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Product marketing connects products with the people who need them most. Learn what product marketers do, why they are essential to a product\u2019s success, and how you can build a career in this field.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s an age-old question: If a tree falls in the woods but no one\u2019s around to hear it, does it make a sound? In the product world, we might reframe the question as follows: If a company builds a great product, but no one knows about it, does it impact the market?<\/p>\n This explains why product marketing is essential to a product’s success. Without a deep understanding of how to talk about your product and generate excitement for it, your product may see a lackluster launch and underperform. Luckily, by understanding its key functions and how to incorporate them into a broader product strategy, you can use it to your advantage and support business success.<\/p>\n Ready to learn how? Keep reading or use the links below to explore the topics that most interest you.<\/p>\n Product marketing is the process of bringing a finished product to your market, positioning it effectively, and communicating its value to the target audience.<\/p>\n To do this right, you must understand your market’s problems and how your product solves those problems. Armed with that information, you can shape your product positioning, messaging, and channel strategy. Product marketers can create buyer personas, product positioning statements, and go-to-market plans to shape their marketing and communication strategies.<\/p>\n Product marketing sits at the intersection between product, traditional marketing, sales, and customer experience. It takes information from many different sources and influences how a company talks about a product and who it talks to. To accomplish this, product marketers are typically responsible for product positioning and messaging, marketing strategy, supporting customer onboarding and retention, and sales enablement.<\/p>\n Simply put, product positioning is what you want to communicate, and product messaging is how you will communicate it.<\/p>\n Product positioning involves documenting market needs and articulating how a product meets those needs. It\u2019s also an opportunity to show that your product beats competitors\u2019 products. Ultimately, completing product positioning will help you define how your product stands out in the market and exceeds what competitors can offer.<\/p>\n Product messaging helps all your marketing materials sing from the same songbook. It\u2019s a blueprint for communicating how the product solves market needs, why it will resonate with buyer personas, and exactly why it\u2019s different from competitors\u2019 products.<\/p>\n In a nutshell, messaging is the game plan for communicating the broad ideas identified through positioning.<\/p>\n Strategy is how a company positions, prices, and promotes a product from launch through the product life cycle<\/a>.<\/p>\n Product management is responsible for building products the market loves, and product marketing ensures that the target audience knows about those products.<\/p>\n Remember, product marketing doesn\u2019t end after launch \u2014it supports the product\u2019s success throughout its life cycle. Products, markets, and target audiences may evolve and change over time. These strategies help companies retain customers who may otherwise consider and purchase other products. It can also engage and convert new customers who may not have known about the product when it was released or who may benefit from new features.<\/p>\n Product marketers are often tempted to focus on metrics like paid ad click-through rate (CTR), leads, or the PR\u2019s earned audience value. However, it\u2019s important to remember that the business\u2019s goals are your goals. If the company aims to sell a new product or upgrade existing customers, product marketing goals must be tied to primary business objectives like sales, revenue growth, or customer acquisition and retention.<\/p>\n To show their impact, product marketers need to demonstrate how their marketing initiatives support business growth goals.<\/p>\n Product marketing is important because it gets the product in front of the right people and encourages them to buy it. A product management team might build an exceptional product, but it won\u2019t matter if your target market doesn\u2019t know about it or see its value.<\/p>\n Product managers develop products from concept to launch, but product marketers are responsible for promoting them during launch and beyond. To accomplish that, they must ensure that all teams\u2014including sales, operations, customer experience, and product, are attuned to how the product solves customer needs. They use buyer personas and market research to craft messaging, product positioning, and sales enablement assets.<\/p>\n So, product marketing ensures that all outbound communication and customer interactions are guided by the customer\u2019s needs (not just the company\u2019s revenue goals).<\/p>\n Because of their close partnerships with marketing and customer experience teams, product marketers are often among the first to hear feedback from product users. That feedback might come from social media sentiment<\/a>, reviews, or support call logs. It\u2019s not all negative! Positive customer feedback can encourage product teams to focus on experiences that users love and even shape marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n Product marketers\u2019 first-hand market insights can benefit sales teams, too. They can leverage their knowledge of the market to help create sales enablement tools, resources, and training. They can also share common market pain points and articulate how the product solves them. With this information, sales teams can build scripts and think ahead to counter common concerns.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested in a career in product marketing, you\u2019re in luck! It is a fast-growing field with no standard career path. Professionals in these roles often have backgrounds in traditional or digital marketing, product, sales, and even engineering. Product marketing managers are often called a \u201cSwiss Army Knife,\u201d so an unconventional background or skillset can work to your advantage.<\/p>\n Historically, marketing focused on growing the brand and driving sales. Product marketing began to gain traction as companies moved toward product-led growth (PLG) in the 2010s. PLG is a business strategy that relies on products to acquire new customers, retain existing customers, and achieve business goals. PLG prioritizes specific products over the brand and enables prospects to engage with your product through the sales cycle.<\/p>\n Product marketers must balance hard and soft skills to succeed in their roles. This field is deal for professionals who enjoy working on dynamic, evolving projects and have the skills to work cross-functionally to bring a product to the market and ensure its success.<\/p>\n Hard skills:<\/p>\n Soft skills:<\/p>\n\n
What is product marketing?<\/h2>\n
What does product marketing do?<\/h2>\n
Product Positioning and Messaging<\/h3>\n
Product Marketing Strategy<\/h3>\n
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Supporting Customer Retention and Onboarding<\/h3>\n
Aligning Product Marketing Strategy with Business Goals<\/h3>\n
Why is product marketing important?<\/h2>\n
Aligning Teams Around the Customer<\/h3>\n
Driving Product Growth and Innovation<\/h3>\n
\nThat creates a unique opportunity to escalate customer pain points to product teams. Additionally, that information can inform how sales teams approach conversations with their prospects or how marketing communicates important product information.<\/p>\nSales Enablement and Cross-Functional Collaboration<\/h3>\n
How to build a career in product marketing<\/h2>\n
Origins of Product Marketing<\/h3>\n
Key Skills Needed for Product Marketing<\/h3>\n
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