Product Marketing 101: Templates, Strategies, and Examples

By Joe Weller | August 11, 2017 (updated August 12, 2023)

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In this article, you’ll learn all the fundamental components of a product marketing plan based on tips from experts.

Included on this page, you’ll learn how to create and implement a product marketing plan with free downloadable templates, key elements of a product marketing strategy , and how product marketing aligns with your company’s growth strategy .

How to Create and Implement a Product Marketing Plan

To help kickstart your product marketing plan, download any of the following free, ready-to-use templates to help you plan, strategize on, and track your product marketing plans.

Product Marketing Plan Template

Product Marketing Plan Template

Download Product Marketing Plan Template

Excel   |   PDF 

Once you’ve mapped out your product’s essentials, it’s time to create the go-to-market plan that guides how it will be promoted and sold. This launch plan covers everything from developing the pricing and messaging for the product to creating training materials for your sales staff. It keeps everyone on the same page and makes sure that your team is ready when the product is ready. The plan also spells out timetables, release schedules, resources, and tasks.

Marketing Mix

You can frame your product marketing plan, or marketing mix, with the Four Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, a process developed by E. J. McCarthy in 1960. In 1981 Bernard Booms and Mary Bitner added three more components: process, people, and physical evidence. Read the Definitive Guide to Strategic Marketing Planning to learn more about the Four Ps here. These are some of the key elements you’ll need to start framing your marketing plan:

Product: While you will spell out the unique designs, features, services, and other elements that describe your product, your marketing plan covers more than the details. It’s a positioning statement that defines what makes your product different.

Price : When you set your pricing, you need to consider several factors. First, you know how much it costs to make your product. Then, you need to know how much value customers will assign your product. Consider marketplace conditions: Is your product in high demand? Are there a lot of competitors who will respond with pricing strategies of their own? What kinds of discounts, sales, payment periods, or other terms can you include with your pricing? The bottom line is that your product is only worth what your customers are willing to pay, so make sure you understand your product’s value in the marketplace.

Place: Place can mean the brick-and-mortar store where customers find your product, but it also extends to include all the distribution channels you use to get your product to your customer. (Software startups, for example, typically sell online.) Delivery methods vary widely depending on the product, but the goal is getting your product into the marketplace.

Promotion: This may seem like the most natural part of product marketing. Promotion includes all the channels and methods you will use to reach customers about the value of your product. Tactics include advertising, sales, events, email marketing, content marketing, social media, and more. Every aspect of your promotion is centered on your product messaging.

Process: Think of process as the pipeline for your product. This is especially important if you deliver a service. For a startup, the first product launch has several benefits. First, you get your product into the marketplace. Then, you also learn how to improve your process in subsequent product development. For any company, the process always reveals your strengths and your opportunities for improvement.

People: The people behind your product are critical to marketing the product. From the engineers and product development team, to sales and support, your success depends on your people. Do you have enough staff to handle the launch and product fulfillment? Have you given your sales team everything they need to explain what sets your product apart?

Physical Evidence: Successful product marketing fosters a superior customer experience. How does your messaging shape the perception of your product, whether it’s in a store or online? The consumer experience could be the biggest differentiator of your product.

The Four Ps as the Four Cs

The Four Ps are business focused, but product marketing is customer focused. To accommodate product marketing and put the customer ahead of the seller, the Four Cs approach was developed in the 1990s: Customer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication.

  • Customer Solutions, Not Products: Customers want to buy a solution to their problem, not simply purchase a product.
  • Cost, Not Price: What is the value of the product to the consumer, and is the price point something they are willing to pay?
  • Convenience, Not Place: How easy is it for customers to find and buy your product?
  • Communication, Not Promotion: Promotion is one-way messaging from the company to the consumer. By setting up social channels and other ways for customers to offer feedback and insight, you create value and loyalty.

Creating a Sales Guide

By working through the marketing mix, you will identify the differentiators and details of your product. This is the information your sales team needs. One more responsibility of product marketing is to turn these positioning statements into materials that help your sales team sell your product and achieve the company’s revenue goals. The sales guide should not focus on price, but on the differentiators of your product:

  • Features and product details
  • Advantages of your product
  • Benefits of your product   

In addition to a sales guide, you should develop data sheets, training materials, and other collateral that your sales team can use to take your product to your audience.

Coordinating the Product Launch with the Promotion

Product development and product marketing have to work in sync so both are ready simultaneously. Imagine releasing a product and not letting your customers know it’s in the market - you won’t get many sales, and you also can’t create positioning statements that are inaccurate about the product’s features and benefits. Either way, you are alienating yourself from your customers. Customer satisfaction is your primary goal, and one you can share across departments to help you achieve it.

Communicating Across Departments and Summarizing Findings

Time is your most precious resource. Don’t waste it by working independently of other departments or leaving key stakeholders out of the loop. Create a marketing brief at the beginning of your process and use it for regular updates across the organization. Your project brief should include:

  • Product goals
  • Positioning and messaging

Product Marketing Brief Template

Product Marketing Brief Template

Download Product Marketing Brief Template

Excel    |    PDF

Elements of Product Marketing Strategy

A product marketing strategy goes hand-in-hand with the product strategy — the plan that identifies and defines what you want to accomplish. A good strategy points everyone (from the CEO to engineering to sales and customer support) in the same direction. It keeps you focused on your customers and your market. It’s your guide to working together on what matters most.   A product marketing strategy will have several components:

Vision A product starts with your organization’s vision. The product must sit squarely in the strategic vision of the organization. That vision feeds the development of the product and conveys energy and excitement to your customers. It outlines your customers, what they need, and how you will address those needs. You might even get a sense of the life cycle of the product , what it could become and when it might reach its end stage.   Insights You have a vision about what you want to achieve. Now you need the information that turns this vision into reality. Here are some vital areas:

  • Your Competitors: What companies are offering what you want to offer? (Find at least the top three.) How will your product be different? What makes it unique? Who are their customers? What problems will your product solve for those customers? Competitive research, also known as a market review, is key to your success. Learn more about conducting a competitive analysis .
  • Your customers: Which ones will you target with this product? What is their pain point? What is the customer or buyer persona? What are the demographic and psychographic traits (age, gender, education level, values)? What are their buying patterns? How are they using current products? How many customers will you talk to? (These conversations will help shape your product messaging down the road and help target your marketing and advertising.)
  • Your market position: How will your product offer value? What is the real problem that your product solves? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

You may have had a rough idea of how you wanted your product to function. Armed with these insights, you can nail down all the details that will make customers happy and drive your business forward. You will be able to speak with confidence about the specific product functions that meet the consumers’ requirements — from features and colors, to additional services and warranties. The product description you craft tells the story of how this product meets your customers’ needs.   Understanding the Product Life Cycle Few products last forever. From the beginning of your product, you should prepare for the growth, maturity, and drop in demand. At some point, sales will decline. Competitors will offer a comparable product. Insights are the key to identifying the stage your product is in. Always monitor the life cycle of your product and be ready with improvements, updates, or even a new product that builds on what exists. (For example, while pay phones barely exist today, the problem they once solved still exists, and has been replaced by cell phones.)   Goals and Initiatives  Management guru Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying, "You can't manage what you can't measure." That’s not only true in the C-suite, but also extends to every product and department in your company.   Once you’ve defined the product, it’s time to define what you want to achieve. Without goals, how will you know whether your product succeeds? Use simple, clear, and precise goals (whether it’s improving your market share, re-engaging with customers, or driving revenue) to keep on track. Keep in mind that the product goals don’t stand alone. They need to align with your company’s strategic and business goals. After all, your product is part of the company’s success. For more information on writing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) goals, read this article . 

Finally, ask how this product fits with the initiatives of your business. Your product may be a better mousetrap. It meets customer needs by making them feel safer with fewer mice. (They buy solutions, not products.) The product also addresses the company’s initiative to move into new neighborhoods, territories, or areas. You can map your product’s features to the larger initiatives of your company.

Use the free template below to map out your product marketing strategy.

Product Marketing Strategy Template

Product Marketing Strategy Excel Template

Download Product Marketing Strategy Template

Excel   |   PDF

What Is Product Marketing?

The key function of product marketing is connecting your consumers to your products. Not only does product marketing require deep knowledge of your customers, but you must also understand your product and how to position it in a crowded marketplace. As the product marketer, you are responsible for the success of your product. Key deliverables include:

  • A clear market position that distinguishes you from the competition
  • Product pricing and packaging
  • A marketing and promotion plan to help your sales channels succeed
  • Analysis of customer response and keeping the product relevant

Product Marketing Responsibilities

What Product Marketing Is Not

As noted earlier in this article, product marketing started as brand management and works directly with product development. While the two roles work together, they have different areas of responsibility: Product management focuses on the product and its features and requirements, whereas product marketing focuses on the customers who will use the product.

Who Uses Product Marketing Plans and Strategy?

Because product marketing is at the heart of connecting the customer to the product, everyone from CEOs to engineers and salespeople relies on their work. Internal communication across and among departments is just as important as the external messaging to customers. Everyone needs to understand the key messaging and be on the same page. Your messaging builds a strong connection among all the stakeholders in the company who are committed to the product’s success.

It’s important to get approval and buy-in from key stakeholders . Once you’ve got it, you’ll find it easier to get the necessary resources and generate excitement about your work. It’s also important to make sure all the stakeholders have what they need. A CEO may not need the sales brochures and spec sheets that your sales staff relies on in the field. The engineers may not need the strategy overview that your CEO reads. With a solid product marketing plan, you can keep everyone on message while making the relevant materials available without wasting their time.

What Does Product Marketing Do?

While all departments in a company may think about customers, product marketing puts the customer at the front and center of everything it does. The goals of traditional marketing include building brand awareness, growing new markets or audiences, and even strategic communication. By contrast, product marketing focuses solely on existing customers and keeping them happy. To succeed, you need deep knowledge of who your customers are, what they want, what influences their decisions, what problems they need to solve, and how they perceive that your business can provide a solution. Keep in mind that, while it seems as though people buy products, they are actually buying solutions to their problem. So, knowing their problem enables you to build and market the best solution to that problem.   Having this expertise gives you an influential voice in shaping the goods and services your business provides. Product marketing works with product development and the marketing and sales teams to plan the packaging, features, pricing, and promotion of the end of product. Because the work of product marketing crosses so many areas of a company, product marketing can be aligned with product development, product management, and sales and marketing. The most successful product marketers learn to work across departments, regardless of the official structure of their company.

According to David Fradin, an expert Product Leader, Product Manager, and Product Marketing Manager, product marketing emerged in the 1930s at Procter & Gamble as brand management. Over the years, the duties of the brand manager have evolved into two roles: the product developer and the product marketer. By 2015, 84 percent of the companies surveyed by Regalix Research said they invested in product marketing. You can read more from Fradin in his books: Building Insanely Great Products available now and Foundations in the Successful Management of Products , available soon from Wiley. 

What Is the Value of Product Marketing?

Product marketing brings many benefits to your company. By identifying the right product and getting it to the right customers, product marketing drives sales and profits. Using customer data wisely also helps your company develop new products, as well as create smarter overall marketing strategies. In an increasingly competitive (and innovative) marketplace, product marketing is your key to success.

For start-ups, your company is your product. Product marketing is really marketing for your entire company, since the only way you can grow is by knowing your audience and knowing how your product meets their needs.

At the B2B level, product marketing faces additional opportunities and challenges. According to Kapost article by Gerardo Dada, VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at SolarWinds, B2B buyers are 57 percent through their purchase decision-making before they ever talk with a sales representative. The challenge is that purchasing decisions with B2B customers are made by a range of stakeholders, from CEOs and other C-suite executives, to sales and marketing teams. The opportunity here is to demonstrate the value of your product in a way that deepens the relationship with your customer—and can’t be duplicated by the competition.

Whether you’re just getting started or your business has years under its belt, product marketing helps your company scale by:

  • Gathering and analyzing detailed information about customers
  • Defining which products will meet audience needs
  • Identifying and evaluating your competition
  • Setting the price for the products
  • Creating the go-to-market plan, with consistent messaging

 As your business grows, product marketing gives you key insights into which new products and services you should add. With consumer insights, you will be able to identify needs in the marketplace and create a successful strategy. In an innovation economy, your skill at anticipating your customers’ needs (whether B2B or B2C) will help your company survive and thrive. In the digital age, customers can go anyplace, anytime to find new products and services to meet their needs - you must be one step ahead so they consistently turn to you to solve their problems. 

Do You Need Help in Product Marketing?

If all your products are selling quickly and your only feedback is kind notes from happy customers, you likely have a successful product marketing strategy. However, these covert signs might indicate that you need help: 

  • Decisions about audience, features, and pricing are made by people who don’t have the data or understand the market.
  • Products are developed and put into the market without a launch plan or a budget.
  • Sales staff have to create their own collateral and spec sheets.
  • Your company doesn’t have relevant data about its customers, market share, and sales.
  • The role of marketing is simply to write web copy or social media messages or design brochures.

Don’t hire product marketing professionals simply to help your overworked product development team get the product finished. The jobs, while related, are not the same. Product marketing will not make the product faster. It will make the product better, because they understand what your audience needs.

How Product Marketing Aligns with Your Growth Strategy

Market Grid

No company wants to simply maintain its current level of revenue and audience by keeping a static line of products. Using a combination of markets and services, you can identify how your product will help your company grow. Each of the following growth strategies is based on a combination of markets and services. Growth strategies are based on: Market Penetration: The combination of current products and current market. Your product marketing strategy focuses on increasing your market share and getting existing customers to use more of your product.   Market Development: The combination of current products and new markets. Your product marketing strategy focuses on new audiences and communities with different packaging and pricing.   Product Development: The combination of new products and current market. By listening to your audience you stay ahead of your competitors, developing new and innovative products.    Diversification: The combination of new products and new markets. Your product marketing strategy must clearly define your goals, since your current product is not growing at the rate you need for business to flourish. There are two types of diversification: 

Related diversification means you develop (or buy) products that are related to your current offerings. One example is the line of beverages that Coca-Cola offers.   By contrast, unrelated diversification means you create products in a completely new area. For example, Samsung has developed solar panels, bio-tech drugs, medical devices, and more. In fact, their mission statement describes their product marketing strategy: “For over 70 years, Samsung has been dedicated to making a better world through diverse businesses that today span advanced technology, semiconductors, skyscraper and plant construction, petrochemicals, fashion, medicine, finance, hotels, and more. Our flagship company, Samsung Electronics, leads the global market in high-tech electronics manufacturing and digital media.”   There’s one more way to think about diversification: Horizontal (buying companies that are your direct competitors or are directly related to current products) and vertical (buying the suppliers and distributors of your product or developing your own channels). Each of these strategies has risks and rewards, so your decisions should be based on a solid understanding of your audience and your competitors, as well as an examination of your business strategy.     Key Growth Questions to Help with Product Marketing   Product marketing is at the intersection of product development, marketing, and sales. It covers a lot of corporate ground from defining product details, tracking customer data and market testing, creating marketing collateral, setting price and promotion strategies, training the sales staff, and even giving product presentations. To ensure your efforts stay on track with the company’s larger strategic goals, ask these questions:

  • What are our revenue goals for the next year? Overall and by product line?
  • What resources changes will be made in the coming year, including marketing staffing and budget?
  • Do we anticipate any strategic partnerships, mergers or acquisitions?
  • In which existing markets do we want to grow? What existing markets are we willing to move away from? What new markets do we plan to pursue?
  • What existing services do we plan to maintain and improve? Which are at the end of their life cycle? What new products are being discussed?
  • What are the biggest challenges we will face this year?

The Future of Product Marketing

David Fradin is a Distinguished Professor of Practise and Advisor, and Product Management Programs at Manipal Global Academy of Information Technology. He is also the author of Building Insanely Great Products and the soon-to-be-released Foundations in the Successful Management of Products , available soon from Wiley. Fraudin thinks the biggest change in the role of product marketing is the advent of social media and tools to manage social media.  

“The product marketing manager should be working strategically not tactically, thereby developing and maintaining the product’s marketing strategy including social media,” explains Fradin. “Social media is a huge part of marketing now and it is important for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing and sales.”

He also recommends a shift in titles to reflect the changes in product marketing. “The product marketing manager’s title should be changed to product marketing success manager to reflect the actual role played,” he adds. “They are given the budget for the marketing that needs to be done, so they have the authority they need to go with their responsibilities. Accordingly, they should not be the demo god. That should be done by pre-sales support.”

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The 6 Elements of a Powerful Product Marketing Strategy

November 29, 2022

by Sujan Patel

product marketing strategy

In this post

Elements of a product marketing strategy.

Companies put a lot of effort into marketing their brands.

They design fancy logos, set up email marketing automation programs, and roll out amazing websites, among other efforts. But without a strong product, your brand means nothing.

But why? Well, failure could be due to several factors:

  • Lack of understanding of the market
  • Lack of understanding of the buyer
  • Lack of communication
  • Ineffective product marketing strategy

With so many people involved and so much time and money invested in your new product , it’s important to get it right. You don’t want to spend all your time and energy focused on building your brand only to have your first product fail.

What is a product marketing strategy?

A product marketing strategy guides a business' decisions regarding a product's positioning, pricing, and promotion.

Well-defined product marketing strategies are critical in ensuring strong product launches that help inform target markets and audience groups.

Successful products require successful product marketing strategies. That means you need to ensure the product meets customers’ needs, position it in the market appropriately, and have the plan to get the word out.

There are six essential elements of a strong product marketing strategy:  

The first step to developing a strong product marketing strategy is ensuring you have a strong product. Before developing your strategy, you must ensure the product is created with the customer in mind and aligns with their needs.

People don’t want to buy things; they want to solve their problems. So, ask yourself what problem your product solves for the customer. How will it make their lives better? Answering these questions will help you determine the right messaging for promotion down the road.

The value your product provides is more important than its capabilities. In other words, you should focus more on the benefits of your product rather than its features. Each feature should be developed for a purpose and provide some benefit to the customer. You should have an innovative product or at least one that solves a common business challenge.

2. Audience

Just like your product needs to be created with your audience in mind, your strategy should also be created with your audience in mind. To do that, you need to truly understand the individuals in your audience and know everything you can about them, aka investing in behavioral marketing .

Start by doing some research and gathering any information you can about your intended audience, such as:

  • Marital status

Better yet, interview your customers. Set up phone calls or meetings and ask them about their preferences. Listen to how they talk and the language they use. This can help form your narrative.

 Any information can help uncover your audience’s preferences and how best to market your product to those individuals. Once you have all your information gathered, start building buyer personas .

In your research, you’ll probably discover some patterns among your audience. These commonalities can be grouped to create buyer personas or an archetype of your ideal customer's appearance and behavior. This way, you can focus on marketing to one buyer persona at a time rather than your entire audience.

3. Messaging

It’s not enough to think about your audience through product development - you need to communicate with them. Consumers  feel trust when they’re emotionally connected to a brand; that emotional connection is built through your messaging.

Your product messaging should be built around a narrative. Narratives are the easiest way to get your audience to connect with your product because they are relatable and will resonate with your audience.

You must identify your product’s unique selling proposition to craft an effective story. What is the main value for the user? Hone in on one key message that will drive your narrative. But don't stop once you think you've found it – testing is key. Consider an A/B testing tool to help you hone your messaging even more. 

Developing and promoting a product requires a multi-team effort. However, keeping multiple teams on the same page is no easy task. Product marketers need to be the bridge between sales, marketing , engineering, and development. They must bring the teams together and ensure everyone is on the same page.

The product marketer is responsible for educating and informing the entire team and organization to ensure everyone knows their part.

With so many people working on one project, it’s easy for miscommunication and disorganization to derail your progress. A product roadmap can bring all the teams and internal stakeholders into alignment.

The product roadmap summarizes the entire product marketing plan and guides the team on what will happen at each process step. With this document, you can maintain visibility throughout the entire project and ensure all involved know what’s happening.

5. Promotion

Having a great product and a well-thought-out strategy isn’t where the work stops. You can’t expect your audience to flock to purchase your product if they know nothing about it.

Your promotion plan needs to get your message in front of the right audience at the right time. If you’ve researched and built your buyer personas, you should have no problem identifying the right audience.

But timing is also important. Besides researching your audience, you should also research the market overall. You must ensure a strong product-market fit and that your launch is timed well to be the most effective.

Communicating through the right channels is also important. Look where your audience spends time, and include a mix to reach different user segments . 

Examples of common promotion channels:

  • Social media
  • Social media advertising
  • TV advertising
  • Direct mail, such as brochures

You should promote your product through the channels that make the most sense for your brand and audience. Make sure you plan your promotion to ensure everything runs smoothly once you’re ready to launch the product .

6. Analysis

Your product marketing strategy needs to be just that – strategic. You can’t expect your strategy to have perfect results; you need to track those results to learn from them.

Once you’ve implemented your promotion plan and your product has gone to market, you need to watch and listen to find out how successful you are. Focus on key performance indicators  to track, such as email clicks, website form submissions, reach, voice share, and conversions.

Look at both what did well and where you went wrong. If possible, adjust your strategy as you go along, using the lessons you learn to guide your product marketing strategies in the future.

Eyes on the product

Investing in the product from the get-go is the first step toward ensuring your customers' voice is at the core of the business. Implementing product marketing strategies is key to learning and understanding what customers want and how your product solves their problems.

Say yes to product marketing for stronger product positioning and effective product value communication for better conversions and increased market presence!

Your customers are looking for your product on social platforms. Learn how to build a social media plan with a stellar social media marketing strategy.

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Sujan Patel photo

Sujan Patel is the co-founder of Web Profits , a growth marketing agency helping companies leverage the latest and greatest marketing strategy to fuel their businesses. In addition to running his marketing agency Sujan is also a partner at a handful of SaaS businesses, including Quuu.co, Narrow, Linktexting.com & Mailshake. His SaaS companies help 10,000+ marketers scale their social media, mobile marketing and content marketing efforts.

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Go To Market Strategies: A Guide for Product Managers + Template

Ellen Merryweather

Author: Ellen Merryweather

Updated: January 24, 2024 - 9 min read

So you’ve put together an incredible team, you’ve built the world’s best product, and you’re ready to send it out into the world and get it to the people. But how exactly are you going to achieve that? Will you launch it in the app store and on your website and just…pray? Hopefully, you’ve got more of a plan than that, and that plan is your Go To Market strategy.

What Is a Go To Market Strategy?

photo-1548148870-adbf75452257

A Go To Market (GTM) strategy is essentially your marketing plan for making sure your target market knows about your launch – be it for a feature or for a whole new product. A GTM strategy applies whether you’re breaking into a new market, or trying to reach your current market.

It’s a document that outlines your pricing structure, aspects of your target market, your value proposition, and your distribution plan.

