Product Marketing is a new term. This is the reason why finding an exact definition of it is very difficult even if you search on Google. In some businesses, the responsibility of a product marketer is positioning for products. However, at other companies, product marketers only focus on supporting sales and promoting customer demand.

So, what is the exact definition of product marketing? How to implement a Product Marketing strategy? Let’s find out with Enosta through the article below!

What Is Product Marketing?

In the simplest terms, product marketing is a strategic process that brings a product to market, promotes it, and sells it to a target audience.

Product marketers are the bridge between the product and the customer. They understand customer needs, create clear messages, enablers of sales and accelerators of adoption all at the same time.

In fact, everyone has a different idea of what product marketing is. It can vary a lot from company to company. Let’s see what some product marketing experts think:

“The glue that brings disparate stakeholders together. We create scalable, personalised customer experiences to drive growth, profit and satisfaction” – Alicia Carney, Global Product Marketing Manager of Growth at Deliveroo.
Marvin Chow, vice president of global marketing at Google, defines a product marketer as “The liaison between product engineers and the end user. PMS should be an expert on the user and their needs. Great PMS championed the voices of all users and celebrated and elevated diverse perspectives during the go-to-market process. PMS should own the launch plan working to make the product a reality for all users”
Carol Carpenter, CMO of VMware, describes the role and value of product marketing as “expressing the distinct value of our solutions to customers. Expression of value”

There’s one thing that’s pretty consistent across all of them: The customers who use the product are the heart of everything.

Product Marketing Is A Multi-team Effort

Product marketing isn’t just one team’s job—it’s a collaborative effort that connects product development, marketing, sales, and customer support to deliver a product that customers love.

Here’s how different teams contribute:

Product Team: Ensures that you know what’s being marketed and when it’s launching.
Marketing Team: Executes promotional activities and optimizes channels for maximum impact.
Customer Success: Listens to customer feedback, helps prevent churn, and supports upsell opportunities.
Sales Team: Aligns the product’s value with customer needs without overpromising or underselling.

Product Marketing vs Product Management

While they’re often confused, product marketing and product management serve different purposes.

Product managers focus on building the right product, while product marketers ensure it’s positioned effectively in the market and reaches the right audience.

5 Fundamental Phases Of Product Marketing

Product marketing is a complex process that involves multiple stages. Let’s break down the key elements.

Discovery

The initial phase is all about deep research:

Gathering customer feedback.
Conducting win/loss interviews.
Analyzing competitors.
Reviewing market requirements.
Validating internal assumptions.
Refining segments, messaging, and other assets.
Building a business case for viable opportunities.

Strategy

By this point, you should have discovered an opportunity. We validated it and got internal buy-in.

Define measurable objectives.
Develop a go-to-market strategy.
Identify the most effective acquisition channels.
Plan the customer onboarding process.
Outline retention strategies.
Create an internal communication plan.
Identify required sales enablement materials.
Address potential barriers.
Plan pricing and budgets.

Positioning

The right positioning can exponentially increase sales. The wrong positioning can leave you floating in a sea of sameness or failing to take off at all.

Positioning strategy
Messaging
Product story
Segmentation
User personas
Buyer personas
Use cases

All of which will help you leverage your positioning and messaging and take your sales and marketing approach to the next level in terms of both relevance and personalization.

Tactics

Execution is critical for product marketing success:

Sales Assets
Marketing
Sales enablement sessions
Training

These tactics ensure that everyone is aligned and that your product’s value is communicated consistently across all touchpoints.

Growth

Post-launch efforts focus on optimization and improvement:

Analyze performance data.
Refine strategies based on insights.
Gather customer feedback.
Fix bugs and updates.
Collect case studies to support future marketing.

Tips To Conduct A Product Marketing Strategy

The Product Marketing Strategy is an orientation for positioning, pricing, and promoting new products. It helps you to follow from the product development stage to the product launch and provides insight into target audiences and the market.

1. Know Your Audience Inside Out

Before you even think about promoting your product, you need to know exactly who you’re selling it to. This is where the target market definition comes in. Here’s how to do it:

Create Buyer Personas: Develop detailed profiles of your ideal customer, including demographics, pain points, buying behaviour, and online habits.
Market Research: Conduct surveys, and interviews, and analyze competitor marketing to understand the market landscape and potential opportunities.

