ask:
- For whom do we build?
- What problem do they try to solve?
- What can we deliver to help and how will we measure success?
This mentality is how product teams build functions. And increasingly it is how successful marketing teams an impact scales without scaling the workforce.
The new reality of B2B growth
In today’s Saas market, Marketing is not about flood channels with content. It is about mapping buyer travel in a way that reflects how teams actually evaluate solutions.
The problem is that many teams are still running playbooks that are stuck in 2015: building a plus, launching a campaign, rousting the leads, drop them in cherishing and then calling it ready. That approach does not correspond to the reality of how buyers go through a decision.
Today’s buyers are not isolated leads. They are part of a team – each with their own role, priorities and influence on the final choice. Treating them as individuals in a funnel misses the greater whole.
That is where product thinking creates a lead. It shifts marketing away from agendas and vanity statistics and to what is important: solving copper problems, demonstrating measurable impact and treating any launch as an opportunity to learn and refine.
Diger Diger: How AI turned the funnel and made GTM tactics outdated
What product thinks looks like in a marketing org
Product -oriented marketers ask: “What value do we deliver and to whom?” From there, she:
- Design Minimal viable experiences (Mves) for every buyer persona, aimed at the jobs that can be done- not The titles and problems they solve in every phase.
- Build a content matrix that tunes content to task, role and intention phase.
- Accounts and individuals give priority based on accurate signals in the market and outside the market.
- Develop Surround Sound programs such as product launches: small, scoped, fast to shipping and instrumented from the first day.
- Measure success based on buying team activation and theater speed, not just clicking and form fillings.
- Set feedback klussen in everything. Customer reviews are not just a tactic. They use them to refine messages, positioning and campaign strategy.
- Use Genai to speed up research, variation and iteration, but not to replace the human voices that matter.
Product thinking helps marketing to claim a chair at the strategic table
Product thinking is shifting marketing from implementing tactics to designing systems that stimulate growth. Too often, marketing is seen as a less strategic function in the general GTM strategy. A team that pushes content, performs campaigns and fills the funnel.
But that perception is shifting. By using product thinking, you can solve power -growing problems in the GTM strategy:
- How can we reduce the time that a new buyer needs to achieve value?
- Where do deals and why?
- Which roles cannot we take to buy committees?
These are product questions. But they are also GTM strategy questions. And when you pop up with answers and solid data, your team will earn credibility with product, sales and customer success and build up a report with the C level.
AI speeds up the shift
AI tools make it easier to generate content, score accounts and recommend the following best promotions. But that doesn’t matter if you don’t have a point of view about how good looks or a system to act accordingly.
This is where product thinking protects you against glossy object syndrome. Instead of having to chase AI functions, ask for product thoughts:
- How does this tool fit into the journey we build?
- Can it help us to personalize on a scale without entering insight?
- Where does it help us to go faster and where does the human QA need?
Product thinking treats AI as a junior team member, helpful, fast and scalable, but only as good as the strategy behind it. And that is only effective when it is built with a clear understanding of your buyers, their context and your value delivery.
In other words: AI is the accelerator pedal. Product thinking is the basis.
Dig Dpery: Adjust your GTM to win the AI-driven copper
Stop thinking as a campaign leader
If you are in question, gene, growth or marketing ops and under pressure to do more with less, it is time to shift your mindset.
Don’t think anymore as a campaign leader. Not only perform a different program because your team has content to push. Instead, think in systems, such as a product manager:
- Define the challenges Your buyer is confronted (not just the internally powered message that you want to send).
- Start small By designing a journey that fits in one copper role or group based on their task.
- Send quickly. Get it live, learn from it and don’t wait for perfection.
- Instrument the right signalsSuch as involvement by persona, speed per stage, etc.
- Scale that works. See what customers and users say, not what is the hardest.
The most effective marketing teams are not those with the most expensive technical piles. They will be those who think in travel, operate in systems and grow as product teams.
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