Similar to a roadmap, this document must be agile in order to adapt to any changes.

If you don’t come from a marketing background , it could sound complicated and like a lot of work. You might also be asking yourself " I’m a Product Manager…do I need to be involved in this? Isn’t this a thing for the marketing team?".

If you’ve ever heard the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, you know that it’s not a good idea to let someone else take your cow to market, or they’ll sell it for some beans! It’s not that you don’t trust your marketing team, it’s more that you have the knowledge they need to successfully bring your product to market.

A great GTM strategy relies on user/buyer personas, market understanding, and an understanding of the long-term business plan. That’s why it’s critical for Product Managers to work in collaboration with marketing on a GTM strategy.

If you give marketing a chance, you might even find it fun!

Real Go To Market Strategies: Apple Watch

andres-urena-qSw5XKtUyus-unsplash

It’s sometimes hard to describe documents and methodologies without sounding vague, especially in product since they’re mostly agile and can vary from company to company (or even from product to product within the same company). So it’s more helpful to look at some real-world examples, to see how great Go To Market Strategies can launch a product towards huge success.

So let’s take a quick look at how Apple uses marketing strategies to bring the Apple Watch to market.

When the Apple Watch was first launched, Apple already had a built-in customer base – but that doesn’t guarantee an automatic win. Plenty of tech giants have experienced catastrophic failures in the past.

You might also be interested in: Design Thinking for PMs: 3 Lessons from Apple and Google

The way Apple Watch succeeded was by hyper-focusing on luxury-oriented customers. Smartwatches were nowhere near as commonplace as they are today, and rather than try to convince every single customer that they needed the Apple Watch, the company decided to focus on a smaller portion of their customers.

They did this by building collaborations with luxury brands like Tesla and Hermes, and by advertising in places where tech typically isn’t found – like fashion magazines.

They didn’t need to spend money advertising in tech magazines, because of course tech nerds everywhere would know about the new offering.

By thinking creatively, and utilizing a fresh use case and buyer persona, they were able to capitalize on a corner of the market that they otherwise would have left relatively untouched.

None of this was accidental, this was planned out and all part of their GTM strategy.

Laying the Groundwork: What to Prepare Before Building Your Strategy

You’ll need to have a clear idea of your product-market fit, which is actually something that you should have secured before you even started building your product. If you’re only just getting to it pre-launch…you might find some serious speedbumps.

Check out what happens to products that never found their product-market fit.

PS Gallery PM-Fit-Pyramid-1024x757

While you should already have this nailed, let’s do a quick refresher. Dan Olsen’s Product-Market Fit Pyramid shows the steps needed to be taken to achieve it:

Before you do anything else, you need to have found your target customer. That customer needs to have a need that is underserved (aka, there aren’t already dozens of well-adopted products that serve that need), and your product needs to be able to fit into that gap in the market.

This also involves having a good understanding of your market landscape . Who else is currently in the space? Who is poised to dominate? What can you offer your customers that your competitors can’t?

This will help you to create your business case. It’s not enough to want to sell your product to customers, you have to be able to articulate why .

Steps to Creating Your Go To Market Strategy

There’s more than one way to go about building a GTM strategy, and a lot of it will depend on your company, product, industry, budget, resources…there’s a lot that goes into it!

So keep that in mind when you start building your strategy. If the situation changes, your strategy needs to be flexible enough to adapt. With that in mind, we’ve created a basic template that should guide you towards building a winning strategy.

Get the Template

Just keep in mind these tips:

Tip 1: Work collaboratively with marketing, sales, and leadership to craft the perfect GTM strategy.

Tip 2: Go back to your plan before launch to see if anything can be improved or if any potential pain points can be fixed.

Step 1: Identify your Launch Owner

This is the person who will be the main point of contact for the product launch. They’ll take the lead on building the GTM action plan and making sure it is communicated across the entire team.

Sometimes this person is the Product Manager, but that may not be the case if they’re too busy getting the product itself ready for launch. It may also be the Product Marketing Manager, who will often liaise with the Product Manager.

The launch owner will also be in charge of creating a Launch Tracker. This is an important document which tracks potential pain points, who raised them, and whether or not they were resolved. It also tracks which important decisions were made by who, and when.

Step 2: Know who you’re trying to reach

Somewhere during product development, you identified your target audience and potential customers. You may have done this by building user personas (or your UX designer built your user personas).

To see more about user personas, check out our guide plus some templates to get you inspired .

Part of this is also knowing what the competition is like. How many people in your target market are probably already using your competitor’s product?

At this point you should also be thinking about your use cases . You know who you’re users are, but you need to be able to demonstrate how they’ll use your product, and how it’s going to benefit them in the long run.

Step 3: Determine your pricing and sales strategies

This step will be much simpler if you’re releasing a new feature or a rebrand for an existing product, but what happens if you’re launching something brand new? You need to figure out how to monetize it. This will go hand in hand with your sales strategy, so be sure to work closely with your sales teams on that. If you work in a larger company there likely will already be plans and protocols in place.

Step 4: Build your marketing strategy

photo-1582091652153-eb8f55ff7cd9

This is easier for existing products and services, because you hopefully already have a platform and or/a community. Your marketing team will know some very specific things like, ‘what’s the average price per click on our ad campaigns?’ or ‘how many email subscribers do we have, and in which segments?’ If you’re launching something new, you have to start from scratch.

If you don’t come from a marketing background, then this is a great learning opportunity. You’ll be working very closely with your Product Marketing Manager, who should already have some great ideas for ad, email, and content marketing campaigns.

Wondering how to get started? Check out our guide to product marketing .

Step 5: Identify your metrics

This is all part of being a data-driven Product Manager. You need to know if your campaigns are working, and if they’re cost-effective. You don’t want your customers to cost more money to acquire than they’re going to spend on your product. We call this metric your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) . This number will frequently change, as it’s calculated by adding the total expense of your marketing and customer support strategies, and dividing it by the number of customers acquired.

(It’s helpful to do this within a specific time period of time, and use them to track your progress. When you see that your CAC is going up, it’s time to rethink your marketing strategies.)

Step 6: Make a plan for customer support

New tech adoption is a pretty hot topic, alongside discoverability. While you want people to easily discover your new feature or take to your new product, you have to be prepared for those customers who will struggle.

Great customer support can make or break a product, so make a plan and have it factored into your CAC calculations.

Step 7: Consolidate your post-launch resources

Ask yourself what you’re going to need once the product has launched. Will you need the same level of customer support, and will you want to maintain the same marketing campaigns?

Part of getting your product to market is to understand how you’re going to keep it there. If you burn through all of your marketing resources at launch, how are you planning on reaching new customers? A GTM strategy is as much a long-term plan as it is a pre-launch blueprint.

Ready to Learn More?

If you enjoyed that, and you’re looking forward to building a great GTM strategy, you can learn all that and more with our Product Manager Certifications .

Updated: January 24, 2024

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  • Product management
  • Product strategy
  • How to set product strategy

How to set product strategy + examples and templates

Last updated: August 2023

The best products start with a clear strategy that is customer and market driven. And the technology builders know how to make each unique stakeholder feel a sense of higher purpose. Brian de Haaff Aha! co-founder and CEO

Who are your customers? What problems will your product solve? What opportunities and threats do you face? What will you do differently? How will you stand out in a crowded market?

Product strategy defines what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there. It defines the "why" behind the product. Strategy happens before you dive into the detailed work of building your product roadmap and developing new features — what we call the "what," "when," and "how."

A goal-first approach is a product manager's best path towards innovation. Strategy aligns the organization around a shared vision and keeps everyone focused on the work that matters most. It should connect every piece of work the team completes — guiding both the large themes of work and the smaller details.

Set product strategy with Aha! software. Sign up for a free trial .

You might think you know what goes into a product strategy. You might even think you know how to set a winning product strategy. But strategy is the thorniest and most misunderstood aspect of product development. If you have been a product manager for some time then you know how many teams are busily working and building against flimsy product strategy. (If there is one at all.)

We all know how important product strategy is to delivering successful products. Yet getting it right in practice is really hard. There is no magic wand or secret sauce, but there are best practices that you can follow to make it easier. This guide gives you an overview of the basic concepts, tips and how-to advice on setting product strategy, along with a bevy of templates for moving forward with purpose:

What is product strategy?

Why is product strategy important, what are the challenges of product strategy, what goes into a product strategy, what are examples of successful product strategies.

What are some tips for setting product strategy?

Product strategy templates

Let’s start with a straightforward definition of product strategy. Product strategy outlines how a product will support company strategy and business goals. Product strategy serves as a guide for the team planning , developing, and taking a product from concept through to market release. Product strategy is made visual through a product roadmap .

In the graphic below, you can see the artifacts that product development teams rely on to deliver against the product strategy and ultimately to support the higher-level business strategy.

market strategy product project

Vision vs. mission vs. strategy

Product strategy vs. go-to-market strategy

Product strategy vs. marketing strategy

Product development is an adventure. And like most adventures, it is full of risk. Timing and ambiguity are two of the greatest threats — neither of which can be fully controlled. Unforeseen circumstances (everything from external factors like economic conditions to internal challenges such as team changes ) can directly impact your product’s success. Lack of depth in understanding customers needs, the competitive landscape , and technical feasibility can stunt progress and in some cases lead to failure.

This is why product strategy is so important. Doom and gloom aside, product strategy gives people clarity about what they are working towards and why. Product strategy can be a rallying cry that bonds and motivates the team. It enables folks to make better decisions faster and prioritize features that will deliver the most value.

Product strategy is the foundation of product development. Setting product strategy enables you to:

Align around goals

Chart the way forward

Prioritize the right work

Stay focused and agile

Deliver what users need

Create value for customers and the business

market strategy product project

Strategy is an adaptation to achieve success. It explains why a company will compete in a certain market and how what it delivers will be better than any other company in that market at serving customers. In today’s fast-changing markets, a strong product strategy allows you to stay nimble and responsive to change without veering off course.

Related: Set the strategy that you think is right

Understanding the difference between the strategic planning process, strategy, and the plan itself is essential for all product builders who want to avoid the planning trap and instead build meaningful solutions to real customer problems. Brian de Haaff Aha! co-founder and CEO

Many teams conflate a product plan with a product strategy. Because product development is dynamic and unpredictable, folks tend to jump straight to pulling together a list of ideas or activities that seem to align with a loose set of goals. You believe you can implement that list with the resources you have available and are then lulled into a false sense of strategy.

What product strategy is not:

Vision and mission: The company (or product) vision and mission are foundational components of a strategy

Metrics: KPIs give a sense of how you are tracking against product goals, which in turn are a component of your product strategy

Budget: Financial resources enable (or constrain) your ability to deliver against the product strategy

Ideas: Creative concepts and requests for enhancements can support innovation if they align with the product strategy

Features: Individual features (or even a collection of functionality) are one way that you might achieve the product strategy

Roadmaps: Roadmaps visualize the product strategy and offer a timeline for implementation and delivery

Launch plans: A list of activities that a cross-functional team will complete as part of releasing new functionality to market

People fall into the trap of thinking that the plan for how they will build something new is itself a product strategy. This is especially common in early-stage companies or on teams lacking in strong product leadership. Product plans are certainly critical to product development. Vision, goals, ideas, and tactics are necessary too — but none are actually a product strategy.

Related: Why strategic thinking is so hard for product managers

Executives and product leaders typically collaborate to define the product vision and determine how your product will serve a specific customer segment . The exploration phase of setting a product strategy often involves competitive analysis, vetting different business models , and creating product positioning . This needs to happen before any detailed product roadmap work begins.

market strategy product project

The team at Aha! are all product development experts. Collectively we have hundreds of years experience planning, building, and launching new offerings. We put all of that knowledge into our own software suite . Those learnings informed how we structure product strategy in Aha! Roadmaps .

Our major areas of focus for product strategy are organized into three categories — foundation, market, and imperatives. The sections below reveal the mindset that a product manager should be in when developing a product strategy, along with best practices, tools, and tactics you can use during the process.

Foundation: What you want to achieve

You seek to understand the market context you operate in, are able to define why your offering is superior, and can identify growth opportunities.

Vision: Represents the core essence of your product and what makes it unique. It should be something that everyone in the company deeply understands — the "why" behind the product you are all responsible for.

Business models: Models are useful when you launch a new product or want to evolve your strategy as the market changes. There are many types of business models — including lean canvas , Porter's 5 forces , and the 10Ps marketing matrix .

Positioning: Define where your product fits in the marketplace and the unique benefits you provide. Strong positioning supports your marketing strategy , brand storytelling, and all content developed for customers.

Market: Who you will serve

You are curious about who your customers are, can empathize with the problems they have, and are familiar with any alternatives to your offering.

Personas: Fictional characters bring your customers to life. Creating user personas is one way to develop empathy for your customers — you document their likes and dislikes, professional aspirations, challenges, and more.

Competitive analysis: Understand where your offering excels and falls short compared to other solutions in the marketplace. Doing this type of research provides insights into where you fit within the broader market and what opportunities might prove most valuable for your customers and the business.

Imperatives: What you will accomplish

You set time-bound and specific goals and identify initiatives that will help you achieve your strategy.

Goals: These are benchmarks that you want to achieve in the next quarter, year, or 18 months. A useful exercise to identify the most impactful goals is to plot out potentials on a chart based on the investment needed (from your team) and the impact (to your customers) .

Initiatives: High-level efforts or big themes of work that need to be implemented to achieve your goals. These strategic initiatives link your goals to everything planned on your product roadmap.

A note about goals...

Defining goals and initiatives is typically done towards the end of setting product strategy. With all of the information that you have gathered and reviewed during that process, it can be tempting to choose many goals and many initiatives. You want to make everyone happy, right?

A product that serves everyone actually serves no one. Too many strategic imperatives will confuse the team and lead to muddy decision-making. So you want to be shrewd when selecting goals and initiatives — fewer, specific objectives will make it easier to select features that will make a real impact.

When we think of successful product strategies the same examples pop up over and over. In the software space, these are the household name brands and challenger startups that most of us are familiar with: Apple, Airbnb, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, Uber. Let’s add a few newcomers to the whack-a-mole software pile — put ChatGPT, Tiktok, and even Meta's latest launch, Threads, on the list too.

We could approach each of these example technology companies as having special stories and explore the product strategies that helped them ascend. But that would make this a very, very long article. And you would quickly realize that the individual companies are not doing anything unique. Instead they are employing a proven product strategy in an effective way.

There are a few core categories when it comes to product strategy — cost, quality, technology, service, and speed to market. You may choose one or several for your own product, but typically not all. When reading through the table below, consider what you are working on now. Which strategy makes the most sense for your product?

What about differentiation?

If you have worked in product development for a while you might be wondering if we missed the “differentiation strategy.” Keen eye, but no — this is an intentional omission. The strategies above are all ways that you show why your product is different and worthy of a customer’s purchase. You cannot have a differentiation strategy, when the goal of any product strategy is to differentiate in a meaningful way.

What are some tips for setting strategy?

The following 10 tips can serve as a touchstone for any product manager when setting strategy:

Do your research: Take the time to do the analysis needed to inform your product strategy, from persona work to SWOT to evaluating the market landscape .

Know your target audience: Never underestimate the power of knowing and empathizing with your customers and embrace every opportunity to deepen that knowledge.

Avoid comparisons: Do your competitive research but fend off temptations to directly compare your product one-to-one or vet opportunities against what others offer (do not let another company’s product strategy rule yours).

Be aware of weaknesses: Understand the areas where you, your team, and your product could improve.

Limit goals and initiatives: Select only three to five product goals for a given time period to prevent dilution of your efforts.

Communicate effectively with stakeholders: Make sure you can succinctly articulate the value of what you want to achieve and can translate it for different audiences .

Foster a culture of innovation: Encourage the broader product development team to use the product strategy as inspiration for their own creativity.

Embrace an agile mindset: Allow your product strategy to say “yes” or “no” to prospective features, sidestep pet projects or one-off requests that do not align, and move quickly to pursue work that does.

Keep the roadmap updated: Ensure that your roadmap shows the most recent work and reflects how that work supports the product strategy.

Continuously monitor and evaluate: Be diligent about reviewing what you have identified as supporting your product strategy, from the moment you prioritize a feature to how it performs once you release it to market.

Setting your product strategy is just the beginning. Product development is most effective when product strategy is an integral and dynamic part of the process — the lens through which all decisions are viewed.

Case study: Maybe you should rethink that "game-changing" new AI feature

Product development teams vary in terms of sophistication, maturity, and needs. (So do products for that matter.) In extremely early-stage companies where there might not be a product yet, you might be able to make do with researching, defining, and documenting your product strategy in Excel or PowerPoint. These tools were not built for strategy or product work though — over time you will begin to get frustrated with the limitation of using spreadsheets and presentations.

As you and your team grow in experience (or if you are already working on a complex product), you will want to choose a purpose-built tool. Integrated product development software offers all of the functionality you need to not only set strategy, but link it to active work in a dynamic way. You can prioritize features, build beautiful product roadmaps, and report on the value you delivered all in one place.

Integrated tools for product strategy

Aha! software includes everything you need to imagine, plan, build, and deliver lovable software. When it comes to setting strategy, most product managers rely on the expertly crafted templates in Aha! Notebooks and the robust planning functionality in Aha! Roadmaps .

Aha! Notebooks

Virtual whiteboards help you capture your thoughts and collaborate with the team. Guided templates created by product development experts make it easy to get started quickly on early-stage product thinking.

market strategy product project

Here are a few of the guided templates that product managers use to set strategy:

Business model template

Competitive analysis template

Customer interview template

Customer research plan template

Customer journey map template

Lean canvas template

Market requirements document (MRD) template

Mind map template

Persona template

Porter’s 5 forces template

Pros and cons template

Segment profile template

  • SWOT analysis

Aha! Roadmaps

Product development teams are able to work faster and deliver better products. Set strategy, capture ideas, prioritize features, build beautiful roadmaps, create presentations, and much more.

market strategy product project

Free Excel and PowerPoint downloads

Business plan templates

Competitor analysis templates

Product positioning templates

SWOT analysis templates

How-to videos

The following how-to videos show how you can research competitors and set strategic product goals.

Additional product strategy resources

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Product Marketing Strategy: The 2024 Complete Guide

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Quick links:

An effective product marketing strategy can be the key to growing your brand, boosting revenue, and unlocking new opportunities. 

Focused on demonstrating the specific values and benefits of a product to your customer, a product marketing campaign can be extremely valuable in both B2B and B2C environments, particularly as customer-centric advertising grows more popular.

Unfortunately, there are still countless people who don’t understand what product marketing actually means. Only around 5% of product marketers are convinced their role is fully understood, even among business leaders. 

Today, we’re going to be defining product marketing, exploring what it can do for your business, and providing top tips on how to use product marketing more effectively. 

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What is Product Marketing Strategy?

Man holding box containing product and reviewing his product marketing strategy

Product marketing is the art and science of bringing a product to market. It involves various strategic marketing and sales tactics, as well as long-term lead nurturing, up-selling, and cross-selling techniques. A product marketing strategy is the exact plan a company uses to bring their product to their audience. 

Your strategy will usually include things like figuring out the positioning and messaging you want to link to your product, launching the product, and ensuring customers and salespeople understand what it can do. Strategies can also cover insights into how various teams (production, marketing, sales, and customer support) will work together to drive demand and usage of a product.

While this might sound the same as conventional marketing, product marketing is slightly more focused. 

Part of the “ 7 P’s of marketing ”, product marketing focuses specifically on product, while your other marketing campaigns might focus on people, prices, promotion, place, packaging, and positioning.

Product Marketing Strategy Example

Product marketing is focused on the steps people take to purchase your products, and how you can support people in adopting and using that product. Let’s take a look at a classic example.

Apple is a household name in a highly competitive technology market. To stand out from the crowd, Apple ensures its products are beautifully well-designed, easy to use, and convenient. Apple’s product marketing strategy focuses specifically on the benefits it can deliver to users, rather than just listing the features you can get from each item. 

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Apple’s language in virtually every product page and marketing campaign concentrates on telling consumers what they can do, and what they’ll be able to accomplish. Apple tells a narrative with its marketing content which helps the customer imagine the challenges they can overcome.

For another example, look at Billie, a woman’s razor brand well known for the #ProjectBodyHair campaign. This started with a TV campaign that actually showed body hair in women’s razor ads – something which hadn’t been done before. 

Screenshot of video showing an ad which is part of the #ProjectBodyHair campaign

The idea for this campaign came from the product team, who researched the market to find out customers didn’t like seeing ads where customers didn’t have body hair. 

Combine this with the rising demand from women to be portrayed realistically in the media, and Billie had an excellent product marketing campaign. In fact, it generated 3.3 billion earned media impressions across 23 countries. 

Why You Need a Product Marketing Strategy

Product marketing strategies are all about understanding your audience’s needs, and positioning your product in a way that grabs attention. Developing the right product for your market and ensuring you present it in a way that captures audience attention is essential for growth.

With a product marketing strategy, you can:

Improve your understanding of your customer: 

Implementing a product marketing strategy requires companies to conduct in-depth research into their target audience. You learn what your customers need to see in your product to determine whether it’s valuable to them, and their lives. 

Understanding why customers gravitate toward your products will help you to create better buyer personas and more relevant campaigns. In other words, you’ll speak your customer’s language. 

Understand your competitors

While you’re building your product marketing strategy, you’ll need to look at your wider market and determine how your product or service is different from other existing options. You can compare your strategy to those of your competitors, and get a better insight into what you’re going up against.

With in-depth competitor research, you’ll be able to differentiate yourself more clearly in your target market and ensure you’re positioned appropriately in your chosen industry. After you’ve assessed your competition, ask yourself:

  • How is my product suitable for today’s market?
  • How is this product different from competing products?
  • Can we differentiate our product even further (with extra features, pricing changes, etc)?

Ensure your teams are on the same page

When you know exactly what makes your product stand out and why customers want it, it’s much easier to give your teams a consistent view of their purpose, and your brand’s mission. With a strong product marketing strategy, you can align your product, sales, marketing, and service teams around a shared understanding of your company’s purpose .

When everyone in your team has a better understanding of the purpose of the product you’re selling and why it’s so beneficial, they’ll be more likely to communicate this information correctly. 

Boost revenue and sales

Ultimately, customers have endless options when it comes to where they can spend their money these days. The only way to ensure they come to you instead of the competition, is to position your product as the best possible option for their needs. 

Building a product marketing strategy that gives you an in-depth understanding of your customers will help you to generate more sales, through more personalized marketing . Remember, around 72% of customers say they expect businesses they buy from to understand them as individuals. 

How to Develop Your Own Product Marketing Strategy

A good product marketing strategy should guide the positioning, promotion, and pricing of your product. With this plan, you should be able to take your product from the “development” stage, all the way through to launch with a clear vision. Here’s how you can get started. 

