What does a good product marketing strategy look like?

Many of us think having a great product alone is the key to bringing in new customers.

But that’s not true.

Let's go back to 1914 for a brief moment.

Listerine, originally developed as a surgical antiseptic, was sold as a germ-killing liquid for bad breath, a floor cleaner, and even as a beneficial remedy for smallpox.

The product was having an identity crisis, and retailers threatened to remove it from shelves.

So, what changed that made Listerine a million-dollar company?

Not the composition…

But the marketing strategy.

The marketing team quickly realized that they didn't need to please everyone and focused on just one problem: "halitosis", the Latin name for bad breath.

They refined their marketing campaigns and highlighted real-life examples that 40x’d their sales by 1927.

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A lot of your product's growth depends on how you market it and not just about having the best solution.

Successful product marketing strategies ensure that you target the right people, align product positioning and messaging, and don't underestimate your product's worth.

What is product marketing?

You can build the most valuable and useful product, but if your target buyers don't understand what it does, why they should use it or whom it's for, then the product is useless.

This is where product marketing comes in.

Product marketing is the process of bringing new products to the market.

While regular marketing efforts present a general view of the company's strategy to increase traffic and sales, product marketing is set specifically for a target audience.

Ikea ads are an excellent example of product marketing.

When you go on their website, you'll find different sections dedicated to unique customer groups.

Whether you are redesigning your home or looking for dog-proof furniture, Ikea runs ads for almost every use case possible.

According to DocSend, these are some of the core responsibilities of product marketers:

• Product positioning and messaging
• Managing product launches
• Creating sales collateral and updating internal documents
• Customer and market research
• Sales enablement

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To put it another way, a product marketer's job is to identify product use cases, understand customers' problems, and present a solution. Product marketers run the commercialization strategy and define the product's position in the market.

What is a product marketing strategy?

A product marketing strategy is a roadmap that describes what a business wants to accomplish with a product and how it plans to do so.

Your strategy should run simultaneously with the product life cycle, from development to growth, maturity, and decline.

It will help you decide how you position and promote your product to become the best solution in your niche.

Product marketing strategy is a game changer.

If you go a decade back, when ConvertKit had just launched, it faced fierce competition with MailChimp and ConstantContact.

Instead of quitting after a slow first two years, Nathan Barry changed its dynamic and doubled its growth by niching down on a niche: email marketing for bloggers.

Barry knew he couldn't compete with big players on features, so he focused on one product marketing strategy: running successful partner webinars and addressing the needs of users through content.

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Barry used product marketing to establish ConvertKit's new positioning in the market, and it evolved into the successful email marketing suite it is today.

The CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, once said:

"The easiest way to get one million people paying is to get one billion people using it!"

If you help users recognize the value behind your product, those users will then evolve into customers and then into brand advocates.

The product marketing strategy is a synergy between product, marketing, and sales focused on targeting the right people at the right time with the right solution.

Why is product marketing strategy important?

In this new era of B2B marketing and sales, where buyers have more options than ever before, product marketing strategy acts as a distinguisher between vendors that sell similar products.

It contributes to brand positioning and ensures the marketability of your product.

Here's more about why product marketing strategy is important for your business:

• It provides clarity for your business. When everyone on your team knows what they are working to accomplish, how they are going to accomplish it and what strategy is built to achieve those results, they automatically work towards a shared goal.
• With a product marketing strategy, your team can make smarter strategic decisions regarding adjusting their plan and priorities to cope with the changes happening in the market.
• It also helps in crafting the right message and positioning for your brand which is crucial to stand out in the competitive landscape and reach your customers before your competitors do.
• By focusing on building the product's value propositions and ensuring that it meets customers' needs, a product marketing strategy helps increase sales and customer retention.
• Product marketing improves alignment between product development, marketing, and sales teams, providing a comprehensive view of product use cases and customer needs or wants.

How to nail your product marketing strategy in the first go?

Developing a product marketing strategy requires a combined effort of both product marketing and product management:

• Product marketing is responsible for the voice of the customer, as well as the messaging and positioning of the product.
• Product management defines the vision, identifies pain points and develops a product that solves that product.

As you go through the process of creating a successful product marketing strategy, you'll see where the strengths of both teams are needed.

