Enable Smart Sales via Product Marketing

Here’s something interesting. During the 1950s, Volkswagen sold a bus. Although now considered a classic vehicle, the bus remains an icon for the car company decades later.

The cool part? Volkswagen announced their new VW Bus — it’s electric and features sleek, modern styling. Volkswagen’s marketing for the vehicle is eye-catching, unique, and fun, and it complements the original "hippie" vibe the company was once known for.

Wondering why it’s important? This sentiment touches on the fact Volkswagen is contributing to society’s interest in electric, eco-friendly vehicles. It also relates to this being a new era for the bus. Product marketing and client service teams share an ultimate goal: to help sales teams sell more. As the leading sales outsourcing company in India, AOB India, believes that the sales and marketing of every product is inter-related. Leveraging a strong marketing approach can help the sales team score more numbers in field.

In today’s time, when the complexities of sales have increased and the top sales consultancies are innovating new tactics to deliver results, the sales consultants at AOB India, trust in the science behind sales and bring a combination of people, process and technology. Product marketing is one of the important aspects of the process. But let’s start with the beginning. What is product marketing?

Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to market, promoting it, and selling it to a customer. Product marketing involves understanding the product’s target audience and using strategic positioning and messaging to boost revenue and demand for the product.

Why is product marketing important?

Product marketing is a critical part of any business’s marketing strategy. As sales outsourcing partner, AOB India suggests that without it, your product won’t achieve its maximum potential among your target audience. Let’s look at what product marketing does -

• Understands your customers better.
• Targets your buyer personas effectively.
• Learns about your competitors (products and marketing tactics).
• Ensures the marketing, product, and sales teams are all on the same page.
• Positions the product appropriately in the market.
• Boosts revenue and improves sales.

As you can see, product marketing requires you to look at your products from a strategic perspective to ensure they’re successful among customers in your current market. Your responsibilities as a business may vary slightly based on your industry, company, products, and company size and resources. Your sales consultants can help you receive feedback from your customers and how the product is performing in the market. The leading sales outsourcing company, AOB India, also leverages the strategic help to its partners. With the years of experience in the field of sales and marketing, the company has an experience of every domain. The sales outsourcing company in India, has proven to be a trusted partner in sales and strategy for years.

Responsibilities in Product Marketing

1. Identify the buyer personas and target audience for your product.
2. Successfully create and carry out your product marketing strategy.
3. Work with and enable sales to attract the right customers for your new product.
4. Determine your product’s positioning in the market.
5. Ensure the product meets the needs of your target audience.
6. Keep your product relevant over time.

Product Marketing Strategies

Your product marketing strategy serves to guide the positioning, pricing, and promotion of your new product. It helps you take your product from development to launch and informs what new audience(s) and markets to which to launch and market your product.

Now, let’s take a look at five steps that can help you optimize your product marketing strategy.

1. Define your product’s target audience and buyer personas.

As mentioned, one of the main roles you have is to define a specific target audience and create buyer personas for the specific product being sold (different products will likely have different target audiences). This is the first step to market your product.

By understanding your customers and their needs, challenges, and pain points, you’ll be able to ensure all aspects of your product marketing strategy (as in, the rest of the steps we’ll define below) are tailored to that target customer and persona. This way, the product and the marketing content that’s created for the product will resonate with your audience.

2. Determine the positioning and messaging to set your product apart.

After performing your customer research and learning about your audience, you’ll have identified their needs, challenges, and pain points. From here, you can think about how to highlight the ways your product resolves those challenges for your customers.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors. After all, they are your competitors because they solve the needs of your customers in a similar way to your product.

The sales outsourcing company, AOB India believes that the key to setting your product apart is positioning and messaging. Positioning and messaging answers key questions your customers might have about your product and what makes it unique and then turns those answers into the main points behind your product’s marketing strategy.

Examples of questions you’ll need to answer to develop your product’s positioning and messaging include:

• What specifically makes your product unique?
• Why is your product better than your competitors’?
• Why are your product’s features ideal for your target audience?
• What will your customers get out of your product that they cannot get from your competitors’ products?
• Why should your customers trust and buy your product?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can compile these responses into one, impactful, and shareable statement that captures your positioning and messaging as a whole. To do this, follow these steps:

• Turn the answers to the positioning and messaging questions into an elevator pitch.
• Use action words to excite your customers.
• Ensure the tone of your statement captures the tone of your brand.
• Focus on the benefit of your product as a whole (not just one specific feature).

3. Set goals for your product.

Next, you’ll want to set goals for your product. These will vary based on your specific product, the type of company you work for, your overall marketing goals, and more — your goals will be specific to your business and situation. However, let’s review some common goals to achieve:

• Increase revenue
• Engage with customers
• Improve market share
• Gain customers from competitors
• Boost brand recognition

4. Price your product.

Depending on the company, you might work with other teams on this part of the strategy, or it might be a job just for you and your product marketers and sales experts. Either way, you can consider competitive vs. value-based pricing.

5. Launch your product.

Now it’s time for the most important part: the launch of the product you’ve been marketing.

There are two main parts to the launch to focus on as: the internal launch (what goes on within your company upon product launch) and external launch (what goes on outside of your company, with customers and audience members, upon product launch).

Internal Aspects of a Product Launch

As previously stated, it is important to make sure the entire organization is on the same page about your product. This way, your customers only receive consistent and accurate details about the product.

The marketing, product, and sales teams at your company should be aware of the following information:

• The product’s benefits
• Any available product demo information
• Sales training opportunities on your product and details about how it’s used
• What the positioning and messaging looks like
• Who your buyer personas and ideal customers are
• What the goals for your product include
• What your product’s features are
• The pricing of your product
• How your product is being launched to customers (which we’ll discuss momentarily)

Now, you might be wondering how to provide this information to marketing, product, and sales. Which channels are ideal for sharing these details with your fellow employees?

External Aspects of a Product Launch

Externally, there are many ways to market your product launch so your current base of customers, prospects, and target audience learn about whatever it is you’re selling.

First, determine where you’re going to focus your product marketing efforts. Here are some examples of channels and places to do this (You might choose several of these or just one to focus on depending on your needs, goals, and resources).

• Social media
• In-store
• Product launch event
• Blog
• Website landing page
• Exclusive product preview (prior to the official launch)
• Promotional event/ campaign (in-person and/ or online)

On whatever channel you choose to focus your product launch marketing efforts, you should include relevant product information so that prospects and customers can learn all about your product and why they need it. This includes your product’s features, what makes it unique, pricing, demos for customers, training for customers, and any other materials you’ve created and want to share.

Congrats! You’ve just worked through the steps to marketing a product. Remember, this process is one that should be thought about and updated as your products change and evolve and so they remain relevant among your customers.

Start Marketing Your Products – Let the sales begin!

Product marketing is the process through which a company brings a product to market. Now you need to align the marketing, sales and service to give you a proper result. The client acquisition partner, AOB India believes that the integral part to the success of your product not only lies in what and how you create and manage your product’s specific marketing strategy, but also on how you serve as a link between all three of these departments, ensuring everyone is on the same page with your product, it’s features, capabilities, and more. So, start developing your latest product’s marketing and sales strategy to ensure it’s a success among your target audience and customers.

The B2B Sales outsourcing company in India is pushing a number of companies all across the globe to climb up their success ladder.