Sure, a customer can find your website and fill out the form, and you can nurture their interest and drive conversion. However, you will miss out on several high-value buyers if you think the sales funnel is always linear.
Now customers have multiple touchpoints before they decide to buy from you. They also face multiple challenges like the lack of personalization, lack of inventory information, and a long buying process. Your product marketing must address them, or you risk losing valuable customers.
To top that, there are also competitor considerations. Your product may be the best in your niche. But with better product marketing, they can, and will, surpass you.
We will address all these roadblocks and more in this blog so that your product marketing strategy satisfies customers, leaves competitors behind, and boosts profit.
Traditional marketing strategies help build brand awareness and collect qualified leads. B2B product marketing strategy is on a slightly different ballpark. Here, you highlight what your product can do and why it’s better than the alternatives.
Of course, the common marketing strategies won’t work for B2B product marketing. Here are some that will:
1. Precisely define your target audience
Your product marketing must reflect that your solution addresses your B2B buyers’ specific needs and pain points. It shows why buyers should choose you over competitors.
How do you know their needs and challenges with certainty? By defining your target audience to perfection.
In B2B, user personas must define 9 aspects of a person:
- Job profile
- Demographics (age, gender, company name, location, etc)
- Education
- Average income
- Behavioral attributes (starts the day early, frequent engagement on LinkedIn, etc)
- Personality traits (Detail-oriented, avoids risks, is budget-conscious, etc.)
- Pain points
- Frustrations
- Motivations
To collect these data points, dip into first-party and third-party user data. You can organize focus groups to make your findings more detailed and realistic.
Conducting interviews with existing customers shows what motivated them to use your product in the first place. Try to get insights from churned customers with exit interviews to identify gaps.
Note similar patterns and start segmenting the audience. Create flow charts and mind maps to make huge data sets more comprehensible for the whole team.
Now you can start filling out persona templates. The above template is an ideal example.
Other than the basic user details like age, gender, title, and responsibilities, it also has fields for preferred channels, content types, themes, psychographics, etc.
Defining target audiences guides product positioning and messaging that shows your product’s exact solution to specific problems.
For example, the above email from HubSpot mentions how their products Typeform and Supered can help the recipient as they move to inbound marketing next month. The message is personalized and aligns the product features with the recipient’s precise needs.
2. Craft a unique product value proposition and positioning
Now that you know your buyers’ backgrounds, frustrations, and what they actually need, start crafting your value proposition. It should communicate:
- What your product offers
- Which features can solve each problem
- Why your products are better than the competitors
You must also identify where your product stands in the current demand. It should show your product in a good light for all your user segments. It will boost your product’s value, offer an edge over competitors, and ensure consistency between sales and marketing.
The Steve Blank method is a good approach for defining an effective value proposition. Instead of listing your features, you describe what problem each feature can solve.
For example, Pipeline CRM’s value proposition for construction workers points out the challenge of maintaining multiple spreadsheets to keep track of projects. It talks about how the tool is specially designed to accommodate construction businesses and how it solves their challenges with centralized CRM and automation.
Create a value proposition canvas with value maps for each target segment. You can create a list of each job profile, their challenges, frustrations, and expectations. Note down the product features that address each and their individual benefits according to customer needs.
3. Use market research to gain insights
Only 6% of B2B companies are advanced insight-driven businesses. If you are not one of them, you are missing out on important trends and benchmarking data that can enhance your product positioning and marketing.
Plus, without proper market research, your campaigns are just running on assumptions — and that’s never a good recipe for success.
Monitor industry trends and changes in user behavior. See if any emerging technologies could impact your product’s perceived value. It will keep your strategies on par with the current demand. Plus you will be prepared to adjust marketing to keep your product ahead of the curve.
For example, Unbounce, a landing page software company, identified and leveraged the excitement with growth marketing optimization with a video series PageFights. Here, marketing experts critiqued landing pages in real-time and talked about how these websites can drive more conversions. It highlighted the brand’s expertise, making its services look more credible.
You already have detailed customer profiles. Now arm your strategies with competitor research. Analyze how competitors are positioning their products. Do they have features you don’t? You must also identify where their products fall short in addressing customer needs. It helps you highlight how your product is better.
4. Nail your messaging
Now you have all the insights to create messaging strategies that put your product at the forefront. Start with developing your key message. It has to be the central idea that your audience will remember you by.
Avoid using vague descriptions like “maximize your revenue” or “optimize your workflow.” That sets the bar low for your product. Instead, quote numbers. Say things like “Save 30% time with our automation.” or “Say goodbye to messy spreadsheets with our centralized project manager.”
The key to effective messaging is to be brief and catchy. It should pose your product as the best solution to your target audience’s pain point in a memorable way. The aim here is to make your audience think of your product whenever they face those challenges. Think of it as an elevator pitch.
For example, Slack’s homepage has a simple key message. It shows a carousal of phrases like “Collaboration”, Project Management”, and “Integration”, “Culture Building”, with it finally ending at “Work”. It’s short, cleverly communicates the product’s value, and pushes the user to explore the platform.
