I always wonder what makes someone really good product marketer. Is it your understanding of product & market or your ability to communicate effectively with market? Is it teamwork, leadership, networking skills or innovation ?? Actually list is endless but there are few thing which are very important and can hardly be ignored. I have tried to come up with some sort of framwork which I call PDLA (Plan-Develop-Launch-Analyse). You follow it and you got most of produc marketing covered.
Plan:
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1. Define corporate-strategy - clearly undertand,define if required, corporate strategy. Understand your target customers, market size & Growth, competition
2. Product Road Map (2 years) - Try to develop a broad roadmap based on Sales input, target Customers, budget, Timeline.
Develop:
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1. Product Requirement - Work with costomers, sales & Enginering teams. Come up with prototype and test the market if posible before going all out on the product.
2. Development Plan - Clear cmmunication with Engineerin gteam is crucial.
3. Identify Risk - Test your assumptions. If you cant then thats a risk.
Launch:
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1. Product Launch
- Internal Communication - Exec presentation, Sales Briefing, Sales Training, Price Sheet
- External Communication ( Marketing Comm)
* Web Landing Page, Demo on voice Site, White Papers, Blogs/Social Netowrks, Marketing Campaigns (Adwords, use major media channel to reach targeted customers)
* Press Releases, Analyst Briefings, Client Webinars
2. Contingency communications
3. Scheduled Maintanance
Analyze:
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1. Measure Key success factors
* primary : No. of leads/opportunities, Revenue Increase, Profitability
* Secondary: No. of media mentions, No of web hits
Is it all about product marketing. Not even close. There is a lot more to it but it doest provide me some sort of framework around which I would plan my work.
