Product marketing is a function that bridges the gap between product management and marketing. It can be defined as the process of bringing a product to market. Apart from that, it also impacts the creation of the product itself, using marketing insights.
Table of Contents
What is Product Marketing?
The product marketing process can be broken down into two parts, before and after a product launch. It connects products and markets. There are two distinct flows in Product Marketing. First, an analysis of the market needs and demands to help shape the product. Second, bringing the product to market. While shaping the product, research is done on customers and competition. Plus, the pricing is changed to match product value and market value.
Product marketing entails raising awareness, creating content, managing a team, and coordinating the delivery process. It is a process that involves everything about the promotion, positioning, reshaping, and selling of the product. In short, product marketing brings the product to the market and promotes and sells it to potential customers. You need to know the product’s target audience to use strategic positioning and to message to drive demand and revenue.
Why is Product Marketing important?
Product marketing focuses on boosting demand for a product among existing customers. It concentrates on people’s steps to purchase a product so marketers can build support campaigns. Product marketing is vital because it is all about audience understanding at a deep level, developing a product and its messaging to appeal to said audience. Product marketing covers launch and execution as well as a marketing strategy. Hence a product manager’s work lies in the middle of a firm’s marketing, product and sales teams. Creating the right product for the market is one of the most vital stages of growth.
You can identify and push the right product to your consumers through product marketing, driving sales and profits. Product marketing plays an indispensable role in business expansion. Without product marketing, your product will not realize its full potential among your audience.
Product Marketing Goals
Understanding customers better – When a product marketing strategy is implemented, your target audience gets an idea of the value your product is creating in their lives. You need to focus on figuring out how customers gravitate to your product.
Effective Targeting – Product marketing helps you to target your buyer personas effectively. Apart from understanding your customers, you need to consider the future. What sort of buyer persona are you targeting? Knowing their needs can help you innovate your product to suit customer requirements.
Learn about your competition’s products and marketing tactics – While you market your product, you can compare your marketing strategy with that of your competitors. Concentrate on the features or benefits their products offer. Are they exploring new ideas? How does their product differ from yours? Answering such questions can help you craft your product marketing strategy more effectively.
Bring Everyone On The Same Page – Marketing, product, and sales teams need to be clued in on this. Your product’s offering must be clear to your audience and your team members. Everyone in your business needs to know everything about the product to perform their roles better.
Product Positioning – For your audience, your product, brand image, and tone of voice must be consistent to ignite the right feelings within them. Try to gauge whether your product is suitable for modern markets. How is it different from the competition? Is there a way you can further differentiate your product from competitors? Are there any previously-sold products that you would not sell again?
The 7 Ps of Product Marketing
Product – This depends on what firm you run and what kind of product you’re offering. Not every one of the 7 P’s may be applicable. Gauge your competition, find consumer personas and position your product and message accordingly.
Pricing – This is one of the most important ones. Zeroing in on the most appropriate price depends on market conditions, customer’s willingness to pay, and competitors’ pricing.
Place – Whether it is product distribution offline or online, it is your choice. This, again, depends on the kind of company you have and the product you’re offering.
Promotion – This has to be the most important P of all. Promotion involves how a product is presented to a target market and includes brand awareness. It also answers the critical question of where you want to advertise your product. Your promotion strategy defines your channels of advertising. You get to decide how you want to reach your target market. Want to use billboards or hold events? Sell door to door or open a counter in a mall. This is a stage that sets your channel of promotion.
Process – Each product marketer has a different approach. Modify functions and optimize them based on your product and company’s goal. Processes can be broken into strategy and execution.
People – How do you handle your managers and employees that create the product you sell? How many people do you need to get work done, and do you have the means to hire professionals for a product launch?
Physical Environment – This is about the consumer’s experience while buying your goods and the perceptions of your brand. For online shops, it boils down to website quality and package delivery experience.
Steps to Optimize your Product Marketing Strategy
Define TG and Buyer’s Persona – You need a well-defined target audience and buyer personas for the products sold. The more varied the product, the more varied the audience. This is the first step to marketing your product. Understanding your customer’s needs and solving their pain points will ensure that all aspects of your product marketing strategy are geared toward solving customer issues. Your product and the marketing content around it will resonate with your audience.
