Product Marketing is the Future?

If you look at the SAAS companies, majority of them are still dependent on traditional marketing methods. Rarely do they understand that they need a coherent strategy for marketing if they want to accelerate their business growth. Having a good marketing team in place is just the first step. To be successful, you have to ensure your marketing team, product team, sales team and customer success teams, they all work in coherence.

Yes, you got it right. We are talking about product marketing and how it is the future of every business. There is a basic misunderstanding of the role product marketing plays in the organization. In the world of SaaS, product marketing plays a major role in every step of the funnel. Right from the first touch point of the customer to graduating the customer to make a buying decision. The idea in product marketing is to make the customers feel confident about the decision they are about to make, i.e., buying your product. This happens in different stages and in different forms right from product education in the form of demos, product messaging, case studies, webinars etc. Every customer interaction is an opportunity for product positioning. All these require specialized skills and an experienced product marketing professional.

What is product marketing?

Product marketing always starts with the customer. It is very deeply associated with the understanding of the buyer and how they make their buying decisions. This information comes in handy in developing a blueprint for segmenting, positioning, targeting, launching, and ensuring product success in every step. If you have done the product marketing planning right, you should be able to answer the following:

• What does my ideal customer looks like? (Customer Personas).

• What is the right messaging to tell the customer about the benefits of using my product? (Product Messaging).

• What is that one thing which none of my competitors have but I have? (USP), etc.

Product marketing is about how cross-functional teams collaborate successfully to achieve common targets:

• Product development strategy: Product marketing is about the shaping of the product strategy by building a deep understanding of the target customers, their challenges, their needs and their goals. It also involves understanding how the existing products are being used.

• Marketing- Product marketing also involves researching and defining the market and developing the appropriate positioning and messaging, besides building the go-to-market strategies.

• Customer success- Product marketing is also about going beyond just making the product reach the customers. It is also about keeping a close eye on the products that are being used. Most importantly, it is also about gathering insights to improve continuously.

• Sales-Product marketing has a deep connection with sales, guaranteeing the teams are fully equipped with every kind of knowledge that is required for enabling better sales of the product.

We all are aware of the fiercely competitive environment the world is going through. Every organization, whether B2B technology, B2C, or SaaS, faces a challenging question, How to enhance the chances of achieving sustained success?

Effective product marketing is the answer. It is all about developing a detailed understanding of everything pertaining to the customer.

• Products developed in the B2B, and SaaS sector were finding it hard to strive without proper highlight on it, They were not able to cut through the noise. This is one of the reason why product marketing has emerged as a function.

• The buyer and his journey constitute the effective foundation of product marketing. This can be effectively used to build strategies.

• Product marketing supports sales-customer relationships, product-sales relationships and product-customer relationships.

Steps for effective product marketing:

• Product Research- The product development and product marketing team should come together to research and test the product both externally and internally.

• Product Story- There has to be a good story behind every product, and the product marketing team should have strong messaging and positioning strategy to bring this story forward.

• The product-based content- The team for product marketing is responsible for creating content assets that can promote and communicate the product differentiators.

• Product launch plan- A good product marketing team, can document the launch plan in detail and create a roadmap for actions, steps, and responsibilities across cross-functional teams.

• Launch of product- Streamlining the efforts on ensuring the big reveal going smoothly is another responsibility of the product marketing team. They have to coordinate the activities and troubleshoot any issue that might crop up.

• Engaging the community- A product marketing team is responsible to engage with influencers, partners and existing customers to keep the buzz alive.

• Sales Enablement- They have to brief the sales team also on every kind of product messaging, strategy and positioning. The sales team also gets a brief of assets focusing on the products and every other collateral from the product marketing team.

These are only few of the things a product marketing function can help you achieve, simply put, product marketing function is responsible for the success of the product. If this article has been able to provide you with an insight as to how important product marketing is for an organization, but you don't know how and where to start? This is where you need an experienced product marketing professional to help you out. Reach out to me if you want to discuss how your organization can benefit from product marketing best practices.