Did you know that 95% of products fail to launch successfully due to poor product marketing? Yes, that’s right. A product can be of top-notch quality, can have excellent features and use cases but can still fail in the market if it’s not marketed properly. Product marketing is a very wide yet important concept which is not completely understood by most marketers. It can make or break the launch of a product and doing it efficiently is crucial for every business to succeed. Nowadays, quite a few businesses incorporate tools like chatbots built using software like Appy Pie’s Chatbot Builder into their product marketing strategies to achieve even better results.
But what is product marketing really? This guide will cover everything you need to know starting from a basic overview to an in-depth understanding of the concept of product marketing, its importance, strategy formulation and examples. So, let’s get started.
Table of Contents
What is Product Marketing?
Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to the market and driving demand for it. It is concerned with coordinating product development and product awareness among the target audience. In simple terms, product marketing is the promotion and sale of products in the market using carefully formulated marketing strategies.
Effective product marketing is a combined effort of the marketing, product, sales and customer support team to ensure that all its aspects are given the attention required for seamless execution.
Now, you might think of what the difference between the two terms- marketing and product marketing is or if they’re interchangeable. Let’s break it down.
Marketing vs Product Marketing
Most people confuse marketing and product marketing as interchangeable, however they’re not.
Marketing is a broad concept that focuses on promoting and selling products or services using a variety of activities like market research, brand management, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, digital and content marketing. It covers all aspects of sales and promotion and aims to build brand awareness among a broad audience to drive sales.
On the other hand, product marketing is a narrower concept which is product-specific and focuses on bringing a product to the market and ensuring its success. It involves market positioning, identification of target audience, launching the product, formulating good strategies for implementation and providing customer support efficiently. It targets a specific segment of audience and ensures that a product meets market needs and achieves sales targets.
Thus, marketing and product marketing differ in scope, focus and target audience significantly.
The Importance of Product Marketing
Spending a whole lot of time and effort on developing a new product goes to waste if the product is not marketed properly as it will not drive demand. Thus, the process of launching a new product does not end with developing it, but requires it to be heavily marketed and promoted among the target audience. Here are a few reasons why product marketing is extremely important:
- Product Positioning
- Successful Launch
- Sales and Revenue Growth
- Increased Customer Engagement
- Competitive Advantage
Product marketing is important to ensure that a product is placed correctly in the minds of the target audience and its unique proposition is clear to them. Correct positioning of a product determines whether customers are able to distinguish your product from competitors. Through effective product promotion, a product’s USP is highlighted and the likelihood of market success increases.
Planning and execution of a product launch is not easy as all elements starting from product awareness to product distribution have to be aligned properly. Here is where product marketing enters as it helps coordinate the efforts and focus them on a common goal of effective product launch.
Effective product marketing ensures that marketing and sales efforts are clear on the product’s key selling points and provides both teams with clarity and knowledge on the product description, its features, use cases and benefits. This allows for a more organized way of selling the product and increases sales volume thereby increasing revenue for the company.
Product marketing involves collecting customer feedback and analyzing it to make necessary changes to improve the product and address customer problems. A customer support chatbot can be used for this purpose. When customer pain points are handled with efficiency, they are satisfied and customer loyalty as well as retention increases. Thus, it helps optimize customer experience, increase engagement and improve brand image as well.
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Analysis of the competitors in the market including their strategies, product innovations, pricing policies etc. is done effectively through product marketing which helps carry out a SWOT analysis and make improvements in own product and marketing strategies. A detailed competitor analysis also allows determination of what sets the company products apart from others and gives a competitive edge in the market.
Interconnection Between Product Cycle and Product Marketing
A good product marketing strategy spans across the entire product life cycle which consists of 4 phases: Pre-Launch and Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. Each phase requires specific strategies to be adopted to effectively promote the product.
- Phase 1: Pre-Launch and Introduction
- Phase 2: Growth
- Phase 3: Maturity
- Phase 4: Decline
- Specify Target Audience
- Determine USP
- Set Achievable and Measurable Goals
- Give Proper Training to the Team
- Create a Product Launch Plan
- Coca-Cola
- Nike’s Air Jordans
- Airbnb
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This is the first phase of the product life cycle and involves researching about the market, understanding customer needs and analyzing competitors to build the product roadmap and generate demand for it before the product launch. In this phase, businesses focus on clearly defining their target audience and developing strategies to create interest in them for the product.
Additionally, a small group of users is selected to test the product and gather their constructive feedback before the launch. Product marketing teams play a crucial role in promoting the product among users selected for product testing, facilitating feedback collection and refining the product for improvement.
This phase is important for understanding user feedback through testing so that improvements can be made before the actual launch and building the initial awareness and excitement for the product when launched.
The second phase aims at expanding the user base, gathering constructive feedback, developing and promoting new features of the product. The growth phase involves launching targeted marketing campaigns like content marketing, social media campaigns, webinars etc. to attract new users.
Feedback is collected from the users to understand their perception of the product experience and accordingly improvements are made by adding new features and highlighting them through promotion to maintain user interest and attract even more users.
This phase focuses on expanding the product’s reach through effective promotion, feedback collection and product improvements.
The third phase of the product life cycle is the ‘Maturity’ phase. This phase is when the market for the product is reaching saturation, sales slow down, pricing becomes competitive and profit margins deteriorate. The competition is highest at this level and thus marketing strategies are updated and additional tactics are used to maintain the product’s market standing.