Step 1: Get to Know Your Product’s Target Audience

A strong product marketing strategy begins with a deep knowledge of your target audience. You’ll need to define a specific target audience and create a buyer persona to help you understand the pain points, expectations, and requirements of that client. 

The more information you can include in your personas, the better. You’ll need to know where your target customer comes from, what kind of issues they’re facing, why they might want your product, and even how much they earn on a regular basis. The more data you have, the more you’ll be able to ensure all the aspects of your product marketing strategy are targeted to the right person.

Step 2: Conduct market research

Man presenting market research data

After you’re done with your customer research, the next step is figuring out where your product is positioned in the context of the wider market. Look at the other products similar to yours that exist in the current market. What exactly can these products offer?

Perform a full analysis of each item, thinking about:

  • What your product can do better
  • What your competitor’s product does well
  • Whether people are happy with the product, or what their overall response is

Answering these questions will help you to choose a position for yourself in your chosen market. 

Step 3: Determine your positioning and messaging

With this knowledge of your target audience and your competition, you’ll be able to start investing in positioning and messaging strategies. Positioning involves thinking about where your product exists in the market in the context of other brands and solutions. 

For instance, is your product one of the cheapest on the market, or one of the most expensive? Do you offer the widest selection of features, or a specific focus on customer service your customers love? The positioning you discover will help you to determine what you need to emphasize in your messaging (such as excellent service, or low prices). 

Some of the questions you’ll need to answer when developing your positioning and messaging include:

  • What makes this product unique?
  • Why is this product better than our competitors?
  • Why is our product ideal for our target audience?
  • What will our audience get out of this product they can’t get elsewhere?
  • Why should customers trust and invest in our product?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you should be able to create an elevator pitch that describes everything someone would need to know about your product in an exciting, compact way. 

Step 4: Create your go-to-market strategy

Now it’s time to think about how you’re going to bring your product to customers. 

Identify which personas you’re going to be targeting with your product, and how you’re going to be capturing their attention with your messaging strategy.  Think about how you’re going to price your product, and what kind of methods you’re going to be using for selling. For instance, do you want to sell through distributors or direct to customers?

You can also use this stage to consider the kind of marketing methods you’re going to use, like social media marketing, or content campaigns. At this stage, you can utilize a graphic design maker for compelling visual content across your marketing campaigns.

As you choose marketing automation and sales strategies, also select KPIs you’ll want to measure as you progress to see whether your product marketing strategy is successful. 

Brief your sales and marketing leaders on your go-to-market strategy and ensure they have all the resources they need to do their job, such as advertising tools, product samples, brand guidelines, and go-to market strategy templates . 

Step 5: Launch, monitor, and optimize

Finally, you’ll be ready to launch your product. There are two aspects to the “launch” for most companies. Internal launches involve introducing everyone in your team to your product’s main benefits and features, which you’ll need to do before anything else.

External launches mean bringing your content to market through the various advertising and sales channels you chose above. Remember to monitor the performance of your campaign by tracking the KPIs you’ve set. These KPIs might include:

  • Number of trial or demo sign-ups
  • Lead to customer rates
  • Product usage levels
  • Customer engagement score
  • Net Promoter score
  • Feature adoption and engagement
  • Usage of assets
  • Upsells and cross-sells

Setting Your Own Product Marketing Strategy

While product marketing can seem like a complicated process at first, it’s something that becomes easier the more you work at it. 

A good product marketing strategy can be an essential part of ensuring your new product is a success with your target market. The more time you spend on your marketing strategy, making sure you understand your audience, their needs, and your position in the market, the more likely you are to see a significant return on investment from your products. 

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How to create a brilliant product marketing strategy

Even the most life-changing product won’t sell if no one knows about it. To get the word out, you need a product marketing strategy—a research-backed plan that presents your product to current or potential customers. 

Developing a strategy seems more complex than it really is. You just need to take it one step at a time, focusing on the value your product offers, its place in the vast market landscape, and how it meets your customers’ needs.

A product marketing plan helps you position, promote, and sell your product throughout its lifecycle. Create one in just five simple steps:

Research your customers to deeply understand them and shape your strategy around their needs

Conduct competitive intelligence research to understand the broader market and your product’s place in it

Develop product positioning and messaging that highlights your offer’s unique value so you can resonate with your target audience

Create a pricing strategy that makes sense for your customers, industry, and goals

Develop a promotional plan to build awareness and interest, and encourage buyers to take action

5 steps to create an effective product marketing strategy

A strong product marketing strategy ensures you have a structured, cross-functional roadmap to achieving product success. Here are five steps you need to follow to do just that.

1. Research your customers

Whether your goal is a new product launch or longevity in the marketplace, your first step is research. Pinpoint who your ideal customer is, including their demographics, wants, needs, and behaviors. 

This research informs the rest of your product marketing strategy and ensures that you maintain an empathetic, customer-centric mindset. 

Some tried-and-tested user research approaches for product marketers include

Launching surveys to gather your target audience’s demographic data and pain points quickly

Conducting user interviews and focus groups to understand user needs and opinions more deeply

Delving into website analytics to see who comes to your site and from where

Using heatmaps to see which parts of your website or web app people engage with or ignore

Watching recordings to observe how users interact with your product and learn what user experience (UX) issues they face

Gathering this information helps you create accurate buyer personas—profiles of your ideal customer personas (ICPs)—ensuring that your strategy is spot-on and user-centric.

💡 Pro tip: use Hotjar Engage to connect with your ICP and gather valuable insights for your product marketing strategy. 

Watch users interact with your product in real time, and ask follow-up questions to learn what they like and dislike. Then, use these insights to develop targeted messaging—and share them with your product team, so they can make design improvements. It’s a win-win-win!

2. Conduct competitive intelligence

Once you have a thorough understanding of your customers, it’s time to analyze the competitive landscape and understand how your product fits in the marketplace. 

Conducting competitive intelligence ensures you

Price your product correctly 

Find market gaps and position your product accordingly

Anticipate market trends that might affect how you promote your product

Competitive intelligence sounds a bit like secret spy work, but it’s all above board. 🕵️ It simply involves widening your research lens to

Pull up your competitors’ profiles on industry databases

Study similar brands’ websites and product landing pages

Keep tabs on competitors’ press releases about new offerings

Monitor their social media accounts to understand customer sentiment

Run a SWOT analysis to unpack your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats from competitors 

By keeping an eye on your competitors’ product marketing strategy, you learn how to position your own. For example, you might learn that customers love another scheduling software’s features and integrations, but don’t enjoy its UX. Your own product’s effortless UX could become a major selling point.

💡 Pro tip: gather quick info on how your users view your competitors with a market research survey . Hotjar’s free template lets you discover

The challenges your users face

Their existing tech tools

The features they value 

Their pain points

This helps you see who your competitors are—and where they may fall short—so you can market your product accordingly.

market strategy product project

Hotjar’s customizable market research survey template lets you gather user insights on your competitors in seconds

3. Develop product positioning and messaging

Product positioning is the process of defining where your product fits in the marketplace and how you want your audience to feel about it. 

A key step in this process is determining your product’s unique selling proposition (USP) , the characteristics that set it apart from competitors’ products to make it desirable.

For example, online graphic design tool Canva’s USP is empowering the world to design since it puts formerly intimidating professional design tools in the hands of anyone who wants to use them.

To position your product and develop your USP, ask yourself questions like

What makes our product different? 

Why is it perfect for our target customer?

What unique value does it provide to them? 

Your USP is the cornerstone of your messaging strategy—the way you communicate your product’s value with customers. It also gives all of your company’s teams, from public relations to sales, a cohesive way to talk about your product.

Ensure consistency by creating an internal product messaging hub that contains

A product vision that captures what your product is, who uses it, and why it matters

A positioning statement that shows what differentiates it from the competition

A value proposition that sums up its benefits to customers 

A one-liner or elevator pitch, a short description of your product that captures why it’s great

Key phrases to use with different audience segments 

Notes on tone and voice , which align with your brand’s overall messaging strategy

💡 Pro tip: use Hotjar’s product suite to understand how your users feel about your messaging. Ask them directly with interviews or surveys, or gather data indirectly with heatmaps and session recordings.

Session recordings show you how individual users interact with key elements on marketing assets like your landing page. Pay close attention to where they linger on the page and what they skip. 

Engagement Zones , a type of heatmap based on users’ click, scroll, and move patterns, highlights copy and content that catches users’ attention.

market strategy product project

Engagement Zones’ grid overlay shows you the most engaging areas on your page

4. Create a pricing strategy

Even with perfect positioning and messaging, you need a smart pricing strategy to keep your product afloat in the marketplace. Pricing your offer too high halts sales, but underpricing could create an impression that your product is low quality.

It’s not just a numbers game, either. You also need to understand buyer psychology and motivations—whether people value scoring a deal or feeling like they’re investing in a top-of-the-line item. 

Luckily, you don’t need to create a pricing strategy from scratch. Start with a model that makes sense for your industry and product.

#Hotjar's pricing page includes several options for users to choose from, including a free forever Basic plan with up to 35 daily sessions and unlimited heatmaps

Competitor-based pricing focuses solely on the price of competing products instead of production costs, and is particularly useful in a saturated industry

Value-based pricing is common among one-of-a-kind or highly sought-after products, and is based on a customer’s perception of a product’s value

Cost-plus pricing , also called markup pricing, calculates the item’s production cost and then adds extra on the top for profit. While less common in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry, it’s popular among grocers and other retailers.

Dynamic pricing works well for industries that experience frequent shifts in demand, such as hotels or airlines

Price skimming prices a product high to begin with and gradually lowers the price to maximize profit short-term

Penetration pricing starts a product at a low price and gradually increases it once they have a solid customer base, with the intent of maximizing profits long-term

💡 Pro tip: stay flexible with your pricing strategy throughout your product’s lifecycle, remaining ready to pivot or adapt as the market changes. 

Put an exit-intent survey on your pricing page to gather feedback about unclear wording or ways to improve your packages.

market strategy product project

Use Hotjar’s exit-intent survey template as a pop-up on your pricing page to learn what visitors think of your pricing

5. Develop a promotional plan

You’re in the home stretch. To ensure your product gets in front of the right people—whether that’s brand-new leads or established customers who might be interested in a newly released feature—you need a promotional strategy. 

Start by setting measurable goals or key performance indicators (KPIs) to track, so you can gauge whether your promotional strategy is successful down the road. 

Consider which channels your target audience frequents and the types of content they prefer, such as video, blogs, or graphics. Then, choose tactics to promote your product, such as 

Creating landing pages to highlight product features and benefits

Planning targeted social media campaigns on 1–3 channels

Investing in email marketing 

Creating an ad campaign for television, radio, or social media

Drawing on influencer marketing 

Seeking brand partnerships to promote each other’s products—Hotjar’s Partner Program lets you earn a revenue share of up to 25% for referrals

Developing content marketing plans for blogs or case studies 

Tapping into search engine optimization (SEO) to attract more web traffic to your site

💡 Pro tip: gather product experience insights to see how real users use your marketing assets, and then optimize your promotion plan.

Run A/B testing on two different landing pages to compare how they perform

Use Hotjar Heatmaps to better understand how users experience each variant. See how far the typical visitor scrolls, what catches their attention, and what they miss entirely.

Once you know what floats users’ boats—say, how-to videos for easy onboarding—tweak your promotional strategy to tout that benefit.

market strategy product project

Hotjar’s five types of heatmaps help you visualize how users interact with your page

Find lasting product success with user insights

For long-term success, continue to analyze your data to find new ways to improve your product marketing strategy. By optimizing and iterating your plan—and assets like landing pages, blog content, and ads—you continue to attract new customers and keep your existing customers happy and coming back for more.

Transform your campaigns with Hotjar’s powerful insights

Use Hotjar’s tools to discover who your users are and what they want—and create a product marketing strategy that works.

FAQs about product marketing strategy

What is a product marketing plan.

A product marketing plan, also known as a product marketing strategy or framework, is a step-by-step blueprint to generate awareness for and continued interest in your product. It ensures that the people who need your product find and purchase it.

Why is it important to have a product marketing strategy?

A product marketing plan tells you exactly how you should position and promote your product. Having a strategy guides the messaging and marketing for each stage of your product’s life cycle—and it’s research-based, so you can feel confident you’re setting your offer up for success. Ultimately, a product marketing plan boosts conversions and revenue, helping you achieve customer retention and loyalty.

How do I create a product marketing framework?

Creating a product marketing framework might seem challenging, but it’s actually a simple five-step process. Follow these steps to ensure product marketing success:

Get to know your customers

Conduct competitor analysis

Determine product positioning and messaging

Decide on a product pricing strategy

Create a promotional plan

KPIs and OKRs

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Product marketing tools

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  • SaaS Marketing
  • 13 November, 2023

How to Create an Effective Product Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps (Examples included)

Stanley Krajčír

You’ve spent months designing and developing your product. You’re ready to launch. But what if the product launch fails? 

Product designers and developers are focused on the technical aspect of product creation. 

But no matter how perfect the codebase is or how great its features are, the efforts are wasted if the product doesn’t get into the hands of the right people. 

As marketers or business owners, it’s your job to create a marketing strategy to ensure the success of your new product. 

  • 71% of companies who exceed their lead and revenue goals have created buyer personas 
  • High-performing companies were 2.3 times more likely to research their buyers’ motivations. 
  • 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a company that provides personalized experiences. 
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln

Understanding your consumers and providing a personalized experience based on their customer journey will help you convert more sales. 

In this article, we’ll dish out the steps to create a bullet-proof product marketing strategy so you’re ready to launch and capture the attention of your ideal customers. 

What is a Product Marketing Strategy? 

A product marketing strategy is a high-level plan to bring a product to the market by promoting it to the right audience. 

Developing a product marketing strategy requires knowing your ideal customer persona, understanding your unique value proposition, and how you’ll craft the messaging to attract customers. 

The goal of the strategy is to sell your product to the right audience and deliver on the promises that are being advertised. 

Each product marketing strategy should define and clarify the following: 

  • The target audience or buyer persona.
  • The unique value proposition and how it fits into the marketplace.
  • Where the product will be promoted.
  • How the product will be promoted.
  • Tracking the behavior of your users to improve user experience and retention.

market strategy product project

But the strategy isn’t just about the pre-launch phase . Product marketers must work with the product development team, sales team, and customer service team to ensure the success of a new product. 

The marketing team may work with the product design team to ensure the product addresses the customer’s needs. 

They will have to create a marketing vision that describes the features and benefits of the product to help the salespeople better sell the product. 

Lastly, the marketing team will have to collect feedback from the customer service department to adjust the product and help drive adoption. 

market strategy product project

There are three stages to a successful product marketing strategy: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. 

  • Pre-Product Launch: Product marketers will determine the positioning, messaging, and promotion for how the product will enter the market. 
  • During the Launch: Marketers ensure that customers have a great experience with the product. 
  • Post-Product Launch: Marketers will help drive adoption by focusing on driving demand and usage of the product. 
“Product marketing has suffered from an identity crisis as long as I have known the term. Product marketing, when done correctly, is usually in charge of three things: First, deciding a soon to be released product’s positioning and messaging. Second, launching the product and making sure users understand its value. Third, drive demand and usage of the product.” Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. Source: Drift

Why is creating a product marketing strategy important? 

A product marketing strategy is critical to the success of your product. Without a plan, the product won’t reach its full potential. 

Attract the right customers

When you understand your target audience, you can design and market your product to the needs of your consumers. 

They’ll be more interested in what you have to say if you craft personalized content and messaging to your target persona. 

For example, this dentist advertisement demonstrates that they understand the fears of their consumers. They know that their audience may fear going to the dentist because the procedure might be painful, and that’s why they explicitly mention that the procedure will be painless.

market strategy product project

Once you know everything about your buyer’s personas, you can quickly determine where you can get their attention. Determining who your buyers are lets you know where to find them. 

Similarly, once you’ve identified your buyer’s demographics and psychographics, you can better attract them to your product. Not to mention, you’ll create a better product that is better suited for your customers.  

market strategy product project

Gain a competitive advantage

Creating a winning product in the marketplace requires you to study your competitors. 

A business must find the gap between what is currently offered in the market and what customers want. 

It’s essential to provide customers with something unique that other businesses don’t offer. Most companies are formed due to something that is lacking in the marketplace. 

HubSpot was founded because they noticed consumers were tired of being harassed by marketers and salespeople. As a result, they created CRM software to empower businesses to focus on helping the customer through inbound marketing. 

market strategy product project

Many startups use a SWOT analysis to determine whether a product is worth releasing. 

A SWOT analysis is a framework to help evaluate the product’s competitive positioning in the marketplace. Leaders will assess their product’s potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Use the SWOT analysis to help you find out where your product excels, where it could improve, and what opportunities you could capitalize on based on current market conditions. 

market strategy product project

Improve sales 

Developing a product marketing strategy helps to increase sales and maximize profits. 

Researching the competitors in your market and the problems people face allows you to attract qualified leads and convert them into customers. You’ll be able to craft your message to make your content relatable to their goals, fears, interests, and ambitions. 

When you understand where your product fits into the niche, you can state the features and benefits to your leads. As a result, you’ll achieve a higher response and conversion rate. 

market strategy product project

As we now understand why building a product marketing strategy is important, let’s examine a 6-step process for creating your first product marketing strategy.

1. Create a customer avatar 

There’s no point in designing a product your customers don’t need. 

“You could have the greatest product on earth, but if you’re trying to sell it to the wrong person – you’re never going to hit your sales numbers” Digital Marketer

Customer research is critical to identifying what your target audience wants. It allows you to better serve them by providing products or services to fulfill their needs. 

To collect data about your customers, start with the demographics and psychographics of your customers: 

Demographics: Find the demographic characteristics for your future customers – location, household income, job title, age, gender, etc. 

Psychographics: Research the audience’s motivations and needs. Look into common psychographic traits such as personality, attitudes, and hobbies. 

market strategy product project

Demographics and psychographics are valuable data for using advertising platforms like Facebook Ads . Their platform lets you target specific audiences such as location, age, gender, languages, interests, behavior, etc. 

market strategy product project

You also want to dig deeper into your research. Creating a customer avatar will allow you to articulate your customer’s goals, values, challenges, and pain points. 

For example, Digital Marketer is a website that provides training, workshops, and classes about digital marketing. They have four buyer persona’s who they believe would be interested in their certification classes . 

  • The marketing employee: Looking to earn a promotion or land a new job by acquiring new marketing skills 
  • The marketing freelancer: Interested in increasing their offerings or distinguishing themselves from other freelancers 
  • The marketing agency owner: Want to sharpen the marketing skills of their employees to serve their agency clients better 
  • The business owner: Want to help the marketing department by brushing up on the latest marketing skills and tactics. 

Follow these steps to create a customer avatar: 

  • List out the customer’s goals and values. Ask yourself, what do they want to accomplish, and what do they strongly believe in? 
  • Identify their challenges and pain points. What keeps them up in bed late at night? 
  • Think about where your audience obtains their sources of information. For example, marketing freelancers may read DigitalMarketer.com or Neil Patel’s blog. 
  • Identify possible objections in the buying process. Think about the reasons that could prevent this customer from buying. Also, what is their role in the purchasing decision? Are they the primary decision maker? 

market strategy product project

Here’s another example of a customer avatar interested in purchasing an SEO course or using SEO software like a keyword research tool. 

How to do customer research without talking to customers 

Talking to potential customers is always the best way to gather the information for your customer avatar. However, sometimes, it may be logistically inconvenient. 

Online conversations are much more easily accessible and allow you to get more data in a short time frame. Also, customer research is an excellent way to validate your product idea.  

Here are some methods and places to look: 

  • Surveys allow you to gain deeper insight into your ideal customer’s opinion. Consider offering a freebie in exchange for people who complete your survey. 
  • Reddit has large crowds of subcommunities on nearly every topic imaginable. Use the search bar to input relevant keywords and phrases in your niche. Scan the posts and comments and engage with the community. 
  • Facebook Groups offer niche communities where anyone can join them. Use relevant keywords to search within the group, such as “help me,” “how-to,” or “struggle with.” 
  • Quora has 300 million active monthly users, and many go on to look for answers to questions. 
  • Find industry thought leaders, public figures, and experts in your industry. Some of them will often tweet and elicit thoughtful responses from their audience. Scan the comments and see what they are saying about a given topic. 
  • Niche online communities can be a hidden gem to learning about your audience’s struggles. There are many online forum communities where you can join. Discord has categories that allow you to join servers to chat with members about topics. Hundreds or thousands of servers are within each category, such as Business, Financial, Design, Programming, Investing, Writing, etc. You can also look at customer communities such as the HubSpot community or Trailblazer community to see what customers say about their product. Finding a related competitor community gives you insight into the problems their customers could be facing. 

market strategy product project

2. Identify your unique value proposition 

Marketers must understand what makes the product unique and why customers need it when developing and promoting it. 

Customers don’t buy because you are selling a product. They buy because you are fulfilling a need in a way that other businesses cannot. 

You can add value to customers by: 

  • Saving them time.
  • Giving them extra value for their money.
  • Eliminating an inconvenience that other competitors do not.
  • Offering resources or an experience that others do not.

A unique value proposition is the unique positioning that your product has in the marketplace that stands out from competitors. 

You can develop your value proposition by asking yourself a few questions: 

  • If your product didn’t exist, what would customers use? 
  • What features do you have that others do not?
  • What value can you add to your customers that other competitors can’t? 

market strategy product project

In addition, a product should have a clear vision of what it can achieve. For example, Uber’s vision is “ go anywhere and get anything .” They are a tech company that helps movement happen with a push of a button.

Marketers can develop a product vision board to help them clarify who the product targets, what their needs are, what the features and selling points of the product are and how your business will benefit from it. 

market strategy product project

Craft your product messaging

Every product needs a concise and easy-to-understand messaging for its unique value proposition. Great product messaging should be persuasive, memorable, and simple. Furthermore, it should contain the following: 

  • Tagline: Communicate what the product does. 
  • Problem statement: How the product solves the problem.
  • Core features: How the product goes about solving the problem. 
  • Value proposition: What makes your product unique from its competitors. 

Leadpages does an exceptional job with their product messaging: 

  • Tagline: Turn clicks into customers. 
  • Problem statement: A drag-and-drop landing page builder to capture qualified leads and convert them into customers.  
  • Core features: A drag-and-drop builder, conversion tools, and templates to build the perfect landing page. 
  • Value proposition: “ All you need is better than all in one .” The tool bundles everything that works into pre-made builders and templates. 

market strategy product project

3. Create a product marketing strategy

Now that you’ve created your buyer persona and unique value proposition, it’s important to establish the 4 P’s of Marketing into your strategy. The 4 P’s of marketing is a framework used to market your product. These 4 P’s consist of: 

  • Product: What are you selling?
  • Price: How much are you charging? 
  • Place: Where will you promote your product? 
  • Promotion: How will customers find out about the product? 

market strategy product project

Since we’ve already discussed how to find your product’s value proposition, you can move on to the price, place, and promotion aspects. 

