What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is a well-known role in the technology industry with most mid to large-sized organizations employing Product Management and Product Marketing folks to manage product requirements, product release cycles, and the go-to-market strategy. These are the roles I held during my corporate career. Although my experience has focused on products and services that are associated with implementing and educating on software solutions, Product Marketing (and Product Management for that matter), is relevant regardless of the type of product or service you offer.
What is Product Marketing?
Understanding how Product Marketing fits into your company and is different from other traditional forms of Marketing can be a challenge. Product Marketing is a distinct discipline that brings value to any size and type of business. Product marketing is different from what many think of as traditional marketing, such as Marketing Communications, Online Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations. However, Product Marketers will leverage these channels in order to market your products or services.
Product Marketers are ultimately responsible for the market success of your product/service. In order to achieve this success they must build a thorough knowledge of the associated market, target customer and competitors to guide your product and go-to-market strategy. They take careful approach to understanding the buyer of your product or service, developing targeted positioning, messaging, competitive differentiators and enabling both Sales and Marketing to generate leads and close opportunities. This is strategic marketing at its best – Focusing on your true product benefits, differentiating you from the competition in a very clear, defensible and monetarily productive manner and empowering your sales teams with resources to make them successful. Before you know it, you’ll be speaking with your defined target market in a way that resonates with them.
Product Marketing fills a gap that has existed for far too long in many businesses.
What happens without Product Marketing?
Some businesses manage their marketing by throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. They just throw one thing after another at their “wall” of customers hoping that something will “stick.” Needless to say, this is messy, expensive and sucks up a lot of time.
Imagine you have a product or service that you know is amazing. You know you are offering it in a different way than all of your competitors. You hire a web designer to build you a beautiful website, you start posting on Facebook and Twitter. You then contract with an email marketing company to send out emails to promote your product. Finally, you start a blog that focuses on your product. You build up a few Facebook followers; you even get a few customers from the email marketing. Unfortunately, you’ve spent a lot of money and energy without much strategy or focus. You’re not getting the return you expected on your investment.
The step that many businesses skip is one that makes all the difference in the world. Product Marketing builds a foundation for your product or service that results in a synergistic message across all of your marketing and sales activities and a streamlined marketing strategy that is sure to “stick.”
Many businesses run lean when it comes to Product Marketing and this is where an outsourced expert is your best friend. Your business can continue to run lean and still leverage the expertise of an experienced Product Marketer without incurring the overhead costs that come with recruiting and training a full-time employee.
As an external resource, I’ll act as an extension of your team, helping you bring profitable, problem-oriented products or services to market so that you can achieve more at a much lower cost.
Reach out and let’s chat about your Product Marketing needs.