2-min Technical Product Marketing Insights: Jan 2026 Releases
Part 1 Release Date: Dec 15, 2026 (2 min read)
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
1 / Try a reverse demo during your sales call to spark excitement about your product among your prospects.
Clay initially struggled to help their ICP (outbound salespeople) find an “aha” moment with the product. To counter that, instead of leading a demo, the team would let the prospect share their screen and guide them via Zoom’s annotation features. Clay got a ton of UX feedback, while the prospect learnt to use their product!
2 / Reframe your product through the lens of “Who does it help me become?” to identify the part that drives word of mouth.
Gamma’s CEO suggests getting beyond just capturing tasks and pain points during discovery. You have to figure out the self-image your product reinforces. Most products compete on features, but the ones that win compete on feelings.
3 / For new startups: Be wary of offering an AI ‘open’ text box as the first stop to your user, and instead opt for guided flows.
Upwork asks new users to enter what they want in an ‘open’ text box right after signing up. While the company may benefit from brand recognition, new startups trying to do the same may hurt themselves by assuming that users know what they want. Help users understand what’s available.
4 / On B2B influencers: Adopt a B2C mentality by weaving creators into your strategy as “co-architects” and not just promoters.
Bumble avoided any script and let comedian Amelia Dimoldenberg lean into her humor and voice. The takeaway for B2B is to co-create a narrative with creators, aligning on tone and story to reach the audience, rather than offering a finished brief.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See” by Seth Godin
1 / Think of marketing in 5 steps - (i) invent something with a story worth telling, (ii) design and build it in a way that a few people care about, (iii) tell a story that matches the built-in narrative of that tiny group of people (”smallest viable market”), (iv) spread the word, and (v) show up regularly, consistently, and generously for years and years.
2 / A bet you’d be better off making - “When in doubt, assume that people will act according to their current irrational urges, ignoring information that runs counter to their beliefs, trading long-term for short-term benefits, and most of all, being influenced by the culture they identify with.”
3 / “Effective marketers have the courage to create tension” to move people with paralyzing fear over the chasm to the other side. If you care about a change you want to make, care generously to create tension on behalf of that change.
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
1 / A new navigation paradigm: Is AI truly eliminating navigation, or is it simply shifting its agent and form?
2 / How The AI Bubble Will Burst: It’s Because of Finance, Again
3 / How to Build a GTM Dashboard That Doesn’t Fail
4 / Your Career Needs A Breaking Change: Forget resolutions. Change your defaults.
5 / How to choose which startup to join: A framework and system for making a better decision
Part 2 Release Date: Jan 31, 2026 (2 min read)
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
1 / Explore TRUST as your growth lever with these trust-building activities to counter rising product expectations and collapsing distribution channels.
The Head of Growth at Lovable emphasizes that we need to rethink our current growth models in an AI-first world where traditional SEO, paid search, and corporate social don’t work as effectively anymore. When users see AI commoditizing product capabilities, they expect your product to build a certain level of trust with them that you’ll continue to deliver better outcomes over time. Entertain transparent roadmap sharing, thoughtful lifetime comms, monetization aligned with outcomes, ‘WOW’ moments, as a first step in building that trust.
2 / For agentic products: Consider switching from monthly to quarterly billing to buy time for the learning curve and reduce customer churn.
AiSDR switched to quarterly billing to account for the commitment required from any customer, given the company’s hands-on support during the upfront setup. The quarterly billing serves as a filter to secure customer commitment and avoid quick churns before AiSDR can show value.
3 / Position your product around a repeatable human behavior and continue to reinforce it until your brand becomes the default expression of that behavior.
“I’ll Venmo you” is commonly heard around restaurant tables after dinner with friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Venmo took the awkwardness out of asking for your own money back by turning it into a peer-to-peer interaction with a social layer, complete with emojis, gifs, influencer campaigns, and all.
4 / Study the conflicts between the ‘to-do list’ and the ‘calendar’ of your customers to discover product opportunities.
Rob Snyder (a fellow at Harvard Innovation Labs) proposes the PULL hypothesis to get at the heart of a product or feature idea. For a customer: (i) What’s the project on their to-do list that’s blocked? (ii) Why is it urgent or unavoidable now? (iii) What is the list of options they’d consider or try? (iv) What are the limitations of their existing options?
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“High Output Management” by Andy Grove
1 / You can increase the productivity of a manager in 3 ways - (i) increase the rate at which they perform their activities, (ii) increase the leverage of their activities, (iii) shift the mix of manager activities from lower to higher leverage.
2 / A manager should maintain an inventory of projects that don’t need to be finished right away (“discretionary projects”). These are projects to increase the group’s long-term productivity.
3 / There are 3 Ls to keep in mind when delivering a review - (i) level, (ii) listen, and (iii) leave yourself out.
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
1 / The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026: Modern trends and history lessons across culture, politics, AI, economics, science, and the long story of progress.
2 / Everything I know about running UX Audits
3 / The Line Between AI-First and AI Theater: Letting product ownership be your guide
4 / Skill gives you power. Taste decides how you use it.
5 / 17 PMM Ways to Move Faster: Practical ways to compress timelines without compromising on quality
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