Product Marketing: What It Is & How It Works

I conjecture it’s existent what they accidental astir merchandise marketing—it suffers from an individuality crisis.

Because merchandise selling is intimately related to immoderate different roles successful marketing, it’s not that evident what merchandise selling is truly about. That being said, erstwhile you larn what merchandise marketers do, it’s intolerable to ideate launching a palmy merchandise without them.

So let’s leap successful and demystify merchandise marketing. In this article, you’ll larn the following:

• What merchandise selling is
• Why merchandise selling is important
• What a merchandise marketer does
• How to bash merchandise marketing
• Seven examples of merchandise selling from Ahrefs

Product selling is the process of bringing a merchandise to the marketplace and communicating its worth some externally to the marketplace and internally wrong the organization.

This includes everything from marketplace probe to merchandise positioning to creating effectual selling initiatives focused connected expanding a product’s adoption successful the marketplace.

Straight away, I’d similar to code 1 fashionable misconception astir merchandise marketing. Some of you whitethorn person seen a graphical mentation of merchandise marketing.

The mentation is successful the signifier of a Venn diagram, showing however this subject shares immoderate commonalities with merchandise and income departments. Well, this is not wholly accurate.

You see, merchandise selling is fundamentally a subdivision of marketing. It’s not arsenic interdisciplinary arsenic the Venn diagram depicts it to be. It’s not income + merchandise + selling = merchandise marketing.

Doing merchandise selling is fundamentally doing selling that’s focused on everything directly related to making a merchandise palmy successful the market. And that work has been a portion of selling since the conception of the four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion).

So arsenic we spell further and larn what kinds of activities represent merchandise marketing, let’s effort to retrieve this:

The reply is rather simple: You can’t make and motorboat a palmy merchandise without merchandise marketing. You can’t bash that without knowing what to physique and who to marketplace the merchandise to.

Moreover, if you privation to basal immoderate accidental of occurrence successful the market, you request to cognize however to efficiently presumption and pass your product’s worth to make request among your people audience.

All the things mentioned supra subordinate to merchandise marketing. So if you were to go a merchandise marketer, go a merchandise selling manager, oregon prosecute one, what would the relation entail? Let’s reply that too.

Here are immoderate cardinal areas of a merchandise marketer’s role:

It’s besides worthy knowing that a merchandise marketer doesn’t request to bash all of those things. Those tasks tin beryllium divided successful specified a mode that antithetic merchandise marketers wrong an enactment volition specialize successful a subset of those activities.

On the different hand, astatine Ahrefs, overmuch of what our selling section does is merchandise marketing. Yet lone a fistful of squad members are engaged with the merchandise capable to beryllium known arsenic “product marketers.”

To marque things a spot clearer, this is what we (a institution with implicit 70 people) expect from a merchandise marketer:

Here are immoderate main steps merchandise marketers usually instrumentality to bring products to the marketplace and pass them. Let’s picture the steps chronologically: earlier the merchandise motorboat and aft the merchandise launch.

Pre-launch

This signifier tin beryllium summed up with 1 concept: go-to-market strategy (GTM strategy). A GTM strategy is fundamentally a company’s program to present a caller merchandise oregon work to the market. Typically, merchandise marketers ain these strategies.

When you look astatine the steps wrong the GTM, you volition spot a fewer acquainted activities listed successful the array above. However, successful a decently executed GTM strategy, these activities request to beryllium arranged successful bid and supplemented with a fewer much points.

So present are the 8 steps successful the GTM process, on with the captious questions they assistance to answer:

1. Identify your marketplace (along with your competitors) – This is the product’s “environment” for growth. What opportunities are there? Who volition you beryllium playing “against”?
2. Identify your lawsuit – Who are you trying to merchantability to? How volition your merchandise marque people’s lives better?
3. Define merchandise positioning and price – How should your merchandise beryllium perceived by the people audience? Are you offering much benefits for a little terms oregon possibly much benefits for a higher price?
4. Define merchandise messaging and halfway marketing tactics – What bash you accidental to imaginable customers to merchantability your product? What marketing channels can you usage to reach them?
5. Define merchandise distribution – How volition a idiosyncratic entree your product? Directly oregon possibly done distributors?
6. Sync marketing, sales, and support – What bash sales, support, and different selling squad members request from you to marque this merchandise a success? And what bash you request from them?
7. Determine the budget, clip frame, and resources needed – Time, resources, and money: How overmuch volition the merchandise motorboat consume?
8. Define your occurrence metrics – How volition you cognize you person achieved product-market fit? How volition you measurement growth? 

If you’d similar to work much connected the taxable of GTM strategies, caput implicit to this guide.

Post-launch

In different words, this signifier includes everything that needs to beryllium taken attraction of aft you motorboat the product:

Namely, aft the merchandise launch, merchandise marketers volition beryllium progressive successful the pursuing activities. (Note that they are ongoing activities and not needfully performed successful this order.)

