BusinessBeginnerPreview
Product Marketing
A practical course that teaches the four pillars of product marketing the way working PMMs do it: positioning and messaging, go-to-market launches, sales and customer enablement, and competitive and customer intelligence.
Beginners, marketers, founders, and product or sales people who own or want to own how a product is positioned, launched, and sold, with no prior PMM experience required.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into reps you run on a real offer. Each section mirrors one course module with hands-on exercises, fill-in worksheets, and checklists. Pick one product or service you actually care about and carry it through every section. You will finish with a locked positioning statement, a message house with proof, a tiered launch plan and RACI, a pitch one-pager and FAQ, a competitor battlecard, and a win/loss interview guide that routes findings back into all of it.
What Product Marketing Is and How to Position
Place your offer inside the four pillars, then position it against the real alternatives using April Dunford's five components and pressure-test the result before you build on it.
Worksheet: Position Your Offer with the Five Components
Fill the fields in order; each constrains the next. Start from alternatives, not features, and do not write the category until the value is clear.
- Competitive alternatives (what the buyer would use or do instead, including do-nothing and any spreadsheet or manual process)
- Unique attributes (what you have that the alternatives do not)
- Value (for each attribute, the outcome a buyer wants, written as attribute then so-what then outcome)
- Target market characteristics (the buyers who care a lot about that value)
- Market category (the frame of reference you place yourself in)
- One-paragraph positioning statement that ties all five together
Exercise: Pressure-Test the Position
Run your draft position through the four cheap tests from the course and note what each reveals. Sharpen the weakest component before locking.
- Alternatives test: ask three to five recent buyers or prospects what they considered before you. Which alternatives did they name that you did not list?
- Value-ranking test: show target buyers your value statements and have them rank the top three. Does your headline value land in the top three?
- Category test: tell ten people your one-line category and ask what they expect it to do and cost. Where were they confused or wildly wrong on price?
- Competitor mirror test: read three competitors' homepages. Which of your claimed unique attributes appear on theirs and are therefore table stakes, not differentiators?
Checklist: Positioning Readiness Check
- I listed the real competitive alternatives, including do-nothing, not just named competitors.
- Every unique attribute is translated into a value a specific buyer wants.
- My differentiators do not appear word-for-word on three competitors' sites.
- I chose the market category deliberately and a stranger guesses roughly the right purpose and price.
- The position is written on one dated page that every later asset will trace back to.
From Features to Messaging That Lands
Find the job your buyer is hiring the product to do, organise positioning and jobs into a message house with real proof, and tailor emphasis by persona and funnel stage without fragmenting the story.
Exercise: Write Jobs to Be Done and Map the Four Forces
Write at least two job statements in the situational format, then map the forces. This becomes raw material for the message house.
- Job 1 in the format: when I am in a situation, I want to do a motivation, so I can reach an outcome (no product named).
- Job 2 in the same format for a different buyer or situation.
- Push and Pull: what pain with the current approach pushes the buyer, and what better outcome pulls them to you?
- Anxiety and Habit: what makes switching feel risky, and what inertia keeps the buyer on the old way? Note how you will reduce each.
Worksheet: Build Your Message House
Fill the roof, pillars, and foundation. For each pillar, complete the features-advantages-benefits ladder and prefer the buyer's own words mined from calls, tickets, and reviews.
- Roof: core value proposition in one sentence aimed at the target market
- Pillar 1: supporting message + the job it maps to + feature, advantage, benefit
- Pillar 2: supporting message + the job it maps to + feature, advantage, benefit
- Pillar 3: supporting message + the job it maps to + feature, advantage, benefit
- Foundation proof per pillar (metric, named customer outcome, integration, award, or demo moment)
- Voice-of-customer swipe: three verbatim buyer phrases to reuse in headlines and quotes
Worksheet: Persona and Funnel-Stage Messaging Matrix
Map which pillars and proof each audience and stage should receive. Keep the roof fixed; change only the emphasis. Every cell must trace back to a pillar.
- Economic buyer: lead pillar + proof (ROI, payback, risk)
- Technical buyer: lead pillar + proof (security, integrations, how it works)
- End user: lead pillar + proof (daily job, ease, time saved)
- Top of funnel emphasis (push and the job, problem framing)
- Middle of funnel emphasis (differentiation and proof)
- Bottom of funnel emphasis (anxiety reducers: case studies, guarantees, migration, security)
Checklist: Messaging Quality Check
- Each pillar maps to a real job to be done, not just a feature group.
- Every external claim ends in a benefit, not at a feature or advantage.
- At least three phrases come verbatim from real buyers, not internal jargon.
- The roof stays identical across personas; only the emphasised pillars change.
- Every tailored asset's headline traces back to the roof and its claims to a pillar and proof point.
Planning and Running a Launch
Right-size the launch with a scored tier, coordinate it with a dated checklist and a RACI, and define success metrics before launch day so the retrospective can teach you something.
Worksheet: Score the Launch Tier
Score the release on each axis from 1 to 5, total it, and assign a tier. Use this to decide effort instead of arguing by gut.
