9 Questions That Unlock Product-Focused Campaign Ideas (When You're Not Sure What to Talk About)

You know you should be running more product-focused campaigns.

The demand gen team is asking for assets. Sales wants fresh talk tracks. Your CEO keeps mentioning that new feature nobody's talking about.

But when you sit down to plan the next campaign, you hit the same wall: What do we actually talk about?

Feature announcements feel stale. The same three customer stories are getting recycled. And the "thought leadership" content isn't connecting product to pipeline.

Here's the fix: Stop trying to invent campaign ideas from scratch. Start asking better questions.

These 9 questions will surface product stories hiding in plain sight—the kind that make prospects lean in and sales teams say "finally, something I can use."

1. What is a big hairy problem customers solve with our product?

This is the foundation of product marketing, yet it's shockingly easy to lose sight of.

Not the problem your product could solve in theory. The problem customers are actually solving. The one that made them pick up the phone, sit through a demo, and fight for budget.

Talk to your customer success team. Listen to sales calls. Read support tickets. You're looking for the problems that come up again and again—the ones customers describe with emotion, not corporate-speak.

When you find it, don't just write about the problem abstractly. Show how your product has solved it for real customers.

The campaign angle: Create a problem-focused landing page or ad campaign that speaks directly to that pain. Lead with the problem, not your product. "Still spending 6 hours every week manually reconciling data?" hits harder than "Introducing our automated data sync feature."

What to avoid: Generic problem statements that could apply to any competitor. "Businesses struggle with inefficiency" isn't specific enough. "Finance teams waste 10+ hours per close cycle chasing down missing invoices" is.

2. What feature makes our customers say "Wow!"

Every product has wow moments—those features or experiences that make customers pause and say "wait, it does that?"

These moments often happen during demos or onboarding, when customers discover something unexpected. They might not be your most complex or expensive features. Sometimes they're small details that signal you truly understand the problem.

The challenge is that product teams and PMMs become blind to these moments. What's routine to you is revelatory to prospects.

How to find them:

• Ask your AEs: "What feature consistently gets the best reaction in demos?"
• Review Gong calls for moments of excitement or surprise
• Ask recently onboarded customers: "What surprised you most about the product?"

The campaign angle: Build campaigns around these wow moments. Short demo videos. Interactive product tours. Comparison content that highlights what competitors can't do.

Don't bury the wow moment under layers of context. Lead with it. "Watch what happens when you click this one button" is more compelling than a 47-slide feature overview.

3. What's a customer story that really got our team excited?

You probably have case studies. But do you have stories?

There's a difference. A case study is a formatted document with metrics and quotes. A story is a narrative that makes people care.

The stories that excite your internal team will excite prospects too. When your sales team voluntarily shares a customer win in Slack, when your CEO mentions it in an all-hands, when your support team celebrates it—that's signal.

What makes a story worth telling:

• Unexpected results (not just "improved efficiency")
• A transformation narrative (before/after that's visually striking)
• A customer willing to be vocal and specific
• Details that make it feel real, not sanitized

The campaign angle: Don't wait for a prospect to request references. Proactively share these stories in email sequences, on social, in ads, and during the sales cycle. Create multiple formats: written case study, video testimonial, customer webinar, podcast interview.

The best customer stories become multi-month content engines. A single great story can fuel a dozen pieces of content.

4. What can we demonstrate that is truly unique in the market?

This is where differentiation becomes tangible.

Most companies claim differentiation. Few can prove it. The question isn't "what do we say makes us different?" It's "what can we show that no competitor can show?"

This might be:

• A workflow that's 10x faster than alternatives
• A capability that simply doesn't exist elsewhere
• An integration depth that competitors can't match
• A user experience that's visibly superior

The campaign angle: Comparison content that's specific and demonstrable. Not "we're more user-friendly" but "here's a 2-minute video completing a task that takes 20 minutes in [Competitor]."

Side-by-side comparisons work when they're honest and specific. Vague differentiation claims ("best-in-class") are worse than no comparison at all.

Warning: Make sure your differentiators are still differentiated. Markets move fast. What was unique 18 months ago might be table stakes today. Regularly audit your competitive positioning.

5. How does our unique point of view show up in the product?

Every strong product company has a perspective on how things should work. A belief about the right way to solve a problem.

This POV shapes product decisions—what you build, what you don't build, and how features work. But often this philosophy stays internal, never making it into marketing.

When your POV aligns with how your product works, you have a powerful story.

Examples:

• "We believe sales enablement should be self-service" → Show how your product eliminates the need for a dedicated admin
• "We believe data should be accessible to non-technical users" → Demonstrate how your UI makes complex queries simple
• "We believe in workflows, not tools" → Walk through how your product guides users through complete processes

The campaign angle: Manifesto-style content that explains your philosophy, then product content that proves you live it. Blog posts that challenge industry assumptions, followed by demos that show your alternative.