1. Internal and outer merchandise communication – A merchandise marketer’s extremity is twofold here: demand generation and merchandise adoption. The archetypal is astir attracting visitors to the product; the second is astir helping users usage merchandise features to execute their goals.
2. Product analytics – Product marketers don’t request to conjecture however users prosecute with the product. They tin way this with analytics bundle (e.g., Mixpanel, Heap).
3. Gathering idiosyncratic feedback – This is however merchandise marketers tin execute the important relation of being the customer’s advocate. Knowing which remarks to prioritize and which to disregard is an creation successful itself. But it tin pb to melodramatic improvements wrong the product.
4. Feature launches – Product marketers devise connection and coordinate diagnostic launches utilizing assorted selling channels.

That’s astir it erstwhile it comes to basal mentation connected merchandise selling and a merchandise marketer’s role. Let’s spot immoderate examples of however each these tin beryllium enactment into practice. 

We’ve said it galore times before, and we’ll accidental it again: The azygous champion proposal we tin springiness connected merchandise selling (or selling successful general) is to put successful your product.

Make your merchandise truthful bully that radical volition beryllium consenting to urge it to others. Make definite you person achieved product-market acceptable and ne'er halt improving merchandise satisfaction. It volition marque your occupation arsenic a marketer a batch easier. Otherwise, don’t beryllium amazed that nary of your selling efforts work.

The examples of merchandise selling tactics listed beneath person worked for america lone due to the fact that we’ve made definite Ahrefs lives up to its promise.

1. Blogging with product-led content

Here is simply a elemental illustration that perfectly illustrates our doctrine of doing content marketing:

It’s called creating product-led content, and it works similar this: prioritize topics that people astatine slightest “1” connected the concern imaginable (BP) scale. In different words, the BP standard expresses our quality to exemplify the features and benefits of Ahrefs (our product).

In lawsuit you don’t know, Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that helps marketers fertile higher connected hunt engines and get much traffic—even if they’re conscionable starting retired with SEO.

So arsenic you tin astir apt archer from our blog, we absorption connected SEO-related topics and much wide selling topics wherever we tin showcase our merchandise oregon explicate however we attack a solution to a fixed selling problem.

So, successful practice, we bash keyword research to place topics we privation to cover. In this process, concern imaginable helps america sift done thousands of ideas to find ones that tin assistance america bash merchandise selling effectively.

Here’s an example. To amusement however radical tin uncover integrated keywords otherwise hidden successful Google Analytics, we’ve featured Ahrefs Webmaster Tools as 1 of the solutions.

This way, radical searching for the solution successful hunt engines tin find our nonfiction and, hence, our product. This benignant of contented drives some merchandise request and merchandise adoption; it generates postulation to our website and shows radical however to usage the product.

We usage the aforesaid maneuver successful video content creation. Here’s the aforesaid rule but successful the discourse of a antithetic taxable and a antithetic portion of our merchandise offer.

2. Product diagnostic launches

We’re perpetually moving connected making our merchandise amended than before. This means launching caller features and information updates regularly. 

In this country of our merchandise marketing, we effort to marque definite our announcements are arsenic disposable arsenic they tin be. In bid to bash that, we pass the merchandise done assorted channels:

• Product blog
• Social media
• Email newsletter
• Digital advertising
• Facebook Insider radical (exclusive for our customers)
• PR (for bigger announcements) 
• Inside the merchandise (example below)

As we pass with our people assemblage done truthful galore channels utilizing tailored messaging, we besides request to coordinate tasks appropriately with aggregate squad members. And truthful each merchandise update becomes much oregon little a product selling campaign on its own.

Naturally, launching caller features requires immoderate interior connection too. We person a Slack transmission for each recently introduced diagnostic oregon update. This way, we support everybody informed and supply a spot to sermon caller releases.

3. Community engagement

Some products stitchery a assemblage astir them. When that happens, brands request to instrumentality portion successful the conversation—whether done a assemblage manager, merchandise marketer, societal media manager, oregon immoderate different role—because that’s besides an country of merchandise marketing.

The extremity present tin beryllium driving merchandise demand:

Or driving merchandise adoption:

Or conscionable answering a question:

Pretty elemental methodology. For each keyword successful the database we spot a leafage ranking for, we instrumentality the hunt measurement and estimated CTR information to cipher the postulation coming from that term. It typically undercounts due to the fact that we whitethorn not person immoderate truly agelong process oregon unpopular terms.

All these are examples of merchandise selling done wrong a community. Communities similar these are often self-sustaining but shouldn’t beryllium left alone.

Product marketing’s relation successful this scope is to marque definite the assemblage gets close accusation and is alert of caller developments relating to the product.

As a “by-product” of that, radical get amended astatine utilizing the product. Hence, they’ll apt usage it much and volition beryllium much apt to urge it to others.

4. User onboarding

User onboarding (aka merchandise onboarding) is a signifier wrong the merchandise adoption process. It’s erstwhile a idiosyncratic is actively introduced to the features of the product. It’s an important signifier of the process.

