Perspective
Before I worked in tech, I spent two years teaching second graders in a low-income government school in Delhi, and five more years leading program strategy across Teach For India's largest site. It was the hardest work I've done. It was also, I realize now, where I learned to be a product marketer.
You can't sell what doesn't land in context.
Classroom
State textbooks described festivals my students had never seen. I rebuilt lessons around their neighborhoods and families. Participation shifted immediately.
Meta, Bihar
"Connect with the world" meant nothing to first-time female users. Onboarding guides built around their real goals got them to show up.
Context wasn't a positioning layer. It was the reason they showed up at all.
Lead with the outcome, not the feature.
Classroom
Attendance was 30%. Families saw no reason to prioritize school. Home visits and community sessions showed them what education could unlock for their daughters.
Meta, ad tools
Messaging about targeting capabilities landed flat with NGOs. Showing them their campaigns were reaching wider audiences with better recall moved adoption.
The feature was the same. The frame changed everything.
Treat every launch as a hypothesis.
Classroom
A quiet student told me she couldn't follow reading lessons but was too embarrassed to speak up. I restructured into small reading circles. By term end, the shyest readers were participating.
Meta, creator programs
Roundtables revealed that training modules were technically sound but tonally intimidating. Conversational rewrites lifted completion rates. Those insights shaped simpler onboarding docs.
Every classroom I taught in had thirty students telling me, in real time, whether my approach was working. Product marketing is the same job with different data.