How Product Marketers Maximize the Impact of B2B Marketing
When product launches and growth initiatives have an integrated strategy, a unified story is delivered across all marketing channels. The messaging and voice are consistent wherever customers interact with your company—website, sales rep, social media, email, etc. Pulling this off can be challenging, which is where product marketing comes in to make it happen.
🎯 Product marketing is the central team responsible for product growth, and it’s their job to wrangle the troops around the agreed-upon goals. Whatever that topline goal may be, the likelihood of success is higher if there is alignment across key stakeholders. Proceeding without goals is risky. Teams have no clear target to strive for, and success measurement is arbitrary.
📚 Throughout the planning process, the goals remain top of mind for product marketing. The goals are emphasized during the internal kickoff, which must first be successful to ensure a flawless external launch. Product marketers must evaluate internal and external requirements to determine what team enablement and content are needed. Launching a new product can require new content - buyer personas, competitor talking points, one-pagers, presentations, and other materials. Price books, CRM systems, and support processes may need to be updated to operationalize things.
🗣 Enabling customer-facing teams is one of the most critical product marketing tasks. Teams across the company need to be educated and aligned on strategy, positioning, and messaging. Associates interacting with customers need to understand the ins and outs of the product and be able to discuss in plain language how it solves a problem and stands out from the competition. In addition to core sales and marketing assets, customer support teams may benefit from a reference guide to help with cross-selling.
💰 For the best outcome, marketing associates (demand gen, AR/PR, design) must gain a solid understanding of the marketing strategy and work collaboratively with the product marketing team and each other. Product marketers ensure that collateral aligns and campaigns are consistent across channels. When executed well, the culmination of uniform messaging makes a more substantial impact than disjointed communications and tactics.
👀 Product marketers monitor progress towards the goal and ensure that things are on track to reach KPIs. If risk is identified, analyzing data (e.g., campaign performance, sales, adoption) can reveal where course correction or follow-up team enablement is needed.
From end to end, product marketing is essential to launching and growing B2B solutions. With efficient, repeatable processes, everyone is set up for success! 📈
