A product marketing plan is a document explaining how you will position and promote new products or services. This post should cover all aspects of the product lifecycle, such as product development, launch and growth.
How can you develop a product marketing strategy which engages and excite consumers? Follow these steps:
1. Identify your target audience
It is important to identify your target audience. There are two ways to go about this:
- Participate in market research. Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups for the collection of data including demographics, behavioral information, and preferences. Ask customers to provide more information about themselves, including age, gender and occupation. Also, ask them about hobbies, locations, media consumption, and their location.
- Survey your customers. Take note of their comments, reviews and suggestions.
- Use analytics. Use web analytics tools (like Google Analyti) for analyzing visitor behavior, interaction, and demographics. Social media analytics can also be used to determine the demographics and interest of your social media fans.
- Perform competitive analyses. Check out your competitors’ social media platforms, websites and other online resources to find similar products. You can also pay for tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to discover what keywords are being used by your competitors and their websites.
- Use buyer personas: Develop buyer personas to represent your ideal customer. Include information on demographics, behavior, and psychology.
2. Develop a unique selling proposition (USP)
Define your product’s or service’s characteristics that set it apart from similar offerings. This is also known as a unique value proposal or unique selling proposition.
Focus on the characteristics that address a pain-point (solve a problem) when defining your USP. It is important to understand your audience’s problems in order to create a content and product marketing strategy that is focused on them.
If you are selling a razor for example, do not simply state that it is blue. It doesn’t matter what color the razor is, it won’t help your customers. Tell your customers that the razor has triple blades that result in a smoother finish, and that they will need to shave less frequently. This feature will save their skin and their time.
Market research is the best way to find out what makes your USP unique. Compare your product or service to those of competitors and see how it is different.
3. Create a strong brand identity
A strong brand can make it easier to promote a product or a service. Brand Identity is how people perceive your brand. It includes visual, verbal and emotional elements. Building a brand identity aims to elicit a positive emotional response from the target audience.
The first step to creating a new brand is to define your brand’s values and mission. This is the first step in creating a brand because it defines your brand’s purpose and values. Check out Target’s Mission Statement for inspiration: “To help families discover the joys of everyday living.” Or McDonald’s “Our mission to make delicious, feel-good moments simple for everyone.”
Create a visual identity for your brand. Visual branding is your brand’s Logo and tagline. It also includes Color Palettes and Typography. Think of McDonald’s golden arch or Target’s red target.
Your brand voice is also important. What verbiage and tone reflect your brand’s personality? You may want a more formal tone, or a tone that is relaxed — or even a tone that is humorous or irreverent (think Card Against Humanity).
Use your brand elements in all your marketing and advertising materials, from your website to social media. Consistency makes it easier for customers to remember and recognize your brand.
4. Set goals and analyze your results. Then, make changes.
You can easily create a plan using the above steps. In order to create a successful marketing plan, it is important to set measurable goals. You will need to establish key performance metrics (KPIs), to measure the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.
However, depending on the channel of marketing you use, your KPIs will be different. You might decide to measure the success of a Email Marketing Campaign based on how many email opens and clicks you get. You can measure the success of a Instagram campaign by looking at metrics such as likes, shares, and comments.
Decide how often you will measure KPIs (daily weekly or monthly). You should monitor your marketing initiatives regularly. If your marketing plan is not performing as expected, make changes.