Steps for Creating a Successful Product Marketing Strategy

Every year, 95% of new products fail upon their launch. What sets the remaining 5% apart? A standout element is undoubtedly the product marketing strategy behind these successes. 

Often, the products that fall short either didn’t invest enough effort into their marketing strategy or their efforts were misdirected.

In this guide, we will help you design a product marketing strategy that is effective, unique, relevant, and in line with modern market demands. 

What is a Product Marketing Strategy?

A product marketing strategy is a plan businesses use to promote and sell their products to their target customers. 

The main benefit of a product marketing strategy is to boost sales and generate more revenue. It involves defining the product’s value proposition, identifying the target market, and creating a mix of marketing tactics to reach these customers effectively. 

Without a product marketing strategy, businesses risk launching products that fail to connect with their intended audience, resulting in wasted resources and lost opportunities.

Other significant benefits include:

• A clear understanding of target customers
• Focused and effective marketing efforts
• Higher product visibility
• Improved customer retention
• Strong differentiation from competitors
• Shorter time to market
• Improved product roadmap
• Enhanced brand loyalty
• Streamlined communication across product teams
• Better customer feedback loop for product improvement

Setting Objectives and Goals

Objectives guide your strategy, helping you measure success and make necessary adjustments. 

Here, we outline five key objectives of product marketing, each addressing specific needs and challenges, and how a well-crafted product marketing strategy can help you meet these goals.

• Increase Market Share: By identifying untapped market segments or optimizing your product’s positioning, product marketing can help you attract a larger customer base to increase your market share.
• Boost Brand Awareness: Through targeted advertising, social media posts, and public relations efforts, product marketing increases your product’s visibility, making your brand a familiar name among your target audience.
• Enhance Customer Loyalty: Creating loyalty programs, offering exclusive updates, and gathering user feedback for continuous improvement. For example, a retail brand can introduce a rewards program, offering points for purchases that can be redeemed for discounts on future orders.
• Launch New Products Successfully: Product marketing designs a multi-faceted launch strategy that includes pre-launch buzz, a well-timed launch event, and post-launch follow-up. It leverages press releases, email marketing, and social media to spread the word, using clear and persuasive messaging that highlights the product’s innovation and how it solves a problem. 
• Support Sales Enablement: Product marketing creates detailed sales enablement materials, such as product datasheets, FAQ documents, competitive battle cards, and case studies, which help the sales team understand the product features and benefits thoroughly. 

Target Audience Identification

Buyer persona is the first step in identifying your target audience. It is a detailed profile of your ideal customer based on accurate data and some educated speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.

Elements of a buyer persona include:

• Demographic information: Age, gender, income, education, job role.
• Psychographic traits: Interests, values, attitudes, lifestyle.
• Behavioral details: Buying patterns, brand interactions, product usage.
• Pain points: Specific problems or needs your product can solve.
• Goals and motivations: What they aim to achieve or what drives their decisions.
• Preferred communication channels: Where they spend their time and how they prefer to receive information.

Example of a Buyer Persona:

Name: Digital Dave

Age: 30-40 years

Gender: Male

Income: $80,000 – $100,000

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business or Technology

Job Role: Middle management in a tech company

Interests: Technology, productivity tools, gadgets, personal development

Pain Points: Needs efficient tools to manage team projects and tasks, feels current solutions are too complicated or lack features

Goals: To increase team productivity and streamline project management processes

Preferred Communication Channels: Email, tech blogs, LinkedIn

Consider the following questions to refine your target audience further:

• Which ones will you target with this product?
• What is their pain point?
• What is the customer or buyer persona?
• What are the demographic and psychographic traits (age, gender, education level, values)?
• What are their buying patterns?
• How are they using current products?
• How many customers will you talk to?

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is a core component of your product marketing strategy, allowing product marketers to understand where your product stands in the marketplace. 

By applying the 4 Cs of marketing—customer, cost, convenience, and communication—you can gain a comprehensive view of where your brand stands about others in the marketplace. 

For instance, Amazon’s convenience and customer obsession unfold across every touchpoint, from easy searching for products on their platform to quick delivery and hassle-free returns. 

Customer

Start by understanding who the customer is for both your product and your competitors. Analyze the target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. This deep dive into customer insight ensures that your product and marketing efforts are finely tuned to address the actual demands of the market. 

As Jonah Sachs says, 

“Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints.”

Cost

Examine not just the price of your product but the overall cost to the customer, including time, effort, and emotional investment. How does your product’s cost compare to your competitors’? 

Consider if your pricing strategy offers more value, a unique advantage that justifies a higher price point, or if a lower cost could attract a broader audience.

Convenience

Evaluate how easily customers can find, buy, and use your product compared to your competitors. Convenience can often be a deciding factor in consumer choice, so look for ways to enhance accessibility and user experience. 

Communication

This is about how you talk to your customers, the channels you use, and the messages you convey. Effective communication is about broadcasting your message and engaging in a two-way conversation with your audience. 

For example, Nike excels in communication, using inspirational messaging that resonates deeply with their target market.

Product Positioning and Messaging

Product positioning is a marketing strategy that defines how a product is unique in its market and how it fulfills a specific need or desire of the target audience that isn’t currently being met. 

“Positioning is not what you do to a product; it is what you do to the mind of a prospect.”

— Al Ries

Product positioning crafts the narrative of why a product is the best choice for its potential customers.

