What Is Product Marketing?

With products central to the success of many businesses, product marketing is essential and has a role in many organizations. Recently B2B and B2C businesses have been using product marketing to ensure their targeted audience sees their products. The goal of product marketing is to make sales. In this article, learn about product marketing strategies, what a product marketer does, and more. 

What is product marketing? 

For companies, having a product marketing strategy in place helps create products that appeal to a particular market and audience. A good product marketing strategy analyzes the market to determine whether product improvements and creations effectively cater to customers.

What do product marketers do? 

Product marketers collaborate with various teams, including sales, marketing, product development, and customer service to bring a product to market. They are responsible for bringing products back to the production team for improvements, and using insights for future products. 

Other roles

Within product marketing are various roles, including product marketer, product marketing manager, and product marketing head, which is a C-level position. A small company may have one product marketer, or it may be incorporated into a product manager role. In larger companies, whole teams may be dedicated to product marketing.

How much do product marketing managers make? 

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, growth for marketing manager roles, in general, is at 10 percent between 2021 and 2031, which is above average [1]. According to Glassdoor, the average total salary for a product marketing manager in the US is $132,342 [2]. The figure includes an average base salary of $104,073 and $28,269 additional pay. Additional pay may represent profit-sharing, commissions, or bonuses. 

Read more: What Does a Product Marketing Manager Do? Career Guide

Different types of product marketing strategies 

In product marketing, many strategies exist to get your products seen and sold to your target audience.

Storytelling 

How you connect with customers is important because building a relatable product or brand creates trust. A great way to do this is with a true story about why the brand or product was created, especially if it’s emotive to your target audience. The right story will draw someone in, entertain or provoke emotion, and connect your product to a concept. 

Create value for the target consumer.

Adding value will attract customers. One way to do this is through your content like blogs, free resources, and how-to videos that put the customers’ needs first. Adding value to a product will more likely align customers with your brand when they are ready to purchase. 

Product sampling 

Like adding value, you can provide product samples for customers to try before buying. This may be asking customers to try a product sample in exchange for feedback, or offering customers a sample to test out as a trial. This builds trust and takes away the risk of buying something they don’t need or want. 

Example: A carpet specialist who gives out small samples of the carpet so the customer can see the quality and color. 

Email marketing 

Email marketing is highly effective at capturing potential customers via mailing list sign-ups, keeping previous customers engaged, and bringing back past customers. 

A call to action is essential. Email marketing has to capture a reader's attention enough for them to open the email, and the content must be good enough to provoke interest. 

Examples of call to actions: This may be a discount code, link to your website, invitation to view a new product, link to a how-to video, or limited-time offer. 

Read more: What Is Email Marketing? And How to Do It

Align your product with a similar popular product.

Aligning your products with other similiar products is a good way to attract customers that are in the same target audience. You can do this with a ‘recommended products’ section on your website, aligning your products with others you sell. 

You can also align your products with other brands through collaboration or partnering with popular personalities through working with influencers. 

Examples: Recommending inner soles on your website for someone who has added shoes to their basket

How to choose product marketing strategies 

Product marketing relies on different strategies and processes. The right strategy for you depends on your product, the problem it will solve for a customer, and your target audience. To define your strategy, think about answering the following questions: 

What’s the problem you’re trying to solve for potential consumers? 

To determine how to market a product, decide on a solution to a problem. If you can convince consumers that your product will solve their problem, they are more likely to buy it. Answering this question may help you establish which product marketing strategy to use. 

What are you selling or creating? 

What you sell or create should be based on market research of what your target customer buys and needs. Once you know this, determine your strategy with the following factors:

• Product type

• Where it’s marketed 

• Ideal consumer base 

• The message that’s portrayed 

This will all be incorporated into a launch plan. 

Who is your target consumer? 

It's vital that you have identified and based your product on the needs of a particular group. To do this, create a buyer persona using insights from previous customers, customers of similar products, and their common traits. 

Once you have created your buyer persona, research the following things:

• Find out this person’s pain points

• What the person wants

• What appeals to the potential customer 

• How the person communicates

• Where your targeted audience spends their time

Finding out these details will help you to understand where to reach your customers and how. 

Various stages of product marketing

The product marketing process can be broken down into four main stages. It starts with the product development,  generating sales, improving the product, and responding to customer feedback. This can also be defined as the product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. 

1. Product development and launch 

The first stage of the product marketing process is product development and launch. This stage is concerned with deciding which strategies to use, defining the product audience, and conducting market research and tests of the product. All of this shapes the final product and its market launch.

2. Sales and promotion 

Stage two of the product life cycle and product marketing process is the sale and promotion of the product (growth). This is the sales part of the process and is concerned with growing markets, selling to consumers, and using feedback to upgrade the product.

3. Marketing and market research 

The third stage is marketing the product further once it has gained popularity and you know it is as good as possible. Sales can drop at this point as the buzz has worn off, and it can signal the point for new product launches.

4. Customer service and satisfaction 

The final stage is the end of the product marketing lifecycle, known as decline. The product sales have slowed down, and it is time to consider the following:

• Customer opinion on product satisfaction 

• Whether new features should be added

• Whether the product would benefit from a price cut

• Whether it is time to retire the product in favor of new ones

Next steps 

A career in product marketing can be a great choice, if you have experience in product management and qualifications in your industry or in marketing. To get a step ahead, take an online course like Marketing Strategy on Coursera, or get up to speed on the process of product management through this course on Real World Product Management.