Sales teams are equipped with extensive information and tools used to boost sales and engaging messages are drafted and distributed across all communication channels to reinforce the product’s value among users.
In the maturity phase, the product has an existing well-defined market and a loyal customer base. Product marketers focus on doing better than competitors and constantly promoting the product’s strengths to keep the customers engaged and the product relevant.
The fourth and the last phase of the product life cycle is the ‘Decline’ phase. In this phase, the product’s life ends or the product dissolves due to negative growth or lower demand. Reasons for decline can vary from changes in interests and needs to the entry of competitors, substitutes and alternative products in the market.
The product marketing team evaluates the cost and sales structure of the product to determine its viability and prepares product evolution strategies to either introduce new features or altering pricing or phasing out the product.
In this phase, a very important decision is made where product marketers conclude whether to continue the product’s life cycle by adding new features or making price adjustments or discontinuing it by dissolving the product.
How to Form a Good Product Marketing Strategy?
Formulation of a good product marketing strategy isn’t the easiest as a wide variety of considerations are to be made related to specifying target audience, setting goals, determining USP, creating a product launch plan and training a team to carry out all these tasks. However, following the steps listed below can make the process easier. These are:
The first and foremost step of forming a good product marketing strategy is to clearly define the target audience so that product development and promotion can be carried out according to specific needs, interests and preferences of the selected segment of audience. To do so, carry out a detailed market research to gather data about focus groups and segment customers based on demographics, buying behaviors and needs. With this information, buyer personas can be easily created and products can be marketed to them with more efficiency.
USP or a unique selling proposition is what differentiates a product from competitors and is necessary to identify product strengths, understand product positioning and craft a well-written statement that communicates product specialization points clearly to the target audience. Through product marketing, customer needs can be analyzed and product features can be attributed in accordance with those. Thus, product marketing facilitates a clearer understanding of the market to serve customers better.
It’s essential to set goals that align with customers needs and are relevant, achievable, specific and most importantly, measurable. Goals should be relevant to the business needs and should be realistic considering the business’s feasibility and availability of resources. If goals are set after proper consideration of the above factors, they can be achieved more efficiently as there is clarity of what is to be achieved and how it is to be achieved.
After development of the product, specifying target audience, determining a unique proposition and setting goals, the next step is to ensure that the team responsible for carrying out the product marketing process is well equipped with the knowledge about the product and the activities that need to be performed to market it. It’s extremely important as proper implementation and execution of the product marketing strategy is in the team’s hands.
A well-crafted product launch plan is the key to seamless introduction of the new product in the market. Things to be considered while creating the plan include pre-launch activities like releasing teasers, choosing a mix of marketing channels to promote the product, developing promotional offers and pricing strategies and post-launch activities like feedback collection, performance monitoring and providing after-sales services using an after-sales-service chatbot. An effective productive marketing strategy formulation is backed by a good product launch plan.
Top 3 Product Marketing Examples
Brands have been extremely smart in formulating their product marketing strategies and implementing them to their benefit. Top 3 examples of brands which show excellent efforts in this array are as follows:
Coca-Cola aimed at creating a personalized experience for consumers using effective product marketing strategies. It replaced its logo on Coca-Cola bottles with popular and common first names like ‘John’, ‘David’, ‘Emily’ etc. and nicknames like ‘Bestie’, ‘Buddy’, ‘Dad’, ‘Mum’ etc. to adapt to regional variations and add a personal touch to its products.
This encouraged customers and sparked interest in them to look for bottles with their names or their friends’ and family’s names. Kiosks were also set up in certain locations for customers to print their names on coke bottles. In addition, Coca-Cola also started a social media campaign encouraging customers to share pictures of their personalized bottles with the caption as #ShareaCoke. This was a great way to increase brand awareness and customer engagement.
Nike also used an amazing product marketing strategy to promote its new product line called ‘Air Jordans’. Its objective was to create a premium basketball shoe line for athletes and sneaker enthusiasts. Nike used the popularity and endorsement of Michael Jordan, the basketball player, to its advantage and built a strong brand image for its product. Nike created a limited edition for the sneaker line which created a sense of urgency in customers, specially basketball fans.
Nike also launched highly memorable and catchy advertisements for its Air Jordan collection and gradually made it a staple in fashion and streetwear. These strategies helped Nike influence the fashion industry tremendously and create a strong brand loyalty for the product, thereby generating high revenue for the company.
Airbnb started off by offering customers a place to stay while traveling or otherwise. However, they wished to position it as a way for customers to experience living with and connecting with different communities around the world. To do so, they used a great product marketing strategy and highlighted the unique, local and personal experiences that Airbnb hosts offer. They used emotional storytelling techniques and showcased traveler experiences through the ‘Belong Anywhere’ campaign.
Furthermore, Airbnb also crafted high quality videos and pictures to show the amazing accommodations offered and highlight travelers’ authentic experiences. They encouraged travelers to share their personal stories as well and tailored campaigns to suit different local regions. All these efforts led to increased brand awareness and a hike in the number of new customers for the company.
These examples highlight the power of a well planned and executed product marketing strategy in increasing brand awareness, sales volumes and customer loyalty.
Conclusion
To sum up, paying adequate attention to product marketing is much more important than one might think. It bridges the gap between product development and product awareness and is crucial for driving customer engagement for a company’s products and building a strong customer base backed with customer loyalty and trust. Formulate an effective product marketing strategy using the above mentioned steps and achieve skyrocketing results!