Tag Archives: Product Marketing
Respect Your Competition
- 22nd May 2013
Product managers and marketers are naturally competitive. They want their products to win in the marketplace, and they want to beat the competition. This trait is important to the success of a product manager or product marketer. However, it's important to balance support and bias toward your product with the realities of the marketplace. There's a difference between being a champion for your product and being blind to the market, customer needs and perceptions.
Continue Reading....Getting Back to the Basics
- 15th May 2013
Sometimes we need to step back from the complexities of our b-to-b marketing day jobs to make a simple decision: what type of demand we are trying to create. The demand type of a product or service drives a number of fundamental marketing decisions – messaging, targeting, the offers you create, the tactics you use and more. Yet seemingly agreeable colleagues often disagree on which demand type matches their products or services. This disparity is dangerous to your ability to market effectively as a team. SiriusDecisions has identified three demand type categories.
Continue Reading....Summit 2013 Highlights: Inciting a B-to-B Content Revolution
- 9th May 2013
Fully 60 to 70 percent of content churned out by b-to-b marketing departments today sits unused. This stark statistic underscores the urgent need for a content revolution in b-to-b organizations. The SiriusDecisions Content Model, a new framework introduced today by SiriusDecisions’ Summit 2013 event in San Diego, aims to help companies launch such a revolution. “Our revolutionized perspective is that content is an enterprise-wide strategy requiring the alignment of product, sales and marketing in order to optimize the factory that produces content,” said Marisa Kopec, vice president and group director at SiriusDecisions.
Continue Reading....Simplify Market Research by Framing Your Objectives as Questions
- 16th April 2013
Understanding potential customers and their needs is one of the most important elements in developing a successful offering. Market research activities like customer interviews and observational research are great ways of understanding needs, problems and opportunities. However, before running out to start talking with buyers, put together a simple research plan. It doesn't need to be a complex or lengthy document – it can simply be one page that lists the research objectives, types of organizations to target, buyer and user personas to target, number of interviews needed and the focus areas of the research.
Continue Reading....Product Launch Has Changed. Have You?
- 15th March 2013
Inbound marketing is driving the need for a redefinition of product launch processes. By 2015, SiriusDecisions predicts that 71 percent of all inquiries will be inbound in nature. This trend must be reflected in launch budgets and strategies, which, historically, have been heavy on events and direct marketing. Organizations that plan and execute inbound marketing techniques (e.g. search engine optimization, search engine marketing, digital marketing, Web site conversion optimization, social media) fueled by thematic, topical, thought leadership content aligned to audience needs do so at their own peril.
Continue Reading....If You’re in Product Management, You’re in Marketing
- 11th March 2013
I've heard something disturbing in recent conversations with product managers and product management leaders. As soon as the word "marketing" comes out of my mouth, there's an almost-instant reaction: "Oh, I think you're talking to the wrong person." "I don't deal with that." "I'm not in marketing." Well, I've got news for you – if you're in product management, you're in marketing.
Continue Reading....Can’t We All Just Get Along?
- 8th February 2013
As an analyst on the product marketing and management (PMM) team at SiriusDecisions, I listen every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, to the suffering of b-to-b professionals due to the lack of alignment in b-to-b organizations. It’s saddening to witness bright, successful, driven people – who all just want to see their company grow and be prosperous – downtrodden by imbalances in workflow processes or conflicts resulting from accountability tension between product, marketing and sales.
Continue Reading....Product Development: Meet Minimum Buying Criteria Before Exceeding Them
- 5th February 2013
When buyers make decisions, there is a minimum level of value you need to meet for each criterion; above that, additional value may have little impact. If having a minimum of 100 hours of talk time before recharging meets my requirements, then having a phone that can last as long as 105, 150 or even 215 hours isn't really a value-add to me. But if the phone doesn't reach my required need level in another area, such as minimum screen size, the product development team would have been better off putting the engineering effort into a bigger screen size.
Continue Reading....What B-to-B Buyers Really Want
- 30th January 2013
You’ve probably heard the saying, "No one wants a drill, they want a hole in the wall." The idea behind this quote is that what customers say they want – a drill – is just a means to the end; namely, a hole in the wall. Unfortunately, this is only part of the story. If a drill is used to create a hole in the wall, the hole in the wall itself is just a means to a bigger end. The hole will be used to put a bolt in the wall. The bolt will be used to hang a picture. The picture will be used to decorate a room. The room will be used for entertaining guests. Entertaining guests will help the homeowners enjoy their house and lifestyle. So, what does this mean for marketers? Obviously, the tagline "help entertain guests with our power drill" is a bit of a stretch. However, these underlying emotional drivers are a major part of business-to-consumer marketing, so it’s only reasonable that they will be present in the b-to-b decisionmaking process. After all, businesses don't buy products – people working within those businesses do. And those decisionmakers have needs, some which they express as business-related and some which aren't as explicit, or even business-related.
Continue Reading....What’s the Best Way to Announce a Price Increase?
- 9th January 2013
There comes a time in every product’s or solution’s lifecycle when a price increase must be executed. As we’ve seen in the last several years, prices of raw materials can rise as a result of natural events or increased demand. Costs can also rise due to inflation. Whatever the reason, the increase should be announced – but in a carefully planned manner. The following is a list of best practices.
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