Welcome to Technians’s Product Marketing Blog Series, you are currently reading the first article on ‘How to Define Product Marketing & its Implementation from Scratch‘. Your next read is on how to plan a product marketing roadmap with connected strategies. To see the complete list of articles in the product marketing guide, click here.
What Product Marketing Truly Is
Before we dwell into a concrete definition of the topic, let’s instead start with a small practical example.
Suppose you own a bicycle startup company called ‘Red-On Bicycles’. Your company has a special model, ‘Furious X’ to be launched in the next 60 days.
What challenges do you think Red-On faces?
Here’s a little help. Your challenges will be-
- Research & Development
- Product Creation
- Product Positioning
- Product Messaging
- Launch
- Sales
- Marketing
- Improvisation
If you look closely, this is overseeing the whole lifecycle of your product and ensuring that it succeeds throughout before it declines.
This is exactly what product marketing is not about.
Product Marketing is actually a sub-part of this process, it is the positioning and messaging of a product in the marketplace that perfectly solves the problem for which the product was developed. Or it can be defined as the alignment of a product’s position and its messaging with the problems of the customers so that the customers understand the product and buy it to solve their problem.
What It Is Not
So, in Red-On Bicycles, you appointed Mr K for overseeing the product’s success throughout its lifecycle. Mr K did a wonderful job right from the beginning till the very decline of the product, and the show was an overall hit. Here, Mr. K is a Product Manager and not a Product Marketer.
A Product Manager overlooks the whole process and performs a cross-functional job like participating in the technical part of product development to make it more useful for the intended customers.
Then he moves on to the senior management to get their approvals or to get more inputs into the product and revise its development.
Thereafter, he gives instructions to the sales and marketing team to specifically position the product according to the customer understanding research.
Then he decides on the messaging to catch the targeted audience with the right content at the right time.
At the time of the launch, the Product Manager ensures that the right platforms are chosen for the usage and marketing of the product.
And finally, improvisations become a lifelong task.
Also, why did you think that the cycle would be red?
But, Where Does A Product Marketer Fit?
A Product Marketer comes somewhere in between in the above-described process, which is actually the most crucial part of the whole process, the ‘Marketing Bit’ of the Product. A Product Marketer solely lives and dies by the positioning and messaging of the product, to build its value and understanding within the targeted customer base and lastly make it sell through his circumscribed efforts.
Finally, in order to define this concept, it is to be understood that Product Management is more holistic when it comes to making a product succeed. While Product Marketing is a niche that is necessary to achieve the end goals of product management. Hence, a separating line is well required while defining the two positions in a company, however, the two roles when in a company need to be integrated to get the job done.
So, a Product Manager requires a Product Marketer to complete the marketing puzzle for the product’s success.
And Voila! In the end, we can clearly define it and differentiate the two confusing roles. Here is a Venn diagram for the same-
Is Product Marketing That Important?
A simple reason to back the logic behind implementing this niche is assuring the product’s success in the market. Product marketing is primarily connected with whom to market the product.
It is in turn backed by the heavy research that goes into understanding the customer’s needs, creating value in the product, making a go-to-market strategy, aligning sales and marketing, and putting across the right messages to the right people.
A product’s own terrific USPs cannot make it sell. Here’s where this special job comes in.
Example – Cadbury Dairy Milk Shots!
Cadbury resonates with the pinnacle of impactful ads. The brand is known to be dynamic with a fresh product just around the corner. But do you remember this iconic ad campaign of Dairy Milk Shots? The whole campaign was set around promoting Cadbury’s new product – Dairy Milk Shots. The message and positioning behind the product were different from its predecessors, rather than attaching the audience emotionally via showcasing the product as a crucial part of different festivals and occasions. Dairy Milk Shots was positioned as an energetic & on-the-go product that made you feel lucky to have it while doing other tasks. The message was along the same lines- have your Dairy Milk Shot on the Go!
Product Marketing Is A Niche!
Traditional marketing is a complete umbrella system that runs to sell the brand to its targeted audience. However, product marketing is a niche that just works around creating demand for a product, making the perfect value proposition of a product, successfully marketing the product and successfully selling the product.
So, your Red-On Bicycles Pvt. Ltd. will be marketed through different channels like emails, social media, paid ads, banners, etc. and the kind of message and content that goes in these will be about the brand’s overall USPs.
- Its customers are understood
- The product is positioned keeping in mind its value proposition, and
- Its message is aligned with the audience’s needs.
This is what a plan to sell a product should look like, with obvious further strategies to add on.
How To Fit It In Your Company
Do you hear this often that the marketplace is full and the competition is higher than ever?
Well, we can’t diverge from this statement. Also, if we were to talk about products as solutions, those are available in multiple alternatives with highly competitive pricing.
This is where your accurate marketing of the product comes into play and creates an actual difference in pushing the product into the market with a great value proposition.
And here’s how you can implement the role in your company-
- Strategic Role
- Collateral Role
A product marketer’s strategic role involves training the marketing and sales team about the strategies that are to be implemented. While working with internal teams, he ensures that he has well-prepared documents defining product position, messaging, differentiation, and a go-to-marketing strategy that has been approved by senior management. The same strategies have to be aligned with the function of the sales and marketing teams.
A product marketer’s collateral role is implemented more in startups and involves secondary functions such as drafting white papers, copy, and data sheets around the same foundations of product positioning, messaging and differentiation.
Whether to give your product marketer a forefront strategic and tactical role or to allot a collateral/supportive/supplemental role depends upon the size of your company and your other teams’ strengths and weaknesses around strategising the product’s success. However, one thing that remains common is a Product Marketer’s research into making the product a success in the market with its value proposition.
Don’t Stop Here, Keep Researching!
A marketplace for every industry will always be an experimental battleground. Though with the rising competition the demand for a pitch-perfect understanding of the market and customers’ needs has also risen. And so, this niche has been carved out to push a company’s products into the market with an increased probability of success.
Now that you know what it is, how important it is, and the way to implement it, would you rather outsource it? Food for thought indeed. Isn’t it? We can help you through it, let’s start working together today. Get a consultation session scheduled with our experts.
Product Marketing Guide
-
- What is Product Marketing? & How to Implement it
- How to Build a Product Marketing Roadmap & Implement Strategies
- Hire a Product Marketer & Responsibilities of a Product Marketer
- Competitor Analysis in Product Marketing
- Persona Building for Effective Product Marketing
- Analysing Product Reviews for Product Marketing
- Product Differentiation in Product Marketing
- How to Build a Product Marketing Team?
- Post-Product Launch Strategies
- Necessities in Product Marketing- Content, Sales, Report Management, Other Things
- Product Marketing Hits and Fails, and How to Succeed with Internal and External Factors
- Product Marketing Framework- Downloadable
Know Your Fit
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