By truly understanding your audience, you can tailor your messaging and strategies to resonate with them on a deeper level.

2. Product Positioning & Conveying Messages

After step 1, you could identify the customer’s challenges and pain points. Now, you can think about how to highlight the solution your product is able to give them.

Do not misunderstand that this can set you apart from your competitors in the market. Basically, your competitors could have products that can solve the same customer needs and problems as yours.

There’s one way that you can differentiate your product is by positioning and conveying the message. Answer questions that your customers may be concerned about. Make your customers realize what makes your product unique compared to competitors in the market.

The responsibility of Product Marketers is to ensure that target audiences can approach product information without spending too much time learning (or making assumptions) about it. Some questions customers may ask about your product are:

What makes your product unique?
Why is your product better than your competitor’s?
What do customers get when they buy your product?
Why should customers trust and pay for your product?

After you have the answers to these questions, you can combine them into a positioning statement and your messages. To do this, you can follow these steps:

Turn the answers become the positioning and messaging for your product
Use CTAs to excite your customers
Make sure the tone of your position and messages captures your “brand voice”
Focus on the benefit of your product as a whole (not just one specific feature).

Pro tip: Make sure that all members of the Marketing and Sales team or all staff in the company are aware and well understood of your product. This helps to keep the content or information shared with customers consistently.

Get Product Marketing Solutions

3. Setting Goals For Your Product

The next step you need to take is setting goals for your product. The goal for each kind of product is different and depends on product properties and the overall marketing goals. However, there will be some common goals in product marketing that most marketers want to achieve such as:

Increase revenue
Interacting with customers
Improve market share
Attract customers from competitors
Increase brand identity

Pro tip: Cleverly combine some of these goals or just choose one goal to focus on. You can set goals according to the Smart model according to the criteria as specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

4. Pricing Your Product

Considering, and discussing to come up with a suitable price for the product is one of the next things that product marketers need to do. Depending on each company, the decision on the price of a product can be decided by the Marketing offered or through many different departments. You can choose the price for your product in two ways: pricing according to competitive vs. value-based pricing.

Competitive pricing: This is a method that helps you choose a price for your product based on the prices of similar products that your competitors sell. If your product is better and more unique than your competitors’ products, you can choose a higher price for your product. One tip for you to apply this valuation method well is to carefully study the financial statements and industry trends.

Value-based pricing: If your product is unique or one that has very few competitors in the market, you should choose value-based pricing. This is the method that will help you maximize your profits. However, compared to competitive pricing methods, this method will take more time to decide on a suitable price.

5. Launching Your Product

After completing all the steps above, it’s time to launch your product. This is the most interesting part if you are a Product Marketer. Typically, a product launch will have two main parts: internal launch and external launch.

Internal launch: As mentioned above, all departments in the company, especially the Marketing and Sales departments, need to have a deep understanding of the product. This helps customers to receive product information most consistently. Therefore, for the internal launch you need to deploy to the members of the company the following information:

What is the product goal?
Product information
The benefits of the product
Sales Opportunity
The user manual of the product
Target customer and buying persona
What is positioning and the message to convey to customers?
Product price

External launch: There are many ways you can get your product to approach potential customers. First, you need to identify the main channel for you to launch your marketing activities. You can refer to some channels below (You can choose one channel to focus on or select several channels depending on the resources of the business):

Social media
In-store
Product launch event
Blog
Landing page, website SEO

You should carefully plan for this stage because it’s really important. This is the turning point to mark the birth of a brand or a new product in the business process. A successful launch campaign will make it easier for your product to break into a market

Meet Your Product Marketing Partner

Executing a successful Product Marketing strategy can be complex and resource-intensive. Enosta understands the challenges startups face and offers a comprehensive solution.

As a companion with Startups for many years, we can help you find a comprehensive solution for product marketing. Our Product Launch solution can help you cover every step in the process from Website Development to Dial Marketing, Branding and Pitch Deck design.

We’re committed to not only launching your product successfully but also building a strong foundation for long-term growth.

Stop searching. Your product marketing partner is here.

Fill the form and get a free consultation!