Price 

Pricing will vary depending on the product and industry you’re in. If you’re in a saturated space, you may have to offer the lowest price. However, you can charge a premium if you’re in a relatively new space. 

Here are some questions to consider: 

  • How sensitive are customers to price?
  • How does your price compare to competitors? 
  • What would be the lowest price that you’re willing to sell your product for?
  • What is the highest price customers would be willing to pay for the product? 

Place 

Next, consider the place. Where do your potential customers hang out? 

In a virtual world, looking into the channel with your target audience is important. If you own a lead generation software, you may want to use LinkedIn blogs and ads since many decision-makers like to network there. 

Ask yourself these questions to find out where your potential customers are: 

  • Where do your customers spend their time digitally? 
  • Which distribution channels do your competitors use? 
  • Do you sell to consumers or businesses? 

When determining the right promotional strategy, you may want to research what messaging and offers work best with your audience. 

We recommend two research tools to help you spy on what your competitors are doing. 

Ubersuggest, for instance, lets you search competitor websites to view their traffic numbers, their best-performing pages, and the top SEO keywords that they’re ranking for. This helps you find potential keywords you can rank for. 

Facebook Ads Library is another tool that allows you to find ongoing or previous ads that your competitor has used. Check out their best-performing ads to analyze their ad copy and offer. You can go down the rabbit hole in their funnel to see how they are converting their audience. 

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Once you’ve analyzed your competitors’ promotion strategies, you can incorporate the effective ones into your inbound marketing strategy. 

4. Build out your content marketing plan based on the customer lifecycle 

Every prospect goes through a customer lifecycle journey where they start as cold prospects and eventually become paying customers. 

Your job is to deliver timely content to prospects based on where they are in their journey. 

In short, there are four stages: 

  • Awareness – Visitors become aware of your brand through social media, blog posts, or collaborative marketing. 
  • Engagement – Visitors turn into a lead when they opt-in to a lead magnet or free trial. 
  • Conversion – Leads eventually become buyers once they are properly nurtured or onboarded to the product. 
  • Retention – Customers become active users and refer your product to other people. 

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Notice that the type of content varies based on the stage of the buyer’s journey. 

Users should educate visitors about the problem through blogs and social media posts in the awareness stage. 

Encharge uses their blog posts to educate visitors on how to use marketing automation and email marketing to help SaaS companies, content creators, and agencies improve conversion.

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Next, users interested in implementing marketing automation may start a free trial with Encharge.

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Lastly, Encharge will use a series of onboarding emails to get users acclimated to the tool. You can send emails about the features, and case studies and even answer common questions. 

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5. Implement email marketing 

Like content marketing, your emails should be automated based on time or triggers. 

Time-based emails are triggered by a set time. Conversely, triggered-based emails are sent where a person interacts or fails to interact with your product. 

Where time-based triggers are useful: If you are offering a 14-day trial, it may be beneficial to send a time-based email to ask for feedback on the software on Day 10. This reminds them to use the product and see whether they like it or not. 

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Where action-based triggers can be useful: If a trial user becomes a customer before your onboarding flow ends, you can remove them from the previous flow. 

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Further reading: Time-based Vs. Action-based Onboarding Emails. Can they work together?

Types of emails 

It is critical to send the right emails based on where the prospect is in their buyer’s journey. There are a few email types you should use within your product marketing strategy: 

Nurturing emails 

Nurturing emails are designed to establish trust and engage prospects. These emails primarily educate and entertain users. They may include funny anecdotes, links to blog posts, or even case studies. 

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Onboarding emails 

Onboarding emails welcome new users and get them accustomed to your product. It may provide an overview of the product and how to use its features. 

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Sales emails

Sales emails directly ask for the sale and may use psychological tactics such as scarcity or exclusivity to push the prospect into buying. 

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Develop winning headlines 

When writing your emails, it’s important to generate eye-catching subject lines. Boring subject lines mean your emails won’t be opened. 

47% of email recipients decide to open an email solely based on the subject line. Additionally, 69% of recipients will report the email as spam depending on the subject line. 

Follow these tips to improve your email subject lines: 

  • Keep it short and sweet.
  • A/B test your email subject lines .
  • Use personalization tags such as name or location. 
  • Segment your list so the email is targeted based on the user’s specific action or lack of action.

Encharge has a free AI-powered email subject line generator to give you unique subject lines for your new product campaign.

5. Use analytics tools to improve customer retention 

Analytics tools can be used to analyze user behavior with your product. The data provided from these tools can help you improve your funnel, website, and software. 

Crazy Egg 

Crazy Egg provides visual representations of where customers click when they land on your website. Furthermore, they give valuable statistics such as page clicks and bounces and even provide sources of where the traffic is coming from.

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Encharge can provide critical email metrics to help you improve your marketing campaign. This information can help improve your email flows or the content within the email. The metrics include: 

  • Delivery rate
  • Clickthrough rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Bounce rate
  • Forward/share rate 
  • Return on investment
  • Unsubscribe rate 

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MixPanel is a product behavioral analytics tool that captures data about how customers interact with your digital product. 

  • User profile: The data helps you understand who your user is, where they are in their journey and how they got there. 
  • Conversion data: You’ll be able to see the drop-off rates for every aspect of your digital product. 
  • Engagement activity: It measures the engagement of each user through event properties. Marketers can create the desired event properties such as time or number of watched videos, features used, etc. As a result, you can restructure your digital product or marketing to increase engagement. 
  • Retention data: Analyze the retention rate of your product and see where users are dropping off. Prioritize what areas of your products move the needle. 

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Amplitude 

Using behavioral data, Amplitude helps digital creators understand how users interact with their product or marketing funnels. The software gives you more than the basic counting numbers. 

The platform shows you a user’s customer journey and their path to achieve a particular outcome. Furthermore, they’ll recognize trends that lead to conversion and patterns that lead to drop-off. 

Amplitude also uses AI machine learning to provide recommendations to your app, website, or funnel to improve conversion metrics such as sign-ups, purchases, and downloads.

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Heap is an analytics platform that helps digital marketers understand how and why users engage with your product. The platform gives you fast and definitive answers on how customers behave on your site, such as: 

  • Which events on your site have the highest drop-off rate?
  • Which behaviors correlate with conversions and retention? 
  • What are the different paths that users take on your site? 
  • Which steps are you not tracking but should be tracking? 

With Heap, you can use data analytics to understand what metrics and behaviors matter the most.

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Understanding Customer Lifecycle 

Besides analytics tools, you’ll need to understand the psychology of the customer lifecycle. Understanding the customer lifecycle will help you guide your leads into customers and turn first-time customers into recurring customers. 

These are five steps to the customer lifecycle: 

  • Acquisition: Visitors become aware of your brand and usually enter your website from various channels. 
  • Activation: Users will purchase and enjoy their experience as a customer. 
  • Retention: Customers will come back and continue using your product or service. 
  • Referral: Your customers will refer the product to others. 
  • Revenue: Customers are happy to continue paying for your product. 

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When it comes to acquisition, you’ll want to choose the right marketing channels to promote your product. We recommend selecting the marketing channels that: 

  • Provide the most significant volume of traffic.
  • Have the Lowest costs.
  • Are performing best.

Activation requires plenty of A/B testing to identify which features, offers, and marketing copy drives conversions. 

The goal is to use features on the page to engage users to have a happy first visit. 

Retention involves using automated email marketing sequences to onboard the customers. These emails deliver value and educate customers on how your product helps them to drive retention. 

Referrals can be driven by creating a loyalty program to encourage referrals by users. 

Revenue is increased when you find ways to improve the lifetime value of each customer. Perhaps you can offer users a VIP or premium plan or provide complementary tools to enhance their experience.

Examples of successful product marketing strategies 

Studying effective campaigns gives you insight into their strategies to capture and convert leads. 

Here are a few examples of successful product marketing strategies: 

#1. HubSpot Academy SEO Training Course 

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HubSpot is a CRM tool to help manage leads and customers throughout the sales cycle. They build brand awareness by first educating people on attracting leads through SEO. Once a person builds an SEO strategy, they’ll need to effectively manage their leads in the pipeline with HubSpot.  

How to replicate HubSpot Academy’s strategy: 

Educate customers about the problem you’re trying to solve. If you own an SEO software tool, you want to educate users on the importance of SEO and the mistakes most websites make when attempting to rank on Google. As they learn more about SEO, you’ll become their authority, and they’ll trust you. Once you’ve established trust, it’s much easier for you to present them with an offer about your new product.

#2. Jim Kwik Learning Course 

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Jim Kwik offers a course that teaches people how to study effectively. There are a few things that Jim does incredibly well: 

  • The ad addresses the concern of the audience. Most students are worried they won’t have time for another course. He mentioned that it only takes 10 to 15 minutes per day. 
  • Jim builds brand authority by mentioning that he is trusted by Harvard, NYU, Caltech, Stanford University students, and more. He also notes that he’s been a brain coach for nearly 30 years. 
  • Lastly, he eliminates the risk of buying his course by offering a 100% money-back guarantee. 

How to replicate Jim Kwik’s strategy: 

Jim effectively addresses and quells the concerns that his target audience has. He knows his audience won’t trust him immediately; therefore, he tackles the concerns one by one. In your promotion, it’s vital to acknowledge your audience’s potential objections. 

Brainstorm all of the possible objections they have and make sure to overcome them. You can have an FAQ page to answer them directly. Additionally, you can use authoritative tactics such as mentioning high-profile businesses you’ve worked with or sharing case studies to demonstrate the effective results you provide. 

#3. DollarShaveClub Subscription Razor Service 

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With over 27 million views on their ad, Dollar Shave Club was able to gain 12,000 new customers on their $1 per month trial for their subscription razor service. As a result, the ad generated $144,000 in recurring revenue. 

The ad did a few things exceptionally well:

  • Communicated that their razor service was affordable and convenient 
  • The ad was funny, which made it shareable and lowered the CPM. 
  • The ad had concise messaging that made its features and benefits memorable. 

How to replicate Dollar Shave Club’s strategy: 

It’s crucial to convey your unique value proposition. How is your product better than the competitors? Clearly and boldly state your USP to your customers in your content and advertisements.

Build your product marketing strategy today! 

Creating a cohesive product marketing strategy is like doing your homework before the test. It sets you up for success. 

By understanding the buyer’s persona and creating your unique value proposition, you can attract more qualified leads and convert them into paying customers. 

Get clear on the direction of your marketing and product and do the work to develop your marketing master plan.  Now it’s your turn! Steal our best strategies and then execute your product marketing plan. Sign up for a free 14-day trial with Encharge and build your marketing automation system today!

Read next: 10 Steps to Create a Sales and Marketing Business Plan [Templates included]

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How to create a go-to-market strategy: Guide with examples

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Editor’s note : This blog was updated on 7 April 2023 to add a section on how to develop a go-to-market strategy and specify more examples of go-to-market strategy tactics and programs.

How To Create A Go-To-Market Strategy: Guide With Examples

Go-to-market (GTM) strategy is key to any product’s success. Without one, you’re essentially driving blind — trying to introduce a product to an audience that, chances are, doesn’t know anything about it. The word “strategy” in “go-to-market strategy” emphasizes this well, you can’t just throw a last-minute plan together and hope it’ll work.

Thought and intentionality are the drivers behind go-to-market strategy. You have to really understand your target audience, its needs, and the context around you.

In this article, we’ll talk about what go-to-market strategy means, how to develop a GTM strategy, the various factors and considerations to account for, and demonstrate some examples of GTM strategy along the way. Let’s get started.

What is a go-to-market (GTM) strategy?

So what does go-to-market strategy mean, exactly? The name is pretty telling; go-to-market strategy is a thorough, comprehensive plan outlining how a company is going to bring a new product into the market it’s hoping to serve. The plan truly goes from A–Z and includes all aspects of the product, starting from research at the very beginning and to post-launch promotional activities and advertising (and beyond) at the end.

The objective of a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is simple: drive awareness, accessibility, and retention of a product from initial validation to scaling it for a much larger market population. As you might imagine, the strategies adopted will transform over time based on market confirmation.

The general notion is that go-to-market strategies are transactional, so companies often wait to execute until the product is ready to deploy.

However, a good product manager initiates the GTM strategy when conceptualizing a product idea. The strategy should capture new realities around business models, market maturity, brand positioning, competitive forces, and growth strategy.

The evolution of new business models

Software-defined solutions and as-a-service business models necessitate a transformational approach to GTM strategy. Products do not reach end-of-life anymore; they evolve and drive continuous innovation.

The lifecycle below represents how organizations now think about products and solutions. Every lifecycle step requires a conscious approach to a market strategy, not just the launch phase.

The product inception phase captures a pain point and creative solutions. Product strategy, however, needs to consider the product’s market entry, differentiation, viability, and feasibility. Each phase validates the hypothesis and refines the GTM strategy as we move through the cycle.

Products are rarely fire-and-forget nowadays. The deliberation on building stickiness, increasing switching costs, and creating long-term value for the customer is crucial.

Go-To-Market Strategy: Fit, Opportunity, And Scale

Setting the scene: Analyze, aspire, action, accomplish

When introducing a new product in a new or an existing market, I often use the Analyze, Aspire, Action, Accomplish model to build a proper idea of what we’re working towards. It applies various frameworks at distinct stages of the product lifecycle. These help set us up for success as we build a GTM strategy:

Go To Market Strategy: Analyze, Aspire, Action, Accomplish

The intent is not to explain the tools captured within the framework but to present the key outcomes from each phase:

The analysis phase requires a solid understanding of customer pain points (said and unsaid), market dynamics (what is available, why it is insufficient), and potential solutions to minimize or eradicate the gap.

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At this stage, the GTM aspects are usually not critical. However, solving a problem with no avenue to reach the customer is also futile.

The aspirational step is where I believe the hypothesis for a GTM strategy is crucial. In product parlance, segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP) is an essential activity.

The key questions here are:

  • In what market segments do you have a real opportunity?
  • What is the path to get there (e.g., who else do you need to come along with you)?

This step should also inform you of critical competitors and the differentiators you need to win in the market. It should define your ideal customer profile, and, more crucially, identify beachhead customers .

The action stage should help determine a product-market fit , messaging (writing a press release, the FAQs, credentials that you expect to have, etc.), and the different  personas  you must target.

Once the product is launched to the market , the accomplish stage should help with data-driven product refinement .

A conceptual example

When pursuing my MBA, my group worked (unofficially) with Marriott on a concept idea to offer an experience-first product. While considering Marriott’s breadth of brands, we selected JW Marriott and Sheraton to provide an experience beyond just room and food to the middle-aged and Millennials, respectively.

The package considered everything from travel, activities, pricing, and even specific pilot locations where the offer would be live first. The concept also identified messaging for the personas and essential ecosystem strategies, including travel and experience partners.

How to develop a go-to-market strategy

Now, let’s go over how to develop a GTM strategy. The Analyze, Aspire, Action, Accomplish model I shared earlier is kind of like a mini version of what I’m about to break down.

You can use the following steps — or categories of steps, rather — for holistic GTM strategy.

  • Initial research and context
  • Evaluating product-market fit
  • Competition
  • Setting goals and milestones
  • Launching the plan

1. Initial research and context

It’s vital to understand the context of the world around you before you try to bring a new product into the mix (or bring an existing product to new markets). Just like the “analyze” component, this step builds the foundation you need for a GTM strategy.

The first thing to consider is how mature the market is. The best GTM strategies to adopt often depend on the market’s maturity, which you can evaluate using the Ansoff matrix:

Go-To-Market Strategy: Quadrant Chart Showing Market Penetration, Product Development, Market Development, And Diversification

Consider an electric vehicle, for example. It is a new product in an existing market. The adoption threshold is dependent on solving the range anxiety.

As Tesla demonstrated, building a supercharger network was equally important as making the car itself.

I would argue that autonomous cars will be a new product in a new market. It’s easy to imagine this as an existing market, but an autonomous car has the potential to completely redefine how people think about car ownership.

Further, societal context is important. In 2013, Google launched Google Glass. Though Google thought it was super cool and innovative to bring a wearable, information-displaying headset in public, they failed to recognize the privacy concerns that came along with that.

The general public immediately saw through to the privacy concerns, and Google Glass didn’t last very long as a result. If they’d considered the context and implications around their new product sooner, they hopefully wouldn’t have poured as much time and resources into it.

2. Evaluating product-market fit

It should be no surprise that product-market fit holds a big piece of the GTM strategy pie.

Product-market fit refers to the product’s ability to fulfill the unmet needs of your target market. Driving your value proposition here is extremely important, as you want people to clearly see how you meet their needs in ways competitors can’t.

The general idea is to find the sweet spot where you’re offering just enough value that your customers find the product usable and your business sees it as feasible and viable. There are lots of ways to capture this data across both qualitative and quantitative methods . Things like customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups can be a great way to capture this information. You can also do observation studies to see if your product is being used by target customers in the way that you think and hope they are.

And, if you have a product that already exists in the market but isn’t being adopted as highly as you hoped (or is slowly being overtaken by competitors), it may be time for a rebrand.

In 2018, we researched cars, their perceived branding, and their attempt to rebrand themselves. It was interesting that vehicles such as Buick and Cadillac had transformed themselves to be more amenable to upper-middle-class people in their early 40s (BMW and Lexus had held this market), whereas Lincoln failed.

Such repositioning requires a considerable thought process from a GTM perspective, especially regarding social messaging, following, advertisements, product considerations — the whole nine yards.

3. Competition

What are your competitors doing? What are they not doing? How do customers perceive your competition’s products?

These are all great questions that can help you build a successful GTM strategy. You don’t need to namedrop your competitors to convince people that your product has an edge over theirs, but you can emphasize how your product differentiates itself from others on the market. If it’s obvious, customers will notice all on their own.

Though there are many tried and true methods for competitive analysis , here a few steps to follow to kick it off:

  • Create a shortlist of competitors
  • Do a competitor deep dive
  • Look at holistic overview and strategy

By fleshing out these ideas, you can get a better view of who you’re directly competing with. Though you’re in the same market, you may not be direct competitors, and looking at these three steps can help you draw those conclusions.

Take Microsoft Surface and Apple iPads for example. Yes, they’re both tablets and would be considered competitors for that reason, but their features and target audiences don’t really make them competitors after all.

Further, when evaluating the competition, think creatively. Brita, for example, opted not to compete with other kitchen appliances. Instead, it was sold in the water aisle, which positioned it to compete with bottled water.

Such decisions are not determined at the launch stage but during inception. Cialis beat Viagra by redefining the customer purchase criteria where Levitra wasn’t. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that product differentiation was crucial in this endeavor.

4. Setting goals and milestones

Goal setting and tracking are going to help you figure out where you’re placing in your GTM race and keep you on track. Without clear goals that everyone buys into, there will be no real direction that your team is working towards, and you’ll find yourself in disarray.

I know everyone talks about SMART goals, it’s basically drilled into our heads. SMART goals, to everyone’s disdain, really do make all the difference. Setting goals that are smart, measurable, attainable, etc. makes it easier to see where and how you’re falling flat.

On the flip side, milestones will help hold you accountable to the pace you’re at — are you behind schedule, ahead, or right on the money? They provide an opportunity to evaluate your tactics, identify bottlenecks, and pivot when needed. By regularly reviewing your progress against milestones, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your GTM strategy, improving your chances of success in the market.

For example, say the goal is to increase the number of new customers by 18 percent within the first six months after launching the product. You have a specific number to reach within a certain time frame, and in the case of our example, we’ll say it’s not an overly egregious goal. Your milestone can be to acquire 10 percent of these new customers by the end of the eighth week. The track is set, and you can adjust methods depending on how far behind or ahead you are of that finish line.

5. Launching the plan

Everything is in place — it’s time to launch! Boots are on the ground. This is the most nerve-wracking and critical stage of the journey. You’re going to need to align a number of things here.

First and foremost, ensure communication is clear and specific across all functions. Sales and marketing need to know what’s going on, as do executive teams and adjacent product functions. Collaborate effectively and ensure you’re informing the right stakeholders throughout the launch process.

Similarly to how goals and milestones are crucial, you’ll also need to put some KPIs in place to monitor how your GTM plan is performing. Check them regularly to see how you’re doing and adjust accordingly. There’s no shame in admitting that something needs to change — after all, all products didn’t come out perfectly from the get-go. Be ready to make changes and adjust your plan as needed to respond to changes in the market, feedback from customers, or any unexpected challenges.

Example of go-to-market strategy

As part of our capstone project, thanks to a fantastic initiative from the NIU College of Business, we worked on a real-life GTM, from cradle to grave.

The solution was a way to minimize readmissions. Preventable readmissions (readmission is when a patient returns to the hospital within 21 days after discharge for any reason) cost over  $25 billion , and Medicare incurs more than 60 percent of that cost.

Medicare instituted a penalty for hospitals where readmissions are too high. A database of all hospitals and their readmission rate (and propensity for pen) was available.

Based on the information, we devised a method to segment the ideal market, their demographics, and five states that maximized the sales motion. Note that the “ideal customer profile” is not genuinely perfect — it was a “what’s possible” with the resources available on-hand.

In addition, we identified a set of hospitals that would be the best candidates for a pilot. An extensive amount of math went into parsing through the spreadsheets — my group was willing to recommend me for a Ph.D. just for that work — but we distilled it down to a single roadmap of client profiles (pilot, short-term, long-term).

While the GTM strategy was to work with the hospitals, the eventual goal was to work directly with Medicare to save them at least 30 percent of the $17 billion spent on unnecessary expenses.

Product-led vs. sales-led growth

You’re also going to have to choose if you want to pursue a product-led or sales-led growth approach, as they represent fundamentally different methods of acquiring and retaining customers. Most articles about product-led vs. sales-led growth strategies push one versus the other. The truth is, you have to pick what’s best for your situation. You should also know where the inflection point is to switch from one to the other (or use them in tandem).

Before I go further, let me explain as I best understand it — because my approach often is not to choose between the two consciously.

Product-led growth

A product-led approach often depends on organic growth, backed by an exploratory model (freemium, trial to buy), self-serve capabilities, and a seamless user experience when it comes to setting up and using the product.

Companies spend considerable finance on marketing rather than on the sales motion. The product-led strategy enables a broader net and a lower acquisition cost (CAC).

A prominent example of a B2C product that took a product-led approach is Spotify.

