Product Marketing: Role, Strategies, & Insights

The success of a business does not solely depend on a great product; it also requires excellent marketing. To market a product, companies need to use effective strategies that encourage successful brand promotion and sale of the product. A broad, comprehensive strategy for successfully promoting and selling products is called “product marketing.” A brand’s image is created and customer demands and perceptions are understood via the use of a range of product marketing strategies, tactics, and marketers.

According to research, 21% (1 in 5) of product marketers have never interacted or engaged with their target market or prospects. Rather, they get and compile all relevant evaluations and feedback from other staff members or departments of their company. This approach may not prove to be effective in devising a marketing strategy. So, it’s necessary to create a comprehensive strategy to market your products.

This blog offers additional information on the nature of product marketing, and its significance, functions, and distinctions from other key marketing terms.

What is Product Marketing?

Product marketing is a strategy used to promote, launch, and sell a product using different marketing activities. Product marketers initiate the process of marketing by conducting market research, and analysing the audience, their needs, and preferences. The insights are then used to give feedback to product developers so they can create a distinctive product that will fulfill the needs of the audience. 

Different teams within a company collaborate to develop activities and strategies that help promote and sell the product. Knowing what the consumer wants and assessing the brand’s product position to carry out plans and promotions can help boost sales. Product marketers also use trending market trends like targeted messaging, events, influencer marketing, promotional materials, and campaigns to raise brand awareness among consumers. Companies analyse the results of the marketing throughout the process to inform the product development and marketing team to change the tactics in the future for better profitability. 

The Role of Product Marketing

Product marketing plays a critical role in the success of a product in the market. Some of the important roles of product marketing include:

1. Market research to help companies understand the current and future needs, preferences, and choices of the target market. 
2. Collecting honest feedback, reviews, likes, and dislikes from customers to improve the products.
3. Continuously looking for the market trends, competitors, and possible opportunities to inform the companies and adjust their marketing methods and techniques accordingly.
4. Increasing the visibility and demand of the product by using efficient marketing tactics on different digital platforms. 
5. Helping the company’s product development team to understand the future needs of the customers, which is used further to create appropriate products to meet those needs.
6. Developing strategies and launching new products as per the current and future market trends and needs.

The Essentiality of Product Marketing

Product marketing is essential for different reasons, such as: 

1. Helping companies to develop a product as per their target markets, customers’ needs, preferences, current and future needs, etc.
2. Important to plan and carry out efficient product launches and other strategic promotional activities and events for maximising product engagement.
3. Marketing the product helps companies gain insightful client feedback and reviews which help them develop better products in the future.
4. Strategies to help brands develop satisfaction, loyalty, and strong relationships with customers by communicating and educating them strategically. 
5. It is important to drive demand and facilitate sales which directly results in more revenue and profit.
6. Research done by companies for marketing the product also helps them to identify the current and future market trends, competition, performance of other products, etc.
7. Increases the visibility, credibility, and identity of the company in the market. 

How to Devise a Great Product Marketing Strategy?

Here is a step-by-step guide to devising a great product marketing strategy:

• Step 1: Identify your market: Conduct thorough market research to understand customers’ needs, preferences, the strengths, positions, and limitations of competitors’ products, the latest market trends, potential opportunities, and threats that might influence your business or product sales.
• Step 2: Understanding unique value proposition (UVP): Identify why your product is better than that of your competitors and how it can satisfy customers’ needs better.
• Step 3: Product position: Understand the position of your product in the market and develop goals and achievable targets for the product to increase brand awareness and sales. 
• Step 4: Target audience: Know your target audience and segregate it based on behaviour, needs, trends, etc. Start customising marketing techniques and messages as per the different preferences of different sections of the target audience.
• Step 5: Marketing channels: It is important to have appropriate marketing channels to market your product to the target audience, like marketing through social media, SEO, print, television, radio, planning events, campaigns, sponsorships, etc. Companies can also plan marketing tactics with professional marketers, like influencer collaborations, PR, advertising campaigns, content marketing, etc. 
• Step 6: Create marketing collateral: Product description, sales, website, promotional materials, etc. are marketing collaterals that are created to communicate about the product effectively. These collaterals are engaging and consistent, grab the attention of the customers, and create a brand identity. 
• Step 7: Execution: Execute the marketing strategies by allocating budget, time, and resources. Make sure to choose efficient marketing strategies to launch or promote your product. 
• Step 8: Analysing: Constantly monitor and analyse the outcomes of the marketing strategy used to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy and optimise results. 

