What do product managers get wrong about product differentiation?

The most common mistake is to not think about it at all.

It can be so challenging to get a product built and shipped at your company that Product Managers naturally become very internally focused. They have dependencies to manage across other teams, they have timeline pressure from leadership, there are technical challenges to work around, etc.

On top of it all, most Product Managers don’t engage their Product Marketing counterpart until they are almost done building the thing. This should be avoided at all costs – your Product Marketing partner is key in helping guide and shape creating the best product that will land most favorably with your audience.

Product differentiation != new features.

New features can enhance differentiation, but these are not the same thing. For example, product differentiation can be predominantly delivered in the go-to-market if a product's "see-try-buy" motion is just inherently better than everything else available. The differentiation there is in the trial experience and ease of transaction - not necessarily in the latest feature.

Differentiation is not just a product team responsibility. However, as a product manager, you can help connect the dots from product differentiation to customer adoption and business value.

Product feature differentiation is the internal metric. As a product manager, you focus on competitor feature matrix tables, technical deep-dives, SWOT analysis and more. However, the external more important metric is customer focus and sustained business value. Focus on differentiated features that drive customer value, pricing and packaging that drive market share, and GTM execution that puts winning for customers and partners as the top priority.