Businesses always have well-built marketing strategies, but the plan for market expansion needs to be updated. In the process of upgrading strategies, brand promotion and product marketing have an integral part. Businesses incorporating operative product marketing strategies always have the upper hand in their organic growth.
Businesses can utilize their full potential when they apply product marketing strategies to their optimal effectiveness. This will consequently help them gain a competitive advantage.
Table of Contents
Product Marketing and its Importance
Product marketing is the process of promoting a product to the target audience to improve sales. It can be understood as a combination of marketing, sales and product development. Product marketing managers (PMMs) need to find a workaround to manage all 3 of these departments. For PMMs, success lies in expanding the customer base and improving customer satisfaction while doing so.
PMMs need to be able to launch a product into the market and make sure that their potential customers understand the value they receive from the product.A PMM’s responsibility lies in several roles including, but not limited to, storytelling, positioning, messaging, building personas, managing websites, segmenting the customer base, enabling sales and researching the competition.
Product marketing is an essential part of the business since it facilitates the demand for the product. By being specific and focused, PMMs can bring positive results to the company via greater lead-gen, more sales, more number of satisfied customers and, eventually, a substantial ROI.
Fundamental Mechanisms of a Product Marketing Strategy
(PS: the source link for the image is of a template; kindly assess and take action as needed)
A successful product marketing strategy engages the prospective client’s attention. It is usually done by taking into consideration the key components such as:
- Market analysis
- Differentiating factors
- Learning about the target audience
- Realistic financial goals
- Diverse market strategy
- Driving customer loyalty
8 Strategies to Enlarge Your Potential Market Demographic
(PS: the image is a template; please adjust and modify as needed)
8 result-driven product marketing strategies for expanding your clientele are given here:
1. Analyze the market
Begin by analyzing the market. A proper market research at the early stage is crucial for any business success. It reassures you about the demand for your product and offers insights for customer needs.
You can go about with your research in 2 ways:
Qualitative research: This type of research involves customer interviews, surveys and focus groups.
Quantitative research: This is a more deepened form of research involving analyzing audience data from numerous sources like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, audience intelligence tools, journals and industry studies.
Ensure that your product is practical with data-driven research. It is absolutely necessary to scrutinize your customer data for understanding territories, customer types, sales averages and pricing. Financial data shows which products bring more profit.
2. Define the target audience
Salesforce’s report states that 66% of customers expect companies to comprehend their needs and 58% will take their business elsewhere if they believe that their expectations are not met. Zeroing in on your target audience provides essential insights about their expectations and preferences. Buyer personas need to reflect real individuals rather than stereotypes, as emphasized by Tony Zambito:
“Buyer personas are archetypal representations of real people. If they sound and look like stereotypes—they probably are. They must sound believable and represent believability as well.”
3. Define your product positioning and messaging
Positioning and messaging need to market a product as desirable. They help craft a unique story that draws customers away from competitors. Authenticate your product’s market position first to shape customer perception by highlighting its benefits and how it differs from others. You can use the four Ps model: consider your product, price, promotion and place. Combining this with focused data-driven research will guide you on details regarding what your customers value, giving your narrative consistency. Standardize your product positioning statement across all teams while being open to alterations as and when deemed fit.
Messaging is most effective when you convey your story in a consistent and attractive manner. Invest your time in cultivating a messaging strategy encompassing the interests of your target audience while not compensating on the specific guidelines you wish to follow, the brand story and your product’s USP. Focus on what makes you and your product unique to appeal to your target audience. Make an effort to understand customer motivations so that you can test and tweak your messaging accordingly.
4. Plan measurable goals aligning with your business’ objectives
Be realistic about your business goals. Make sure that they are practical as well as achievable.
Sales goals can be:
- Number of qualified leads
- Revenue generated
- Cost per acquisition, etc.
Customer satisfaction goals can be:
- Product usage
- Net promoter score (NPS), etc.
Brand awareness goals can be:
- Website Traffic
- Market share, etc.
5. Formulate a clear-cut go-to-market strategy
Plan the introduction of your product to potential prospects. A lot of questions need to be asked and answered, like:
- What profiles do you want to target?
- How do you grab their attention?
- What pricing and sales methods are you choosing?
- Will you be availing of distributors or selling directly?
- Which type of marketing campaigns do you wish to use – like social media campaigns?
You can utilize a graphic design tool for visual content. Decide on suitable KPIs to measure success. Inform sales and marketing leaders of your strategy and provide them with necessary resources like advertising tools and product samples.
6. Team alignment
Companies with proper team alignment have a tendency to grow quicker and have lower customer churn rates. [Customer churn rate is defined as the proportion of customers that end their relationship with a company within a specific timeframe.] It is important that all involved in developing and executing the strategy agree with the common goal.
Research by Sprout Social shows that customers can relate to brands where the CEO and employees boast of an active online presence. Don’t over exaggerate the information you post, as it might lead to potential prospects turning skeptical about your brand. Provide clarity by making sure that all team members are aware of core aspects such as features of the product, customer pain points, product positioning, buyer personas, product goals and the pricing strategy. Create an internal knowledge database to help make this information easily accessible.
7. Product pricing
Product marketers need to actively participate in setting the price of the product and collaborate with other teams when necessary.
You can opt for either competitive or value-based pricing strategies. Competitive pricing depends on the prices your competitors have set, while value-based pricing lets you set prices based on the value that your customers observe rather than external market factors. It is suitable for products with few competitors or innovative features.
8. Product launch plan
A proper product launch plan is of utmost priority for a successful product marketing strategy. How you present your product will be governed by whether you are targeting new prospects or existing clients.
With a soft launch, you can introduce the product to a small segment of customers first, work out any issues found by gathering feedback and later confirm the product as market fit. A general availability (GA) launch is exposed to your entire client base and usually involves traditional marketing strategies like building brand awareness and attracting new clients.
To streamline your resources, you need to select a product launch tier that best aligns with your product.
Tier 1 is for products that are known to be important and will gather everyone’s attention.
Tier 2 is for products that have the capability to influence a large number of customers and involves content material like blog posts and social media updates.
Tier 3 is for product upgrades that need elaborate descriptions. It includes content such as blog posts and help center guides.
Plan a product marketing blueprint and delegate suitable team roles to gain a positive result. The blueprint shows growth plans and can be done on the basis of tasks, deadlines or goals. Every stakeholder and team member needs to know their tasks and responsibilities and be informed of the overall development.
The Future of Product Marketing
Product marketing is here to stay. It is predicted that there will be a great amount of evolution in the process of product marketing in the future. Let’s have a look at what the future of product marketing has in store for us:
- PMMs leading marketing teams
- Higher budgets for product marketing tech stacks
- Data-driven product marketing
- Higher budget for automating product marketing tasks
- Customer-centric product marketing
- Elevated upfront investment
- Adoption of AI for high-impact tasks
- More personalization
- Higher usage of influencer marketing
- Prominent shift towards cross-selling and up-selling strategies
- Messaging and product positioning employing AI
Summing Up
An excellent product marketing strategy helps your target audience see the value of your product in their lives. It builds brand awareness, generates leads, drives sales and sets you apart from your competitors. Successful product marketing will enable you to connect deeply with your clients, elevate your revenue and formulate a loyal customer base.
There are numerous product marketing strategies that you can try to grow your customer base. The important thing is to take calculated risks while trying them out. You can try one or many at a time. But make sure that you monitor each strategy’s results. Tweak your strategy whenever required. You will surely reap success by properly exploring, trying and executing marketing strategies in a systematic manner.
