Product Marketing That Builds Real Connection
by Jayson Miller
Strong product marketing is like creating a new friendship. Behavioral psychologists have long studied how people make new friends, and the same basic process applies whether you’re trying to nurture a new friendship or create a connection with a new audience.
Whether it's promoting technology products, learning platforms, or consumer wellness brands, my work has followed this same simple and effective strategy: become known, spark interest, make engagement easy, and keep people interested.
Step 1: Be where your audience already is
You can’t build a relationship if no one knows you exist. Awareness is about presence. It’s about understanding who your audience is, where they spend their time, and what influences their decisions. Before building any campaign, gather what you can about a specific audience’s behaviors and preferences.
At NYU, before launching any technology campaign, I worked across departments to gather relevant audience insights. This meant pulling support ticket data, collaborating with service teams, and reviewing search trends and social media behavior. I also interviewed users directly to understand where they got their information and what signaled value to them. This helped anchor decisions about where to invest effort and created confidence in the campaign.
Being visible in the right places early on gives every campaign a stronger start. You can even start before your actual campaign begins. Discovery shouldn't be left to the last minute. Develop audience insights and immediately create a presence.
Step 2: Offer value that sparks curiosity
Once your audience knows you exist, the next step is to give them a reason to care. Just like developing a new friendship, you nurture interest by creating something that your audience is interested in.
For a global nonprofit client, I led a campaign promoting regional learning programs. To generate interest, I created short videos, case studies tailored to common access issues across regions, and a periodic publication that included digestible, genuinely helpful content around topics that mattered to them, and I knew what that was because I'd taken the time in the first stage to get to know what they were interested in. Each issue earned high engagement and subtly integrated product mentions without overwhelming the reader. That content helped recipients see the programs as useful, not promotional.
By leading with value, the content built trust and opened the door to deeper engagement.
Step 3: Make it easy to act
Now that you've built interest, make it easy to act. In both friendship and product marketing, availability and easy access matter.
At JPMorgan, I worked on campaigns to promote firmwide adoption of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) tools. I partnered with product leads to simplify user onboarding by improving landing pages, reducing redundant steps in setup flows, and embedding contextual help right where users needed it. I also worked closely with product design teams to ensure instructions were clear and logically placed, eliminating common drop-off points. These changes also had the additional benefit of lowering the number of support tickets. By improving product onboarding and resolving common access issues, I was able to enhance the experience for both new and existing users.
Conversion works best when the next step is obvious and the experience is intuitive. Make it as easy as possible for users to say yes.
Step 4: Keep earning their friendship
After someone becomes a customer, the effort doesn’t end. Loyalty is about staying useful and continuing to show up in a way that’s meaningful, not excessive.
To support user retention at NYU, I developed follow-up content that responded to user behavior. I reviewed support queries, usage data, and feedback and then produced materials that addressed them, including walkthroughs, tip sheets, and quick-start videos. I also launched a spotlight series that highlighted how different teams and individual users were interacting with technology tools to solve real problems, creating a sense of shared community while celebrating successes.
Keeping people engaged means staying useful. This is what keeps customers coming back. However, a note about follow-up engagement. Many marketers are tempted to over communicate to customers through daily emails or alerts. This can often have the opposite effect of driving away customers. It's important to monitor email open-rates, click-through rates, website data, and other customer touch points to ensure you are not contributing to customer fatigue. Imagine a new friend who was always there. Wouldn't that annoy you? Don't be the marketer that a customer can't get rid of and has to eventually unsubscribe from because they feel bombarded by constant messaging.
Final Thoughts
No matter what type of campaign I've worked on, there is always a shared marketing process behind the work. Start by learning who your audience is and where they spend their time. Provide something useful that sparks interest. Make it easy for them to act, and keep earning their engagement through thoughtful follow-up.
That’s the model I’ve used across campaigns for technology products, learning programs, and consumer wellness brands. Always aim to begin with really getting to know your audience (and potential new friend!) and continuing with building a long-lasting relationship.