What is product marketing?

A few years ago, the term “product marketing” was pretty unknown, even though it has been with us for decades and helps many companies rise above their competition. Let’s take Mailchimp as an example. In 2001, Mailchimp, a marketing platform for small businesses, was created. Their product is an email marketing tool, an alternative to oversized and expensive software such as Marketo, Adobe or Pardot. Today, Mailchimp has more than 800 employees, 11+ million customers with a customer database of 4 billion people. Mailchimp is the most popular choice for small businesses all around the globe.

What made Mailchimp so successful is that they knew their target market inside out and they not only delivered the right product but also were extremely on point with their marketing messages. They knew how to price the product for growing small businesses and help them be more successful. They have tons of different content for small business owners who want to learn how to easily utilize modern marketing techniques. Once, they even opened an online webshop to sell funky socks. They launched a newsletter and introduced each step they took. It wasn’t just an engaging story, but it was also full of many easy tips and tricks.

Mailchimp didn’t have a huge product marketing team researching the market and creating marketing materials when they first started. But it’s undeniable that they have always known how to do product marketing.

All right, I guess it’s time to finally answer the question: What is product marketing? Product marketing helps you deliver products to the market more efficiently and with greater impact. Product marketing sits at the intersection of the product, sales, customer success, and marketing teams. It helps their cooperation and makes sure information flow is smooth among all parties.

Here are the main functions of product marketing:

1. Definition of the go-to-market process
   Go-to-market (GTM) defines the tasks and responsibilities of each team (product, legal, support, marketing, sales, etc.) for each product or product update launch. The list can consist of more than 100 tasks — it depends on the organization and the product which needs GTM. Tasks range from setting up business KPIs, creating support FAQ and marketing materials, updating the sales demo, and defining who is responsible for what. A well-defined GTM process helps information flow within teams to be aligned, focused, efficient, and helps achieve KPIs.
2. Go-to-market strategy
   Product marketers define the GTM strategy with the help of other teams for each new or updated product and feature based on the GTM process. This contains the selected GTM deliverables, timing, and responsible people.
3. Buyer personas (ideal customers)
   Understanding the buyers and finding new target groups is crucial for product marketing. All the collected insights from market research, customer interviews, and prospect calls should be presented in 4 personas at most (you cannot focus and create dedicated marketing and sales materials for more than 4 personas). They are the ideal buyers your company should focus on. You should develop the product according to their needs, and build your marketing and sales messaging that they find relevant.
4. Competitive intel
   Keeping on top of your competitors’ every move is a full-time job in itself and no product marketer should spend time only on this. However, the knowledge gathered can pay off. So how should you keep up with your competitors’ product updates, website changes, and bigger events? Fortunately, there are various solutions to eliminate a big chunk of the manual work. For instance, Crayon and Kompyte (and many other similar tools) track many data types from millions of sources to give you a better view of your competitors’ every move.
5. Product story and key messages
   The frightening fact is that 72% of new products and services fail to deliver on expectations (Simon-Kucher & Partners 2014). It’s not necessarily the product’s fault; rather, misplaced communication is the actual cause. Having an engaging narrative and relevant messaging for the target market can kick sales off. Read my article on how to build compelling messages around your product.
6. Product marketing deliverables
   Product marketing is responsible for delivering all product-related materials listed in the GTM deliverables. These are the (bottom of the funnel) marketing materials that present the values of the new feature or product. It can be a video, landing page, blog post, a brochure, and many other things.
7. Sales enablement
   I have never seen a single company where the sales team wasn’t super excited to see a new feature or product. Despite this, they need a lot of help to sell new stuff better. That’s why you should never forget to educate them and help them to build a story for the sales demo and provide the necessary sales materials.

It’s possible that you already cover these functions in your company without a product marketer or a product marketing team. However, you should make sure you have one person responsible for GTM who makes sure all necessary actions are taken when launching a new product. If you think you need help on how to improve or start product marketing at your company from scratch, drop me a line: balazs@prodyssey.io.