If you were asked to define product marketing, what would you say?
It is clear that product marketing is related to marketing. In general, marketing is any process that we do in order to attract customers and increase sales of products or services. What is the difference between marketing and product marketing?
Many people do not know exactly what product marketing is and exactly what duties a product marketer has. But in this article I want to fully explain product marketing and its difference from other marketing methods.
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What is product marketing?
Product marketing is the process of aligning product positioning with customer needs so that customers actually buy and use those products. As a result, one of the main tasks of product marketers is to identify the needs of customers and introduce the product as a solution to their problem. But this process is not only limited to introducing the product to the market after production! In fact, introducing the product to the market is the last stage of product marketing. Product marketing starts from before product design and continues until the end of presentation to the market.
If we want to define product marketing more precisely, we must say that:
Product marketing is the process that connects the product to the market. This means understanding the market, identifying the needs of customers, designing a suitable product and offering the product as a solution to the customer’s need.
As a result, product marketing can be seen as a combination of three departments: sales, product and marketing.
How does product marketing help businesses?
The primary responsibility of a product marketer is to be the voice of the customer. In fact, they know that the main reason for buying a product is to solve a problem or need. For this reason, product marketers must know these needs and problems so that they can market by producing the right product to meet these needs.
One of the factors that confuse people in understanding the duties of a product marketer is that its duties cannot be clearly defined with other departments. In fact, product marketing has some amount from each section!
For example, in the sales department, the product marketer should be able to grow the business with the help of different marketing strategies. In addition, it should communicate with the product production team so that they can decide what product to produce in what form, and most importantly, why. He should also be actively present in the marketing department of the product so that the final product reaches the target customer. In fact, product marketing is like a glue that binds different teams together and aligns them with each other.
Responsibilities of the product marketer can be more prominent in each of these dimensions depending on the type of company. Although product marketing has a set of tasks of other job positions, it is an independent discipline and different companies and organizations need more product marketing with the passage of time.
In general, a product marketer has three main tasks:
- Determines product positioning by identifying customer needs.
- He is present in the product production department to make sure that the product will be useful for the customer or not.
- After producing the product, it helps to sell the product through marketing techniques.
The importance of product marketing
Producing a suitable product for the market is one of the first and most important stages of business success. As a result, it is very important to have someone who can create this fit in the product and the market. For this reason, one of the most important job positions in the marketing team, which is very important for many organizations, is hiring a product marketer.
Difference between product marketing and marketing
Marketing is about promoting a company and brand in general, attracting audience and increasing sales. While in product marketing, it is specifically focused on the product or products of that brand.
Also, in marketing, we try to make potential customers interested in the brand by creating brand awareness and trust. Whereas product marketers target a specific group of audience and focus on designing the product needed for that specific group.
The difference between product marketing and product management
The product manager tries to design and produce a product as a solution by identifying and understanding the needs and problems of customers. While the duty of the product marketer is to determine the position of the product in the market and commercialize it.
Six important steps of product marketing
Product marketing begins when product marketers know exactly what group of customers their product is for. Here are six important product marketing steps that product marketers take before, during, and after a product goes to market:
1. Product research
A useful and well-made product is not made and marketed overnight. Rather, weeks and months before product launch, product marketers collaborate with engineers, designers, and product manufacturers to check the product from all points of view and prepare it to enter the market.
2. Product story
Products enter the market in the form of a story. What problem does the product solve? Who is facing this problem? How does it solve this problem? What does it do that the competition doesn’t?
3. Product-focused content
The next step in product marketing is content creation. Here, product marketers create promotional content, blog content, and landing pages on their website dedicated to introducing and describing the product.
4. Product launch plan
No product marketing team is complete without a launch plan, which outlines the final stages of the marketing process. This program specifies exactly what steps must be taken to launch the product and who is responsible at each stage.
5. Product entry into the market
At this stage, the designed product enters the market. At this stage, the task of the product marketing team is to be in contact with the product sellers before, during and after the product launch to monitor the way the product is sold to the customers.
6. Past evaluation
After the product enters the market, you have to look back. Identify your strengths to use them in future projects. Also find your weaknesses. Also check customer feedback regularly.
An example of a successful product marketing
You are probably familiar with Spotify. A music streaming service where you can access millions of music and podcasts from around the world. Spotify launched the Only you campaign in 2021. In this campaign, interesting statistics about the way of listening to music were presented to each user. For example, what kind of music is played the most at different times of the day or who has the same music selection pattern as you.
By launching this campaign, Spotify not only showed how well it knows its users, but also created a space for users to share their favorite music with each other. And this means that users are not alone, but there are thousands of people all over the world who have similar taste in music. This creation of communication in the midst of the Corona epidemic, which had caused people to isolate themselves and move away from each other, encouraged the users.
In fact, by identifying the problem of its users, which was tiredness from quarantine days and being away from large gatherings, Spotify was able to bring back a sense of encouragement to its users.