One of the questions I hear from marketers, especially more junior marketers, is some version of this:
How do I know what kind of marketer I am?
Because marketing is broad. You can go into content, demand gen, events, product marketing, brand, lifecycle, partnerships, community, and about 20 other directions. And if you work at a startup, you often end up doing a little bit of everything anyway.
That is why I loved this conversation with Bryan McCarty, Product & Marketing Leader at Lead. Bryan has moved between product marketing, marketing leadership, and product leadership across companies like Banno, Hummingbird, Orum, and now Lead. But even when his title changed, one thing stayed pretty consistent: product marketing was always his special sauce.
In this episode, we talked about what makes someone naturally suited to product marketing, why product marketers need to be involved much earlier than the launch stage, and how fintech teams can use better messaging, documentation, and internal rituals to make complex products easier to understand.
What is a T-shaped marketer?
A T-shaped marketer is someone with broad marketing knowledge, but one deeper specialty.
So you might understand events, content, demand gen, product, brand, and sales enablement at a general level. But there is usually one area where you naturally go deeper. One thing you enjoy more. One thing you keep gravitating toward, even when it’s not officially in your job description.
For Bryan, that was product marketing.
He started his career as a product marketer at Banno, an early-stage digital banking platform. Like many people at startups, he was doing a bit of everything: positioning, product launches, events, trade shows, SEO, demand gen, and customer conversations.
But what stood out was that he kept wanting to understand how the product actually worked. He wanted to know what customers were struggling with. He wanted to talk to engineers and designers about what he was hearing from the market, which is a pretty good sign that product marketing might be your thing.
Signs product marketing might be your special sauce
Product marketing is not just about writing launch copy or making a sales deck at the end of a product build.
The best product marketers are curious about the product itself. They want to know how it works, why it exists, what problem it solves, and where customers are getting blocked.
If you find yourself wanting to sit closer to product managers, engineers, sales teams, and customers, that might be a sign.
If you enjoy taking something technical and making it easier to understand, that might be a sign.
If you naturally listen for the phrases customers use, the objections they bring up, and the moments where something finally clicks for them, that might be a sign too.
And in fintech, this is especially important. A lot of fintech products are complex, technical, regulated, or infrastructure-heavy. You’re often explaining products to multiple audiences at once: product managers, compliance teams, CFOs, founders, developers, and commercial leaders.
That’s where product marketing becomes incredibly valuable. It helps translate the product into language each audience can understand.
Product marketing should not only happen at launch
One of the biggest themes from this conversation was that product marketing should be involved at the beginning, middle, and end of the product process.
At the beginning, product marketers can help bring customer insights into roadmap discussions. They can help product teams understand what customers are asking for, what problems keep coming up, and what language the market’s already using.
In the middle, they can help shape how the product is described. Bryan gave a really tactical example of reviewing PRDs, or product requirements documents. Even just being close to those early documents helps him understand the language, the product decisions, and the bigger picture before launch.
At Lead, one change they made was adding a launch and comms section directly into the PRD. It sounds small, but it matters. It signals that communication is not an afterthought. It gets the team thinking earlier about how the product will be explained internally and externally.
At the end, product marketers help launch the feature, enable the internal team, and look back at whether the launch actually moved the business forward.
That final part is important. A launch is not done just because the announcement went out. The real question is: did it help customers, unblock sales, support the roadmap, or drive the business forward?
Internal launches matter just as much as external launches
Another point I loved from Bryan was the importance of internal launches.
In fintech, especially remote fintech teams, it’s easy for different teams to be heads down in their own work. Product is building. Sales is selling. Customer success is talking to customers. Marketing is trying to package everything.
But if the internal team doesn’t understand what’s launching, the external launch will suffer.
Bryan talked about running internal enablement sessions before a feature goes live. That might mean walking the business development and account management teams through the feature, showing them the documentation, previewing the customer email, and giving people space to ask questions.
It’s not complicated, but it is easy to skip. And this is where product marketers often become the glue. They may not be the deepest technical expert in the room, but they help bring the right people together, create the right context, and make sure everyone understands what’s happening before it goes out into the market.