This is especially powerful for early-stage companies competing against incumbents. You can't out-feature them, but you can out-vision them.

6. What features have strong adoption among a small set of customers?

Your power users know something your broader market doesn't.

Dig into your product analytics. Look for features with low overall adoption but extremely high usage among the customers who discover them. This is gold hiding in plain sight.

These features are often:

• Poorly marketed (customers don't know they exist)
• Discovered by accident during exploration
• Mentioned briefly in onboarding but never revisited
• Used heavily by a specific persona or use case

The campaign angle: "You're probably not using this yet" campaigns. Email sequences targeted at customers who haven't activated specific features. Content that shows power-user workflows. Webinars that reveal "advanced" use cases.

This approach serves dual purposes: it drives expansion revenue from existing customers while creating content that attracts similar prospects.

Tactical tip: Segment your customer base by feature adoption. Interview heavy users of underleveraged features. Their workflows and use cases become campaign content.

7. What capabilities solve a big pain but aren't top-of-mind in sales calls?

Sales teams develop muscle memory. They highlight the same features, tell the same stories, ask the same discovery questions.

This is efficient, but it creates blind spots.

Somewhere in your product is a capability that solves a real pain but rarely comes up in the sales process. Maybe it's a pain buyers don't articulate during discovery. Maybe it's a problem that emerges after implementation. Maybe it's a benefit that's hard to explain without showing.

How to find these hidden gems:

• Talk to customer success about problems solved post-implementation
• Review support tickets for pain points customers didn't anticipate
• Ask churned customers what they wish they'd known earlier
• Analyze which features correlate with retention but not with purchase

The campaign angle: Create content that introduces these capabilities as "things most buyers don't think to ask about." Position them as differentiators that become obvious once you're a customer—then make them obvious earlier.

This also makes great sales enablement content. Give your AEs new talk tracks that feel fresh to prospects who've seen multiple demos.

8. What features align with strategic company priorities?

Your company is probably repeating certain messages in the market. AI. Automation. Integration. Security. Sustainability. Whatever the strategic priorities are, marketing is amplifying them.

Product marketing should connect product to these priorities.

If your company is pushing an "AI-first" narrative, how does AI show up in your product? If security is a strategic differentiator, which product capabilities prove that?

The campaign angle: Thematic campaigns that connect product features to strategic narratives. An "AI across [Product]" campaign that shows every place AI enhances the user experience. A security-focused content series that details specific protections.

The benefit: These campaigns get internal visibility and executive support. They align product marketing with company strategy. And they reinforce consistent market messaging.

The risk: Don't force connections that aren't authentic. If your "AI features" are thin, don't run an AI-first campaign. Buyers will see through it.

9. What other marketing campaigns are planned this quarter?

Product marketing doesn't happen in isolation.

Your brand team has campaigns planned. Demand gen has initiatives running. Events are on the calendar. Content is being produced.

The question is: how does product fit into these stories?

Look for opportunities to piggyback on existing momentum:

• A brand awareness campaign could include product demonstration
• An industry event provides a hook for relevant product content
• A content series needs product examples and proof points
• A partner announcement creates opportunities for integration storytelling

The campaign angle: Align product launches and campaigns with broader marketing motion. If demand gen is running a "State of [Industry]" campaign, create product content that addresses the trends they're highlighting.

Why this matters: Coordinated campaigns get more resources, more distribution, and more impact than isolated product marketing efforts. You're not competing for attention—you're amplifying shared themes.

How to Actually Use These Questions

Don't treat this as a solo exercise. The best answers come from cross-functional input.

Run a 60-minute brainstorm with:

• Product marketing (you)
• Product management
• Sales (an AE who's in active deals)
• Customer success (someone close to accounts)

Walk through each question. Capture every answer, even rough ones. You're looking for volume at this stage.

Then prioritize ruthlessly:

• Which ideas align with current pipeline priorities?
• Which stories do we have proof points for?
• Which gaps in our content library are most painful?
• What can we execute in the next 30 days?

A single strong campaign idea, well-executed, beats five mediocre concepts running in parallel.

The Underlying Principle

All nine questions share a common thread: look for what's already working, then amplify it.

The best product marketing campaigns don't invent new narratives. They discover existing value that isn't being communicated—and find compelling ways to share it.

Your product is solving problems right now. Your customers are experiencing wow moments. Your differentiation is real.

The gap isn't strategy. It's visibility.

These nine questions close that gap. They surface the stories worth telling. They give you something concrete to talk about when the campaign brief feels blank.

Run the brainstorm. Ask the questions. Build the list.

Then start shipping campaigns that actually connect product to pipeline.