Product Marketing 101

        Product marketing is one of the 3 core areas of marketing, alongside brand and growth.  Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) are tasked with launching new products and services, and they are essential to product strategy, growth, and adoption.  Their role demands a deep understanding of customers to effectively shape the company's positioning and messaging. 

       Product development and strategy begin well before the engineering, product, and design teams start building a product, and long before the sales team begins selling it.  This involves conducting user interviews, market research, and competitive analysis to identify product gaps and highlight key features to emphasize in the launch materials.  The responsibilities of a PMM in this initial phase include quantize research, product roadmap prioritization, and market sizing, typically in collaboration with product management, and sometimes with engineering or strategy teams.

       Product Launch The PMM is responsible for drafting all internal and external messaging related to the launch, including website content, sales collateral, and any new sales materials that need to be created.  Product launches require collaboration across multiple teams, including sales, customer support, product teams, product marketing, event management, and managers.  A successful product launch not only generates increased interest and sustained sales revenue, but it can also enhance the performance of your other products when they are included in launch bundles.  Before reaching the product launch phase, most product development teams go through several stages: ideation, concept development, and testing.  Afterward, they collaborate with marketing and sales teams to develop a launch strategy for the release.  

       There are 5 key parts to a product launch plan:

                         A Clear Vision: A Successful product launch requires the support of your internal teams.  Ensure that everyone is aligned with the goals and understands the purpose and importance of the product.

                         A Strategy: How will you introduce the product to the market?  A strategy outlines the steps from start to finish.  It's a customer-centric plan with tasks and timelines designed to deliver value to the end-user, keeping your teams aligned and focused on the same goal. 

                          A Communication Plan: Regular check-ins, team meetings, and stakeholder or board meetings all help ensure everyone stays informed about the current progress of the product launch plan.  Alongside team communication have a strategy for engaging with prospects and customers.  

                           A Product Launch Checklist: A checklist of final pre-launch tasks to ensure a successful product launch.

                           A System to Measure Success:  To evaluate your product's performance and make improvements you need to a system to measure success.  This allows you to track revenue, adoption, engagement, and satisfaction, while also using customer and market feedback to refine your offering.

          There are 3 types of launch events:

                           Minimal Viable Product (MVP): An MVP is a minimal solution that includes only core features and functionality, designed to give a "taste" of the product.  It helps bring the product to life and enables testing with your target audience.  These tests allow you to assess whether the product resonates with your customers and make adjustments based on their feedback.

                         Soft: A soft launch or beta launch, is when the product is released to a limited audience under specific conditions.  This approach allows for last-minute adjustments and helps generate early momentum through reviews and feedback.

                           Full Scale: this is also known as a hard launch or official release, occurs when the product becomes fully available for public purchase.  It's an "all or nothing" event designed to make a strong impact and drive rapid sales.  Most products move directly to a full-scale launch when they are market ready.

       To guarantee a successful product launch, you need a document that details key objectives, tasks, goals, performance metrics, teams and responsibilities.  A clear product launch plan ensures your teams are aligned coordinated and prepared to full fill their roles.  It's also important to document post-launch activities, including customer support training, and ongoing product improvement.  Your product launch template should include the following information:

                           1)  The Product

                                   * A description of the product

                                   * The challenges it addresses for the customer

                                    * The features and benefits it offers

                                   * The target price range for the product

                                   * The financial investment made so far

                                   * The team members involved in the product launch and their specific           responsibilities

                           2) The Customer

                                   * A description of the target customer and pertinent market segments - such as areas where the product can provide assistance or tasks it can accomplish

                           3) The Goals

                                   * What are the primary objectives for the product?

                                  * How will you track and evaluate your progress toward these goals?

                           4) The Launch Event

                                   * The budget for the activities

                                   * The vision and overview of the product launch

                           5) The Timeline and Milestones of the Product Launch

                                  * Outline the activities along with their completion deadlines, focusing on the key elements necessary for a successful launch.

                                   * Schedule meetings to bring internal teams together to discuss progress and updates.  Regular meetings and updates will help keep teams aligned.

                           6) The Product Marketing and Communication Plan

                                   * What are the key messages you want customers to receive?

                                   * Which channels will you utilize?

                                   * What marketing materials do you need to develop?

       Adoption and engagement.  This process starts before the launch, working with the sales and product teams to establish launch goals and define success metrics.  Without a successful product adoption companies face the risk of low user engagement, diminished customer satisfaction, and potential market failure. 

       The typical stages of product adoption are awareness, interest, evaluation, trail, activation, and full adoption to ensure effective product adoption, it's essential to understand your users.  This involves collecting data and insights on their behaviors, presences, and challenges.  

       By gaining a deep understanding of your users, you can customize your product and messaging to address their specific needs, boosting the chances of adoption.  Customer success stories are highly effective in promoting product adoption.  Share case studies and testimonials from happy customers who have seen positive results using your product.  Emphasize the specific challenges they encountered and how your product provided solutions.  This social proof builds trust and credibility, motivating potential users to adopt your product.  

       Consistently collect user feedback and analyze behavior to pinpoint areas for improvement. Enhancing the user experience will drive higher adoption and retention rates.  Product strategy involves stepping back from various outputs to assess whether a specific approach is worthwhile.  By setting objectives and key results in advance, this process helps mitigate the risk of business failure.

       There are 6 steps to make the adoption strategy successful:

                          Make an Objective to Increase Product Adoption:  This isn't a single event.  It occurs at multiple stages throughout the customer journey.  This objective can be divided into several sub-objectives, each with its own key results to help measure progress.

                           Understand and Map Out the Customer Journey: This will differ depending on your specific product or service.

                           Define Your Buyers Personas: Users and buyers can differ.  Some may be advocates without decision-making authority, while others have the power to make purchasing decision.  It's crucial to address the various types of user and buyer personas to facilitate a smoother transition from awareness to education and then to activation.

                           Run Experiments to Make Smarter Decisions: This step is the experimentation, where you'll test various methods to address their effectiveness in reaching the established the objective.

                           Design an Outcome Based Roadmap: An outcome-based roadmap emphasizes aligning potential projects with objectives.

                           Evaluate Your Strategy: If your experiments don't produce the anticipated results, make sure to document what happened.  Record any issues you encounter, and if the experiment was successful, think about how you can replicate that success in future trails. 

       Product marketing essentially involves product strategy, product launch, and product adoption.  The key element throughout these stages is a through understanding of the customer and their needs.  Product marketing doesn't end when the product hits the market.  It's a continuous process that supports a product's success both in the short term and over the long haul. 

       This ins't a one time event.  It is a series of ongoing steps designed to capture your audience attention, convey your brand story, and encourage customer loyalty.