The website copy also adds relevant data points and keeps the message catchy.
5. Develop a strong go-to-market (GTM) plan
You need a go-to-market plan to make your product a hit from the start. It lets you find the right pricing point, identify profitable channels, design targeted campaigns, and maximize product launch success.
Your chosen channels should align with your target audience. For B2B companies, platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter work well. You should also consider launching your product on Product Hunt to improve discoverability. Events are also wonderful for spreading awareness about your product.
Create a buzz with pre-launch campaigns like teasers and early access programs. Use content planning tools to align the messaging on all distribution channels. We also recommend running beta testing to finetune the details before launch.
For example, Kommunicate posted a teaser on X about their product launch on Product Hunt.
For pricing, you can take two approaches depending on your user profiles — product-led pricing and sales-led pricing.
For the former, the pricing depends on your product’s perceived value. The customer usually signs up for a free trial or uses a freemium version for a bit. Then they choose a plan that fits their need.
For example, Jira’s pricing is product-based.
The sales-led strategy is a more hands-on approach, where your sales reps guide the prospect and negotiate a deal. Consider your customer demographics and choose accordingly.
For instance, Productive’s pricing strategy is more sales-led. You book a demo and then their sales reps customize a deal for you.
6. Set clear and measurable goals
Clear product marketing goals keep your team unified in their efforts. It ensures every strategy is aligned with a focused plan and they catapults into the desired result.
However, your objectives can’t be vague. You must set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. For example, instead of saying “increasing product sign-ups”, phrase it like “boosting product signups to 20% in the next three months.”
Once your goals are set, specify the KPIs. You must monitor these to ensure consistently successful product marketing campaigns. Some common metrics you must track include:
- Activation rate
- User acquisition cost
- Click-through rate
- NPS
- User churn
- Traffic on the product and pricing page
7. Leverage customer success stories as proof points
Of course, you will boast about your products. But why would the user take it as irrefutable truth?
You need to back your claim with customer testimonials and proof points. When users see companies struggling with similar problems as they benefited from your product, they will trust you more.
You can place testimonial snippets on the sign-up page to nudge conversion. Additionally, embedding them on your optimized landing pages can significantly boost credibility.
For example, Social Snowball showcases brand-specific testimonials on its homepage.
Publish case studies detailing the problems your clients were facing, how your products solved them, and the results they drove. Add data points and testimonials to make case studies more impactful.
For instance, Polar Analytics’ resource page features insightful case studies that show what the product can actually do and the results it can drive.
8. Use data and customer insights for continuous optimization
Any strategy’s continuous success depends on how well you optimize it with changing customer preferences. Your product marketing strategy shouldn’t be an exception.
Track social media conversations to see how your audience is responding to your product promotions. Monitor campaign metrics and optimize SEO, hashtags, and content approach accordingly.
Collect and implement customer feedback through survey tools. Identify friction points customers complain about the most and address those gaps. You can start a feature request page as well to keep your product aligned with customer needs. Once you accommodate these requests, promote the new features.
For example, Asana has a feature request page where users can submit their suggestions. Other community members can upvote submissions, and Asana implements the most popular ones.
9. Create product marketing content that converts
Your product content marketing must inform and intrigue the customers with industry insights, product features, the solutions they offer, and the results they can drive.
Be it your website or email copy, focus on the benefits, not just the features. For example, instead of saying “Our software integrates with email platforms.”, you can say, “We save you hours of manual work with our email marketing integration.”
Publish informative blogs, infographics, and social media posts, highlighting industry challenges and positioning your product as the best solution. Create case studies and whitepapers to establish authority. Comparison guides are also an excellent content format to show your product’s superiority.
For example, the website-building solution Duda features comparison guide pages.
10. Develop targeted retention campaigns for existing customers
Don’t forget about your existing customers in your product marketing strategies. To keep them interested, you must keep promoting your product in a fresh light. It should make them believe that you can accommodate their changing needs.
Track customer journey stages to see where users struggle. You can use heat mapping to identify the most common drop-off points. Then run a root-cause analysis for each of those touchpoints, remove unnecessary steps, and make UX smoother.
Regularly introduce features aligned with customer feedback. Talk about your new features and improvements in regular email communication and newsletters. If you see a user disengaging from your product, send re-engagement email flows as a part of your retention strategy.
You can offer free add-ons, early bird access to new features, free entry to events, or a discount for upgrades.
You should also send reminders whenever a free trial is about to expire, like the above one by Typecast.
Conclusion
As we wrap up today’s discussion, here is a reminder: you know your product best. Make sure your product marketing reflects that. Your campaigns should confidently project what problems your product can solve and how.
Segment your audience, set up a strong GTM plan, and create content that puts your product as the most effective solution.
Finally, don’t just make promises in your product marketing. Make sure you have enough insights to back up your claims to look credible to the audience.