Book Review: LOVED
Author: Martina Lauchengco
Product Marketing Leader
Marketing Partner, Costanoa Ventures
Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group
Why you should read this book: It’s just not enough to make a great product. You need to tell the world about it. You need to enable others to tell the world. And how you tell the world makes all the difference.
LOVED help me understand that great marketing is not about explaining yourself. It’s about connecting your product to your future customers.
With LOVED, I identified the holes in my marketing efforts and learned the techniques to fill them. It's aspirational and practical.
The book itself is organized around common sense concepts, not jargon. In the LOVED approach, these are the easy-to-remember responsibilities: ambassador, strategist, storyteller, and evangelist.
Instantly, by seeing those four areas, I know what I’m good at and what I’m missing. I can do a gap analysis with my team to find out where we need to improve.
Since LOVED is well-structured, I can jump to any section and get started. And it flows well enough that I actually read it straight through. There are plenty of Silicon Valley stories, examples and case studies in the book to illustrate the author’s points.
With or without a dedicated product marketer, any company can use this book to ensure that the responsibilities above get done and that your marketing works smarter, not harder.
What’s unique about this book: This is a holistic approach, not a marketing-only approach. Product marketing success is a cross-functional team effort from the moment the product is made to the moment the deal is closed. What aspect of the product is the one that will gain attention in the market? How will you figure this out?
What about the content and strategy of your marketing, not just the volume of it? Has your marketing team done their homework? How can you hold your marketing team accountable for success? How can you bridge the gap between marketing, product, and all facets of the business?
LOVED implores you to answer these important questions and more.
My Advice: Read one fundamental at a time and reflect on how you’re doing with respect to that fundamental. For example, I read about the Ambassador fundamental and that turns out to be a strong point for me. However, when I read about the Storyteller fundamental, I learned I was weak in this area so I’ve been spending more time here. My favorite product marketer that I’ve worked with is amazing at enabling others to be evangelists.
Audience: This book is easily for non-marketers like Product Managers, CEOs, Heads of Sales, Heads of Product and anyone adjacent to marketing. I can’t speak for Marketers since I’m not one but the book is very explicit on how to run Product Marketing functions and how to connect these to the rest of the business.
Style: It is reference-like which is similar to other Silicon Valley Product Group books. LOVED has more diagrams, tables and boxed excerpts that go in depth about the points that the author is making.
Disclosure: I work with the author from time to time on projects. That said, I have put these practices into play with my own company and with my clients and have seen them to be successful.
Jim Morris, Product Discovery Group
Jim coaches Product teams to collaborate with each other and seek customer input early and often during the design and ideation phase.