Define your target audience and customer personas

Market research validates the demand for your product and provides insight into customer needs. It can be broken down into two major types:

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• Quantitative research: Analyze customer insights from internal sources (CRM). Journals, online sources and industry studies.
• Qualitative research: Conduct customer interviews, surveys, etc, to learn about your customers.

If you are new to the market and want to validate the demand for your product, start by analyzing existing information collected by others on the demand for your product, the size of the market, existing competitors and forecasts.

Where quantitative research gives you a top-level view of the market, conducting qualitative research gets you inside the customer's mind.

Speak to the audience you are looking to attract. You can plan out personal interviews, focus groups, and group surveys with your current and potential clients.

Prepare questions around their:

• Pain points
  • What are your biggest challenges with X?
  • How are you currently solving them?
• Goals
  • What are you looking for in a product?
• Behavioral drivers
  • What do you do?
  • What are your interests?
  • Where do you search for information?
• Objections
  • What are your objections to using your product?

Put this information to create buyer personas.

You can use the free HubSpot buyer persona maker to create ICPs for every product. It's important to note that different products will likely have different buyer personas.

Determine messaging and positioning

After you have figured out who you're talking to, the next thing is to decide what you are going to say to them. Using the information you have learned about your target audience, you can create a narrative that positions your brand as an ultimate solution to their problem.

The aim of determining the messaging and positioning is to understand where a product fits in the market and create an identifier that differentiates your brand from others.

A brand positioning statement is a short description of your target audience, the problem your brand addresses and its solution.

Here's a simple formula:

For [target customer] who [need/desire/pain point], [product name] is [product category] that [key benefit], unlike [competitor], our product [differentiation/USP (unique selling point)].

Know that while a brand positioning statement must be consistent over the years, it may eventually shift.

Loom's positioning statement, "async video messaging for work," wouldn't have made much sense in 2015.

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Since then, the world has evolved, and after COVID and many teams stayed remote, Loom pivoted its brand positioning.

It went from a video recording platform used for user feedback to helping remote teams avoid excess meetings and emails.

Their messaging is crystal clear in what they do and how they help their target audience.

Choose a pricing strategy

You have created a unique product that customers are sure to love.

But how should you price it? Most businesses choose between competitive and value-based pricing.

Competitive pricing

Competitive pricing is one of the most popular pricing methods that works well for newcomers.

If you're starting to acquire your first few customers, there might not be enough information to determine your pricing strategy for the product. The easiest way to get started is to analyze your competitor's pricing and price your product around their pricing tier.

A major disadvantage of this pricing strategy is that it can't be sustained in the long run.

Your competitors might improvise their pricing or entirely their marketing strategy.

You'll never be able to scale your profit or build a name for your brand if you keep your pricing based on what someone else has to offer.

Value-based pricing

Value-based pricing, on the other hand, is a method of setting prices based on how your customer perceived value from the product. The more your audience thinks your product is worth it, the more you can charge for your product.

An excellent example of this is the Hermès Birkin Bag, which sells for tens of thousands of dollars online. In fact, buying one directly from the manufacturer is impossible.

People find Berkins extremely valuable and are ready to pay any amount to purchase it.

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If you are someone who is just starting or does not have anything unique to offer, then competitive pricing is a great option. However, in the long run, you can switch to value-based pricing when you make people realize your product's worth.

Choose a product marketing framework

A product marketing framework is a structured approach that guides product managers from planning to launching the product.

As a product marketing manager, you'll find these frameworks essential to keep you and your team on the same page with a clear vision of what goals to achieve.

Here are some product marketing frameworks that you can look into to accelerate your marketing efforts:

Jobs to done framework

The jobs-to-be-done framework is a brainchild of Tony Ulwick that advocates that people don't buy a product because they want it; instead, they want a product to complete a job.

Product marketers can use the job-to-be-done framework to educate people about different use cases for the product.

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Product-market fit pyramid

The product market fit framework was developed by Andy Rachleff and focuses on delivering a product to the market that needs it. You don't want to get too much wrapped around creating the perfect product for finding a niche market.

Instead, you continuously work to reach the optimum product market fit for your product.

Discover, strategize, define, get set, grow

This framework is developed by the Product Marketing Alliance and focuses on five fundamental phases of product development: discover, strategize, define, get set, and grow.