Types of Product Positioning:

Product marketing managers can position the product in different ways:

• Quality Product Positioning: Emphasizes superior quality as the main selling point, setting a product apart based on its craftsmanship or material superiority.
• Variety Product Positioning: Focuses on offering a wide range of options to cater to diverse customer needs and preferences.
• Performance Product Positioning: Highlights the product’s superior functionality and performance features compared to competitors.
• Efficiency Product Positioning: Positions a product or service as a time, money, or effort saver for the customer, appealing to those seeking practical solutions.
• Aesthetic Product Positioning: Focuses on the design, look, or style of a product, appealing to customers’ sense of aesthetics or identity.
• Reliability Product Positioning: Underlines the dependability of a product, aiming to build trust among consumers looking for reliable solutions.
• Sustainability Product Positioning: Emphasizes environmental friendliness, targeting eco-conscious consumers by highlighting sustainable and recyclable features.
• DIY Product Positioning: Targets customers who prefer to complete tasks independently, emphasizing the product’s ease of use and self-sufficiency.

Go-to-Market Strategy

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is your game plan for a product launch. It’s about hitting the market with the right message at the right time and through the right channels to make your product successful from day one.

Unlike broader marketing strategies, a product marketing agency will create a GTM strategy that zeroes in on the crucial early phase of the product lifecycle. It’s designed to carve out a space in the market, grab attention, and build momentum quickly.

Creating a Go-To-Market Strategy — Step by Step

Here’s how you can develop a go-to-market strategy for your new product:

1. Zero in on Your Target Market: Who will buy your product? Determine if it’s a B2C or B2B play and use segmentation to pinpoint your ideal customers. Understanding their pain points and desires is key.
2. Define Your Value Proposition: What’s your product’s killer feature or benefit? This is the heart of your pitch. Whether solving a unique problem or offering a cost-effective alternative, make sure it’s compelling and clear.
3. Set Your Pricing Right: Pricing can make or break your launch. It should reflect your product’s value, be competitive, and fit your market’s willingness to pay. Consider all costs and how you stack up against the competition.
4. Craft a Killer Promotion Strategy: How will you get the word out? Tailor your approach to fit where your target audience hangs out. Choose between online or offline, inbound or outbound, and make sure your methods align with your audience’s habits.
5. Pick Sales and Distribution Channels Wisely: How and where will customers buy your product? The path should be smooth and straightforward, whether directly to consumers online or through a network of distributors.
6. Measure and Adjust: Set clear, measurable product goals. As you launch, monitor performance metrics like customer acquisition cost and conversion rates. Be ready to pivot your strategy based on real-world results.

Marketing Tactics and Execution

The right mix of marketing tactics can elevate your brand, engage your audience, and significantly boost your sales and visibility. 

Here are some other key elements of product marketing:

Content Marketing

Do you think your product is too dull for content marketing? You might be wrong. There’s magic in every product story. Your job? Unearth it. Create content—blog posts, videos, infographics—that turns your product’s everyday utility into a narrative your audience cares about. 

For instance, a company selling office supplies can create content about transforming chaotic workspaces into models of organization and efficiency.

Retargeting Existing Customers

While chasing new customers is crucial, never overlook the value of your current ones. 

Retargeting or remarketing to existing customers is incredibly cost-effective. They already know and trust your brand, making them more likely to buy again. Keep them engaged, and watch your bottom line grow. 

After all, loyal customers are your brand ambassadors.

Influencers

Need a visibility boost? Tap into influencers. They’ve got the audience you want and the credibility you need. 

Alternatively, consider building your own influence by sharing expert content and insights and positioning yourself or your company’s leaders as go-to sources in your industry.

Events

In-person interaction is a rare commodity in a digital-first world—and it’s invaluable. Attend events, host your own, or volunteer. Meeting people face-to-face solidifies relationships in a way no email ever could. 

Measurement and Analysis

In product marketing, flying blind is not an option. Measurement and analysis provide the radar. They tell you where you are, how far you’ve come, and where to head next. To keep track, you can either build your product marketing team or collaborate with a product marketing agency.

Every product owner, developer, and marketer needs this insight, regardless of industry. It’s how you learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to allocate resources efficiently.

Without it, you’re guessing—and in today’s competitive markets, guesses are expensive.

Key KPIs to Measure

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Price you pay to acquire a new customer (keep it lower than the lifetime value of a customer to ensure a healthy margin.)
2. Conversion Rate: It matters because it shows your website’s or marketing campaign’s effectiveness in turning interest into action.
3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Predicts the total value generated by a customer over time. High CLTV means you’re creating lasting value and strong relationships.
4. Retention Rate: Measures how many customers you keep over time. It’s vital because retaining customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
5. Return on Investment (ROI): Helps justify marketing spend and prioritize future investments.
6. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Gauges customer satisfaction and loyalty (A high NPS indicates that customers are likely to recommend your product, signaling a strong market fit).
7. Website Traffic: Top-funnel metric that indicates brand interest and awareness.
8. Social Media Engagement: Measures interactions on social platforms. Important for understanding your brand’s resonance and audience health.

Final Thoughts

Successful product marketing demands a deep understanding of the customer’s needs, a clear differentiation in the market, and an agile approach to adapt to the ever-changing consumer behaviors. 

Ready to make your product the talk of the town? Our experts ensure your launch grabs attention, keeps it, and drives your sales up. Contact us today!