As B2B marketers, we’ve spent the last decades optimizing channels, refining nurture streams and automating campaigns. But something’s shifted in this new AI-powered GTM world.
Growth is no longer just a distribution game. It’s a product game. The most effective marketing teams today don’t just run campaigns. They operate more like product managers than traditional campaign marketers.
What is product thinking?
Product thinking involves solving real user problems through structured, iterative, value-driven systems. Instead of asking what campaign to run, product thinkers ask:
- Who are we building for?
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- What can we deliver to help and how will we measure success?
This mindset is how product teams build features. And increasingly, it’s how successful marketing teams scale impact without scaling headcount.
The new reality of B2B growth
In today’s SaaS market, marketing isn’t about flooding channels with content. It’s about mapping buyer journeys in a way that reflects how teams actually evaluate solutions.
The problem is that many teams are still running playbooks that feel stuck in 2015: Build an asset, launch a campaign, route the leads, drop them into nurture, and then call it done. That approach doesn’t match the reality of how buyers move through a decision.
Today’s buyers aren’t isolated leads. They’re 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 bigger picture.
That is where product thinking creates an edge. It shifts marketing away from calendars and vanity metrics and toward what matters: solving buyer problems, demonstrating measurable impact and treating every launch as a chance to learn and refine.
Dig deeper: How AI flipped the funnel and made GTM tactics obsolete
What product thinking looks like in a marketing org
Product-minded marketers ask, “What value are we delivering, and to whom?” From there, they:
- Design minimum viable experiences (MVEs) for each buyer persona, focusing on the jobs-to-be-done — not the titles and problems they’re solving at each stage.
- Build a content matrix that aligns content to job, role and intent stage.
- Prioritize accounts and individuals based on accurate in-market and out-of-market readiness signals.
- Develop surround sound programs like product launches: small, scoped, fast to ship and instrumented from day one.
- Measure success based on buying team activation and stage velocity, not just clicks and form fills.
- Establish feedback loops into everything. Customer reviews aren’t just a tactic. They use them to refine messaging, positioning and campaign strategy.
- Use genAI to accelerate research, variation and iteration, but not to replace the human voices that matter.
Product thinking helps marketing claim a seat at the strategic table
Product thinking shifts marketing from executing tactics to designing systems that drive growth. Too often, marketing is seen as a less strategic function in the overall GTM strategy. A team that pushes content, runs campaigns and fills the funnel.
But that perception is shifting. Adopting product thinking lets you solve upstream problems in the GTM strategy:
- How can we reduce the time a new buyer takes to reach value?
- Where are deals stalling and why?
- Which roles are we failing to engage in buying committees?
These are product questions. But they’re also GTM strategy questions. And when you show up with answers and solid data, your team will earn credibility with product, sales and customer success, and build rapport with the C-level.
AI is accelerating the shift
AI tools make it easier to generate content, score accounts and recommend next-best actions. But none of that matters if you don’t have a point of view on what good looks like or a system to act on it.
This is where product thinking protects you from shiny object syndrome. Instead of chasing AI features, product thinkers ask:
- How does this tool fit into the journey we’re building?
- Can it help us personalize at scale without compromising insight?
- Where does it help us go faster and where does it need human QA?
Product thinking treats AI like a junior team member, helpful, fast and scalable, but only as good as the strategy behind it. And that is only effective when it’s built with a clear understanding of your buyers, their context and your value delivery.
In other words: AI is the accelerator. Product thinking is the foundation.
Dig deeper: Adapting your GTM to win the AI-driven buyer
Stop thinking like a campaign manager
If you’re in demand gen, growth or marketing ops and under pressure to do more with less, it’s time to shift your mindset.
Stop thinking like a campaign manager. Don’t just run another program because your team has content to push. Instead, think in systems, like a product manager:
- Define the challenges your buyer is facing (not just the internally-driven message you want to send).
- Start small by designing a journey that fits one buyer role or group based on their job-to-be-done.
- Ship quickly. Get it live, learn from it and don’t wait for perfection.
- Instrument the right signals, such as engagement by persona, velocity by stage, etc.
- Scale what works. Look at what customers and users say, not what’s loudest internally.
The most effective marketing teams won’t be the ones with the most expensive tech stacks. They’ll be the ones who think in journeys, operate in systems and grow like product teams.
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