- Strategic importance to the company (1-5)
- Breadth of audience affected (1-5)
- Degree of behaviour change required from users (1-5)
- Revenue or competitive impact (1-5)
- Total score and assigned tier (Tier 1 flagship / Tier 2 significant / Tier 3 minor)
- Internal launch date (team enabled) and external launch date (market told)
Exercise: Draft the Launch Plan and RACI
List the major tasks across the three phases and assign ownership. Confirm every task has exactly one Accountable name.
- Pre-launch tasks with owners and dates (messaging, enablement, website, beta quotes, briefings).
- Launch-day tasks with owners (page and blog live, email, in-app and social, flags flipped, support FAQ ready).
- Post-launch tasks with owners (track adoption and pipeline, gather feedback, follow up leads, retrospective).
- For five key tasks, assign Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed, and verify only one Accountable per task.
Worksheet: Define Launch Success Up Front
Pick two or three target metrics tied to the launch objective and write the targets before launch day. Prefer influenced over generated for revenue.
- Launch objective in one sentence (awareness, adoption, pipeline, or repositioning)
- Awareness target (email open/click, page traffic, press, share of voice)
- Adoption target (percent of eligible users who try it, time to first use, 30-day repeat)
- Pipeline target (influenced opportunities and influenced pipeline in dollars, with UTM/campaign in CRM)
- Enablement target (percent of reps trained, battlecard/deck usage in deals)
- Retrospective date and the qualitative signals you will collect (sales heard, customers said, objections seen)
Checklist: Launch Readiness Check
- The tier is scored and written down, not assumed.
- The internal launch (sales and support enabled) precedes the external launch.
- Every launch task has exactly one Accountable owner.
- Success metrics and their targets were set before launch day.
- A retrospective is scheduled and its lessons will be added to the reusable checklist.
Enablement and Competitive Intelligence
Build the few enablement assets reps actually reach for, distil competitor research into an honest battlecard, and run win/loss interviews that route real evidence back into positioning, messaging, and enablement.
Worksheet: Outline the Pitch Deck and Write a One-Pager
Structure the deck as a story (customer as hero, you as guide with a plan, clear call to action) and draft the one-pager fields a rep can email after a call.
- Deck slide order (problem and push, stakes, your position as resolution, proof, call to action) in 10-15 slides
- One-pager headline (the roof) and three pillars
- One-pager proof points (metric, customer outcome, integration)
- One-pager clear next step / call to action
- Demo script: the two or three moments that prove the core value (not a feature tour)
- Where assets live and how reps find them (sales content tool or organised drive)
Exercise: Build a Competitor Battlecard
Pick one real alternative and complete a deal-ready, internal battlecard. Be honest about where they win and coach a reframe rather than a denial.
- Quick overview: who they are, who they target, where they are strong.
- Why we win: two or three points where you genuinely beat them, each with proof.
- Why we lose and how to handle it: where they are stronger, plus the reframe a rep can say honestly.
- Landmines and objection responses: questions that expose their weaknesses, and crisp rebuttals to their common attacks on you.
Worksheet: Win/Loss Interview Guide and Findings Router
Write the open questions you will ask won and lost buyers, then set up a log that sends each finding to the exact asset it should improve so the loop closes.
- Sample plan (how many recent wins, losses, and no-decisions; who interviews so it is not the selling rep)
- Open questions (what triggered the search, who else was considered, what nearly stopped the purchase, what tipped it, what we could have done differently)
- Theme synthesis: top three recurring drivers heard, with a verbatim quote each
- Findings router: objection to FAQ/battlecard, repeated value to message house, competitor reframe to positioning review, buyer phrase to copy
Checklist: Enablement and Intelligence Check
- Enablement is a process with training and a feedback loop, not just files dropped in a folder.
- The battlecard names where we lose and how to reframe it, not only where we win.
- Competitive intel is gathered from public and first-party sources within ethical and legal limits.
- Win/loss uses a neutral interviewer and at least six to ten interviews to find themes.
- Every win/loss finding is routed to a specific asset (FAQ, battlecard, message house, or positioning).
Your Action Plan
- Pick one real product or service and write its competitive alternatives, including do-nothing, then complete the five-component positioning statement on one dated page.
- Pressure-test the position with the four tests, sharpen the weakest component, and lock it for this cycle.
- Write at least two Jobs to Be Done statements and map the push, pull, anxiety, and habit forces.
- Build the message house: one roof, three pillars mapped to jobs, and a proof point for each pillar, using verbatim buyer language.
- Fill the persona and funnel-stage matrix so emphasis is tailored but every claim traces back to a pillar.
- Score the launch tier, then draft the launch plan and RACI with exactly one Accountable owner per task.
- Set two or three launch success metrics with targets before launch day and schedule the retrospective.
- Outline the pitch deck as a story and write the one-pager, demo script, and FAQ for the offer.
- Build a battlecard for one real competitor, honest about where you lose and how to reframe it.
- Write the win/loss interview guide, run six to ten interviews, and route each finding back to a specific asset.
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