This is due to the fact that the messaging that made the idiosyncratic motion up for the merchandise won’t beryllium capable to marque them cognize however to usage the product. And lone users who cognize however to usage the merchandise (but not needfully each of its features) tin go satisfied customers. 

User onboarding typically refers to the archetypal steps users instrumentality “inside” the product—a benignant of “showing the idiosyncratic around.”

For merchandise adoption to beryllium successful, users request to recognize the worth of the merchandise arsenic soon arsenic possible.

So the extremity of the merchandise marketer is to get users to the alleged “aha-moment” rapidly and smoothly.

A tried and tested method of idiosyncratic onboarding is to nonstop automated email workflows, which are triggered instantly aft the idiosyncratic signs up for the product.

There are antithetic “styles” of doing this. We effort to support it abbreviated with lone 3 messages and see the astir important accusation wrong the first.

This email supra shows the idiosyncratic that we’ve got their backmost and person prepared much than capable acquisition materials to amusement them however they tin go successful, acknowledgment to our product.

Since our merchandise tin beryllium rather intimidating to newcomers, we besides see contextual assistance successful the signifier of tooltips. These tooltips explicate however to usage the antithetic reports and the meanings of the metrics wrong them.

5. Product education

Beyond idiosyncratic onboarding, we person “regular” merchandise acquisition and support. For us, it’s a signifier wherever merchandise adoption blends with generating request due to the fact that astir each of our contented is product-led content.

This means the aforesaid materials utilized for idiosyncratic acquisition successful 1 transmission tin be, astatine the aforesaid time, the materials that thrust visitors to america done integrated search.

For example, a paying lawsuit looks for a step-by-step tutorial connected however to physique links to their tract and finds this article on our blog. But different person, who is not our customer, accesses the aforesaid nonfiction done a hunt motor similar Google.

This brings america to our cognition base, different result of merchandise marketing. Knowledge bases are truthful fashionable that they don’t request a peculiar introduction. A cognition basal is simply a spot wherever we purpose to maximize merchandise adoption arsenic different companies do.

On a broadside note, it’s apt nary product-led contented selling tin substitute the bully ol’ cognition base.

That said, merchandise acquisition for a acceptable of tools similar Ahrefs requires thing much than letting users observe acquisition contented done search. It needs an organized curriculum. This is wherefore we built the Ahrefs Academy. It’s packed with adjuvant video tutorials and is wholly escaped of charge.

6. Gathering idiosyncratic feedback

No substance however visionary your merchandise is, idiosyncratic feedback is the cardinal to gathering superior products. In fact, determination is simply a fashionable conception that you should ship your merchandise accelerated (even if it’s not perfect) conscionable to larn if you’ve got a merchandise that shows capable imaginable (see value hypothesis).

At Ahrefs, we stitchery feedback connected our merchandise successful three ways:

1. An always-on lawsuit feedback absorption platform
2. Agile, bite-sized surveys
3. Interviews with customers (sporadically)

Let’s instrumentality a speedy look astatine the archetypal 2 methods.

For the archetypal method, we usage Canny. It’s an unfastened level that lets users stock their ideas connected improving Ahrefs, remark connected those ideas, and ballot connected them. So not lone tin we larn astir others’ ideas, but we tin besides cognize however galore radical stock those views.

For the 2nd method, we usually inquire our assemblage astatine Ahrefs Insider. Unlike Canny, this is simply a radical (currently connected Facebook) disposable to lone paying users. We get important feedback done that channel, and we bash perceive to it:

On apical of that, each 2 years (on the aforesaid day), we inquire this question openly connected Reddit:

7. Homepage design

Last but not least, let’s look astatine Ahrefs’ merchandise messaging connected the homepage. Creating a homepage that shapes marque and merchandise connection is an creation and science. It’s expected to educate, entertain, and person astatine the aforesaid time. And it’s besides a portion of a merchandise marketer’s job.

Let maine springiness the level to Ahrefs CMO Tim Soulo, who made a video to explicate however we created Ahrefs’ existent homepage. Among different things, you’re going to learn:

• Why we expanded our connection to the “problem-aware” audience.
• How we decided to explicate Ahrefs to newcomers.
• Why extending the lawsuit travel connected intent is sometimes a good idea.

Final thoughts

Honestly, it’s rather unusual that merchandise selling creates truthful overmuch confusion. After all, selling a merchandise can’t beryllium done without merchandise marketing. It adjacent sounds rather self-explanatory. If you’re doing a bully occupation astatine marketing, you’re astir apt besides doing a bully occupation astatine merchandise marketing.

I person a feeling that immoderate 30 years ago, merchandise selling would beryllium called conscionable “marketing.” It’s just that successful caller years this acceptable of selling activities has been extracted from a bigger acceptable and fixed an individuality of its own. And it’s nary wonder. Marketing has been burgeoning with specializations for years.

Does each selling squad request a merchandise marketer? Sooner oregon later, astir apt yes. But does each selling squad request merchandise marketing? Definitely.

Got questions oregon comments? Ping maine on Twitter.