Product marketing comes with a host of challenges. Some say product marketing should lie with the sales department, while other pin marketers for the task. On the other end, some people believe it's more or less the same as a product manager's job. So, even before we uncover the challenges of…
Product marketing comes with a host of challenges. In fact, 71 percent of CMOs think they don't have enough budgetto fully execute their strategy. So, product marketing isn't easy.
Some say product marketing should lie with the sales team, while other pin marketers for the task. On the other end, some people believe it’s more or less the same as a product manager’s job.
So, even before we uncover the challenges of product marketing and what to do about them, let’s define product marketing.
Product marketing is the process of driving demand and adoption of a product through a go-to-market strategy, product messaging, thought leadership, and the creation of awareness among target customers.
It encompasses go-to-market strategy, product positioning, market research, messaging, thought leadership, and creating awareness among target customers. Crucially, it also involves measuring and optimizing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as product adoption rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), and net promoter score (NPS).
In short, product marketing involves:
Now, let's explore the most pressing challenges facing product marketers today and digital marketing strategies to overcome them.
Now that we have that in check, what are the most common challenges and pain points that product marketing faces? And how can you counteract them to increase adoption, awareness, and revenue generated from your product launches in real-time?
Perhaps one of the biggest challenge you’ll hear product marketers lament is siloed efforts. Even if the roles in a company are well designed, there’s always different product marketing-related activities other teams are doing.
These siloed efforts result in disarrayed metrics, accountability issues, and of course, an unsuccessful product marketing campaign.
The main reason why this happens is that each team has its own data, metrics, objectives, and so on. Instead of an orchestrated product marketing campaign bringing in the ROI, you have unclear results and lots of room for error.
How exactly do you rein in this issue and help your product marketing manager (PMM) keep their sanity? We say the best solution is the use of an automated marketing project management software, or a content marketing platform, if you will.
A marketing project management software like Optimizely Content Marketing Platform can help your team in the following ways.
A CMP brings all these features under one roof. Some of the biggest companies out there with 90+ marketers use Optimizely's Content Marketing Platform (CMP) to orchestrate campaigns and keep everyone sane.
Getting a new product to the market and getting consumers to like it is always hard, thanks in no small part to the numerous options and competition out there.
This becomes more challenging because if you can’t strike a chord with your target audience, then product adoption becomes tricky.
There are two sides to this challenge: the risk of your messaging and positioning sounding the same as all the competitors in the market or going overboard with messaging that no one responds to.
You can remedy this with better research and getting to the thick of how customers use your product. For instance, use beta testing feedback to determine the key benefits users get from your product.
Or, if your product is already out in the market, you can probe customer reviews to understand how and why people are choosing your product. And if your product isn’t a favorite despite your marketing efforts, which issues are the culprits?
Even better, conduct surveys of early product adopters. In your survey, make sure to include questions such as:
On the other hand, if your product’s market is relatively new, then you’ll need to do a lot of explaining. You might have to convince buyers why they need your product in the first place, as they may not be aware of the problem it solves.
Finally, understand that before buyers purchase or change products, there are factors that will make them want to adopt your product, known in marketing parlance as:
However, there are also factors that will keep a customer from your product:
If you know the motivation factor behind a buyer’s decision, you can better decide how to position your product and what messaging to use.
Another challenge you might experience in product marketing is proving ROI.
Product marketing is not sales, nor is it marketing per se. There are slight perceived differences that may make it hard to prove the exact value product marketing brings.
Product marketers often find it challenging to quantify the influence of their sales enablement input.
For instance, how does one quantify the value of resources such as product presentations, product sheets, or demos on a website? Do these items contribute to the bottom line, or is the buyer’s decision based on something else?
Plus, how is your presence on social media, especially on LinkedIn if you're in the B2B space, impacting the product marketing strategy in your target market?
Surely there’s got to be a link. But without the data to prove it, getting executive backing for future product campaigns becomes challenging. Convincing other teams to back up the product marketing without this linkage data spells disappointment.
So, what can product marketers do about it?
Getting into a partnership with the marketing and sales analytics teams is a step in the right direction. The data and analytics from these two teams can help find correlations to determine ROI.
A CMP makes it super easy to access other campaign analytics that’ll come in handy in proving value. You can get insights on:
This way, you’ll always have reporting on the value of product marketing ads to your overall business goals.
There’s always going to be inefficient resources and smaller budgets where product marketing is concerned. In fact, per Gartner, marketing budgets fell from 11% to 6.4% of company revenuein 2021.
When you couple this with the modern-day complex customer bases, then things start to really get difficult.
Here’s where learning to prioritize essential product marketing activities becomes crucial. Of course, you want to cover all bases, but it won’t be realistic for you, your team, and most likely your budget.
As a marketing professional, what can you do to ensure that you are scaling and bringing results to the table for stakeholders?
To scale effectively and deliver results, you need to first define your goals:
Then balance reactive and proactive marketing:
Finally, leverage marketing project management tools:
Even after months of research, there is bound to be a gap in your product marketing data. That’s because consumers now use an omnichannel approach to research and purchase.
They can do product searches on their phones and end up buying through their desktop or laptop. The challenge is that most teams don’t have the complete picture of this data.
Sometimes, the data is there, but it’s not easily accessible, or as we had mentioned, it’s siloed into different departments.
In product development and marketing, you’ll often have to make do with what’s available. But first, you have to unify the data into a single platform that is easy to access, approve and validate.
Again, you can choose to focus on broad metrics while you collect and leverage other data that is still helpful to your product campaigns. Either way, whether you need data on competition analysis or social trend analytics, Content Marketing Platform can help you access it.
The shift towards product-led growth strategies, particularly in SaaS and tech products is putting the product at the center of the customer acquisition and retention strategy.
The increasing prevalence of voice-activated devices and smart home technology is changing how consumers discover and interact with products.
A 2021 study found 85% of consumers have adopted more sustainable purchasing habits in recent years.
It is important to maintain transparency and open communication channels with customers.
The shift to remote and hybrid work models has impacted how product marketing teams collaborate and execute strategies.
Challenges in product marketing are always going to be there. Success requires a combination of data-driven decision-making, technological adoption, and a willingness to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.
By addressing these challenges head-on, product marketers can position themselves and their products for success in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Remember, the key is to remain agile, continuously learn, and always keep the customer at the center of your strategies.
No matter your current situation, what would help is if all your marketing lifecycle, from planning and creation to storage, to testing, distribution, and analysis is in one workplace. That is exactly what you can do with Optimizely One. It's everything your marketing team needs to stay aligned.