Tailoring a Product Marketing Campaign

You know Product Marketing. You know how it works. You know who a Product Marketer is - you know what his or her job entails, you know what their responsibilities are and how they go about it (and we've also established that it's not a scary Halloween legend!)

The myth has been busted. All that you've gleaned about Product Marketing from scouring the internet - the ideas, pointers, snippets and more are all in place. But here's a puzzler: do we have everything we need to do Product Marketing?

Typing fervently at the search bar, are we?

If you google for Product Marketing Tools, you'll find a lot of results popping up. Try looking into one of these and at the end you'll still be wondering what exactly you'll need to implement effective Product Marketing. I'll give you the harsh truth - there is no exact set of tools for Product Marketing.

Trust me, I have googled it enough to be saying so!

Product Marketing is as such a very broad topic to define since it touches three essential principles - Product, Marketing and Sales. And so there can never be a perfectly carved out set of tools to carry it out. But, every Product Marketer should be aware of these if he or she is to exercise Product Marketing.

What does Product Marketing deal with?

Before diving into marketing a product, it's important to understand the different focus areas of this type of marketing. After spending a considerable amount of time raiding the internet, I came across a couple of articles that talks about the 4 P's of Product Marketing.

1. Product

• This is where you ask the question, "What is being sold?", then identify the product you're selling and formulate a marketing message for your customers.
• If it's a physical product that you're selling, the marketing message should convey how buying that product can help improve your customers' lives.
• If it's a service that you're selling, the marketing message should clearly say how your customers' lives will improve post using that service.
• Take a look at all of the iPhone marketing campaigns, Apple isn't just selling a phone, they're selling a lifestyle -and that's what customers are after.

2. Pricing

• You have a product to sell. How much should this product cost?
• Depending on what you're selling, the product cost is either a trivial part of the marketing or is given very little attention - it's also equally essential to fix a price for your product depending upon its functionality and the problems which it aims to solve.
• If you look at the iPhone campaigns, the price is never a part of Apple's marketing message - this is because they focus on the lifestyle their products offer rather than pushing a margin.
• At the end of the day, customers don't want to only buy things, they want to solve their problems.

3. Place

• You know what you need to sell, but who is your target audience or ideal customer(s)?
• Great product marketing comes down to understanding your customer.
• Hence, it's imperative to understand your customers, their needs, wants and pain points and then tailor your product to tackle these issues for them.
• There's an abundance of data that will help you narrow down to specific target markets or you could even create buyer personas to help with this.
• Once customers know that your product will help them overcome these issues, you'll be able to create user-centric products and tap into more diversified markets.

4. Promotion

• You have your target audience covered, how will you reach them?
• Customers or even the target market will know about your product only when the word is out - this is where marketing comes into play.
• You could consider doing organic content marketing, paid Google search, paid Social Media adverts, Email Marketing and so much more.
• There's a ton of new Marketing trends that you could try out - but, the crux of Product Marketing Promotion is to get the word out, engage, convert and retain customers 😉

Figuring out answers for the 4 P's of Marketing forms the crux of the product pre-launch strategy. You will also need a Product Understanding Checklist to help with your pre-launch strategy.

Product Understanding Checklist

• Product Name

• Product Description This will describe your product and it's features in detail.

• Product Positioning This presents the benefits of your product to your target audience.

• What message does your project convey? This is where your product's marketing message comes into play - this message will tell your audience what your product can do, thus making it a viable option.

• What problem is your product going to solve? People are looking for things to solve their problems. Hence, it's all the more important to reinforce that your product will stand as a solution - this will build both rapport and trust among your target audience.

• Target Audience You've heard the word target audience a lot up until this point. This is where you identify the users of your product and aim the product for their use.

• Target Market A target market is usually defined as the group of people that your product will be catering to. Test ways in which your product will be of use to your target audience, see how your product solves problems and make sure that that's translated through your product.

• Features Every user will look at the features that your product offers - this helps the user decide how useful the product will be.

• Price Point Products are usually designed with the user in mind. And when a user looks at your product, he or she is contemplating on buying and testing it out. Hence it's important to come up with an affordable price that will attract more users, thus expanding the reach and functionality of the product.

• Relevance In a market that's constantly evolving, there are bound to be similarities. When there are similarities, competition is inevitable. While it's important to be aware of competition, it's also important to portray what sets your product apart from the others in the market - this instills the relevance of your product even as the market evolves.

• Promote With all of the pointers in place, it's time to spread the word. Promote your products on different platforms, say Social Media, Print Media, Ads, Emails and even Podcasts are a great way to emphasize and popularize your product.

Once you've checked off all these on your list, you have enough information to go ahead and start with the launch of your product!

Product Launch

This is where every Product Marketer faces a rush of emotions ranging from nervousness to anxiety to almost crumbling and fainting, thanks to the impending, insane amounts of pressure that every Product Launch Campaign brings!

Up until the time leading to a Product Launch, make sure that you have all this handy,

• Answers to all the questions (these have been italicized) under the 4 P's of Marketing
• Every pointer should have been checked off the Product Understanding Checklist &
• A plan for how your going to launch your product into the market

Planning the Product Launch

• First things first, let's talk about the Market. The best way to start of with your product's market is to segment the market by age, product usage, demand and feasibility - figuring out these four factors will allow you to specifically target these segments and market it for them. You can even create buyer/user personas, use case scenarios and user problems if you are not sure about your customer base.
• Time to move onto Strategy. Having segmented out the market, it's high time you make sure that your product reaches them - figure out the platforms, channels and other avenues that you could use to get the word out.
• Get your Techniques in place. While strategizing, you'd have figured out what platforms to use for Social Media, which channels you'll be blogging and posting in as well as other avenues. Now, let's work on these. You could create teasers and actively campaign on Social Media, you could blog about each of your product's features on different channels, you can try Paid ads as well or you can even run live updates on your website.
• Content and Promotion, this is probably one of the most difficult things to get right on the first try itself. Craft interesting content that your users will love, email them with updates, send them brochures and presentations about your product, invite them to check out your product's website, blog a lot more than usual, create case studies, hold FAQ sessions for your user audience or even release a fun video - and promote, promote and promote!
• Optimization and Market Learning, now these might sound like big words but they're just too important to be ignored! Once you're on track with your promotion, it's time to monitor and see what goes on behind the scenes. A product's main goal is to attract, convert and retain customers, so your promotion and content creation efforts should be directed towards these. Track how many people visit your website, check the insights to see what they're looking at, create feedback forums where customers can share their views about your product - this will help you improve the experience that you want to provide to your customers.

Well, that's a little gist of how you go about a Product Launch Campaign. Every product will require a much more tailored, comprehensive approach to expand it's reach among target markets, so you could get in touch with us to talk about a more elaborate strategy for your product.

So that's we do another part of Product Marketing! If you've missed part one of the Product Marketing Series, you can read it here. We hope you have everything you need to market a great product, so Happy Product Marketing!