Product marketing

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Marketing
Key concepts

Product / Pricing / Promotion
Distribution / Service / Retail
Brand management
Marketing effectiveness
Market research
Marketing strategy
Marketing management
Market dominance
Promotional content

Advertising / Branding
Direct marketing / Personal Sales
Product placement / Public relations
Publicity / Sales promotion
Underwriting
Promotional media

Printing / Publication / Broadcasting
Out-of-home / Internet marketing
Point of sale / Novelty items
Digital marketing / In-game
Word of mouth
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Product marketing deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing, which are Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion. Product marketing, as opposed to product management, deals with more outbound marketing tasks. For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others. Product marketing, as a job function within a firm, also differs from other marketing jobs such as Marcom or marketing communications, online marketing, advertising, marketing strategy, etc.

A Product Market is something that is referred to when pitching a new product to the general public. The people you are trying to make your product appeal to is your consumer market. For example: If you were pitching a new playstation game to the public, your consumer market would probably be a younger/teenage market (depending on the type of game). Thus you would carry out market research to find out how best to release the game. Likewise, a massage chair would probably not appeal to younger children, so you would pitch your product to an older generation

Contents

[edit] Role of Product Marketing

Product marketing in a business addresses four important strategic questions:[1]

  • What products will be offered (i.e., the breadth and depth of the product line)?
  • Who will be the target customers (i.e., the boundaries of the market segments to be served)?
  • How will the products reach those customers (i.e., the distribution channels to be used)?
  • Why will customers prefer our products to those of competitors (i.e., the distinctive attributes and value to be provided)?

[edit] Product Marketing vs. Product Management

Product marketing frequently differs from product management in high-tech companies. Whereas the product manager is required to take a product's requirements from the sales and marketing personnel and create a product requirements document (PRD),[2] which will be used by the engineering team to build the product, the product marketing manager can be engaged in the task of creating a marketing requirements document (MRD), which is used as source for the product management to develop the PRD.

In other companies the product manager creates both the MRDs and the PRDs, while the product marketing manager does outbound tasks like giving product demonstrations in trade shows, creating marketing collateral like hot-sheets, beat-sheets, cheat sheets, data sheets, and white papers. This requires the product marketing manager to be skilled not only in competitor analysis, market research, and technical writing, but also in more business oriented activities like conducting ROI and NPV analyses on technology investments, strategizing how the decision criteria of the prospects or customers can be changed so that they buy the company's product vis-a-vis the competitor's product, etc.

In smaller high-tech firms or start-ups, product marketing and product management functions can be blurred, and both tasks may be borne by one individual. However, as the company grows someone needs to focus on creating good requirements documents for the engineering team, whereas someone else needs to focus on how to analyze the market, influence the "analysts", press, etc. When such clear demarcation becomes visible, the former falls under the domain of product management, and the latter, under product marketing. In Silicon Valley, in particular, product marketing professionals have considerable domain experience in a particular market or technology or both. Some Silicon Valley firms have titles such as Product Marketing Engineer, who tend to be promoted to managers in due course.

The trend that is emerging in Silicon Valley is for companies to hire a team of a product marketing manager with a technical marketing manager. The Technical Marketing role is becoming more valuable as companies become more competitive and seek to reduce costs and time to market.

[edit] Qualifications

Typical qualifications for this area of business are is a high level Marketing or Business related degree, e.g. an MBA, not forgetting sufficient work experience in related areas. As a key skill is to be able to interact with technical staff, a background in engineering is also an asset.


[edit] Product Marketing (Alternative View)

The “Product Marketing” discipline is an outbound activity aimed at generating product awareness, differentiation, and demand. There are three principal methods to achieving this goal.

Each of these principal methods concentrates on one of the various aspects of the product: price, features, or value. The price emphasis method is called “Price Competition”. The features emphasis method is called “Comparative Marketing”. The value emphasis method is called “Value Marketing”.

In the price emphasis method, the goal of product marketing is reached by emphasizing and communicating to the market the price of the product as a marketing signal. For example, touting the product’s high price may signify a premium product and attempt to positively affect a perception of quality via inference. The goal of the price emphasis method is to create a situation where the customers primarily consider the product’s price as the main buying decision factor.

In the feature emphasis method, the goal of product marketing is reached by emphasizing and communicating to the market the existence or merit of the product’s features in comparison to the features of other competing products. The goal of the feature emphasis method is to create a situation where the customers primarily consider the product’s feature set as the main buying decision factor.

In the value emphasis method, the goal of product marketing is reached by emphasizing and communicating to the market the value the product holds relative to the customer and comparatively to the value offered by other competing products. The goal of the value emphasis method is to create superior perceived value and prove superior actual value. “Superior Perceived Value” is a state where customers perceive the product (bought from a particular company) gives a net value more positive than its alternatives; and “Superior Actual Value” is a state where the product factually gives customers a net value more positive than its alternatives. The result of these states would be a situation where the customers primarily consider the product’s value as the main buying decision factor.

The price emphasis and feature emphasis methods (price competition and comparative marketing) are considered significantly easier to implement than the value emphasis method (value marketing). This is because the price emphasis and feature emphasis methods convey simple qualitative concepts that are easy to understand and require minimal interpretation by the customers. Conversely, the value emphasis method relays abstract and qualitative concepts which project conjecture and argumentation, and thus are more challenging to grasp.

Another method in the product marketing discipline is product branding. “Product Branding” is the process of building and maintaining a brand at the product level. “Brand” is an identity, made of symbols and ideas, which portray a specific offering from a known source. Product branding is executed concurrently with one or more of the principal methods in product marketing.

The process of product branding and the derived brand is often the result of a deliberate and conscious effort by the company, but can also be an unintentional by-product resulting from the execution of any of the three principal methods of product marketing. Product branding is therefore not considered a principal method on to its own since the formation of a brand can be the outcome of applying any of the three principal methods in product marketing.


[edit] See also

[edit] References

1. ^  This is described in further detail by S. Wheelright and K. Clark in Revolutionizing Product Development (1992), p. 40-41; at the beginning of the section titled "Product/Market Planning and Strategy".

2. ^  This thirty page PRD details the authoring of the product requirement document in further detail, and can be viewed at http://software.franteractive.com.