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Product Marketing

Product Marketing works together with product management to move product into customers hands efficiently. A simple way to define the difference between the two areas is one looks at all the outward bound business issues related to getting a product to market, and the other looks at all the inward bound issues related to creating the product. In fact, it's not uncommon at all to combine these roles under one functional umbrella (or operate them each standalone) when first starting out (or even in Development, but this tends to work out poorly in the long term).

The product marketing role is measured by much more than lead generation, it is often measured on achievements such as gross revenue goals, sales volume achieved, market recognition (including analyst coverage, etc), social media presence -- all the indications that a product is hitting its intended market. We'll start by looking at the basic activities of product marketing, how it works together with product management and examine some of the possible measures that can be used to establish whether a product is on track to hit key business goals.

Product marketing might also be the first marketing role established in a young company. Given the primary need at the beginning is to get some visibility for the first product, the majority of activities would fall to this role.

Market Requirements

Launch Planning

The product is ready -- so says Development, what do we do now? Launch planning, the responsibility of product marketing (or product management in some cases) is more than just breaking a champagne bottle across the bow of a download package. It's a careful schedule of activities and milestones that starts before the product is ready and often continues for a period of time after the product is 'launched' (e.g. made available to first customers).

All releases should have some form of launch planning, even a minor maintenance release. The discipline of planning and formalizing a launch drives the team to make sure that relevant objectives and action items are identified and taken care of. Examples might be how customers will be notified about the upgrade (you want customers to upgrade), any web changes to make so on-line materials match what is shipping, relevant testing is complete, key customers waiting for the enhancements are notified, partners have the new information they need to help sell, internal training is done, etc. Without proper launch planning, the small things are easily forgotten, over time drift can occur between the actual product being shipped and what the Company appears to be saying about it.

Sales Materials

Product Marketing Metrics

Hiring and Interviewing

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