The one-page messaging house every fintech team needs
One of the most practical parts of the conversation was Bryan’s approach to messaging.
At Orum, they used a one-page messaging house, or master brand artifact, to get everyone aligned on how to explain the company.
The idea is simple: everyone in the company should be able to answer “What does this company do?” in the same way.
That sounds obvious, but in practice it’s rare. If you ask 10 people at a fintech company what the product does, you might get 10 slightly different answers. Each one might sound fine on its own. But together, they create confusion.
That confusion shows up everywhere: sales calls, website copy, event conversations, documentation, podcasts, newsletters, and now even in what LLMs say about your company.
This is why a messaging house matters. It gives the team one shared source of truth. The elevator pitch sits at the top. The products and benefits sit underneath. As you go deeper, the messaging can get more technical, but the top-level explanation should be clear and consistent.
For fintech teams selling complex products, that consistency builds trust.
Complex fintech products need different content for different buyers
One challenge in fintech is that you are rarely selling to just one type of buyer.
A product manager may want technical documentation, API details, diagrams, and implementation guidance. A CFO or commercial leader may want case studies, proof points, risk reduction, and confidence that the company can be trusted.
Those are very different needs. Bryan’s point was that you need different tools in the toolbox. Your marketing website might be written more for the non-technical executive. Your documentation site might serve the product manager or developer who wants to go deep. Your case studies might help leadership understand who else trusts you. Your internal experts might help answer risk, compliance, or technical questions during the sales process.
This is especially true in banking-as-a-service, payments, and fintech infrastructure where buyers are not just buying software, but confidence.
And often, the strongest trust-building asset is not just your content. It’s your people. Your compliance experts, risk leaders, product managers, and technical teams can all become part of the buyer experience when brought in at the right moment.
Using AI without losing the writing skill
We also talked about AI, and I think Bryan had a really balanced view.
AI can absolutely help product marketers. Bryan uses it to surface recurring questions from partner Slack channels, identify gaps in documentation, and understand where customers or partners might be getting stuck.
That kind of use case makes a lot of sense. If you’re a team of one, AI can help you multiply yourself. It can surface patterns you might not have time to manually find.
But we also talked about the risk. If you use AI to do all the writing for you, you may lose the very skill that makes you good at product marketing in the first place.
Because writing is not only output, but how you understand the product. When you write about a feature, edit a messy explanation, or try to reduce two pages of technical detail into one clear paragraph, you are learning. You are thinking. You are sharpening the message.
So yes, use AI. But do not outsource the thinking.
Key takeaways
- Product marketing is a natural fit for marketers who want to understand the product deeply, stay close to customers, and translate complexity into clear market language.
- The best product marketers are involved before, during, and after launch, not just when it’s time to announce the feature.
- Adding launch and comms planning into PRDs can help make communication part of the product process earlier.
- Internal enablement is just as important as the external launch, especially for remote fintech teams.
- A one-page messaging house can help sales, product, marketing, leadership, and even LLMs describe the company more consistently.
- AI can help product marketers surface insights and documentation gaps, but it should not replace the writing and thinking required to understand the product deeply.
Show notes
- [00:00] Intro
- [03:45] T-Shaped Marketer Mindset
- [05:56] Influencing The Product Roadmap
- [08:07] PMM Role Across Build Launch Learn
- [13:40] Internal Enablement Before Launch
- [15:05] Remote Rituals To Stay Aligned
- [20:15] Using AI Without Losing Skill
- [25:03] Messaging House Framework
- [28:30] Content For Two Audiences
- [37:19] Memorable Moments Strategy
- [40:33] Consistency For AI Discovery
Show links
- Lead on LinkedIn
- Bryan McCarty on LinkedIn
- Araminta Robertson on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios Website
- Mint Studios Newsletter
About Araminta Robertson
Araminta is the Founder and Managing Director at Mint Studios, an agency that turns content into measurable pipeline for fintech and financial services companies.
