Marketers make good PMs

Marketers are getting access to more customer data than ever before. Detailed customer data helps digital and creative marketers continuously acquire the best users. A byproduct of acquiring this data allows them to know their customer better than most, sometimes more than a PM.

The explosion of customer data is proportionate to the number of new digital channels marketers are getting access to. Facebook and Google have been staple marketing platforms for years (decades?), but Apple, Amazon, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Reddit are quickly opening up their platforms so marketers can continue gaining additional insights and communication channels on their user base.

The pace at which digital platforms are opening up combined with the ability to iterate on the number of creative communications allows marketers to gain customer insight BEFORE a new product is launched at all. App developers, for example, can figure out what resonates with a specific user base before the app is developed. They run marketing campaigns to see which ads customers interact with most and based on these results, companies are able to kill products before they exist. After all, what’s the point in building a product that isn’t marketable? App developers are reducing engineering/product and company costs by figuring out if new ideas are marketable before building them.