Product managers should start by gathering insight into customer and market needs, creating their product market strategy, identifying their buyer personas, and strategically launching their product in the market.

SWOT analysis

SWOT is a famous product marketing framework that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

It's a method that examines the success and failure of the product.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that you and your team can modify, whereas opportunities and threats symbolize external forces. Product managers can leverage their strengths to conquer opportunities and be prepared for future threats.

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MoSCoW analysis

MoSCoW is a product strategy framework that product marketing managers use to prioritize different marketing activities. It categorizes tasks into four categories:

• Must-haves: Non-negotiable functions without which the product launch is incomplete.
• Should-haves: These are essential initiatives but not completely vital to the project.
• Could-haves: These are nice-to-have features that add a layer of sophistication.
• Won't haves: These are features or initiatives that won't be included at all in the current product launch.

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Set measurable goals

Once you have chosen your favorite product marketing framework, it's time to set unique goals for your product. Product marketing goals may vary depending on the product itself, the company and its marketing priorities.

However, you can divide them into 3 categories:

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After the product launch, you can use these goals to evaluate its success and determine ways to improve it in the future.

Put together the launch plan and assign roles

Now, enter the most interesting part of building a product marketing strategy: product launch.

From the marketing and sales team to finance, a successful product launch requires everyone's effort and commitment.

Prepare for the launch in advance.

Make sure that everyone understands the target audience, the launch goals and their roles.

You can use tools like Trello, Airtable, or Monday.com to keep track of all activities and project progress. These tools provide various product management templates (linked them for you) to help you get started.

Once you have set up this detailed plan, you are ready for your product launch.

5 examples of great product marketing to inspire your next strategy

Now that you have an idea of what a product marketing strategy is and how to create one for your business, here are some great examples of marketing strategy inspiration.

1. Clickup: Constantly absorbing user-feedback

Due to its late entrance into the market, Clickup saw one of the most challenging launches in 2017.

Founder Zeb quickly recognized this problem and knew if they wanted to survive in this market, they had to give customers exactly what they wanted.

It starts with constantly absorbing user-feedback and ensuring that ClickUp fits the needs of their ideal buyer persona. Owing to this strategy, Clickup hosts over 10 million users and makes $158.7 M in annual revenue.

2. Baremetrics: Live preview that shows the product's features before free trial

Baremetrics is a subscription analytics tool that provides a live preview of all its features before they sign up for a free trial.

Not many people want to give away their personal information in exchange for a free trial. Instead, users can familiarize themselves with the product and evaluate if they need the product before even signing up, just like a product sample.

3. HubSpot: The king of inbound marketing

HubSpot is a popular customer relationship management software that excels in inbound marketing. They consistently post content, rank on high-volume content and help users by providing free tools.

On its "Resource" page you'll find a variety of free tools, ebooks, templates and webinars that are focused on helping users and suggesting Hubspot as their ultimate solution.

4.Maybelline: Trying out virtual filters

Maybelline is one of the most popular beauty brands focused on women between 15 and 45 years of age. The brand provides a wide range of cosmetic products for the eyes, face, lips and nails. With so many options comes a lot of confusion on product selection.

Hence, Maybelline has recently launched its try-out filters that let you try different products before you buy them. So, even if you are unsure of a shade, you see how it looks on your face through these virtual filters.

5. Farsali: A strong brand story

People don't expect perfection; they want to witness the journey behind your brand's struggles.

A prime example is Farsali, a skincare brand owned by a young couple. Each TikTok video or Instagram reel they create is so captivating that they garner over 500k to 1 million views.

They begin with an engaging hook, share the brand's challenges, and effectively persuade viewers why their product is worth the investment.

How to ace product marketing in 2024: Quick summary

By now, you have extensive knowledge of creating product marketing and feel inspired to elevate your next product marketing campaign.

Let's quickly recap the most important information:

• The role of product marketing is to make your target audience realize what your product does, why they should use it and how it's better than the competitors.
• A product marketing strategy is a roadmap that describes what a business wants to accomplish with a product and how it plans to do so.
• Developing a product marketing strategy requires a combined effort of both product marketing and product management.
• There are a number of product marketing frameworks that product managers can use to keep their marketing efforts on track.
• A great product marketing strategy always puts customers at the center of all activities.

That's how you can nail your product marketing strategies in the first go.