Product marketing is crucial if you want your target audience to notice, consider and actually purchase your product, you must indulge in it. A product marketing plan is even more crucial to ensure that your buyers keep coming back for more and provide you with a regular sales pipeline. Be better prepared to take on marketing contingencies in case something drastically goes wrong with your product marketing plan. In this post, we provide you with some easy steps to create an effective product marketing plan:
Step 1: Start with your end goal
Sounds paradoxical? Trust us, it isn’t. Clearly identifying what you’re trying to achieve with your product marketing efforts will help you focus your efforts better and help achieve it. For instance, if you are marketing your product to increase your sales, determine by how much percentage you want it to increase, by how much time you want to accomplish the results, so on and so forth. Being focused about your goal is the only way to achieve it.
Step 2: Determine who you’re marketing to and why
The next step is to identify your target demographic and again get as specific as you can about your ideal buyers and their motivations. Understand what they’re buying, why they’re buying that, what are their universal pain-points, their distinct behaviors, their motivations to purchase and more. The more you understand your customers, the better you will be able to market your product to them.
Step 3: Conduct a competitive analysis
Find out how your competitors market their products and determine the current satisfaction level of your audience with respect to other similar products and players in the market. Having a clear understanding of your competitors’ offerings will help you identify and establish your unique value proposition that needs to be communicated to your target audience. There are numerous lessons to be learned from your competitors. Things that have worked for your competitors in the past teach you what to do, but more importantly things that haven’t worked out so well for them teach you what not to do – ensuring that you do not make the same mistakes.
Step 4: Market your product offline and online
You have identified your goal, your customers and your competitive edge, now what? Now it is time to jump right in and start marketing your product using all channels at your disposal – offline such as events and print, etc., and online such as social media networks, forums, corporate website and blog. Make sure that you are consistent with your branding and brand experience at each of these touch-points and that they all collaborate to ensure your buyers take a positive purchase decision.
Step 5: Monitor, review and revise
The planning process does not end once you have executed your plan. It is equally important for you to monitor your performance on a regular basis, review it on the basis of metrics that are again tied to your goals. Make corrections before it is too late and plug it back in so that you have a product marketing plan that works for you. Having a product marketing plan that communicates and connects with your customer will ensure that your channels provide you with a regular sales-pipeline.