Unbelievably, AWS started as a product-led offering, with self-service capabilities and utilities that enabled faster time-to-market and monitoring usage, free trial, and cost transparency. It held the No. 1 position in cloud hosting and attracted small businesses, especially startups.

However, Azure, being late to the party, took a sales-led approach. It built strong channel and solution partners, offered end-to-end advisory and execution, and quickly catapulted to no. 1, led heavily by large contracts with the top companies in Fortune 500.

AWS has since transitioned to a hybrid model and built a substantial presence in the large-cap market by offering both a sales-led approach and a marketplace, which are add-ons once they acquire a client.

The most significant driver for a hybrid approach is the transformation to as-a-service models. Many organizations consider customer success management as a sales function. While partially true, CSMs are not purely commission-driven and are usually not in the loop during the initial stages of a sale.

The expectation of driving adoption, cross-selling, upselling, and renewals to minimize CAC implies that they provide the convergence between product and sales-led approaches. I reach out to CSMs for product feedback because it tends to be rooted in data

Side note: If you can’t monitor KPIs and back your CSMs, you shouldn’t be in the SaaS business!

Sales-led growth

A sales-led approach to growth, on the other hand, depends heavily on your sales team or channel partners. Depending on your product (transformational versus incremental) and who you are (Amazon versus startup), your sales team will connect with clients, build relationships, explain product benefits, and take it through the contractual process.

As you might imagine, the success of your product also depends on the sales organization’s willingness to sell. If you’re considering shifting from a perpetual to a recurring model and do not regard the sales angle, you’re sure to have a paperweight on your hands!

B2B products that require long contract cycles and considerable time to deploy and onboard often require a sales-led approach. However, this doesn’t imply that sales will influence the product features or roadmap .

Creating a go-to-market strategy is more art than science. However, it is crucial to start with a hypothesis, do it early, and make it fluid enough to pivot based on data.

Consider the type of product you are building, the markets you are targeting to define the brand, the competition, the pilot customers, and the growth strategy you must adopt. While no crystal ball guarantees success, a conscious approach will amplify the probability.

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14 Product Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Strategy

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Here’s the first thing you need to know: “Product marketing” and “marketing a product” aren’t synonymous. Product marketing  involves some traditional marketing , but it’s ultimately a hybrid, inter-departmental function that spans product, user research, marketing and sales.

Let’s say a company is rolling out a new product: a GPS-enabled dog collar. At this point, a product marketer has already worked on user and market research to ensure that the collar fulfills consumer needs and stands out in the existing collar marketplace. 

As the launch approaches, a product marketer trains sales and marketing teams to clearly and persuasively articulate the collar’s charms. Why should people buy it over an off-brand version? How can a dog owner — or a dog — get the most out of it? Product marketers craft answers to those questions and others, which can provide fodder for traditional marketing.

Product Marketing Examples

Fenty beauty.

Marketing efforts often focus on attracting new customers or cultivating “awareness” — converting those who’ve never heard of a product into those who have. Product marketers focus on what happens to more deeply engaged customers.

As ClassPass CMO Joanna Lord put it to First Round Review : “Whereas marketing is traditionally about leveraging channels to drive prospects or leads — to get people at the top of the [sales] funnel and then move them through it — product marketing is more about helping existing customers understand your products and features and engage with them.” 

It is, as you might imagine, a long-term project. Product marketers  work on launches, but they often stick with a product for the long haul, clarifying the value of every update and redesign. They can even help phase out unsuccessful features — say, a sound system add-on for that dog collar.

For a deeper dive into the realm of product marketing, check out these 14 real-world examples.

14 Product Marketing Examples 

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Location: New York, New York

ClassPass  allows users to sign up for a ClassPass membership, which lets them bop between a variety of in-network workout spaces — instead of signing up for a particular gym or yoga studio. User cans save as much as 70 percent on listed drop-in rates. Every time members attend a studio class, ClassPass HQ pays the host fitness studio. In 2016, the ClassPass team realized that users with unlimited memberships paid ClassPass less than it paid studios.

ClassPass decided to change their model. They brainstormed replacement offerings and ramped up customer service capacity. Under the new ClassPass structure, they decided, every membership would cover a finite number of classes, but they would sell cheap packs of additional classes through their app. 

They also framed the transition, smartly, as a compliment to clients. In an open letter, ClassPass’s CEO explained the problem with the unlimited membership like this: “Many of you began to work out every other day – some of you even every single day! I applauded you for that. I applauded your drive, your desire to discover, your commitment to self. You were realizing the dream I always had for ClassPass.” The unlimited pass was savvily product-marketed, even as it was discontinued

market strategy product project

The Coca-Cola Company

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

In the summer of 2014, Coca-Cola  launched the Share a Coke marketing campaign. Essentially, the company replaced the classic Coca-Cola label, on select drinks, with a label that read “Share a Coke with ____.” In the blank, Coke slotted a rotation of the 250 most common names for American young adults. People rushed out to find cans that bore their names, or their loved ones’ names. 

The campaign boosted Coke sales, an impressive feat considering they had held steady for a decade prior. What’s more, it amounted to a reinvention of a classic product — a go-to product marketing move. Since that initial summer, personalized labeling has become an annual tradition for the company.

Read Next Your Problem Isn’t Marketing or Sales. It’s Brand Positioning.

market strategy product project

Location: Cupertino, California 

Apple  rarely stumbles on the product marketing front, but its first-ever iPhone launch, back in 2007, was one of its most rousing successes. It started with Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld 2007, where he pitched the iPhone as an “iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator” all in one. Though the device wasn’t the first touchscreen phone, camera phone, or internet-enabled phone, Jobs described it as a user-friendly fusion of all these things — the best of all worlds. In fact, he focused on convenience throughout his speech, enumerating the benefits and possibilities of each feature.

The rest of the iPhone launch was similarly effective — people camped outside Apple stores for the chance to buy one! Advertisements emphasized the phone’s most groundbreaking features, like the onscreen keyboard that pops up as needed. Meanwhile, every element — including Jobs’ keynote — addressed existing Mac and iPod enthusiasts, encouraging them to upgrade to the new device. That’s a hallmark of product marketing.

market strategy product project

Location: Boston, Massachuesetts

Drift ’s conversational marketing platform generates hassle-free sales leads through robot-shaped chatbots — you can meet one in the bottom right corner of the company’s homepage. Instead of filling out reams of paperwork, Drift lets prospective clients message with their blue robot.

It looks simple enough from the outside. Internally, though, the platform is a complex web of inputs from sales, marketing and leads. Drift constantly perfects its interface with updates and logs them in a page called The Shipyard , on which customers can watch a slideshow that details every feature released in the last month. Some slides highlight fairly nitty-gritty updates, like an integration with access management software Okta , or a feature that closes multiple windows at once. However, the headline on each slide always plainly states its customer benefit, a technique that propels readers through drier tech specs. One example header: “Get Conversations Started Faster.”

market strategy product project

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Because product marketing is fairly new, the sector so far has only one awards ceremony, run by the Product Marketing Alliance . In 2019, G2 ’s three-person crew took home Best Product Marketing Team. 

Before winning the award, G2’s team had been in action for six months. In that time, though, they launched an average of one new feature per week and reportedly persuaded more than 200 clients to add G2 integrations into their existing platform. One key to their success, according to team lead Yoni Solomon , was “finding a way to lean into the emotional components” of their product stories. How can the story of a new feature echo the classic hero’s journey of, say, The Odyssey ? The pros at G2 have ideas

market strategy product project

Location: New York, New York 

Simon Data  is an enterprise customer data platform succeeding in the B2B space, thanks in part to the internal relationship between the marketing and product teams.

“The interplay between marketing strategy and emerging products is mutually developmental,” explained Simon Data  co-founder Joshua Neckes. “Creative marketers push product development by hitting the limits of current product suites and providing feedback; new products provide new ways for existing marketers to work, facilitating the development of new strategies.” 

One place marketing and product meet is in case studies. Though some companies only share these with vetted sales leads, Simon Data publicly posts this case study  on its work with Social Media Week.   The news platform and conference series used Simon Data’s platform to automate its manual marketing processes. The result? 40 hours of work — a full workweek —saved each month, and thousands of dollars in conference ticket sales revenue.

Related Reading Hiring the Right Product Marketer Can Make or Break Your Startup

market strategy product project

Squarespace

Case studies are a staple of product marketing — a concrete example of the product at work in the real world. In 2015, though, Squarespace  took an unusual approach, turning one of their case studies into a splashy Super Bowl commercial. It featured Jeff Bridges — synonymous in the public imagination with “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski — sitting at a sleeping person’s bedside, chanting one long “Om” and running a pestle around the edge of a metal bowl. 

How is this a case study? Well, Bridges built the slick and scrollable website  for his sleep sounds album, Sleeping Tapes , with Squarespace. It’s a real feat of engineering, too; visitors can stream the album, download it, order it on vinyl or just gaze upon a graphic of three Jeff Bridges nested inside each other, Russian Doll-style. As Squarespace’s CEO explained to Adweek , it was meant to show that “any idea, no matter how wild or weird, can be presented beautifully and meaningfully through Squarespace.”

The cross-promotion made people aware not only of Squarespace’s brand, but specific features of its platform, like the option to embed purchasing and music-streaming.

market strategy product project

Location: Atlanta, Georgia 

MailChimp  began as an email and newsletter platform, but rebranded into an “all-in-one marketing suite” when its product marketing team discovered that customers mainly use its tool to grow their businesses. This led to MailChimp’s “ Growing Businesses ” campaign, which highlights how its tools help small businesses grow. The campaign showcases the affordable all-in-one plans that allow users to create multichannel marketing campaigns and develop their  audience.

market strategy product project

Harry's Inc.

Harry’s  lets prospective customers experience their razors and blades firsthand. The company sells shaving paraphernalia at direct-to-consumer prices, which has some inherent appeal — razor blades are so technically difficult to manufacture that they can be strikingly expensive. For those who want to purchase online, the company initially offers all new subscribers a special trial: a steeply discounted starter kit and free shipping. The trial features prominently on its homepage and in all its communications channels, conveying the same confident product marketing message as those free demos: “You’ll want to pay full price for this once you try it yourself.”

market strategy product project

Location: San Francisco, California

Airbnb  has changed the way people travel, allowing users to book vacation rentals, homes and apartments in an approachable way instead of always using hotels when they travel. Previously, the company prioritized top-rated vacation rentals that were located a certain distance from a city’s center. This meant users could only find rentals in urban areas.

Airbnb recognized users’ search patterns, as domestic stays in rural areas booked by U.S. guests in 2021 on Airbnb grew 110 percent  compared to 2019, while Airbnb Hosts in rural counties in the U.S. earned over $3.5 billion. Now , a rental gets prioritized in the search rankings if it’s in an area that has a high density of Airbnb bookings. This shift to how Airbnb displays its products to users is an example of how data science and product marketing can work together.

market strategy product project

Location: Menlo Park, California

Meta  has cornered a major chunk of the online advertising market, but getting started on the company’s interface can be challenging — especially for small business owners with limited marketing experience. Newbies might wonder, for instance, why they can’t start an ad campaign from their personal Facebook page. 

The detailed sequence of free tutorials from Facebook Blueprint  has the answer: You need a Facebook business page to start advertising. They cover much more, too, like the art of selecting a target audience, budgeting and choosing between the various ad formats and placements. Often presented as videos packed with screenshots and illustrations, BluePrint’s multimedia tutorials cater to many types of learners with a mix of spoken instructions, visual aids and dropdown video transcripts. Overall, Blueprint content helps new users make the most of Facebook’s platform — a classic example of product marketing.

More on Product Marketing How Brands Wield the Power of Storytelling Marketing

market strategy product project

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Early on, HubSpot  focused on inbound marketing, which meant that its rigorously researched educational content attracted major audiences. Its articles, however, focused on general industry concepts. As a result, readers often left the site with no sense of what the company sold. 

Rick Burnes, the company’s former director of product marketing, joined HubSpot to resolve this murkiness once and for all. He implemented a product marketing strategy  that complemented the existing content strategy. It involved case studies and persuasive product descriptions (like “Why Choose  HubSpot?” ) that clarified the platform’s features and value. HubSpot is now a marketing industry mainstay whose growth platform boasts more than 150,000 users.

market strategy product project

Metadata.io

MetaData’s  account-based marketing platform leverages AI to automate much of the marketing process, from data acquisition to sales attribution — it can even recommend strategy. That means as AI evolves, so does Metadata . The company keeps clients in the loop on the platform’s new features via an email newsletter, which complements an array of online tutorials, social media announcements and more. That ensures old clients can adopt new features and paves the way for subscription upgrades.

market strategy product project

Fenty Beauty  has never used the word “inclusive” in its marketing materials, because the brand’s inclusivity goes without saying. The multi-billion-dollar beauty brand, led by singer and business mogul Rihanna, offers cosmetics for a wide variety of skin tones. Fenty foundations come in 50 shades. Each one was blended with “nuance” and real skin tones in mind, writes the CMO of Kendo Brands , Fenty’s parent company. 

A diverse group can also see themselves reflected in Fenty’s marketing — a synergy between product and messaging that suggests a stellar product marketing team. The Fenty Beauty Instagram , for instance, features models with a vast spectrum of skin tones.

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Product Management

Go-to-market strategy in product management: guide + checklist.

30 November, 2023

Tope Longe

Growth Manager

Taking a new product to market is no easy feat. All the ingredients need to be right—from the ICP to the pricing, messaging, and sales process.

Your go-to-market (GTM) strategy is one of the most critical pieces of the puzzle. A successful GTM strategy should capture your customer’s attention, help you develop a strong brand presence, and set you up to close deals.

Let’s dive in.

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how an organization will sell its products or services to customers. It details how the organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service and to gain a competitive advantage.

A typical software or app GTM strategy includes tactics related to:

Customer intelligence

Distribution channels

Sales & marketing plans

Promotional activities

It’s designed to mitigate the risk inherent in the introduction of a new product and includes target market profiles, a marketing plan, and a concrete sales strategy.

Advantages of a go-to-market strategy

Keep you focused.

A GTM strategy helps product managers stay focused on the end goal. It provides a clear roadmap that outlines the steps needed to successfully launch a product. This can help product managers avoid distractions and make sure that all efforts are aligned with the product’s objectives.

Identify opportunities for new or enhanced products

A GTM strategy involves an in-depth understanding of the market, including customer needs and competitive landscape. This can help product managers identify opportunities for new products or enhancements to existing ones. It can also help in identifying gaps in the market that the product can fill.

Help discover unique selling proposition

A GTM strategy can help product managers discover their product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The USP is what sets the product apart from its competitors. It’s the reason customers should choose your product over others. A well-defined USP can be a powerful tool in convincing customers to buy your product.

Go-to-market checklist for product managers

Define your market

Define your buyer persona

Develop a clear value proposition

Identify your competitors

Choose a pricing model and strategy

Plan marketing and sales tactics

Measure and adjust

Step 1 - Define your market

The first thing on the agenda is to define the market you’re trying to enter. 

Are you offering a B2B or B2C product? Is your product intended for a specific industry? What’s the total size of your market? How big are the businesses you’re targeting (if the product is B2B)?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help inform your buyer personas and product positioning.

Step 2 - Define your buyer persona

Whether your product is B2B or B2C, human beings are the ultimate decision makers. It’s important to get an understanding of who your ideal customers are, so you can create a product that helps them solve their problems.

A good buyer persona might include:

Job titles and roles

Industry or vertical

Income level

Education level

Pain points and current solutions

To fill in these blanks, you need to do some research. Look into products that are similar to yours—who do they appeal to? Don’t worry about getting this perfect yet, you’ll fine-tune it with data after launching.

Step 3 - Develop a clear value proposition

Your value proposition is the offer or exchange you present to users. They’re offering their money (or time, if your product is free) and you’re offering them a solution to one (or more) of their problems.

Your value proposition needs to be clear, concise, and easy to understand. You should also be able to explain how it’s different from any other similar offers on the market, as well as how your product benefits your target user.

A popular formula is:

“For (target customer) who (statement of need or opportunity), our (product name) is a (product category) that (key benefit, compelling reason to buy). Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (key differentiator).”

For example, JobNimbus is a CRM and project management software specifically designed to offer contractors the flexibility of on-the-go business management. Using our formula, a value proposition might look something like this:

.css-61w915{margin-right:8px;margin-top:8px;max-height:30px;}@media screen and (min-width: 768px){.css-61w915{margin-right:38px;max-height:unset;}} “For contractors who need an efficient way to manage their businesses on the go, JobNimbus is a CRM and project management rolled into one app. Unlike alternatives, JobNimbus allows users to manage tasks, communicate with clients, collect payments, and more from a mobile app.”

JobNimbus used UXCam ’s suite of product analytics tools to unpack user behavior and understand how customers interacted with their product—tools like session replays, heatmaps, and event analytics.

With this insight, they were able to craft a value proposition which highlighted the features that mattered most to contractors—flexibility and ease of use.

Step 4 - Identify your competitors

Next up, it’s important that you understand who you’re up against. List out your main competitors and jot down the features that make them unique.

From there, define the key differentiators between their products or services and yours—identifying what makes your offering superior to theirs in a specific way. Doing this will help you craft value propositions that highlight why customers should choose you over other alternatives available.

Review sites and tools are your friends here. For web and desktop products, you can use sites like:

TrustRadius

For mobile apps, you’ll want to use:

Google Play

ProductHunt

Type in a known competitor and look at the recommended similar products. Or, check out the category page for the type of product you’re developing and see who comes up.

Step 5 - Choose a pricing model and strategy

Pricing is one of the more important pieces of the GTM puzzle.

There are a few approaches to pricing you can take—each with pros and cons. In terms of pricing models, most apps choose to go for subscription-based pricing (often with discounted annual plans and sometimes with lifetime offers). Tiers are also common—these let users self-select the level of service they need and can help make the decision to buy seem safer.

Beyond that, there are also a few main pricing strategies. The two most effective are

Value-based pricing

This is a powerful pricing strategy for products that are one of only a few solutions in a given niche. It works by charging users a percentage (usually 10% to 50%) of either:

The amount they're currently paying to solve the same problem with an alternative solution.

The amount of value you add with your product.

For example, if you build a mobile app that helps small business owners optimize their window displays using AI. You might set your price as 10% of the average monthly revenue increase your ICPs can expect from your product.

This approach is great because it’s highly targeted. Your price is directly based on the amount of value you provide to the people you’re targeting.

Competitive pricing

Competitive pricing works better in more competitive niches (no surprises there). 

You don’t want to be an outlier in these situations because there are alternatives that offer a similar service. Instead, aim to match the average price of the market and adjust your pricing structure according to what your product does better (or worse) and the buying power of the ICP you’re targeting.

For example, if your competitors are all charging $50/month for their product, you can either charge the same amount or find a way to differentiate yourself with an additional feature that added value and justifies charging a slightly higher amount. 

This could be as “simple” as cleaning up the UI and offering a more premium-feeling experience.

Step 6 - Plan marketing and sales tactics

Marketing and sales tactics should make up a sizable chunk of your GTM strategy. Once you know the ICP and have a pricing structure that works, you can start to plan what tactics work best for each stage of the funnel.

There are too many options to cover in full here—check out our mobile marketing guide for more info. That said, here are some of the most effective tactics to consider for each stage:

Content Marketing

Social Media

Events & Networking

Email Campaigns

Free Trials & Demos

Lead Nurturing & Qualification

Sales Enablement Tools (CRM)

Onboarding Tutorials

Support Services

When you do have users moving through your funnel, you can use UXCam to spot patterns and learn how to optimize them. We give you tools like funnel analysis and user journey mapping that you can use to identify opportunities to increase conversions. 

That way, your marketing efforts are as efficient and effective as possible.

Step 7 - Launch

It’s time to launch—congratulations!

As soon as your product goes live, you should begin collecting feedback and data from users to understand how your product is performing. This will help you identify what’s working, what needs improvement, and where there might be room for growth.

You can leverage customer service software like Zendesk and SurveyMonkey to collect first-party data quickly and efficiently. Tools like UXCam will let you collect user behavior data that helps you zero in on the issues and opportunities that users aren’t telling you about.

Step 8 - Measure and adjust

Finally, don’t forget to continuously monitor, adjust, and optimize your plan. This will ensure that your product messaging and brand voice stay relevant, resonant, and successful. 

Keep an eye out for emerging trends in the industry or new customer groups you can target.

A GTM strategy is important for product managers to successfully launch new products or features. It aligns their vision, goals, value proposition, target market, and channels with customer needs. However, a go-to-market strategy alone isn't enough for ensuring a positive user experience and retention.

This is where UXCam comes in.

UXCam captures, analyzes, and enhances the user experience of mobile apps. With UXCam, product managers can track user behavior, identify pain points, test hypotheses, and iterate faster. Ultimately, UXCam helps create beloved products.

Try UXCam for free today to enhance your go-to-market strategy.

Ardent technophile exploring the world of mobile app product management at UXCam.

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9 steps to craft a successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy

Caeleigh MacNeil contributor headshot

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan for launching a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you launch your product to the right audience, with the right messaging, at the right time. Learn how to craft a go-to-market strategy in nine steps and set your next product launch up for success.

Oatly went straight to their target audience at the exact moment customers were smelling the espresso and ready to buy. And you can bet this innovative go-to-market strategy was the key to their success. 

What is a go-to-market strategy? 

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan for launching a new product or expanding an existing product into a new market. It sets your initiative up for success by answering the following questions: 

What product are you selling, and what unique problem does it solve?

Who is your ideal customer, and what pain points do they experience? 

Where will you sell your product? What markets do you want to pursue, and what does the demand and competition look like in those markets?

How will you reach your target customers and create demand? 

Launching a product is a big investment. And no matter how cutting-edge it is, the way you market and sell your product can make or break its success. Creating a GTM strategy helps you ensure you’re taking everything into account and avoid costly mistakes—like launching your product to the wrong audience or in a market that’s already saturated with similar offerings. 

When do you need a go-to-market (GTM) strategy? 

Whenever you bring a product or service to market, you need a go-to-market strategy. This includes: 

Launching a new product in an existing market —for example, an established clothing brand launching a line of beauty products. 

Bringing an existing product to a new market —for example, a local grocery chain expanding into a different state. 

Testing a new product in a new market —for example, a tech startup launching their first app. 

Even established companies need a go-to-market strategy when pioneering a new product or expanding into a new market. That’s because competition and market forces can quickly change. Even if you’ve had success with a similar product launch in the past, that same strategy might not work as well now. 

Go-to-market strategy vs. a marketing plan

A go-to-market strategy is specifically for launching a product or expanding to a new market. On the other hand, a marketing plan details how you’ll execute your overall marketing strategy. Instead of being launch specific, a marketing plan is a long-term approach to help you achieve your marketing objectives—like an annual roadmap or an overarching digital marketing strategy . Your GTM strategy draws from your long-term marketing plan, but it’s tailored to a specific launch. 

