The 7 Rules of Product Marketing

Whether you’re a fan of Charlton Heston or Mel Brooks, you likely understand the concept of a commandment: It is a foundational command or directive or an essential requirement with no compromise. In the course of managing today’s crises and worrying about tomorrow’s problems, we as product-marketing professionals can lose focus on the essentials needed to be an effective product marketer.

Having been at the product-marketing game for about a dozen years at three different companies (more if you count how many times I was acquired) and having had the distinct honor of working for a master of product marketing, I submit to you this list of the essentials, which we call “The 7 Commandments of Product Marketing.” I hope they help guide new product marketers or reintroduce core product-marketing fundamentals to veteran practitioners.

The 7 commandments are built around the constituencies we as product marketers serve: sales, product management and business, press and analysts, competitors, partners and most importantly, customers.

1. Have an up-to-date positioning document and buyer persona for your product.

                                            How often do you start developing product or marketing materials without fully knowing who the target buyers are and what their pains are? It happens more than it should when we are going too fast, but without this fundamental understanding you run the risk of losing control of your message. Never forget: YOU own the message.

2. Know the business plan for your product and have a measurable go-to-market plan for it.

      Regularly perform a marketing activity analysis against budget to measure this. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t achieve an objective without understanding what it takes to get there. I recommend setting a regular cadence of operational reviews with your functional marketing counterparts, where you can review a standard set of results to measure what’s working and what’s not. And when marketing issues come up during quarterly business reviews, make sure your business leader is prepared with the numbers. It’s your responsibility as steward of the marketing budget for the business.

3. Know how customers are using your product.

       Observing customers in their native habitats need not be intimidating. Ask for a ride-along with a sales rep, or talk to an established customer willing to give you honest feedback. (Customer reference program members are an ideal source for this.) Use these conversations to determine if how you’re positioning your product is real or just hype. Be prepared for an opinion different from what you were expecting and take it in context with other conversations. Just because you have one conversation with one customer who says something completely divergent from what your buyer personas say doesn’t mean you have to shift how you market your product. Keep it real by speaking to a real customer at least once per month. This is also a non-threatening way to gather win/loss data.

4. Know where your product’s customers and users are coming from

. This one can be tricky, especially if your business lacks the operational maturity to have consolidated business metrics. There will be someone—likely multiple people—who are able to tell you how many active customers you have for a product (maintenance or support records); the sizes and industry verticals of your customers (Hoover’s et al); average sales price, discount and margin (bookings database from finance); and new customers vs. existing (finance). The trick is to consolidate this information so you have the right information when you need it. For example, wouldn’t it be great if—when your business leader indicated you needed to focus on selling to existing customers to drive penetration—you had that data at your fingertips and could weigh in on the addressable market?

5. Know your product’s license and maintenance revenue targets and progress toward those targets

. As a product marketer, you are the VP of marketing for your product. The main focus of your role as a marketer is contributing to revenue. How are you influencing license bookings? Pretend for a moment you work for a “company-is-the-product” startup. You own marketing for that product—and therefore the company—soup to nuts. What do you need to know to be successful? Knowing your progress toward targets helps you move your marketing investments to meet current business objectives.

6. Know who sells your product.

   Also know what their comp plans look like. Sales reps are coin operated; their behavior follows the money. Knowing how your reps are compensated helps you know what to focus on in sales-enablement discussions. For example, if reps have their comp plan tied to growth in enterprise-level accounts in their region, they’re not going to respond to products and training that address a small- to mid-market customer. Hand-in-hand with this is an understanding of quotas, average deal sizes, whether they’re comped on other parts of the portfolio, professional services, etc. This helps you better understand the folks who are taking your product to market and how to talk their language. You can then be better positioned to influence comp-based incentives or spiffs for your product. 

7. Ensure sales, partners, field marketing and others can successfully evangelize for your product with accurate and up-to-date sales tools.