Formulate a Tone of Messaging to Set Your Product Apart – Post customer research and learn about your audience’s needs, challenges, and pain points, you could go on to think of how to highlight the ways your product or service resolves those challenges. This alone doesn’t mean you’re any different than your competitors. The central aspect of keeping your product apart is positioning and messaging, which solve vital customer queries. Product marketers must ensure that customers know the answers to specific questions like what makes your product unique, what sets it apart from the competition, and more. Once these questions are answered, the responses can be compiled into one impactful statement that summarizes your positioning. Sales, product, and marketing teams should be aware of the messaging around the product so they can communicate the same information to prospective and current customers.
Set Goals For Your Product – Set goals based on the product type, company profile, and overall marketing plan. Some common goals are increased revenue, higher customer engagement, improved market share, and increased brand recognition. Use the SMART goal format. Smart stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.
Price Your Product – As a product marketer, your input towards coming up with the price for your product will be needed. You might need to work with other teams on this part of the product marketing strategy, or you might be alone working. Here, there are two scenarios to consider. Competitive vs. value-based pricing.
Competitive pricing is excellent for companies who create products similar to one that several other firms sell. The price is based on these similar products. However, as a product marketer, if your product’s unique features warrant a higher markup, you might want to price your product above the average market rate. Financial reports and industry trends can give you an idea of how to price your product.
Value-based pricing takes a little more time to establish than competitive pricing, allowing you to maximize your profit. This pricing model is great for firms selling a product with few peers in the market, something new with unique features. Value-based pricing quantifies your product’s value so your customers can relate to their profitability. You can base your product’s price on its value for the customer rather than what the industry trends, market, or competition say.
Product Launch is perhaps the essential part of a product marketer’s role. There are two parts to any launch. Internal and external. Internal launches deal with what goes on within your company, and external launches deal with what goes on outside the company with audience members.
How do you measure the impact of a Product Marketing Strategy?
Every campaign’s efficiency must be measured, and product marketing campaigns are no exception. Here are some important metrics that you can use to measure campaign success.
Overall Revenue Goal – At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of most firms is good sales. Every marketing team will always count revenue among their metrics.
Win Rates – Measuring sales success by win rates is vital for the firm to meet its revenue goals and reflect the efforts of the product marketing team. Measure overall win rates and slice this data by the sales team, product, and competition, to find out more strengths and opportunities and closely work with and recognize the contribution of the product marketing team.
Product Launch Metrics – Content views, new consumer numbers, and more are the usual market strategy metrics used during product launches.
Product Usage – Here’s another metric that can boost your overall revenue. Metrics such as cross-sell numbers or upsell numbers are one to include.
Customer Satisfaction and Retention – These metrics can correlate with others to form product marketing goals. Retention rates are a direct metric that can align customer happiness with profit goals.
Qualitative Feedback – It’s not all a numbers game. Quantitative KPIs tell only part of the story, so most teams get qualitative feedback.
Real-Life Examples of Great Product Marketing
Apple – A household name and a giant in the electronic goods sector, Apple’s products are gorgeously designed and valuable. Their product marketing focuses on user benefits instead of product features. Instead of just listing the features of their products like other manufacturers, Apple uses those features to show consumers who they can be and how they could work if they used those products. Apple gives a narrative through its products, encouraging purchase decisions.
Pepsi – Pepsi has positioned itself as a youthful, energetic, and exciting brand, as evident in its product marketing campaigns. Pepsi’s target audience is between 13 and 35 years old and leads modern and active lifestyles. Celebrities like Doja Cat in a commercial make sense for this brand. The soda brand has become a household name thanks to its targeted positioning, repetitive advertising, and consistent branding.
MailChimp – Despite so many email marketing tools on the market, MailChimp has been unfazed by the competition. The company has successfully positioned itself to be more than just an email marketing tool, morphing into an all-in-one marketing system that helps businesses grow. This has made it rise above its competitors.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, product marketing is a process that involves user feedback to reshape your product. There are quite a few product marketing strategies, yet online ones like online product sampling and paid search are doing well thanks to the pandemic. Most product sampling strategies involve brands that connect emotionally with their consumers. For any marketing strategy to succeed, you must know your consumers profoundly and personally. A product marketing strategy has to tell a story. It is a process of bringing a product to market. Being a product marketer means being in the center of your firm’s sales, marketing, and product teams. You are essential to your product’s success as your strategy will help launch it and ensure its eventual success.
