MOVING FROM FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS TO A DEMAND GENERATION MACHINE
Animation: a simplified comparison of the roles and why it might be time for your organization to have both.
People often confuse Product Management and Product Marketing. They are two unique roles with separate responsibilities and a great deal of interdependence. When the roles are not clearly defined it can cause ambiguity and lack of ownership that stifles product marketing. The animation above provides a simplified overview of the responsibilities of each role.
Product Marketing requires both of these roles collaborating, communicating and working together in order to help the Sales Organization and the market understand the unique value and benefits of the product as related to others that perform a similar function (the competition).
Product marketing is a subset of strategic marketing that focuses on an individual product or a collection of interrelated products, and has the primary objective to create a product mix, pricing and promotion combination that elicits the desired customer response. The marketing programs a Product Marketer might implement will largely depend on what stage of the lifecycle the product is in. For example, a product in the introduction and growth phase will likely need lead and demand generation programs, whereas a product in the maturity stage might require account penetration and customer retention marketing.
Create Value Propositions for the Customer Buying Lifecycle
Today's B2B sales and marketing landscape is more dynamic and complex. This requires a new set of strategies and tools for supporting buyers. In addition to the product lifecycle, product managers, marketers and sales teams need to think also about pipeline marketing.
The job of Product Marketing is to create strategic programs that support the business objectives as related to the product lifecycle and development roadmap. For demand generation, this might mean creating a nurture stream to move clients from one stage of the pipeline to the next until the lead has matured to a critical point for handover to the sales team. For an account penetration program, it might mean synthesizing and analyzing internal sales data to create targeted incentives or promotions for a particular segment.
In all cases, product marketing relies on a strong relationship with the sales organization to develop a mutually agreed upon scoring system, KPIs for the program, a variety of content pieces to utilize at various points during the marketing and sales process, and constant feedback and measurement to optimize ROI.
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Case Study
This case study features a go-to-market and marketing strategy combo developed for a client's new product launch.
How we can help
Strategy
Documenting, planning and implementing a marketing program that helps your team build an appropriate framework to deliver qualified leads to the sales organization.
Lead Scoring
Development, documentation and implementation of the lead scoring system with the sales team so client interactions during nurture stream marketing are properly weighted and there is clear accountability between marketing and sales.
Nurture Stream Marketing & Engagement Plans
If/Then mapping of content and next steps depending on customer actions and response up to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). This will often utilize marketing automation platforms to help streamline the process, but can also be implemented manually.
Messaging & Positioning
Creating and documenting the differentiated value propositions of the product/portfolio for each persona as they relate to solving a business problem and ensuring the features that enable the added value are highlighted appropriately.
Persona Mapping
Analyzing and segmenting the target market to develop buying personas (technical buyers, influencers, economic buyers, users and coaches) and create the associated persona profiles that can be used to develop relevant and impactful marketing messages.
Content Marketing
Strategy, creation and management of various content pieces (technical and business-related) utilized for lead generation, prospecting, and nurture stream marketing across multiple platforms such as email, social media, direct mail, blogs, website, etc. These pieces may include videos, infographics, flyers, brochures, case studies, whitepapers, articles and animations.
Pipeline or Sales Marketing
Development of the supporting materials and messages that target customers at a given point in the sales process (beyond MQL).
Marketing Automation
Implementation and configuration of the systems used to automate email, social media, and website marketing.
Optimization
A|B testing, personalization and path analysis to reduce the cycle time from lead acquisition to various points of conversion. Implementing a systematic demand generation program enables the effective testing of a multitude of variables.
Analytics
Reviewing and measuring the effectiveness of messaging, tactics, channels, spend and consolidated programs including building dashboards and reports to properly share the results with multiple stakeholders.
Additional Resources:
- Blog Post and Slideshare: "What is Product Marketing?", by Dave Gehart of Drift - December, 2016
- Blog Post and Guide: "8 Key Product Marketing Metrics", by Ellie Merman of Crayon.com - June, 2017
- Blog Post: "9 Killer Demand Generation Strategies for New Brands", by Dan Shewan, Wordstream