What is Product Marketing

What is product marketing? That's a common doubt among many professionals, even the ones who work in marketing. Understanding what this area is responsible for can help your company to develop effective actions to increase sales and promote your products. 

Product marketers will analyze how a product can meet the demands of the target audience, and also consider the ways to emphasize that. If you have an online or physical store, regardless of the company sector, it's necessary to show the benefits of your products, so your potential customers will understand why they should buy from you.

What Is Product Marketing?#

Different from traditional marketing, the product marketing area focuses on how to highlight the product and its benefits, instead of only promoting the brand. It's known that customers buy products not for the item itself, but because of what it has to offer. 

Therefore, product marketing is dedicated to understanding the target audience's needs and how the product you sell helps to solve them. It's a company sector that interacts directly with the marketing and sales team with the purpose to assist them in finding the most effective strategies to enhance sales. Product Marketing will position a product on the market and work on its launch as well. 

Product marketing worries about getting to know the target audience's behavior and buyer's journey to have a complete understanding of how to communicate the benefits of a product. This sector doesn't work only on product launches, but also is concerned with conquering loyal customers, who will act as advocates for the product and the brand. 

Product marketing is a subdivision of marketing where the main goal is to make products thrive on the market. It includes processes like marketing research, target audience analysis, and product positioning,

What Is Product Marketing Responsible For?#

The sector of product marketing in a company is usually responsible for:

• Product research;
• Product launches;
• Product positioning;
• Helping the sales team to understand how to close more sales;
• Research the market and the target audience;
• Creating product marketing strategies;
• Promote community engagement;
• Gather user feedback;

Product Marketing x Product Management#

Do you know the difference between product marketing and product management? Both areas are very important in a company and complement each other. The product manager is responsible for the process of creating new products and developing their features. On the other hand, a product marketer works to understand the customer's pain points and identify how the product solves them. 

The product manager's focus is on the product itself, on developing its design and features, and on giving the company something interesting to the market. The product marketer doesn't build the product but creates strategies regarding how to communicate the product's values.

They will work together to come up with the best products and marketing strategies that deliver results. The product manager can assist by showing the product marketer the product details and what was considered while creating it, and the product marketer may share their insights and knowledge towards the target audience and the market demands. 

How Product Marketing Can Help Your Company#

Product marketing is a very important sector in a company because it is going to be in charge of developing the basis to create the communication to promote and sell a product. All the advertisement campaigns and sales promotions will be built considering the guidelines that the product marketers give.

Therefore, the marketing and sales team will rely upon the research and strategies the product marketing team makes. This area understands how customers interact and feel attracted by a product, and uses that to boost sales, making the company profit more. 

Product marketers understand the importance of customer satisfaction and will help different sectors to reach that goal, enhancing the whole experience with a product. This also has a positive impact when it comes to conquering customer loyalty. 

Product Marketing Strategies#

When the subject is what is product marketing, it's important to comprehend how this area will come up with strategies related to different processes of promoting and selling a product.

Customer Development#

Before defining the product marketing strategies, it is essential to define who your target audience is. Then, you will need to make research to get to know them better,  and answer questions like what their pain points are, how is their consumer behavior, where they are located, what communication channels they use most, what social media platforms they are in, and much more.

Only through that, it becomes possible to identify the benefits that a product offer to your customers and how to communicate with them to highlight those benefits. Customer research is one of the bases for product marketing. 

Positioning and Messaging#

Once you have understood who you are talking to, product marketing will be responsible for analyzing the best way to position the product in the market and developing a narrative that shows how the product is helpful to the target audience. 

To do that, you should answer the following questions: 

• Who is the product for?
• What does the product do?
• Why customers would want to use it?
• Why do customers need the product?
• What differentiates this product from other ones already available in the market?

Having those answers will be very important to align with the sales and marketing team on how to build communication around the product to promote and sell it. Both teams will be equipped to address the customers and highlight the product characteristics considering what drives the target audience's attention. 

Product Launch#

When a product is launched is fundamental to create strategies to promote it, so customers can discover this new product, and get to know its benefits. As product marketers work on this, they are the perfect experts to develop a launch plan. 

Post-Launch#

After a product is launched, the product marketers' work isn't over. It's their responsibility to follow up on how the product is being perceived by customers. They need to analyze customer feedback and measure relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the launch performance. 

Team Preparation#

As the product marketing team will align product characteristics with the target audience's needs and build the guideline on how to promote and sell it, the product marketers are in charge of preparing the sales and marketing team.

They must instruct the other sectors so they know what strategies will be followed when talking with customers, and producing marketing content such as banners, leading pages, blog articles, social media posts, and advertisements.  

Enjoy Product Marketing#

Beyond answering what is product marketing, it's fundamental to comprehend its value to multiple types of companies. Regardless of your business size, you can implement product marketing strategies, starting by presenting its concepts to your team.