Getting your products to the market in the best possible manner is a subtle art that you need to learn. On that note, product marketing is the driving force behind getting your products out there and making it sell. Today, product marketers are constantly on the run to understand the customers better and market the products that best define and benefit their interests. This post will walk you through the ins and outs of product marketing for SaaS and spill all the beans about how to ace it. Without any further ado, let us dive right into the post.

What is Product Marketing?

Product marketing is all about positioning and promoting the product into the right frame. It is basically to understand what your customers actually want and then frame your product in a way that resonates. It typically delves into questions like: Who’s the product for? What unique problems does it solve? Why’s it different to the competition? How does it benefit our audience? In simpler terms, Product marketing hones in on essential functions of marketing to strike a balance between product users and product positioning.

Product Marketing vs Conventional Marketing: What is the Difference?

Product Marketing zeroes in on the product life cycle and works through new product pipelines to create interest and rev up the existing customer demand of a particular product. Conventional marketing on the other hand focuses on driving more conversions, acquiring leads, and generating more sales. While this relies on various customer engagement platforms and other CRM software to drive perfect communications across channels, product marketing relies on project management, social listening, industry research, and other tools not always associated with marketing. Not just that, product marketers mostly enlist conventional marketing teams or their tools to aid with marketing a new product or service launch. And conventional marketers consistently club in with product marketers to better understand positioning and long-term product strategies.

4 Critical Steps for Product Marketing

Research your Target Audience and Market

First and foremost, conduct a deep dive into your target audience and market and know what your customers might be losing out on. What is it that your products can deliver to your customers that they are not receiving at the moment. One of the simplest ways of doing so is by competitive analysis. This will help you to look at the individual products in your space, how they compare to each other as well as to your product, and how they’re being positioned to consumers. Once you are done with that, you will have to understand the actual companies behind the products you’ll be competing with. This will help you apprehend how mature the space is, how many resources you’ll be competing against, and how the competing products fit into a company’s larger portfolio.

Delve into Product Targeting and Positioning

How you target and position your product is essential for differentiating yourself from competitors as well as resonating with personas and adjacent consumer targets. That is why, it is more than necessary that you craft this message right and give away enough detail in drilling down to specific consumer segments while also remaining high-level enough to appeal to a broader audience. On that note, most of the product marketers bring out different position statements that appeal to different personas. These are essentially product marketing campaigns that have been designed to form the product accurately but in a detailed, specific context for target consumer segments.

Club in Sales and Marketing

The second your go-to-market strategy has been created, all sales and marketing team members must be put together in a loop. Product marketers need to ensure sales leaders and their teams have all the collateral necessary to speak to the new product. Now, this might include sales sheets, pitch decks, product videos, and some of the other creative assets that be helpful in highlighting the product. Digital managers, social media coordinators, email marketers, advertisers, and other channel operators need to know about the product to be able to best promote it across their channel.

Track and Monitor your Performance

It is more than necessary to keep a tab on how you perform out there. Remember, it is an extremely competitive market and you want to ensure that your products shine out. Now, this might mean different things depending on the nature of your product that you are marketing. Now, you as a product marketer must lead sales and marketing through the launch, knowing when to stick to the script and when to pivot in order to maximize the launch effectiveness. Performance monitoring is essential to tracking consumer response to the product, ensuring it’s targeting the right audiences with the best possible messaging.

SaaS Product Marketing Examples

SaaS product marketing requires you to know everything about the product. SaaS product marketing needs everyone to be an expert in the product. SaaS product marketing focuses on acquiring customers for the product and retaining them. Here are some product marketing examples that have helped companies.

MailChimp 

MailChimp is a popular digital marketing company catering to small and medium businesses. The focus is on being affordable and empowering for small and medium businesses. MailChimp put a lot of focus on product adoption and product success. MailChimp evaluated how customers utilize their tools for the business. MailChimp focuses on user-friendly designs that will grow the business. They market their product on its key feature of being easy to use. MailChimp uses email marketing to gain more customers and ensure the prospects know about the product. They send a lot of marketing content and collateral. Marketing SaaS products is crucial for SaaS companies, and they can take a leaf from the books of MailChimp.

Userpilot 

Userpilot focuses on content marketing. They put a great deal of importance on product-led content marketing. Userpilot builds organic traffic and drives awareness with a focus on lead generation. Userpilot can engage users with good quality content. Userpilot focuses on good backlinks to ensure domain authority. Userpilot delivers customized in-app experiences to product teams. Product marketing resources will help drive the sales further across the pipeline.

SaaS Marketing Tips

Here are some SaaS Product Marketing Tips that will help you improve your strategy and enhance retention. SaaS marketing is focused on the product.

Provide free trials to users 

Offering free trials to users is a great way to let them understand the product. They get a first-hand idea of how the product works. ‘Try-before-buy’ is a great concept that offers users the flexibility to understand the product. Freemium in SaaS helps users understand new software and products. Providing free trials to users will help buyers make better choices when they decide to buy. Product marketing resources need to include freemium aspects.

Make the user experience a priority 

SaaS product marketing requires you to prioritize user experience. You need to prioritize user experience at all stages of the funnel. For example – the website should be easy to navigate from the user’s perspective. A good UX will keep the user engaged. You can deliver a unique proposition to users and offer a great product experience. You can even make the experience great for users to ensure they engage for a longer time. You can increase the page time and reduce the bounce rate.

Measure all your efforts 

You need to track all efforts to the product. Your marketing campaigns need to be product-focused. Pitch your product wherever possible. Positively manage SaaS growth. Keep some KPIs in mind and track them regularly. For example- Product engagement rate, product launch metrics, product revenue goals, product usage, customer satisfaction scores, and customer retention.

SaaS product marketing needs to focus on solving a specific problem. To effectively communicate value, SaaS products must put customer retention and customer happiness at the core.

Parting Thoughts

Product Marketing for SaaS needs a perfect blend of disciplined research and constant agility throughout each of the stages. Today, product marketing continues to be an essential function in the fiercely competitive technology industry. It basically all simmers down on giving your customers a product that they can count upon and rely. While that holds true, how you market your product changes the ball game altogether. At the end of the day, it is the satisfaction of the customer that truly matters.

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