Product marketing is all about making your product sellable. You do this by understanding your buyers’ challenges and positioning your product as a solution to their problem.
A product marketer’s day might be spent writing positioning and messaging, launching new products and features, talking to customers, or enabling other teams to sell successfully. That’s why a Product Marketer sits at the intersection of product strategy, sales, customer success, and marketing.
In some companies, a product marketer works solely on product positioning. In others, they focus on sales enablement or driving demand and product adoption.
And in some companies, they do all of those things.
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What’s the difference between Product Marketing and Traditional Marketing?
Product marketing is all about driving demand and adoptionfor the specific products your brand sells. Traditional marketing, on the otherhand, focuses on promoting the company and its brand as a whole.
In product marketing, you target specific audiences for your products and solutions, and work on getting them to buy. You understand the specific buyer personas in your audience, like a Chief Revenue Officer, and what their pains and goals are, what they care about, how they measure success,and where they do their research. All this information helps you craft positioning that appeals to them. Your goal is to promote products in a way that resonates with customers to increase customer lifetime value, drive product adoption, and increase win rate and revenue.
In traditional marketing, your goal is to get people interested in your company. You focus on generating awareness of your brand and building trust with potential buyers.
So, if you're trying to decide whether to focus your efforts on product marketing or traditional marketing, think about what your goals are.If you're looking to drive demand and adoption for specific products, product marketing is the way to go. But if you're trying to promote your company and brand as a whole, traditional marketing is the way to go
What do you need for a Product Marketing strategy?
A good product marketing strategy requires a clear vision, data insights, and a product life cycle. Aligning your product with your company's vision is the most effective way to build repeat and loyal customers. Conducting customer research to understand key industry insights and what other companies are offering is essential to informing product development and marketing strategies. Modeling a product life cycle will allow you to better prepare for the unexpected and produce improvements in advance.
Vision: It's important to make sure that your products are in line with your company's vision. This will help with product development and also make it easier for customers to invest in your company. Having repeat and loyal customers is very important, so it's worth taking the time to ensure that everything is aligned.
Data Evaluation: In order to create an effective product marketing strategy, you'll need to have a good understanding of the key industry insights. You'll need to know what other companies are offering and how you can outperform them. Additionally, you'll need to know who your target customers are and what their primary source of pain is. Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to develop a product that provides value and solves a problem.
Life Cycle: One way to stay ahead of the competition is to model a product life cycle. By using customer insights,product marketers can change their marketing strategies over time. Being prepared for the unexpected will allow you to better prepare products, updates,and improvements in advance.
How do you build a GTM strategy?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to developing a product marketing strategy.
However, five major steps correspond to standardized product lifecycle marketing. And perhaps the most important is identifying a target demographic and distinct customer personas.
To identify your ideal customer:
- Examine both your current and prospective customer bases.
- Sort them according to the most common characteristics, pain points, motivation, demographics, career path, and education.
- Sort them by less popular characteristics such as hobbies, art preferences, and preferred sports.
- Create a hypothetical description of 2-3 people who will represent your buyer personas based on the above grouping.
- Give them names to make identification easier.
By doing this, you'll be able to adapt all aspects of your product marketing to your future customers.
Choose the most effective messaging
You might have a great product and a support staff that exemplifies first-rate customer care, but if you don't have messaging and positioning that resonates with your target market, then all of this is for nothing.
Creating messaging that is based on the following four points will help to ensure that you are on the right track:
- Who will use our product?
- What problems will the product solve?
- What sets this product apart?
- Why do consumers think this product is worth the price?
By having a clear understanding of these points, you can then share this information with marketing, sales, and customer service within the team to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Setting SMART Goals
It is not enough to have the right messaging: setting SMART goals for your product is crucial. The marketing priorities for a given product, company, and environment can vary greatly. This is also the step where you determine your product's price, which in turn allows you to forecast expected revenue and sales.
Be Ready
Every team involved in developing a product launch marketing plan should give it their undivided attention. The product marketer's job is to make sure all teams are prepared.
Make sure that everyone is aware of:
Customer pain points
Buyer personas
Company messaging
Product cost
In addition, if your product launch is online, make sure the website and demo work.
Develop a detailed launch plan
When your teams are ready, you can focus on launching the product. A successful launch plan is vital to the product's success. It is the most exciting part - putting all the previous points into action.
That means determining how you'll reach your target audience; namely, which channels you'll use.
Here are some suggestions:
Onsite launch
Blogs
Google ads / paid campaigns
Social media posts
Printed campaigns
Once you've got a detailed plan, you can focus on the actual launch.
What teams work in Product Marketing?
Product marketing teams may contain the following members:
Development
The development team will help you track your project's progress from concept to minimal viable product testing. If you need coding, assembly, supply sourcing, or manufacturing for your product marketing activities, the development team can help.
Demand generation
The demand generation team is responsible for creating and driving demand for the company's products or services. This can be through inbound marketing activities (such as search, social media, or website marketing) or outbound marketing activities (such as cold calling, conferences, or industry events). The demand generation team then nurtures these leads by providing the appropriate content and giving the sales team the context they need to sell.
PR and Brand
When it comes to product marketing, does your campaign reflect the company's values and standards? If not, the brand team will step in to provide you with the appropriate images, words, and logos. Meanwhile, PR will help you connect with the right media outlets.
Sales
Sales is a critical part of ensuring the success of your product. As such, you'll need to integrate your product into the sales team's daily agenda. This means working with them to create sales materials that emphasize the benefits and features of your product to potential customers. Once the launch is complete, they can also help you close sales and get more users.
Conclusion
Product marketing is critical for any business that wants to create and sell products. By understanding the basics of product marketing, businesses can create a plan to market their products effectively and reach their target audience. By using the right mix of marketing strategies, businesses can create a successful product marketing plan that will help them reach their sales goals.
If you're a product-led company or interested in pivoting into a product-led growth model, StaffGrabbers specializes in sourcing and recruiting all levels of Product Management, Product Design, Product Marketing and Product Analytics.
Reach out to us at hello@staffgrabbers.com for a white glove recruiting experience.
