This is one of the significant marketing areas focused on bringing the product closer to its final consumers. For this, it is necessary to think about the pre-launch phase, when the product’s positioning, competitive differential, and message will be structured, in addition to the launch and post-launch phases, both aimed at letting the proper people know about the existence of this product.
But What Is A Product?
The vision of Marty Cagan, a famous professional in digital products, can complement this definition since he states that a successful product needs to solve a problem for the customer and the business.
The product has different phases in its life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Knowing these phases is essential to understand each moment within a strategy to launch a new product. Check out!
Introduction
It’s the stage where your product has just entered the market and needs its first customers. At that moment, it is common for the first to be those who like to test new things.
Growth
When your product is in this phase, it indicates that it has found an attractive market and has room to consolidate. New customers, not just those who like innovation, start to buy it. With this, more general adherence comes growth.
Maturity
After faster growth, it is normal for the number of customers to stabilize, as your product has already reached many people interested in making a purchase. At that time, you keep the number of customers more or less stable.
Decline
This is the moment when the number of customers starts to drop. Your product no longer attracts people’s attention or even that it no longer makes sense in a new market context.
Product Marketing vs. Product Management
Due to the similar names and because they are inserted in the same context, there is expected to be clarity between these roles of marketing and product manager. However, the responsibilities are very different.
Product marketing will take care of the strategy used for launching, looking mainly at how to distribute information about the product’s existence, arouse interest, and generate conversion.
But to be able to execute a marketing strategy, a product must first exist. Taking care of the development, guaranteeing the delivery of something that is a need or a desire of the public is a product management task.
To result in a successful product and also to avoid rework, it is essential that marketing and management work side by side, collaboratively building a unified strategy.
The Stages Of Product Marketing
Product marketing plays a significant role in the pre-launch stage, where strategies will be drawn together with the product manager and the team.
It is common for people responsible for marketing to start acting after a large part of the product has already been developed or at least after a prototype has been developed, but this is not a rule. It may make more sense for your company to have the marketing team close to development from the beginning.
Pre-Launch
Product ResearchThe research stage is a moment where mainly the management and development team will work, but as we mentioned before, the marketing team is welcome in this process.
Marketing can help understand the consumer profile and the market study to understand if there is room for this product.
At the end of this stage, marketing can work more intensely with management to test the new product with so-called beta users, those who have early access to test and report feedback.
Product History
At the time of launch, this product must have a story to be told, making its positioning clear. It needs to be clear what problem your product solves, who the consumer is, and the competitive differential, that is, why it should be bought instead of one of its competitors.
This position needs to be thought out and documented so that all communications are consistent.
Launch Plan
Scoring the tasks that will need to be done and the division of responsibilities helps to ensure that everything is being done and that the work is well distributed. But remember that this plan can be modified throughout the process, and it is always necessary to keep everything in line with product management.
Product Content
With the positioning well defined, it is already possible to start the first drafts of the content that will be used for dissemination. At this stage, it is necessary to think about the different formats and channels of dissemination and, later, start creating the materials.
Carrying out A/B tests to adapt your content to the target audience is a great way to structure your communication better and launch a more efficient one.
Team Alignment: Marketing, Management, And Sales
Alignment should occur throughout the product development period and its launch strategy. However, in the final phase of this process, the sales team needs to understand the entire strategy in detail.
The main objective is to convert. And to do this, the sales team must know the consumer’s profile to be able to define the best way to sell the product and know the buyers’ possible objections. Another critical point for the sales team is to understand the competitive advantages of the product that will be launched.
These insights can be brought by research carried out by the product marketing and management teams.
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