Guide to Product Marketing

In its central role in businesses, surrounded by product, sales, marketing and customer service teams, product marketing has gained greater importance in the world of advertising, marketing and communications over the past few years.

When you consider that most businesses have teams dedicated to handling public relations, email marketing, digital marketing and social media etc. The role of product marketing within a business is to bring all of these different areas of marketing and communications together under one strategy, defining how products are delivered to the target audience in the market.

In this article we take a closer look at the key areas of product marketing and also take a closer look at key points businesses should focus on in order to develop and implement successful product marketing strategies.

What is Product Marketing?

Once a product has been developed and is ready to launch into the market, the role of product marketing takes over. From determining the product's positioning, and messaging to ensuring internal teams and customers understand the product are all key tasks included in product marketing.

Launching a product into the market is just the first stage of a product marketing team. Monitoring customer feedback and ensuring the market fully understands the product are both areas which require continued monitoring and adjustments to ensure the product achieves its sales targets and expectations of the business.

As well as playing a key role in the products in the current market, product marketing teams also play a key role in looking at market trends and product innovations in order to gain insights for the development and launch of future products.

Top Benefits of Product Marketing For Businesses

The primary goal of product marketing in business is to generate revenue which can then be used to develop and launch more products into the market. Product Marketing can also benefit a business in a variety of ways such as:

• Increasing Brand Awareness & Recognition
• Better customer understanding & segmentation
• Improved product positioning in the market
• Enhanced customer experience 
• Improved customer loyalty

4 Stages That Should Be in Every Product Marketing Plan

Market Research

Before launching a new product into the market it is important to have a clear understanding of the target market, this includes customers and competitors to inform product development and marketing decisions. Key tasks in the Market Research phase often include:

• Defining research questions and objectives
• Identify & Segment target customers
• Collect data via surveys, focus groups and online data analytics 
• Analyse data to understand customer needs, requirements and competitive landscape.

All of the findings from the Market Research stage can then be used by the Product development and Marketing teams to ensure the product is launched successfully into the market and meets the demands of the target customers.

Product Story & Messaging

This stage defines both the narrative and messaging used to communicate your products unique value and benefits to customers. Having a good understanding of your target customers needs and pain points will allow you to refine your messaging more effectively.

Once a product story and messaging has been created it's important to be consistent in showing this across all platforms such as website, advertising, social media. By doing this successfully your product messaging will be memorable and resonate with your target customers. A strong product story and messaging will help to build an emotional response with your target customer as well as drive product sales and customer loyalty.

Community Engagement

With your marketing campaign up and running, keeping an eye on what is being mentioned about your product and brand across social media and in the news is a great indicator of customers' perception of your product. This is also a great time to read customer reviews and respond to feedback which can prove valuable for your product development team in refinding your product.

Some of the most popular ways to engage with your community include

• Social Media
• Influencer Marketing
• User Generated content (reviews, testimonials etc)
• Community Events
• Surveys
• User Groups

Product Launch Strategy

Planning out all the stages of launching your product is crucial for teams such as sales, public relations and marketing to sync with each other. List out who is responsible for each task and set dates to ensure everything follows the right order. During this stage it is important to set a product launch meet where all teams involved can monitor the performance as well as share the excitement of launching a new product into the market.

Metrics used to Track Product Marketing Success

There are a wide variety of metrics used by Product Marketing teams to track the short-term and long-term growth and success of their products. Some examples of these metrics include:

• Customer Acquisition Cost
• Lifetime Value
• Retention Rate
• Market Share
• Surveys & Customer Feedback
• Churn Rate
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Qualified Leads
• Usage
• User Count & Growth

All of the above metrics can provide product marketing teams with valuable insights into both short-term and long-term growth. However the most important metric for Product Marketing teams to focus on is Revenue. By focusing on revenue as a primary metric, product marketing teams can quickly gauge how well their products are performing in the market. 

How Vodus Can Help You Optimise Your Products to Ensure Market Fit?

By having the largest online panel in Malaysia via the Vodus Media Network that has a combined sampling frame of 17M consumers, Vodus is best suited to gather the most accurate and representative insights on the Malaysian market.

Vodus can recruit samples that accurately reflect your customer base using our cutting-edge OMTOS survey method and conduct comprehensive Product Innovation Research. With these insights, product owners can minimise their risk of product launch failure by ensuring a market fit for their product.. Contact us in the form below to find out more.