Marketing plan example: Sephora’s marketing plan leverages its loyalty program , which offers discounts and gifts to customers who spend a certain amount. This plan isn’t specific to a product launch, rather it’s a long-term approach to build customer loyalty over time. 

Go-to-market plan example: Microsoft executed a go-to-market strategy when launching its third generation Surface tablet . Their strategy was specific to the tablet’s launch and addressed a particular market problem—that existing tablets didn’t have the functionality of a full-fledged computer. 

Organize your go-to-market strategy with a project management platform

Every GTM strategy involves lots of moving pieces, whether you’re launching a new product or exploring new markets. The right project management tool can help you visualize your entire plan in one place—including the status, owners, and dependencies of each task. And as team members collaborate and execute your go-to-market strategy, you can see those updates in real-time. 

[Old Product UI] Product marketing launch project in Asana, spreadsheet-style view with project deliverables (Lists)

9 steps to crafting your go-to-market strategy

So you’ve created an exciting new product or want to expand into a new market. You know you need a go-to-market strategy to make sure your initiative succeeds—but what exactly does that look like? 

Step 1: Identify the problem

Every great product launch solves a specific problem. For example, Blackberry phones let business people answer emails on the go, Uber circumvents the cumbersome process of hailing or calling for a taxi, and Dawn detergent cuts through grease and makes washing dishes easier. Each of those products have a unique value proposition —a way they add value for customers by addressing their pain points. And most importantly—when those products launched, there was significant demand for solutions.

This concept is known as product-market fit —the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Understanding product-market fit is essential to gain a competitive advantage and make sure you’re launching the right product to the right customers. 

Step 2: Define the target audience

In order to have a successful GTM launch, you need to clearly understand your target audience. Start by asking yourself the following questions: 

Who is experiencing the problem that your product solves? 

What are the specific frustrations your product can alleviate? 

How much is your audience willing to pay for a solution? 

The two most common ways to define your target market are with an ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas. These methods work together to narrow down your customer base and specify the types of people within your audience.  

Ideal customer profile (ICP)

This approach defines your perfect customer—in other words, someone who experiences the frustrations your product solves. They’re aware of the problem, already looking for a solution, and are able to buy your product. To create an ideal customer profile, consider the following characteristics:  

Industry or demographic: If you’re selling to businesses, identify the specific industry you’re targeting—like financial, legal, or SaaS verticals. If you’re selling to individuals, define specific demographics your ideal customer falls within. For example, a child-care service may target families with kids between the ages of 1 and 5. 

Geography : Where do your ideal customers live? For example, a tour company that offers English-only experiences may target customers in the US and Europe. 

Size: This one is specific to B2B companies. Identify the size of the business you’re targeting—for example, you may market a new co-working space to funded startups with less than 20 employees. 

Budget: To shape your pricing strategy, consider how much your customers have to spend on your product. This will also influence the market’s perception of your product. For example, if your company sells luxury watches, you probably don’t want to go below a certain price point. Alternatively, a legal consulting firm may find it worthwhile to only target businesses who can spend at least $5,000 per month. 

Decision-making factors : What factors influence whether a customer decides to purchase your product? For example, do they rely on referrals from trusted friends or colleagues? Is there a primary decision-maker, like the CEO or sales manager of a company?

Pain points: What specific frustrations does your ideal customer have? For example, a company selling a financial-planning app may target customers who lose time trying to track their budget with spreadsheets. 

Preferred media: How does your ideal customer absorb information? For example, do they use social media, read print magazines, or browse the web with ease? 

Buyer personas

Not all members of your target audience are the same—each person is a unique individual with their own problems, values, and goals. Creating buyer personas helps you differentiate between the different types of people within your target audience, so you can visualize who your customers are on a human level. 

You should create multiple customer personas to fully understand your target audience. Here’s an example of one buyer persona for a tour company launching a new in-destination app:

Persona: Memory-maker

Individual between the ages of 25-35

Travels alone or with a partner

Willing to pay a higher price for premium experiences

Values booking flexibility

Wants to book high-demand experiences in advance, but also choose some activities after they’ve arrived at a destination

Can use technology and apps with ease

Buyer personas may seem similar to an ideal customer profile, but they perform a different function. Personas help you visualize who your customers are by breaking your ICP down into more specific segments—each representing a type of person with their own distinct problems, values, and goals. 

Step 3: Research competition and demand

Now that you’ve identified your product’s value proposition and target audience, it’s time to do some research. Before you invest in bringing your product to market, you want to make sure that there’s enough demand and not too much competition. To guide your research, ask yourself the following questions: 

Who already offers a similar version of your product? 

What audiences and geographic regions do your competitors target? 

How does your product differ from the competition? What do you offer that others don’t? 

Is there demand for the product, or is the market oversaturated? 

To fully understand the market landscape, conduct a competitive analysis . This method uses research to identify your direct and indirect competitors and uncover their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own.  

Step 4: Decide key messaging

The next step is to determine the key messages you’ll convey to potential customers. The best approach is to tailor individual messaging for each of your buyer personas, so you can address their unique values and frustrations. 

To map your messaging to each buyer persona, create a value matrix . A value matrix breaks down each persona, their pain points, the value your product brings, and a key message that conveys how your product can solve their unique problem. 

Let’s continue with the tour company example above. As a refresher, the company wants to launch a new in-destination app. One of their personas is a “memory-maker”—a customer who is willing to pay for premium experiences. Here’s what a value matrix might look like for this persona: 

Pain points

It’s hard to verify the quality of experiences when booking online.

If they book an expensive tour in advance, they can’t get their money back if plans change. 

Product value

An app with customer pictures and reviews gives a feel for the quality of tours. 

A flexible booking policy allows them to cancel if plans change. 

Key message

Book quality experiences with peace of mind. 

To complete your value matrix, continue this process for each buyer persona. 

Step 5: Map the buyer’s journey

Now that you’ve identified your buyer personas and messaging, you can map the buyer’s journey—the path customers take from realizing their problem, considering your product as a solution, and deciding to purchase. Mapping your buyer’s journey is a key component of content marketing, because it helps you surface the right type of content to potential customers at the right time. 

Most often, the buyer’s journey is visualized as a funnel broken into three sections: 

Top of funnel: Customers know the problem they want to solve and research solutions. They may not be aware that your product exists yet. During this phase, you want to grab the customer's attention so they consider your product. 

Middle of funnel: Customers weigh your product against other available options. Your goal during this phase is to convince potential buyers that your product is the best option. 

Bottom of funnel: Customers decide whether to purchase your product. Your goal for this phase is to convince them to commit. 

Step 6: Pick marketing channels

Marketing channels are the different types of content you use to create demand for your product and move potential customers down the marketing funnel. For example, social media, paid search ads, blogs, SEO content, and emails are different marketing channels. The marketing channels you choose depend on two things: your target audience, and where your potential customers are along their buyer’s journey. 

Align marketing channels to your ideal audience. You want to make sure the marketing channels you choose align with the way your target audience consumes content. For example, if your ideal customer uses YouTube but not Instagram or Facebook, you may want to focus on YouTube ads rather than paid social posts. 

Use different channels for different phases of the buyer’s journey. Depending on where customers are in the marketing funnel, different types of marketing content can help move them to the next phase. For example, search engine optimization (SEO) content can direct top-of-funnel customers to your website who haven’t heard of your product before. Case studies and webinars may be most applicable for middle-of-funnel customers as they consider your product. And at the bottom of the funnel, strategies like free trial options can help convince potential customers to commit. 

Step 7: Create a sales plan

The goal of your GTM strategy is to sell your product, so it’s essential to decide how you’ll sell to your target audience and turn prospective customers into buyers. That’s where your sales strategy comes in. 

We’ve outlined the four most common sales strategies below. As needed, you can combine these strategies to fit your specific product and business model. 

Self-service model : Customers purchase your product on their own. This is a common sales process for e-commerce, in which customers can find and buy products online. While this option doesn’t require a dedicated sales team, you need to invest in marketing to drive traffic to your website. 

Inside sales model: Your sales team nurtures prospective customers to convince them to purchase your product. This is a good option for products with a medium price point that are a bit more complex, like design software for teams. 

Field sales model : Salespeople focus on closing big enterprise deals. This option requires more sales investment and a longer sales cycle, but there’s a big payoff. For example, you might use a field sales model to sell HR management software to large companies. 

Channel model : An external partner sells your product for you. While this option gives you less say in how you market your product, it’s the cheapest option and can work well if you partner with a company that sells similar products. For example, if you’re selling a new type of cereal, you could partner with a grocery chain. 

Step 8: Set concrete goals

Every great go-to-market strategy starts with clear objectives. Goals give you specific targets to aim for, a clear timeline, and a way to measure progress. Without clearly defined goals, it’s hard to tell if your strategy is working. 

Here are a few different goal-setting frameworks you can use to set measurable objectives. Depending on your business needs, you can combine these strategies or use them on their own: 

SMART goals : This acronym helps you set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. For example, you could set the following SMART goal when launching a new app: “In six months, generate 1M total app downloads and 50K new user accounts.”

Key performance indicators (KPIs) : KPIs are quantitative metrics that help you track progress toward business objectives. For example, you could track total purchases and ad click-throughs when executing a go-to-market strategy for your new product. Keep in mind that you can use the SMART goal framework when crafting KPIs—for example, “Within three months, generate 100K total conversions and 1M ad click-throughs.”

Objectives and key results (OKRs) : This strategy pairs the objectives you want to achieve with the key results you’ll use to measure progress. It follows this format: “I will [objective] as measured by [key result].” For example, “The marketing team will increase awareness of a new product, as measured by the following key results: Drive 1M web visitors to the product page, increase social media engagement by 50%, and generate 50K new customers through email signups.” 

Step 9: Create clear processes

Creating a great go-to-market strategy is one thing, and executing it is another. That’s why creating clear processes is essential when bringing a product to market—because regardless of how well-crafted your strategy is, it only succeeds when you communicate and execute your strategy with your team. For example, you should consider the following when crafting your GTM strategy: 

How you’ll share your strategy and collaborate with team members. Don’t let your strategy gather dust in a drawer—instead, house the plans and projects that comprise your strategy in one easily accessible place. A robust work management tool can help you accomplish this. Asana lets you coordinate plans, projects, and processes in one central location. That way, team members can work and collaborate in the same space where your GTM strategy lives.

How you’ll course-correct and track goals . In order for goals to be effective, they need to be connected to your day-to-day work. That means instead of setting and forgetting goals for your GTM strategy, make a plan to regularly check in and track your progress—for example, at the end of each week or month. Share these updates with project stakeholders in a centralized project management tool. That way, everyone is on the same page. 

How you can standardize processes with templates . Every go-to-market strategy contains lots of components and moving pieces. But while it’s important to evaluate your strategy for each new product launch, that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. To avoid duplicate work, create process documentation and templates to standardize your go-to-market process. For example, you could create templates outlining the steps to determine your target audience, clarify your messaging, and so on—plus an overarching template to guide how you craft your entire GTM strategy. When choosing a project management tool for your team, pick one that lets you create and share templates for processes your team uses on a regular basis. 

Ready, set, strategize

Bringing a product to market is a big investment. But you can set your next launch up for success with a solid framework to determine your audience and messaging, concrete goals, and clear processes to carry out your strategy. With these nine steps, crafting a great go-to-market strategy isn’t so daunting after all. 

How To Create A Marketing Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

Toggl Team

When you think of “big marketing mistakes”, you might think of that episode of The Office where Michael accidentally gives their biggest customer a Golden Ticket for a 50% discount.

And yes, giving away too much of your value for free is bad.

But actually, one of the biggest mistakes marketers make is: failing to plan.

You can have access to the best marketing project management tools but without a clear, documented marketing plan you’re bound to fail.

According to CoSchedule, marketers who plan are three times more likely to be successful than those who don’t.

In this blog, we’ve broken down everything you need to know on how to put together a marketing plan, including examples and templates.

What is a marketing project plan?

A marketing project plan is a report or presentation in which you outline your marketing strategy. It covers your marketing goals, the steps you will take to achieve these goals, and how to measure them. This could be for a specific period, for example, the next quarter or year, or for a specific event, such as a product launch. 

We’ll get into the specifics of what’s included in a marketing plan in a minute, but their basic purpose is to outline:

  • Your goals and the metrics you’ll use to measure them
  • The challenges you face in reaching them
  • The actions you’ll take and resources required to overcome these

It’s the document your superiors will use to understand the project, that the marketing team will work from throughout, and that you’ll use to keep the whole thing on track.

Common formats for marketing plans are:

  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Powerpoint
  • Equivalent products in Google Drive, e.g., Slides

We’ll show you more examples below, but here’s a quick example of an MS Word marketing plan by ProjectManager for now:

Example marketing project plan

In a nutshell, a marketing plan helps you:

  • Define the scope of the project (and minimize project scope creep !)
  • Set out a timeline for completion and allocate resources
  • Measure your success and adjust your tactics as your project evolves

Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan: what’s the difference?

The difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan is subtle but important. 

A marketing strategy is all about high-level thinking – that means how you’re: 

  • Communicating your company values 
  • Achieving your goals for long-term growth
  • Securing a competitive advantage 

A marketing plan, on the other hand, is the more specific, day-to-day actions that will get you there. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship: a marketing plan needs a strong strategy to guide it, and a marketing strategy is useless if not accompanied by a good plan.

9 elements of a marketing plan

No two marketing projects are the same, so it follows that no two marketing plans will be either. However, most successful marketing plans will usually have these nine elements in common.

1. Target market 

If you’re working on an email marketing campaign, this might be which segments of the target audience you’ll be engaging. If you’re launching a new product it’ll mean outlining your ICP, or Ideal Customer Profile.

Buyer personas are useful to document your ICP. Here’s an example buyer persona template.

Example buyer persona for your marketing project plan

2. Project goals

Without goals in place, your marketing plan is dead in the water. They should be SMART – that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

In short, SMART goals are specific targets you want to hit in a defined period. Advantages for setting SMART goals include:

  • Set clear, unambiguous goals for your marketing team
  • Provide a way to measure progress and course correct if necessary
  • Prevent your team from wasting resources on irrelevant work
  • Build confidence with realistic and achievable goals
  • Set clear start and end dates for your marketing projects

Here’s an example SMART goals planning template from HubSpot.

Define SMART goals for your marketing plan

3. Competitive analysis

A competitor analysis might seem like it’s more relevant to a product launch project, but it’s equally important to your marketing efforts.

Depending on your marketing campaign, your competitive analysis can take different forms. For example, to analyze your SEO competition, you want to know:

  • Who are my SEO competitors?
  • How does a competitor’s content on Google?
  • Am I missing any content that my competitors have?
  • What kind of content drives results for my competition?

Here’s an example SEO competition analysis by Moz to include in your marketing plan:

SEO Competitor analysis to include in your marketing plan

4. Strategies

Now’s the time to define the important elements of your brand’s strategy. This will include things like:

  • Your value proposition
  • Your brand positioning
  • Your mission statement

Here’s an example of a brand strategy slide from a brand marketing plan. It includes a brand strategy roadmap, which you can find out more about here .

Include a marketing strategy roadmap in your marketing plan

The last thing you want to do when you’re outlining your big vision for brand expansion is crunched the numbers, but look at it this way: if you don’t crunch them now, they’ll come back to bite you later.

You need to budget for any costs, such as: 

  • Focus groups 
  • Visual assets

Here’s an example of a product marketing budget in Google Sheets:

Marketing plan budget

6. Responsibilities and resource planning

A resource plan is a key component of any plan.

It involves identifying, acquiring, and assigning resources for your marketing project in order to meet the goals. Resources can be anything including people, tools, facilities, materials, or monetary budget.

The resource allocation process involves the following steps:

  • Create your marketing project’s timeline.
  • Identify resources you’ll need to get the project done.
  • Find and book available resources.
  • Create a plan for acquiring unavailable resources.

7. Metrics and measurements

Setting your metrics at the start of the project gives you the ability to track the success of the project in real-time and makes it clear to everyone on board what success would look like.

The best metrics will depend on your overall objectives.

Remember, though: beware of vanity metrics that look good on a graph but don’t give a reliable indicator of engagement, for example, social media impressions.

8. Tasks and schedule 

Do you know what we call a plan without a clear schedule attached to it? Just a nice idea.

Here’s a template to for creating a digital marketing plan in Excel .

Marketing project task list template

Alternatively, you can also use a visual planning tool like Toggl Plan to plan a timeline for your marketing project.

Sample marketing website project plan in Toggl Plan

9. Executive summary

We know what you’re thinking – doesn’t this usually go at the top of a marketing plan?

You’re absolutely right. But the reason we’ve left this part till the end of this list is that it’s actually the last thing you’ll write as part of your marketing plan.

The executive summary takes everything we’ve just discussed and boils it down into a brief overview at the start of the marketing plan.

Learn more about how to write an executive summary .

How to create a marketing plan

Now that you know the key elements of a great marketing plan, it’s time to get yours written. Here’s how to create a stellar marketing plan – in seven steps.

1. Identify stakeholders

The stakeholders are the people you need to please with this marketing plan, and you’ve got to identify them and what their needs are before you begin.

Examples of who your stakeholders might be:

Identifying which ones are the most important to this project and what their distinct needs are can guide your strategy and priorities.

For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign to generate leads for your sales team. Your sales team is a stakeholder in this campaign. You’ll need to consult them to find out their needs—not just high-level goals like “get more leads”, but things like:

  • What does a qualified lead look like for them?
  • What information do they need to contact these leads?
  • How many leads do they need to meet their sales targets?

You can’t afford to skip this stage—only one in three organizations deliver projects that are likely to achieve stakeholder satisfaction.

2. Assemble your team

This is self-explanatory, right? To get the job done properly, you need the right people working on it.

Most project teams have only 6-10 people on them. The old saying “too many cooks spoil the broth” is as true in marketing as it is in the kitchen.

Instead, focus on getting a small group of people who have the right expertise, experience, and authority to get the job done.

For example, in a content marketing project you might need:

  • A project manager (that’s you)
  • An SEO expert
  • A content writer
  • A social media manager to promote the content

Learn more about how to assemble your team in our resource allocation guide .

3. Create a communication plan

29% of project failures are due to poor communication.

A documented project communication plan could mean a difference between success and failure.

Decide how your team will communicate with each other from the outset, for example:

  • The medium you’ll use, e.g., email, Slack, Microsoft Teams
  • How often you’ll meet to discuss the project 
  • What the chain of command is – who should your team members go to with questions and concerns?

One great way of increasing transparency and communication in marketing projects is through effective time tracking .

Some tasks will take longer than you expected them to—that’s just life. With time tracking , you can see when this is happening and react accordingly, whether by allocating more resources or having another team member jump in to help

This can help to reduce the stress of ambitious projects because team members are all on the same page, and they can work more efficiently together and independently, too.

4. Create a task list

Creating a task list for your project seems daunting at first, but we believe it can be broken down into three easy steps: 

  • Establish project scope . What’s your job in this project, and what do you not need to worry about?
  • Create a work breakdown structure ( WBS ) . Divide the project into phases you can then use to bucket your tasks – for example, market research might be the first phase of a product marketing campaign.
  • Break each work phase into tasks . Within the market research example, you might have tasks like “put together focus groups”, “white paper”, or “case study.”

Your project’s activities should be ranked according to stakeholder priorities. For internal tasks consider using these prioritization techniques .

5. Make a schedule for your marketing plan

We’ve already shown you what a schedule in a marketing plan can look like in Excel, but there are numerous drawbacks to scheduling your marketing plan in a static document.

One of the biggest ones is its lack of interactivity, particularly when it comes to integrating with other platforms. There are many more sophisticated project management tools out there that allow you to see not just your team’s work for this one project, but to compare this to their other priorities, including milestones and deliverables.

Toggl Plan's visual project timeline

A visual project schedule helps you identify the milestones, gaps, risks, and resources required for your marketing campaign.

6. Generate a risk management plan

Risk management practices are widely used across most organizations – only 3% of organizations say they never use risk management practices, while 27% say they always do.

One way that you can anticipate risk is by doing a SWOT analysis. That’s an overview of your:

  • Opportunities

Here’s an example of what this looks like for a local Thai restaurant:

Marketing SWOT analysis for a local Thai restaurant

Another important step in preparing for risk factors in your marketing project is to utilize an agile planning model .

Originally conceived by software development teams, agile planning is all about using an iterative approach where you’re constantly evaluating and re-evaluating your methods as the project goes on.

Instead of sticking to your original plan through thick and thin, if something’s not working, you change it up. This minimizes the risk of total project failure, while also building on our final point.

7. Monitoring and reporting

We’ve already spoken about the importance of project time management. Tracking and regular reporting are key to delivering projects on time and successfully, and one way of doing this is through the time tracking tools as we mentioned earlier.

These will help you flag if team members are falling behind, as well as show you how much has been done on the project to date.

Throughout your project, you should constantly monitor your key metrics. And in fact, many good marketing project plans have a space for this kind of reporting built into them.

Marketing plan examples

We’ve already seen some snippets from marketing plans but here are three marketing project plan examples.

We showed this briefly above, but this marketing project plan example from Lush in Portugal exhibits almost all of the features we’ve outlined in this blog.

Lush marketing project plan example

2. Gantt project plan

A Gantt chart is simply a chart that illustrates a project schedule. This marketing plan template from Microsoft gives you a good idea of how it looks and is like an offline version of time management tools like Toggl.

Gantt timeline project plan example for a hiring team

3. Microsoft Word

This simple marketing project plan example is created in Word. In just four pages, it offers a condensed version of what we’ve discussed above.

This streamlined format is ideal for simpler or shorter-term projects, or if you only have a limited time to present an overview of your project—for example, in a company updates meeting.

MS Word project plan template from Envato

Create the Perfect Marketing Project Plan

Designing a dynamite marketing project plan is only the beginning. Now you’ve got all the information you need to do it, it’s up to you to see it through. But you’re not on your own—with these tips under your belt and the right planning tools , we know you’ve got what it takes to lead an amazing marketing project.

Toggl Team

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IE Business School

Marketing Strategy Capstone Project

This course is part of Marketing Strategy Specialization

Taught in English

Some content may not be translated

Ramon Diaz-Bernardo

Instructor: Ramon Diaz-Bernardo

Financial aid available

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(93 reviews)

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There are 5 modules in this course

The Capstone Project will require you to take the knowledge you’ve acquired throughout this specialization and put it into practice. Each week is divided into the different components of the Marketing Strategy: Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Mix Implementation and Expected Results. Review each week’s theory and concrete the takeaways with quizzes aimed at reinforcement of the concepts.

