Most climate tech founders are holding up their product to an empty room. 🤦♂️
But why?
The company skipped product marketing from the get-go.
🔧 Instead, they focused on building the product. And they held off on any product marketing until they hired their first product marketer years down the road.
Here’s the problem with this approach: product marketing should be LITERALLY one of the first steps in the earliest days of any climate tech startup.
Because product marketing includes…
⚫ Interviewing potential customers in the target market
⚫ Understanding their problem(s)
⚫ Capturing how target customers talk about the problem
⚫ Engaging with them to validate the proposed solution (and pricing)
⚫ Gathering feedback to test the feasibility and demand for the idea
⚫ Identifying and defining the ideal customer profile (ICP) for the product
⚫ Defining how the company solves the problem better than competitors
All of this is meant to help ensure the company builds a product that’s worth it.
Because it’s not enough to build a product that’s better for the planet; there still has to be a practical use case.
When climate tech startups skip all of this and just start making a product, they end up with a product no one needs.
This is a documented problem across startups, in general.
Listen to this. ⤵
Based on a 2021 report from CB Insights, 35% of failed startups said they failed because there was “no market need” for their product.
🙁 🙁 🙁
So climate tech startups that skip early product marketing do so to their peril.
In truth, product marketing shouldn’t be seen as a one-time activity once the product is built.
Instead, product marketing should be integrated into the entire product development lifecycle – ensuring the startup builds and continuously adapts the product to align with needs of real target customers.
For startups further down the road, it’s never too late to start this crucial marketing work.