Product Marketing Strategy: Disrupt the Market With Killer Branding

The most popular products on the market right now aren't necessarily the best, most affordable, highest-quality, or most innovative products available. Chances are, the lucky handful of products that truly disrupt the market are the ones backed by the most attention-grabbing, demand-driving product marketing strategies.

In this article, we'll discuss how careful brand management, perfect product positioning, and the strategic use of customer insights can work together to create a successful go-to-market strategy— and a revenue-generating product launch.

Ready to learn how to build your own effective product marketing strategy? Let's begin!

What is a product marketing strategy?

Before we talk about the most important elements of a product marketing strategy, it's important to understand what this essential campaign includes— and how it fits into your business' overall positioning and messaging strategy.

Your product marketing strategy is the branding, product positioning, pricing strategy, and promotion plan you develop to take a product from concept to launch. It's more than just a marketing strategy. It includes in-depth target audience research, careful product management, training for your sales teams, content marketing, and more.

In short, your product marketing strategy is the complete guide to ensuring the successful launch, continuing sales, and customer satisfaction of each major product you offer. And big companies may have dozens, or even hundreds of these product strategies in place!

How is your product marketing strategy different from your overall brand strategy?

As a quick point of clarification, your product marketing strategy is not the same as the branding and marketing strategy that leads your entire company.

Your business' brand strategy is what your marketing team uses to guide everyday social media marketing, email marketing, traditional marketing, your website strategy, and more. That strategy is centered around your brand story. On the other hand, your product marketing strategy is focused on creating unique product branding that speaks directly to your target market. While it should be aligned with your business' positioning and messaging, it can have a handful of targeted elements strategically chosen to speak to your target customers.

Here's an example of a good product marketing strategy

Hello Fresh as a brand has a specific set of buyer personas in mind— busy working adults and parents who value healthy food, but don't have time to shop and cook a whole meal. That's the company's overall branding.

On a product marketing strategy level, take Hello Fresh's vegetarian product line. These meals are specially crafted to offer an even narrower target market (vegetarians) easy, nutritious options that match their lifestyle preferences. The marketing strategy is aligned with Hello Fresh's overall messaging strategy, but offers even narrower branding that speaks to this smaller group of new customers.

The company's product marketers advertise these vegetarian options in a way that doesn't exclude existing customers, but offers targeted marketing that speaks directly to their customer pain points. They offer a specific set of customer solutions built on a complete product marketing strategy, without taking away from the company's main brand story.

3 steps to creating your own successful product marketing strategy

Now that you know what makes a product marketing strategy work, and how it differs from your long term brand strategy, it's time to make your own go-to-market strategy!

As you and your product marketing team work through these steps, it's important to keep your business' positioning and messaging close by for easy reference. As a reminder, every product marketing strategy should be complementary to your main marketing strategies— while still being unique to the product.

If you've never recorded your own brand strategy, use ZeBrand's Brand DNA Builderto create your business' story, visual identity, and messaging. This guided tool makes creating every product marketing strategy much easier!

Step 1: Conduct target audience and market research

Doing research is one of the most important parts of product marketing. If you want a marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience, a product launch that makes a splash, and long-term product awareness, you have to know what your potential customers want!

Here are a few great ways to gather data and market research:

• Check social media. Your social media channels are full of useful data about your target customers. You can use your social media platforms to study your customers' interests, their browsing and buying habits, and even to gather customer feedback before your next product launch.
• Review your CRM. This is a great source of current customer data, like where they live, how often they shop, what they buy, and your average customer lifetime value (how well you retain your customers)
• Explore your website data. Your website analytics (like webpage bounce rate or most visited pages) can reveal which products and product features are most popular with your prospective customers.

Once you've gathered research about your target audience, study the competitors in your field. What are their product marketing strategies? How do their sales teams connect with customers? What buyer personas are they targeting? When you understand how your product will fit in the marketplace, you can develop an even more effective go-to-market strategy that taps into significant market potential.

Step 2: Build your product marketing strategy

It's time to get creative! In this step, your product marketing manager (the person in charge of your product marketers or sales team) will plan out your key product marketing focuses, like your visual branding, the tagline for your product line, and what elements you'll include in your product marketing mix.

Here are some of the main elements every product marketing strategy includes:

• The key pain points this product addresses
• Your target customer research and buyer persona
• The pricing strategy you'll use to sell the product
• The visual branding that will define this product marketing campaign
• The platforms and channels you'll include in your marketing mix (like social media, email marketing, content, and more)
• How your customer success teams will ensure customer satisfaction and retention

At this stage, it's helpful to use a product marketing strategy template to record the key details that will govern your product strategy. A product marketing roadmap helps keep your customer service, sales, and marketing teams on the same page— and ensures consistent creative operations— as you move from product concept to customer retention.

Step 3: Get ready to disrupt your target market!

With your research completed and your product marketing roadmap in place, it's time to launch!

As your product launch progresses, it's important to monitor the customer response at every stage. Is your marketing strategy resonating with your key buyer personas? Are the channels you chose reaching your target audience? Does your product meet all the customer needs you expected, or is your customer feedback revealing new areas of opportunity and improvement? It's your product marketer's job to ask these questions to ensure your product is successful.

Even the best product marketing campaigns need to be tweaked from time to time! And effective campaign management starting on launch day helps keep your existing customers engaged and your potential customers interested.

So you've launched your product.... Now what?

Marketing teams jobs are never done! For business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies alike, releasing a new product is just the first step in the product life cycle. After that, your marketing plan should be frequently reviewed to ensure it still speaks directly to the pain points of your target customer base, and your product marketers can continue looking for opportunities to expand your market share and brand awareness.

If your launch and ongoing product marketing are successful, then it's time to dream up your next business-boosting concept! With the process, product marketing team, and right product in place, you're on track for remarkable growth.

At ZeBrand, we'll help your product marketing team develop a business-building product positioning strategy

The right product marketing campaign is essential to your business' success. And because product marketing encompasses a number of strategic and branding elements, we know the go-to-market strategy process can be overwhelming!

That's why ZeBrand's full suite of brand-building tools and team of brand management experts have one key focus— to help you create the ideal product marketing strategy. Don't do your next product launch alone. Connect with ZeBrand!

To start creating a solid product marketing strategy, Start Hereor Contact ZeBrand!