After reviewing the material learned you will be asked to analyse the case study: ¨Hotel Ipsum: A Marketing and Commercial Strategy to Survive.¨ Now it’s time to put what you’ve learned to the test! Hotel Ipsum’s General Manager, Rafael Escobedo, is faced with a dilemma: Despite his hotel doing fairly well in terms of sales and profitability, Rafael’s Board of Directors are not satisfied and are demanding an improvement in results. Now it’s up to you to create Rafael’s Marketing Strategy. The outcome could mean one of two things: praise from his Board of Directors…or unemployment! Along with the Capstone are discussion forums, quizzes and peer reviews to aid you in your understanding of the theory given throughout this Specialization. Share your thoughts, ideas and debate with other like-minded learners from all over the globe with the same interest in expanding their marketing knowledge.

Introduction to the Capstone and Hotel Ipsum: a marketing and commercial strategy to survive case study.

What's included.

1 video 4 readings

1 video • Total 4 minutes

  • Welcome to the Marketing Strategy Capstone • 4 minutes • Preview module

4 readings • Total 120 minutes

  • Outline of the Capstone project and evaluation process. • 10 minutes
  • Note regarding the case study method. • 20 minutes
  • Hotel Ipsum: a marketing and commercial strategy to survive. • 70 minutes
  • Let's get to know Colombia better! • 20 minutes

Conducting market analysis through understanding market research and consumer behavior.

5 videos 1 reading 1 quiz 1 peer review 3 discussion prompts

5 videos • Total 27 minutes

  • Let´s talk about Market Analysis for Hotel Ipsum • 3 minutes • Preview module
  • Why is consumer behavior important in the marketing process framework? • 6 minutes
  • Evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase evaluation. • 4 minutes
  • Buying situation comparisons and buygrid framework. • 8 minutes
  • The steps to conducting marketing research. • 5 minutes

1 reading • Total 15 minutes

  • Important information regarding Hotel Ipsum. • 15 minutes

1 quiz • Total 30 minutes

  • Review of Market Research and Consumer Behavior. • 30 minutes

1 peer review • Total 60 minutes

  • Advising Rafael Escobedo on an effective market analysis. • 60 minutes

3 discussion prompts • Total 250 minutes

  • How do the current market trends affect Hotel Ipsum's probabilities of reaching its goals? • 80 minutes
  • How will consumer behavior in the market at hand affect Rafael's rationale when developing a marketing plan? • 90 minutes
  • Does the competitive environment in the market provide a good opportunity for Hotel Ipsum's economic improvement? • 80 minutes

Developing a marketing strategy through positioning.

7 videos 2 readings 1 quiz 1 peer review 3 discussion prompts

7 videos • Total 33 minutes

  • Let´s talk about the Marketing Strategy for Hotel Ipsum • 3 minutes • Preview module
  • Marketing strategy definition. • 10 minutes
  • Segmentation levels. • 4 minutes
  • Segmentation models. • 4 minutes
  • What is differentiation and value proposition? • 2 minutes
  • What is positioning? • 3 minutes
  • Positioning statement. • 3 minutes

2 readings • Total 70 minutes

  • Aspects to consider • 60 minutes
  • Important information regarding Hotel Ipsum • 10 minutes
  • Marketing strategy quiz. • 30 minutes

1 peer review • Total 120 minutes

  • Advising Rafael Escobedo on a successful marketing strategy. • 120 minutes

3 discussion prompts • Total 190 minutes

  • New customer attraction or customer retention? • 60 minutes
  • Target segment and positioning to attract new customers. • 65 minutes
  • Target segment and positioning to retain customers. • 65 minutes

Adapting the marketing mix to your strategy: product, price, place and promotion.

7 videos 1 quiz 1 peer review 4 discussion prompts

7 videos • Total 50 minutes

  • Let´s talk about the Marketing Mix for Hotel Ipsum • 3 minutes • Preview module
  • The Product Life Cycle. • 6 minutes
  • External factors affecting price definition. • 8 minutes
  • Internal factors affecting price definition. • 7 minutes
  • Key factors in designing a distribution channel. • 6 minutes
  • Deciding on the marketing communications mix. • 8 minutes
  • Direct and interactive marketing. • 8 minutes
  • Marketing mix quiz. • 30 minutes
  • Advising Rafael Escobedo on a successful Marketing Mix. • 120 minutes

4 discussion prompts • Total 285 minutes

  • What should the marketing budget be to achieve the sales and profit objectives defined by the owners? • 90 minutes
  • What should be the product and pricing strategy for Hotel Ipsum's new marketing plan? • 65 minutes
  • What changes do you think are needed in the distribution channel strategy of Hotel Ipsum? • 65 minutes
  • What communication tools could be more effective considering the marketing strategy objectives of Hotel Ipsum? • 65 minutes

Expected Results and implementation of your marketing plan.

7 videos 1 reading 1 quiz 2 peer reviews 1 discussion prompt

7 videos • Total 38 minutes

  • Let´s talk about the Expected Results for Hotel Ipsum • 4 minutes • Preview module
  • Critical elements of the internal analysis. • 4 minutes
  • Critical elements of the external analysis. • 5 minutes
  • The SWOT Matrix. • 6 minutes
  • The customer attraction vs customer retention dilemma. • 7 minutes
  • Marketing mix definition: short-term tactics vs long-term tactics. • 7 minutes
  • Congratulations for completing this Capstone! • 2 minutes

1 reading • Total 20 minutes

  • Important information regarding Hotel Ipsum • 20 minutes
  • Review of The Marketing Plan. • 30 minutes

2 peer reviews • Total 240 minutes

  • Presenting the Expected Results • 90 minutes
  • HOTEL IPSUM´S MARKETING STRATEGY • 150 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 10 minutes

  • Is it possible to reach the expected return on investment of 6%? • 10 minutes

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market strategy product project

IE Business School is an internationally recognized business school where the leaders of tomorrow shape their ideas and learn to become global citizens. For over 40 years, IE Business School has promoted innovation and change in organizations, equipping managers with an entrepreneurial mindset that generates employment, wealth, and social well-being. Regularly featured among the top business schools in the world, IE Business School has an urban campus in Madrid and a faculty of more than 400 professors who teach students from approximately 90 countries in its undergraduate and master programs. IE uses innovative online, face-to-face, and blended learning formats, including the IE Communities Platform where knowledge and experiences are exchanged with over 50,000 IE graduates that currently hold management positions in more than 100 countries worldwide.

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How to Market Sustainable Products

  • Frédéric Dalsace
  • Goutam Challagalla

market strategy product project

Many companies overestimate customers’ appetite for sustainable products, flooding the market with offerings that don’t sell. The reality is, social and environmental benefits have less impact on purchasing decisions than basic product attributes do. Consumers buy products to get specific jobs done, and only after they find something that will do that will they look for a product that provides some social or environmental advantage.

Of course, that’s only if they value sustainability. Not everyone does, and marketers need to recognize that. Some customers (greens) place a premium on it, some (blues) value it only moderately, and some (grays) don’t care about it and view it skeptically. The three segments cannot all be approached in the same way. How sustainable product benefits interact with traditional benefits is also critical: They can have no impact on a product’s performance (independence), diminish it (dissonance), or enhance it (resonance). Marketers need to follow different playbooks for independent, dissonant, and resonant products, tailoring their approaches to green, blue, and gray customers with each.

Three paths to success

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Many companies overestimate consumers’ appetite for sustainable products, flooding the market with offerings that don’t sell well.

The Opportunity

By understanding how sustainability features interact with a product’s core benefits, companies can devise effective marketing strategies for different consumer segments.

The Solution

Assess whether your sustainable offering’s performance is equivalent, inferior, or superior to that of conventional alternatives. Tailor marketing messages to customers according to how they value sustainability versus traditional attributes.

When companies market the sustainability features of their offerings, they often overlook a fundamental truth: Social and environmental benefits have less impact on customers’ decisions than basic product attributes do. With any purchase, consumers are first trying to get a specific job done. Only after they find something that will help them do that job—and only if sustainability is important to them—will they look for a product that in addition confers a social or environmental advantage. No one decides to buy a chocolate bar to, say, improve the working conditions of farmers on the Ivory Coast. People buy chocolate, first and foremost, because they want to indulge in a small pleasure. No one decides to buy an electric car to prevent climate change. People buy cars because they need transportation; reducing their carbon footprint is an ancillary benefit.

  • FD Frédéric Dalsace is a professor of strategy and marketing at IMD.
  • GC Goutam Challagalla is a professor of strategy and marketing at IMD.

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I Tried 10 AI Project Management Tools to See if They’re Worth It (Results & Recommendations)

Published: February 14, 2024

AI project management tools simplify decision-making, keep projects rolling, and streamline communications. Pick the right project management tool, and you could save hundreds — even thousands — per year.

women use ai project management tools

I started in digital project management nine years ago, and AI project management tools were unheard of. The project management role was different than it is today.

Project managers were doing a lot of manual admin and repetitive tasks while keeping everything together and bringing those all-important soft skills to clients and internal teams who were busy getting the job done.

It was a lot. If you’re reading this, you might still be working like that: more spreadsheets than you can bear to think about, project managers stressed with deliverables and shaky briefs, leaving the team to use their best guess.

Today, my workflow relies on AI tools to keep my clients and team happy.

Sign Up to Try HubSpot's AI Tools

The tools take much of the project management, leaving me and the team with the mental capacity to do what humans do best: build and nurture relationships, send thoughtful updates, and deliver even faster than we could ten years ago.

With the right AI tool, your workflow could look more streamlined with happier staff at work.

Naturally, the AI project management tool you select will depend on how you want to use it, but this article should give you a solid guide for choosing the right AI project management tool for you.

I’ve included my review of each tool, how I found it, the AI features, the price, and who I think it’s best for.

What does AI project management software do?

Testing ai project management tools, the scenario, 10 ai project management software.

AI project management software can help manage and organize projects and teams.

They’re commonly used for automating routine tasks, managing production schedules, storing files against projects and tasks, and providing a central hub with all content related to a project.

With the rise of AI, you can automate workflows, remove decision fatigue with predictive analysis, bolster productivity, and essentially hire a digital assistant who’s there to support you every day.

Project management tools are worth every penny and will pay for themselves in productivity. But if you’re worried about budgets, plenty of brilliant free project management tools exist.

I’ve tested AI project management and many other marketing tools for years. I have to admit it: I love trying and testing tools.

It’s almost a problem because, in the digital world, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by choice and distracted by the next amazing new development.

But I can’t see myself stopping anytime soon. In fact, I committed myself to try more tools in the future.

Embracing the development of new tools is a fast track to an easier life, a streamlined business, and a to-do list that is as satisfying as it is productive. And, in case you’re wondering, it’s not just me saying this.

Of those surveyed in Hubspot’s State of AI report , respondents estimated they save two hours and 24 minutes per day when using AI compared to not. Automating manual tasks is estimated to save two hours and 16 minutes per day.

The time saved using AI is significant. All you need to do is find the one that suits you and your needs, and I’ve run extensive tests to help you out.

When I’m testing AI project management tools, I want a tool that:

  • Feels intuitive to use.
  • Manages projects, tasks, and sub-tasks.
  • Makes my team feel happy (and not overwhelmed!).
  • Streamlines communications related to projects and/or tasks.
  • Has integration options so that my business can scale with the tool.

I judged the tools tested in this article by these factors:

  • How well the tool replicates or replaces human action.
  • AI functionality.

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The scenario is close to my actual life as a marketer. I run many projects with fully remote teams internally and externally (my team and the client’s team).

We all need to work harmoniously in a central location.

The project needs to be well structured with some flexibility for changes. All team members need to add comments, set tasks, and have some accountability tracking to keep the project moving.

Finally, the AI project management tools must take some elements of the project. These tasks must be monotonous, undesirable for the humans involved, and safe enough for AI intervention.

AI project manager software; Asana

  • Individuals get started for free (This is all I’ve needed in the past, but now I have outgrown it)
  • Starter package is $10.99 per user a month, billed annually
  • Advanced package is $24.99 per user a month, billed annually
  • Traditional project management without customization
  • Small teams and individuals

AI project management tools, ClickUp

How I Discovered Trello

Trello was a tool I used many years ago. It was the first project management tool I was introduced to in 2011. I used Trello to manage content as part of a small marketing agency.

How Trello Supported My Project Management

I still use Trello today. It’s in my project management arsenal, even with Asana for client projects.

I like Trello because it is simple. For clients who don’t have many projects, I turn to Trello. It’s intuitive and easy to use, people get on board with it quickly, and the free package is enough for how I use it.

I don’t think Trello suits companies looking to scale, but it's perfect for small projects or teams.

Strategy AI

Tello’s Strategy AI helps with general project management and productivity. You can use the software to control who sees what project, and projects or tasks are marked with priority to keep the team working on the most important tasks first.

Trello is one of the cheapest project management tools. It is also one of the most simple.

  • Get started for free
  • Standard is $5 a user per month, billed annually
  • Premium is $10 a user per month, billed annually
  • Enterprise is from $7.38 a user per month, depending on seat quantity, billed annually
  • Small teams
  • Individuals
  • Small and few projects
  • Content management

ai project management tools, Motion

How OneCal Supported My Project Management

While OneCal isn’t managing projects, it is keeping my workload manageable and the monotony of checking multiple calendars at bay. This means I can go to any calendar for an accurate display of what’s happening in all of my calendars.

Ultimately, it saves me a lot of time and rids me of calendar anxiety.

For those who don’t use Motion, OneCal also has a booking system.

Calendar Syncing

Once you’ve integrated OneCal with your calendars, you’ll have synced calendars everywhere .

Booking Links

You can set up a booking system so your meeting guests can book a slot in your calendar at a time that suits you (and them!).

With this system, you can set buffer times and avoid back-to-back meetings, and your guests can easily see available slots in their time zones.

  • Starter is just $4 a month billed annually (this is all I needed)
  • Essential $8.30 a month billed annually
  • Premium $25 a month billed annually
  • Anyone using multiple calendars or wanting to streamline the meeting booking process

AI project management tools, Notion

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13 Product Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2024

Senior Content Marketing Manager

February 16, 2024

Of the 30,000-plus products launched every year, 95 percent end in failure . The internet is filled with product marketing examples (good and bad) if you want to learn from those who have tested the waters.

Every product ever launched brings a series of learnings or takeaways with them. You can use these marketing case studies to take inspiration or anticipate potential roadblocks while crafting your product launch strategies.

This article will examine some of the best and worst product marketing examples from known and lesser-known brands. 

What Is Product Marketing? 

13 examples of amazing product marketing, 1. clickup , 2. coca-cola, 4. nike’s air jordan, 6. poo-pourri, 7. red bull, 8. volkswagen, 11. tata nano–product positioning gone wrong, key takeaways from these product marketing examples , clickup–the ‘secret sauce’ for a successful product launch, common faqs .

Product marketing communicates a product’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to the target audience. It involves conducting market research to understand the target audience and competition, crafting compelling messaging to highlight the product’s unique value proposition, and developing strategies for product launches and ongoing promotion.

The process involves three steps:

  • Identifying customer pain points to tailor your messaging for the targeted audience
  • Analyzing how your product solves their problems to communicate your product’s value proposition clearly
  • Promoting the product to increase brand awareness and capture market share

Simply put, product marketing is the driving force to get products to the market and keep them there. Product marketers collaborate with cross-functional teams, create marketing materials, and work on sales enablement to drive demand, increase sales, and maximize the product’s success in the marketplace.

Let’s dissect some product marketing examples to understand, implement, and improve your product marketing strategy.

In this list, we have curated good and bad product marketing examples from startups and MNCs—filled with learnings and takeaways for 2024.

Successful Product Marketing Examples to Learn From

In 2017, ClickUp saw one of the most challenging product market launches. Due to its late entrance, the project management landscape was already crowded with popular tools like Slack and Monday.com.

Fast forward to 2024, ClickUp hosts over 10 million users and makes $158.7 M in annual revenue. 

So, how did ClickUp beat the competition?

Three things: 

  • Product adaptation, 
  • Content marketing 
  • Freemium offerings

Founder Zeb Evans recognized the challenge of standing out among competitors until the tool could deliver precisely what people need.

So Evans spilled the secret sauce for creating a user-centric product— the flywheel strategy. It starts with constantly absorbing user feedback and combining that with high delivery velocity.

The strategy was impactful enough to establish strong feedback loops with customers. The team was open to feedback and actively sought it through survey forms and interviews.

Collecting feedback was an everyday ritual.

In 2018, ClickUp released 287 new features , plus tons of improvements centered on user experience. But aren’t 287 features a lot to manage? Well! Here’s how it was done:

ClickUp used the ClickUp Product Management Toolkit to centralize project-related communications in one place, brainstorm ideas with Whiteboards, and draft plans with collaborative tools.

ClickUp offers easy customization, adapting seamlessly as our team grows or scales down. 

Best of all, the tool eliminates app chaos. The team can plan, build, and ship the products from one app. This also helps maintain a single source of truth while keeping everyone on the same page, no matter how remotely located.

After ensuring the product fits the ideal customer persona, ClickUp shared organic content to be more discoverable and beat the competition.

ClickUp

ClickUp made it easy for people to visualize the solution as a better alternative to popular project management tools in the market. 

The team experimented with some humorous videos and ads explicitly targeting potential customers and competitors to stand out from the crowd. 

Lastly, ClickUp offers a freemium model and highly affordable paid tiers.

Brownie points to the ClickUp Product Management Guide and ClickUp Visual Product Roadmap Templates that make the entire process hassle-free, from product planning to product development and collaborating on go-to-market product marketing strategies. 

ClickUp's Product Roadmap Template is designed to help you plan, track, and manage product development.

Key Takeaway: Using ClickUp’s product management toolkit isn’t just about getting organized—it puts all your project communications in one place, making teamwork a breeze, scaling up a cinch, and saying goodbye to app clutter. It’s the smooth way to tackle product planning and development and nail collaborative go-to-market strategies. 

How do you sell soda to the masses? —ask Coca-Cola! 

Coca-Cola has generated US$45.03 billion in revenue selling a simple carbonated sugary drink. However, before it was launched, no such thing existed—no awareness of the product, no potential target audience, or no product market fit.

So, how did Coca-Cola reach the epitome of success?

Coca-Cola used branding and psychological association to penetrate the market. Companies use this marketing strategy to associate the product with positive emotions and experiences.

Coca-Cola associated itself with ‘Happiness’. 

Coke invested heavily in brand promotion via advertisements and other offline and digital marketing channels. The overarching objective was to establish that Coca-Cola equals happiness in the consumers’ minds.

Coca-Cola’s enduring slogan , ‘Open Happiness,’ is an example of product marketing through association design. 

Result–the successful association of soda water and happiness created billions for the brand.

Key Takeaway: Associate your product with emotions. Emotions sell quickly and leave a lasting impression of your brand on your customers.

In 2012, Stewart Butterfield and his team developed a collaboration software—Slack. Fast forward to 2023, Slack has over 54 million monthly active users , including 77% of Fortune 100 companies.

However, Slack reached a $1.1B valuation without a CMO onboard. And we know they didn’t hire an outbound sales team until 2016.

So, how did Slack reach those numbers? Let’s debunk Slack’s product marketing strategy.

In the early days, Butterfield relied on his network for beta testing and word-of-mouth marketing.

Here’s exactly how he pulled it off:

Butterfield got his buddies from other companies to be the initial beta testers—something software testing companies can also try. The idea was to:

  • Generate awareness among companies
  • Measure product-market fit (across teams and departments)
  • Gather feedback to identify and resolve issues

Slack wanted to tick all the boxes before the official launch.

In August 2013, Slack invited people to check out their preview release. They called it a ‘preview release,’ not a beta version.

Slack

Butterfield noted that people often see ‘beta’ as a test phase that is unreliable. So, the team went for a term that would spark curiosity and excitement, getting more people to sign up.

The approach worked like magic. Within the first 24hrs, 8k people signed up for the preview release. Two weeks later, the number grew to 15k and kept rolling thereon.

If that wasn’t enough, Slack created an enemy: Email .

Let’s face it: Emails make collaborating and keeping track of conversations difficult. Slack used this shortcoming as a hook for potential customers and compelled them to try Slack.

Their product marketing team did all that was necessary. They started positioning Slack as an ‘Email Killer’ via articles. 

Slack

Or this one by Business Insider:

business insider

Indeed, it was made clear that Slack is here to replace emails. Being compared to such a giant, Slack drew the curiosity of many customers.

That’s when it threw its final card—freemium membership. Slack didn’t offer a gated free trial. Instead, they earned users’ trust by offering a free product version.

Key Takeaway: For Slack, the little things mattered from the beginning. From testing the product with the right people to a great freemium product, Slack used word-of-mouth marketing to inspire trust, establish credibility, and win customers. 

Nike tried its luck in the aerobics and casual shoe market but failed against Reebok.

In an interview with Harvard Business Review , former CEO of Nike Inc., Phil Knight, said:

“Look at the Nike brand. From the start, everybody understood that Nike was a running shoe company, and the brand stood for excellence in track and field. It was a very clear message, and Nike was very successful. But casual shoes sent a different message. People got confused, and Nike began to lose its magic.”

So, how did Nike get back on track?–The Air Jordan.

nike

The Air Jordan project resulted from an urgent need to produce another great Nike running shoe. Unlike casual shoes, Basketball was all about performance, and AirJordan rightly aligned with the brand’s image. Moreover, the association of Michael Jordan raised the bar even higher.

The shoe was undoubtedly terrific. Yet it was so colorful that the NBA banned it. 👎

Nike took it as a marketing opportunity, doing the unconventional, or in the brand’s own words: ‘Just do it!.’

Michael Jordan wore the shoes despite being threatened with fines. He was a legendary player; fans flocked to buy the brand when he wore Nike. Consequently, Nike’s sales just took off.

The marketing strategy was so unique and out-of-the-box that it changed how Knight thought of his company.

“For years, we thought of ourselves as a production-oriented company, meaning we put all our emphasis on designing and manufacturing the product. But now we understand that the most important thing we do is market the product and brand together.”

Key Takeaway: The Air Jordan success story highlights the importance of aligning a product with a compelling narrative and a charismatic personality. Nike created an emotional connection with consumers by associating the brand with an iconic figure. 

Apple is a behemoth in marketing its products through ad campaigns or comparing them to its competitors’ offerings.

The ‘Get a Mac’ campaign starring Justin Long and John Hodgman as Mac and PC, respectively, started in 2006 and lasted for three years. 

apple

The campaign consisted of a series of ads. In the ads, you see the Mac ‘being nice’ to the PC because, technically, they wanted to show that PCs were inferior to the Mac.

So, was it a successful product marketing campaign?

