Product marketing is the promotion and sales of a specific product or service to consumers, an ongoing process continuing throughout the product lifecycle. Successful product marketing seeks to maximize customer lifetime value by not only finding the right customers but retaining them over the long term. This is especially important in the era of digital products, where you can quickly lose users if you fail to keep them engaged on an ongoing basis.
As with marketing more generally, successful product marketing starts with knowing your customer. Market research often combines qualitative analysis from customer surveys and interviews with data-driven customer analytics, which is an increasingly powerful approach with today’s wealth of data on buying behavior and product usage. These findings can be used to divide potential customers into groups as part of a market segmentation analysis, which can then be used to create personas that capture how different customers find and use your product.
Product marketing teams use this information to formulate a marketing strategy that starts with the product launch, which may use digital, broadcast, or other marketing channels depending on the best way to reach your target customers. After launch, a marketing plan may include elements including subsequent advertising to find new customers, e-mail nurture sequences to keep current users engaged, and promotional offers for different market segments. Throughout this cycle, savvy product marketers may use A/B testing and extensive customer analytics to continually refine their efforts.