Odds are that you bought the device you’re using to read this based on many factors. One of those factors, whether you realize it or not, had to do with how it was marketed.
But what is product marketing? It’s a complex topic, but one that every successful business has a firm grasp of. Let’s take a look at some of its key elements, plus some tips to use if you plan on bringing a product to consumers.
What Is Product Marketing?
Product marketing can be defined as the activities used to help customers choose to buy a specific product. Product marketing managers usually perform the activities so customers can be taken along specific journeys that lead to a product being purchased.
A huge piece of product promotion is your messaging and positioning. Messaging is what you say to your audience when you’re marketing products. Positioning is how you want your audience to feel about your products. These are two concepts that work together, but more on that later.
Now that you have a grasp on product marketing, let’s take it apart and see what’s inside this concept.
Key Elements of Product Marketing
Getting an answer to the question “What is product marketing?” is simple enough. But learning how to market a product is a little harder.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take many courses to get an understanding of product marketing and promotion. We’ll walk through some key elements that you’ll need to know if you’re thinking about marketing products.
Get Familiar With Your Product
Before you start developing and executing product marketing plans, you’ll need to get familiar with your product. If you don’t understand your product, it’ll be hard to convince anyone to buy it.
Take your time to meet with product designers and anyone else involved in developing what you’re promoting. Use the product yourself and ask questions. This will help you get acquainted with what makes your product so special and its key benefits to consumers.
Conduct Market Research
The foundation of any successful product marketing strategy and plan is research. It gives you a deeper understanding of what your customers are looking for in a product. You’ll see which features they appreciate, which ones they don’t, and their pain points.
You can also use this as an opportunity to learn more about your competitors. Find out what you think they’re doing right, and what they’re missing when reaching customers. Identifying these gaps can give you an edge when strategizing.
Create and Understand Your Personas
Depending on your product, your audience will include many types of people. That’s good for sales, but only if you avoid generic strategies and tactics.
The best way to develop plans with a refined strategy is to create buyer personas. Personas are fictional representatives of your product’s ideal customer. They can cover common characteristics, needs, and pain points.
Creating these personas let you group different types of customers together. They’re especially helpful for marketers since they can think of this “person” when talking to customers, not just separate demographics.
A well-made persona isn’t pulled out of thin air. Refer back to what you discovered while conducting market research. Use these insights to create accurate personas for your product promotion plan.
Develop a Product Marketing Strategy
Developing a strategy for marketing products is an in-depth process. For larger business, many stakeholders across a variety of teams are involved.
All these people come together to create a product marketing strategy that will:
- Decide on positioning. This involves telling the story of your product through answering key questions customers might have. Think about what challenges customers have that your product solves. Answer what makes your product stand out from the crowd.
- Develop messaging. The messaging works hand in hand with your positioning. This is where you work out what’s the best way to tell your personas about your product. These messages will be seen on your website, in-store, and on the product packaging itself, so make them relatable!
- Choose a price point. Setting a price may not be a strict marketing function, but marketing managers will have a hand in the process. Use insights gained from market research to meaningfully contribute to price discussions.
- Set tactics. Your strategy sets out the what you’re doing when marketing products. Tactics are the how. This can be email marketing, social media, direct mail, or other deliverables. It depends on what your team think is the best way to conduct product promotion.
Plan and Execute Launch Plans
Launching a product is more involved than just releasing an item online or dropping it off on store shelves. Your launch plans should be ready to go when your product is ready for market.
Create plans that can prepare internal audiences for launch. Internally, your teams and coworkers should know a few things about the product. Your messaging to them should include any benefits, information on personas, and product demo info.
Your external audiences can be primed for launch as well. Start up your social media campaign to build up hype. Publish your product landing page. In-store activations can drive your customers to take action before launch. These are all options for reaching your audience in anticipation of your product launch.
Promote Your Product
Once your product is released, the promotion really kicks in. This stage is especially important when launching a new product. In a crowded marketplace, you’ll have to work hard to make your voice heard.
Your product marketing strategy should cover how to market a product post launch. This is when you’ll use the bulk of your marketing tactics. It’s important to stay on message and trust your product marketing strategy here.
Top 5 Product Marketing Tips for Success
Knowing how to market a product is a great first step towards recording sales. If you want to improve your success rate, follow these product marketing tips.
1. Don’t Work in Silos
It takes a village to bring a product to market. During the process, it’s important to not work completely in silos.
Communicate and work with other teams to make informed decisions about the product. Understanding what choices other teams make will help you see how to best market a product to your personas.
2. Stay Organized
This may not seem like a worthy addition to a list of product marketing tips because it seems simple. But keeping track of all your marketing activities is anything but simple.
Create an editorial calendar that lets you see when you’re publishing new materials. You can also lean on the many online tools for planning and organizing your marketing. Platforms like Monday, Wrike, and Trello will make your marketing efforts easier.
3. Engage With Your Audience
Interacting with your customers is important for many reasons. Create trust in your product and company when you talk to them on a human level. You’ll also see their comments and concerns about your product in real time. It’s also an opportunity to gain insights for future product marketing plans and promotions.
4. Track Your Efforts
It’s near impossible to accurately see how well your product marketing strategy is working without tracking. Set key performance indicators, or KPIs, early. Defining what these targets are gives you tangible goals to aim for. Define how you’ll measure these KPIs so you can later see whether you underperformed, hit, or exceeded these goals.
5. Be Adaptable
The last of our product marketing tips is to be adaptable. It’s important to create a strategy that you can stick to because it’s based on market research and insights. But if what the strategy outlines isn’t working, don’t be afraid to pivot. Adapt to what your audiences are doing and redevelop your product marketing plan.
Learn More About Marketing From Envato Tuts+
Marketing is a deep subject that everyone can gain understanding of with the right resources. If you want to expand your knowledge, stick right here on Envato Tuts+. We have useful tutorials and guides to get you started, like the ones below:
Download Unlimited Product Marketing Materials With Envato Elements
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And unlimited means unlimited. Download everything across categories like presentation templates, photos, and more without unnecessary caps. Sign up for Envato Elements today and take advantage of this amazing offer for your marketing needs.
Go Forth and Market
I hope this article has answered the question “What is product marketing?” for you. The explanation and product marketing tips will provide a useful foundation for your own efforts. Good luck and have fun on your promotion journey!