Absolutely! Not only did Mac sales shoot up in 2006—but Apple ended up taking 66 different TV spots for the campaign in three years.

Key Takeaway: Even if you have a once-in-a-lifetime product, communicate in a way that resonates with what your audience cares about. 

poo pourri

Poo-Pourri is an excellent example of how to market a product that’s embarrassing to sell.

Poo-Pourri, the product, is a toilet spray that removes unpleasant odors associated with the bathroom, generally after a poop.

Naturally, it is awkward to talk about the subject. But—Poo-Pourri found a way to break the age-old taboo and marketed their product humorously. 

Here’s how they did it:

  • The company used visuals such as images and videos to illustrate common scenarios where you can use their product 
  • Then, it used TV and video advertising to attract eyeballs to its humorous ads. Its first-ever video advertisement went viral  
  • The company also created customer personas to target specific audiences and situations. Everyone poops, but not everyone wants a spray
  • Lastly, Poo-Pourri relied on customer reviews to gain the trust of potential customers 

poo pourri

Key Takeaway: Don’t sell the product; sell the solution instead. Everything can be sold if it is positioned in the right manner.

Does Red Bull give you wings? Of course, not literally, but the product has successfully associated itself with energy and adrenaline. 

Back in time, when Red Bull was about to launch, there was no market for energy drinks. Such products did not exist yet. Fast forward to 2023, the company sold 12.138 billion cans worldwide in a year alone.

How did Red Bull get wings?

Red Bull recognized college students as one of their primary target customers. The company used ‘Guerrilla marketing’ to lure students into tasting the drink. One of their first marketing methods was the ‘Red Bull girls’ handing out free cans of Red Bull to college students.

This marketing tactic dramatically increased their sales and visibility. Seeing the results, Red Bull continued to target youth environments like college parties, bars, cafés, libraries, etc.

However, it didn’t stop there; Red Bull started sponsoring adventure-seeking events aligned with their brand image. One such stunt was back in 2012 when we all watched Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space. When falling back down to earth, he broke several world records.

Redbull

The media coverage was immense, and millions watched the live stream on YouTube. The staggering cost of $30 million was overshadowed by the reported $500 million in sales that Red Bull made due to the marketing campaign. 

Key Takeaway : First-mover advantage is real. If you have a unique product that fits a certain segment, associating it with a feeling or emotion is the key to generating billions.

Volkswagen is another excellent example of product marketing. The car manufacturer’s focus has always been to balance the ‘accessibility and premium quality’ of its cars. Undoubtedly, the subtle mix of these two has done wonders for the car company. 

However, the notable shift in car buyers’ preferences from ‘efficiency and price’ to ‘safety’ didn’t go unnoticed by the Volkswagen marketing team. 

The team realized that people are willing to pay more for safety assurance. So, they ensured that their product demonstrated it in the best way possible. 

Today, Volkswagen’s core product marketing strategy focuses more on the safety of its vehicles. The website effectively conveys this message with safety ratings and other proof-of-assurance.

volkswagen

Key Takeaway: Align your product with market preferences. If safety is a critical focus in the market, ensure that your product actively demonstrates and prioritizes safety features.

Colgate-Palmolive is an American firm that manufactures cleaning, dental, and other personal-care products. The company has mastered global market acquisitions, successfully positioning its products in 200+ countries and territories worldwide.

Colgate’s most influential product marketing strategy came into the limelight during its penetration into the Indian market. The product positioning was so spot-on that for almost a decade, Colgate was considered synonymous with toothpaste in India, gaining a 77.21% share of the Indian toothpaste market ($12,00k).

How did Colgate make it happen?–Localization!

Colgate expected it wouldn’t be easy entering the Indian market until the executives figured out that 82% of toothpaste purchases are unplanned!

That insight was enough. Colgate circled its entire product marketing around this fact and came out with many ways to sell itself:

  • They sold their toothbrushes like a pack of chewing gum or small chocolate
  • Buy-one-get-one schemes (increased sales by 170%)
  • While other companies focused on billboards to attract target customers, Colgate marketed using in-store banners to win your attention inside the store

colgate

They enlisted subject-matter experts such as dentists and mothers to advocate for the brand in online advertisements. Giving out memorable taglines like ‘Dentist ka sujhaya no.1 brand’ (Dentist recommended no.1 brand); ‘Kya aapke toothpaste mein namak hai’ (Does your toothpaste have salt in it?)

Key Takeaway: Localization is crucial when competing in the global market.

Back in time, hotels were the most popular vacation choices. However, as Airbnb entered the market, it changed how people travel. Airbnb was competing with the age-old hotel monopoly in the hospitality industry.

So, how did Airbnb revolutionize itself?

Not only was renting an Airbnb affordable, but the entire UI/UX design of the app was easy to use for anyone. Eventually, offering an alternative to traditional hotel accommodations for travelers.

airbnb

Later, the company recognized that this wasn’t enough to penetrate the market. 

So, using data science and product marketing, Airbnb identified high occupancy areas to spread its vacation rentals across prime locations and tourist hotspots.

Today, Airbnb search engines prioritize a rental if it’s in an area with a high density of Airbnb bookings, further optimizing the user experience.

Key Takeaway: This shift in how Airbnb displays its products to existing customers for a better experience exemplifies the synergistic relationship between data and product marketing.

Bad Product Marketing Examples to Learn From

We’ve all heard the saying, ‘ Wise men learn from others’ mistakes. ’ So here are some product marketing blunders to learn from—the don’ts of marketing.

TATA Nano was launched in 2008 by India’s largest automobile company, TATA Motors. 

Nano’s target market was the middle-class and lower-middle-class sector. Therefore, it was priced at a mere US $1300—the car’s biggest USP.

Everything signed up for Nano’s grand success in the Indian automobile market. So, where did things start to go downhill? Tata labeled the Nano as ‘the cheapest car,’ but this branding was off the mark and undermined the usual sense of pride that comes with buying a car.

Ratan Tata, the chairperson of the TATA group of companies, acknowledges that labeling Nano the ‘cheapest car’ was a mistake.

Nano’s opening sales were approximately 30,000 only. Even worse, the plant assembled only one Nano in June 2018 before halting the production.

tata nano

Key Takeaway: Poor branding can be the ultimate deal-breaker, even if you’ve nailed the perfect product for your audience.

dove

As part of a campaign for Dove body wash, a short video was posted on social media, which featured three women of different ethnicities. 

The campaign aimed to show that Dove body wash is for every woman, celebrating diversity. But it backfired, with many viewers seeing it as inappropriate and racist.

The negative perception quickly spread across social media, leading to widespread backlash against Dove. The situation escalated, and some individuals responded by boycotting Dove products.

To cool things down, Dove sacked the post and tweeted an apology. However, the damage had been done. The company had already lost followers and loyal customers due to the backlash.

Key Takeaway: Don’t assume your audience perceives your advertisement as intended. Conduct A/B testing and discuss with your legal team to ensure you don’t make a mistake similar to Dove’s.

audi

In July 2017, Audi aired a commercial drawing anger for comparing women to used cars.

The ad opens with a wedding ceremony, with a bride and a groom ready to take vows. Things take a turn when the groom’s mother interrupts to ‘inspect’ her would-be daughter-in-law.

She pinches her nose, pulls her ear, and checks the inside of her mouth before finally approving. The scene then cuts to a red Audi sedan driving through the city streets with a man’s voiceover saying, “ An important decision must be made carefully. ”

The commercial backfired badly, with people deeming it as sexist and ‘disgusting.’

Audi deeply regretted the commercial’s airing and stated that the ad “does not correspond to the values of our company in any way.” 

Key Takeaway: Avoid overcomplicating ads solely for the sake of creativity. Instead, strive for uniqueness, simplicity, and clarity to ensure your target audience easily understands your message. 

No matter how innovative your product is or what core problems it solves, it will fail to create a dent in the market if not marketed well. 

To summarize, here are the key takeaways from these product marketing examples. Learn from and apply these insights before your next product launch .

  • Don’t sell your product; sell emotions
  • Word-of-mouth marketing is the best way to promote your product. 77% of consumers are likelier to buy a product if it is recommended by someone they know
  • Dare to do what your competitors won’t; sometimes, unconventional marketing campaigns can make your product iconic
  • Align your product with what the market wants
  • Localization is the best way to capture foreign markets
  • People’s perception of your brand makes all the difference in sales—communicate it wisely
  • Taglines play a crucial role in making your product memorable
  • Data gathering and analysis are essential to understand customer behavior, improve user experience, and stand out in the crowded market

A successful product launch relies on three pillars: rigorous planning, progress tracking, and effective team collaboration.

ClickUp helps you take control of your product marketing strategy. From documenting plans to monitoring developments during the process—ClickUp takes care of the details.

Keep tabs on your product marketing performance to gauge strategy effectiveness and make informed decisions. ClickUp’s Product Marketing KPI Tracking Template makes it a breeze to monitor key metrics that truly matter for your business.

ClickUp's Product Marketing KPI Tracking template is designed to help you effectively monitor and measure your marketing performance.

ClickUp’s practical Technology Product Marketing Plan Template empowers you to efficiently handle tasks, improve productivity, and ensure success in the market.

ClickUp's Technology Product Marketing Plan template provides a comprehensive solution for managing and executing your marketing strategy.

Moreover, ClickUp’s communication and collaboration features help teams and stakeholders stay on the same page. At the same time, ensuring that everyone’s ideas and suggestions never go unheard.

Rev up your product marketing with ClickUp—the ultimate tool to streamline tasks, collaborate effortlessly, and track critical metrics for a smooth ride with your next big product launch!

1. What makes a successful product marketing strategy?

A successful product marketing strategy comprises three core elements: market research, understanding the target audience and their pain points, and a plan to tweak the strategy as the market changes.

2. How is product marketing different from regular marketing?

The main difference lies in its focus. While regular marketing focuses on activities to promote a company, its brand, and its products or services, product marketing concentrates explicitly on promoting and selling a particular product. However, both marketing practices align with the company’s mission and objective.

3. Does ClickUp support product marketing tasks?

Yes, ClickUp is an all-in-one collaboration and product management tool. It supports tasks and activities related to product planning, development, and final launch.

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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The Walt Disney Company. Be you. Be here. Be part of the story.

Be Part of the Story

Disney Consumer Products (DCP) Marketing Strategy Intern, Summer/Fall 2024

Job Summary:

About the Role & Program  Disney Consumer Products (DCP) brings the magic of Disney’s beloved stories, franchises and characters to families and fans around the world. From toys to apparel, books to games, our global marketing organization has a profound impact on The Walt Disney Company and the global markets in which we operate. With a portfolio of renowned franchises including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, 20th Century Fox, National Geographic and Star Wars, we are a worldwide industry and category leader delivering innovative products that entertain and inspire! 

Our team contributes to the go-to-market strategies and execution of marketing plans across a variety of franchises and key initiatives that help drive business goals and top line demand. We work with key contributors and partners across marketing strategy, outstanding creative, PR & communications, The Walt Disney Company centers of excellence, and franchise/commercial teams. As a Full-Time Marketing Strategy Intern with the Disney’s Consumer Products Marketing Team, you will be responsible for building, shaping, and implementing coordinated social communication plans, evaluating campaign creative, monitoring and analyzing business performance and becoming a Cast Member as part of a dynamic global marketing team!

What You Will Do 

Assist with marketing strategies and go-to-market plan development to deliver our business goals

Provide support with communication plan development across the team and track program/product budgets

Evaluate campaign creative and track approvals/status updates with agencies

Analyze business performance and use data to make strategic recommendations

Collaborate with teams to deliver assets, campaign pitch kits, toolkits and content following brand guidelines and maintaining updates

Provide generational knowledge into Gen Z trends and way of thinking

Be an active participant and coordinate project management/ad hoc requests from leadership 

Required Qualifications & Skills 

Proven marketing skills to develop strategic feedback, business cases and marketing communication plans

Proven experience in planning strategies and project management

Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite/Keynote and presentation delivery

Marketing industry knowledge of trends and the latest innovations

Creatively minded with the ability to inspire creative teams 

Undergraduate students in their junior or senior year in (or recently graduated within the past six months) pursuing a bachelor's degree in marketing, business, or other related field 

Eligibility Requirements & Program Information 

Be enrolled in a college/university taking at least one class in the semester/quarter (spring/fall) prior to participation in the internship program OR have graduated from a college/university within the past six (6) months OR currently participating in a Disney College Program or Disney Professional Internship 

Be at least 18 years of age 

Have not completed one year of continual employment on a Disney internship or program 

Possess unrestricted work authorization 

Additional Information 

Ability to have a consistent, reliable work schedule throughout the internship

The approximate dates of this internship are June 2024 - January 2025

Ability to work full time hours (approximately 40 hours per week) Monday - Friday, for the duration of the internship with possible evenings and weekends if necessary

Provide own housing for the duration internship program in the Orlando, FL area

Have reliable transportation to/from work

Housing : t his internship is based in Orlando, FL . Housing is available on a first-come, first-serve basis through our partnership with American Campus Communities, for more information click here .

Recommendation

Print This Role Description : Strong candidates may be invited to complete a phone interview. We strongly encourage applicants to print a copy of this role description, so they can refer to it in the event they are selected for a phone interview. Note that this role description will not be accessible once the posting is closed. 

About Disney Parks, Experiences and Products:

The Disney Parks, Experiences and Products segment includes Disney’s iconic travel and leisure businesses, which include six resort destinations in the United States, Europe and Asia, a top-rated cruise line, a popular vacation ownership program, and an award-winning guided family adventure business. Disney’s global consumer products operations include the world’s leading licensing business across toys, apparel, home goods, digital games and apps; the world’s largest children’s publisher; Disney store locations around the world; and the shopDisney e-commerce platform.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, Disney Parks, and Experiences and Products. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney Consumer Prod & Interactive Media , which is part of a business we call Disney Parks, Experiences and Products .

Disney Consumer Prod & Interactive Media is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney fosters a business culture where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a rapidly changing world.

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IMAGES

  1. Product Marketing Strategy: The Definitive Guide

    market strategy product project

  2. Reading: Implementing Positioning Strategy

    market strategy product project

  3. 8 Step Development

    market strategy product project

  4. What Is Product Marketing? [Strategy, KPIs , Examples]

    market strategy product project

  5. Product Development Strategy

    market strategy product project

  6. Strategic Opportunity Matrix

    market strategy product project

VIDEO

  1. BASIC MARKET STRUCTURE

  2. Market Structure: Perfect Market

  3. How to trade otc market

  4. Identify Market Structure Like A PRO #StuckInProfit FREE Mentorship

  5. An Introduction To Basics Market Structure (A Beginners Guide To Market Structure)

  6. The Key To Mastering Market Structure

COMMENTS

  1. The Ultimate Guide to Product Marketing in 2023

    4. Ensure the marketing, product, and sales teams are all on the same page. Making your product offering abundantly clear for buyers and employees is mutually beneficial. Every team working together in your business can better understand the product's purpose and better communicate that in their operations.

  2. Comprehensive Guide to Product Marketing

    Download Product Marketing Plan Template. Excel | PDF. Once you've mapped out your product's essentials, it's time to create the go-to-market plan that guides how it will be promoted and sold. This launch plan covers everything from developing the pricing and messaging for the product to creating training materials for your sales staff.

  3. 10 Free Product Strategy Templates & Examples for Product Teams

    ClickUp Go-To-Market Strategy Template 7. ClickUp Project Strategy Template 8. ClickUp Production Tracking Template 9. ClickUp Website Production Plan Template 10. ClickUp Feedback Form Template New Product Strategy Examples. Navigating an ocean without a compass is as risky as it sounds. Your product strategy is that compass, providing ...

  4. How to Create Your Product Strategy with a McKinsey Alum

    Step 1: Generate Insights. To create killer product ideas, you need to immerse yourself in insights about the products, market, competition, and customers. As you or your team conduct various analyses, always focus on turning insights into product ideas or opportunities.

  5. The 6 Elements of a Powerful Product Marketing Strategy

    Lack of understanding of the market. Lack of understanding of the buyer. Lack of communication. Ineffective product marketing strategy. With so many people involved and so much time and money invested in your new product, it's important to get it right. You don't want to spend all your time and energy focused on building your brand only to ...

  6. Go To Market Strategies: A Guide for Product Managers + Template

    A Go To Market (GTM) strategy is essentially your marketing plan for making sure your target market knows about your launch - be it for a feature or for a whole new product. A GTM strategy applies whether you're breaking into a new market, or trying to reach your current market. It's a document that outlines your pricing structure ...

  7. How to set product strategy + examples and templates

    Challenger strategy. Positioning your product as more exciting than others available in the market based on features, design, or efficiency. Example: Many fitness apps focus on tracking and stats, but you include gamification that rewards users with points towards coveted products from partners. Cost strategy.

  8. Product Marketing Strategy: The 2024 Complete Guide

    An effective product marketing strategy can be the key to growing your brand, boosting revenue, and unlocking new opportunities.. Focused on demonstrating the specific values and benefits of a product to your customer, a product marketing campaign can be extremely valuable in both B2B and B2C environments, particularly as customer-centric advertising grows more popular.

  9. A 5-Step Framework for Effective Product Marketing Plans

    A strong product marketing strategy ensures you have a structured, cross-functional roadmap to achieving product success. Here are five steps you need to follow to do just that. 1. Research your customers. Whether your goal is a new product launch or longevity in the marketplace, your first step is research.

  10. What Is Product Marketing? [Strategy, KPIs , Examples]

    Product Marketing Strategy is the process of strategic positioning, pricing, and promotion of your product among its target audiences. Creating a product marketing strategy will be different for every product. However, we can distinguish 5 main steps that are aligned with standardized product lifecycle marketing. 1.

  11. Product Marketing Strategy: Here's What You Need to Succeed

    Master product marketing: training and courses. In order to create a successful product marketing strategy, you need to understand every key aspect of product marketing first. That's why we recommend you take a look at our product marketing guide. If you want to become a top 1% product marketer, you can learn from the biggest experts in the ...

  12. How to Create an Effective Product Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps

    As we now understand why building a product marketing strategy is important, let's examine a 6-step process for creating your first product marketing strategy. 1. Create a customer avatar. There's no point in designing a product your customers don't need.

  13. How to create a go-to-market strategy: Guide with examples

    Launching the plan. 1. Initial research and context. It's vital to understand the context of the world around you before you try to bring a new product into the mix (or bring an existing product to new markets). Just like the "analyze" component, this step builds the foundation you need for a GTM strategy.

  14. 10 Free Product Marketing Templates & Examples

    The Product Strategy template by ClickUp is useful for product teams looking to define and prioritize their product marketing strategy based on market trends and customer needs. The product strategy template applies an entire Folder to your platform and includes separate Lists to organize features, project timelines, and the team.

  15. Marketing Project Management: Build a Strategy [2023] • Asana

    The five project management phases are: Initiation. Planning. Execution. Performance. Closure. In marketing project management, you'll add a marketing strategy phase where you'll gather market research and data and use your findings to set your project plan in motion. Free marketing strategy template.

  16. Creating Your Product Marketing Strategy: Examples, Metrics, Guidelines

    Product Marketing Metric #1: Revenue. The most important metric you should follow is revenue. Revenue is a straightforward metric: if it goes up, then your product-market strategy is good; if it goes down, then you need to make some changes. That's why it's vital to track your revenue numbers carefully.

  17. 14 Product Marketing Examples

    Product Marketing Examples. Coca-Cola. Apple. MailChimp. Airbnb. Fenty Beauty. Marketing efforts often focus on attracting new customers or cultivating "awareness" — converting those who've never heard of a product into those who have. Product marketers focus on what happens to more deeply engaged customers.

  18. A Complete Guide to Creating a Marketing Project Plan

    Go-to-market strategy. You will need a go-to-market strategy to promote a new product or collection or enter a new market. This includes your marketing plans for five key aspects—product, price, promotion, people, and place. Many ready-to-use go-to-market strategy templates can help you create a detailed marketing strategy.

  19. How To Create A Winning Go To Market Strategy

    Launching a new product seems easy, but finding the right new market for it is hard. You not only need to create a competitive startup with a solid product and develop a marketing strategy but also a dynamic marketing plan and to market the heck out of it. Unless all of your key business units (i.e. the sales team, marketing team, etc.) are on the same page with a well-thought-out go-to-market ...

  20. Go-To-Market Strategy in Product Management: Guide + Checklist

    A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how an organization will sell its products or services to customers. It details how the organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service and to gain a competitive advantage. A typical software or app GTM strategy includes tactics related ...

  21. 9 steps to craft a successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy

    Step 7: Create a sales plan. The goal of your GTM strategy is to sell your product, so it's essential to decide how you'll sell to your target audience and turn prospective customers into buyers. That's where your sales strategy comes in. We've outlined the four most common sales strategies below.

  22. How To Create A Marketing Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

    Within the market research example, you might have tasks like "put together focus groups", "white paper", or "case study.". Your project's activities should be ranked according to stakeholder priorities. For internal tasks consider using these prioritization techniques. 5. Make a schedule for your marketing plan.

  23. Marketing Strategy Capstone Project

    The Capstone Project will require you to take the knowledge you've acquired throughout this specialization and put it into practice. Each week is divided into the different components of the Marketing Strategy: Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Mix Implementation and Expected Results. Review each week's theory and concrete the ...

  24. How to Market Sustainable Products

    Summary. Many companies overestimate customers' appetite for sustainable products, flooding the market with offerings that don't sell. The reality is, social and environmental benefits have ...

  25. 2024 Digital Marketing Strategy Guide

    A digital marketing strategy is a plan that gets a product or brand in front of potential customers. The goal could be to grow the brand or hit specific revenue targets.

  26. I Tried 10 AI Project Management Tools to See if They're Worth It

    Project management tools are worth every penny and will pay for themselves in productivity. But if you're worried about budgets, plenty of brilliant free project management tools exist. Testing AI Project Management Tools. I've tested AI project management and many other marketing tools for years. I have to admit it: I love trying and ...

  27. How To Become A Marketing Manager

    Marketing managers play a key role in the success of a business by leading a team and creating a marketing strategy that meets the organization's goals, either by maximizing profits or building ...

  28. 13 Product Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2024

    Key Takeaway: Using ClickUp's product management toolkit isn't just about getting organized—it puts all your project communications in one place, making teamwork a breeze, scaling up a cinch, and saying goodbye to app clutter. It's the smooth way to tackle product planning and development and nail collaborative go-to-market strategies. 2. Coca

  29. Disney Consumer Products (DCP) Marketing Strategy Intern, Summer/Fall

    Assist with marketing strategies and go-to-market plan development to deliver our business goals. Provide support with communication plan development across the team and track program/product budgets. Evaluate campaign creative and track approvals/status updates with agencies. Analyze business performance and use data to make strategic ...