Product Marketing Explained: What Is Product Marketing?

Product marketing is the process by which a business communicates product information to potential customers for the purpose of sales enablement. In today's business environment, a successful product launch is only one touchpoint in the product development lifecycle. The launch is almost always paired with a product marketing campaign. A successful campaign traditionally starts with conducting market research to identify a target audience and ends with analyzing the success of the email marketing, content marketing, or traditional marketing efforts. Product marketers oversee the ad campaigns from start to finish and typically specialize in product positioning and product marketing strategy.

Product marketing is important for businesses looking to increase product awareness and sales. For a small business to succeed, it needs both a high-quality product and an effective marketing strategy that educates new customers about the product’s value proposition.

Your company's go-to-market strategy will hinge on many factors—including your existing customer base, your sales channels, and your overall marketing budget—but use this template as a starting point.

1. 1. Learn about the product you are selling. Product marketing managers (PMMs) should spend time with their company's product development teams learning about product functions, new features, and the various product usage possibilities. For example, a startup selling software as a service (SAAS) might offer a thorough onboarding process that teaches the PMMs how the software works.
2. 2. Assess the market and identify competitors. Understanding the competition can help you better define the niche for your own product. It can also help you learn how competitors sell similar products. Consider whether they emphasize online marketing or traditional advertising and how they designed the landing page on their website to identify opportunities for product differentiation.
3. 3. Use customer research to create a portrait of your target customer. A great product marketer has a deep understanding of their core customer base. As you prepare to market your product line, consider your ideal customer profile. Researching this information will help you determine how you might tailor your strategy to meet your target customers’ needs.
4. 4. Set a marketing plan and budget. Research the cost of a substantive marketing campaign and draft a proposed marketing strategy and budget to share with your executive team. This is a good time to identify what a successful campaign will look like and the key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to track that success. Embrace the reality of adjustments and compromise as you settle on a plan.
5. 5. Begin your ad buys. Depending on your budget and marketing plan, you might advertise your new product via digital ads on ad networks, in traditional media like TV, radio, and print publications, or via billboards or paid promotions. If you plan to aim for organic reach with customer-facing content like blog posts, podcasts, and webinars, set your team to work creating these materials. By contrast with traditional ads, the goal with content marketing should not be pushing sales so much as providing valuable educational content about product features and building brand awareness.
6. 6. Monitor your campaign metrics and adjust as needed. Not every marketing campaign establishes the perfect product-market fit from the outset. You may need to modify your messaging or offer more enticing pricing promotions. Adjustment is not an admission of failure but rather a savvy strategy that will help your company reach its target audience and convert people into paying customers.

A product marketer steps in after the product has been invented, developed, and tested to help design and execute a launch plan.

1. 1. Understanding market needs: Great product marketing teams understand customers' pain points, what other products already exist on the market, and the price points that will fit most consumer budgets.
2. 2. Identifying target audiences: Product marketing managers and their teams develop buyer personas that describe their target customers. These buyer personas may describe aspects like age, gender, nationality, politics, personal interests, and other elements that help marketers create relevant campaigns.
3. 3. Product messaging: Product marketers must develop campaigns that highlight their product features, product usage, and the product's value to customers.
4. 4. Providing valuable content: Companies often reach their clients through content marketing, or the process of developing web videos, podcasts, and blog posts to attract customers. Product marketing managers hire creative teams to create these content deliverables, and then they disseminate them online.
5. 5. Interfacing with salespeople: Product marketers and salespeople are equal stakeholders in a product development cycle. Product marketing managers must listen to their sales teams and review sales metrics to make sure their company's marketing strategy is serving its sales goals.
6. 6. Adjusting based on customer feedback: The final stage of the product lifecycle is focused on the customer experience and retention. Marketing teams monitor their campaigns to see if they’re effective at generating customer conversions. If not, they might use customer feedback to develop new messaging or entirely new marketing tactics. Customizing the messaging for various market segments can lead to greater customer engagement and greater downstream revenue.

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