Brands That Excel at Product Marketing

Here are some examples of brands that have successfully executed product marketing strategies:

1. Apple: Apple is famous for its excellent product marketing, designs, and distinctive features. The product marketing of Apple is excelling because its products focus on the user experience and users’ lifestyles. It maintains a brand image through different marketing channels to make customers remember the brand and connect with it. Such tactics make Apple customers loyal fans who wait for its new products.
2. Nike: Nike has powerful branding through its storytelling techniques, innovative product launches, and sports endorsements. The biggest marketing tactic of Nike is to inspire customers to connect with sports and athletes, and encourage them to buy the product. Nike collaborates with famous athletes and celebrities to campaign their products and create a trend that easily increases the demand for their products.
3. GoPro: GoPro is an action camera, which makes users believe that it will encourage them to capture and share their adventures with others. GoPro encourages people to document and share their experiences with others while creating a community of vibrant content creators. It produces high-quality videos, tutorials, experiences, etc. to influence and attract the audience to buy the camera and share their experiences too.

Responsibilities of a Marketing Team

The company’s type, size, industry, goals, etc. impact the responsibilities of the marketing team. However, some common responsibilities are the same for every marketing team:

1. Conducting market research to analyse trends, and customer needs, and make strategic decisions.
2. Creating strategies as per the company’s goals to define the brand’s identity and value to differentiate your products in the market.
3. Advertising on different channels, social media handles, radio stations, and print media and managing activities like discounts, offers, sales, etc. to promote the product and increase sales.
4.  Producing content for blogs, articles, videos, media posts, etc. to attract potential audiences and engage with them to retain them.
5. Manage the company’s profile through website optimisation, SEO, pay-per-click advertisements, email marketing, social media marketing, etc.
6. Maintaining and building relations with influencers, media persons, industry stakeholders, etc. to promote your product.
7. Using different marketing strategies to cater to different segments of the market and audiences as per their needs and requirements.
8. Promote sales of products by using marketing and sales strategies.
9. Track and identify the marketing features to generate reports and improve the marketing strategies in the future.
10. Manage customer relationships and use customer retention strategies for the brand and its products to increase sales and loyalty of the customers.

Know How Product Marketing Differs from Some Common Terms in the Marketing Field

Product Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

Product Marketing	Traditional Marketing
Product marketing focuses on promoting and selling the product.	Traditional marketing includes a set of marketing activities like PR, direct mail, ads, events, branding, etc.
It targets specific customers as per their interests and needs for the product.	It aims to connect with a wide audience through different channels of communication.
It highlights the unique features of the products and their benefits to differentiate them from other products.	It focuses on building a brand through storytelling and appealing emotionally to create a customer base.

Product Marketing Vs Product Management

Product Marketing	Product Management
Product marketing’s primary focus is to promote products and increase sales.	Product management focuses on the product and strategies to increase the features of the products.
It directly communicates with the customers and markets the product externally in the market.	It works internally and supports the cross-functional teams to develop the product seamlessly.
It has a short-term focus on increasing sales and profit for the company.	It looks at a long-term perspective and focuses on product strategies, development, and lifecycle management.

Product Marketing Vs Marketing Communication

Product Marketing	Marketing Communication
It promotes specific products to target the potential customers.	It includes the selection and usage of different communication channels to engage with audiences.
Product marketing focuses on the unique features and benefits of the product.	Marketing communication focuses on a achieving wide brand image through storytelling and customised messaging.
It focuses on the sale of the product and making immediate profit.	It aims to have a long-term relationship with customers with constant engagements.

Product Marketing Vs Brand Marketing

Product Marketing	Brand Marketing
It focuses on promoting specific products and services of the company.	It focuses on managing and building a brand’s identity and reputation in the market.
Product marketing promotes the features and benefits of an individual product.	It aims to create emotional connections between brands and customers by storytelling and creating brand value.
It has short-term goals related to the product and generating profit from its sales.	It has long-term goals to focus on building a brand image and loyalty over time.

Product Marketing Vs Demand Generation

Product Marketing	Demand Generation
Product marketing focuses on specific products to promote and attract customers.	Demand generation focuses on generating interest and leads for every product of the company.
It aims to increase sales and allow customers to adopt the product.	It creates an awareness and interest among the customers to nurture leads and demand.
It highlights the unique features and benefits of the product.	It uses wide marketing efforts like SEO, content marketing, creating demand for products, etc.

Product Marketing Vs Field Marketing

Product Marketing	Field Marketing
Product marketing is done as per the needs and preferences of the customers.	Field marketing includes making efforts in the market to promote the product.
It focuses on specific products and their sales through different methods.	It performs different marketing activities at the local and regional levels to engage with customers directly.
It involves market research, positioning of the product, and developing effective marketing strategies.	It uses marketing tactics like sponsorships, demonstrations, etc. to increase customer engagement and sales.

Conclusion

Product marketing is an art that aims to escalate businesses by working as a bridge connecting the preferences of the customer and the different strategies and goals of the company. It plays an important role in the growth and success of companies. Product marketing plays an essential role in the marketing sector. It identifies the target markets and creates a strategy for effective product promotion, increased customer engagement, and constant profitability.