      Gather feedback from the field and provide regular updates. This seems like a no-brainer and will likely be 75 percent of your job. Notice the nuance here, though. Your role as a product marketer likely revolves around building messaging, enabling the sales force and influencing campaigns to drive leads and awareness. But turning other marketing shared-services personnel into advocates for your product increases internal mindshare and ultimately improves focus and results. It’s not just about the blocking and tackling of producing sales tools and a good website, but also ensuring the folks building those tools and that website or managing that event can tell the story well. Part of your success will be dependent on turning others, not just sales, into evangelists. Remember, you’re likely competing with other products for mental shelf space across the company. Be aggressive: It’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Easy Marketing Tricks That Works On Your Business

 START;-

             Businesses don’t usually have the resources to launch huge advertising blitzes in multiple media formats. In fact, even if you are already in business, chances are you don’t have an extensive cash allocation earmarked for promotion. There’s also a good chance that you’ve tried many different advertising approaches and vehicles and haven’t hit on a really successful campaign yet. You aren’t alone!

            Advertising is extremely expensive. Even large national companies with their massive budgets often find it difficult to develop successful advertising campaigns. With an growing number of companies advertising through every imaginable communication avenue, it is becoming increasingly harder to attract the attention of consumers.

Guerilla Marketing: The Non-Advertising Approach to Promotion

With all the advertising clutter out there, often the best bet to getting attention for your business isn’t advertising at all, but other kinds of promotion—more of a guerilla marketing approach. These non-advertising marketing approaches generally require less money to implement and are often more effective. The only catch is that they require time and creativity to develop.

Coupons

                  You don’t have to distribute coupons in print advertising or in big direct-mail campaigns. You can hand them out on the street corner, at trade shows, in emails, on your website, or just about anyplace else. You can send a few to your best customers, or you can include “next purchase” coupons in customer orders.

               Coupons can be “quick and dirty” to design and print because their selling point is price, not image. To ensure your chances of getting an additional sale or establishing an ongoing relationship with your customers, make your coupon offer exceedingly generous.

Contests

                 People love contests. They even love to see other people win! Just witness the phenomenal success of game shows on television. If you choose to develop a promotional contest, infuse it with fun, make it silly, and don’t forget to really talk it up. If your contest is wacky and crazy enough, you should be able to get good media coverage. Remember, this is essentially free advertising!

Gifts

            People love to receive something for free, even if they have to pay a premium price for a more expensive item to get the freebie. Don’t ask why! It may not make sense, but it doesn’t have to, as long as you make money. Although this technique has been used most successfully in the beauty and cosmetics industry, it can be used in almost any business endeavor. It isn’t unheard of to see deals such as a free computer desktop with the purchase of a higher-priced notebook computer, or even a free subcompact car with the purchase of a full-price luxury sedan!

Frequent Buyers

                           Frequent-buyer programs can be very powerful tools for building loyal clientele for both retail and service businesses. The more common approach is to give customers a card that is marked after each purchase and results in a free or reduced-price product or service after a specified number of regular-priced purchases. For example, ten haircuts may net one free haircut. Another approach is to give regular customers a discount on purchases upon presentation of their “Frequent Buyer” discount card.

                      Independent retailers trying to survive the onslaught of superstores that offer their customers super-low prices often implement frequent-buyer programs. A few businesses charge a small fee for their frequent-buyer cards. Others tie freebies or discount levels to purchase volume. For example, after spending $100 at a computer store, you might receive a free subscription to their newsletter or 5 percent off your next purchase of $25 or more. After spending $250, you might receive a free storage disk or 10 percent off your next purchase of $25 or more.

Exclusive Offerings

                          Offering exclusive purchases or previews of new merchandise to existing customers is a great way to inspire a feeling of excitement and loyalty. To enhance participation, you may wish to offer a discount. If the exclusive offering is in itself extremely attractive, the discount can be small.

Events

             Hosting a special event in your business establishment, such as a celebrity appearance or a charity fundraiser, is a terrific way to introduce people to your business or maintain contact with existing customers. It will also create an aura of excitement and goodwill. You may even obtain media coverage!

Cross-Promotions

                           You don’t have to be a movie producer or own an international fast-food chain to cross-promote your product with another business. You might consider offering free tickets to the local theater with each purchase of a particular item or price level. Another great business-to-business cross-promotion might be to offer free tickets to a ballgame to any business willing to invest 15 minutes of time just to listen to your sales pitch.

Trades

              Ever notice the ads for car washes on taxi roofs? Car washes don’t pay cash for these advertisements! They get the exposure in exchange for cleaning the taxis periodically. If you are absolutely sold on developing an advertising campaign, remember that smaller media outfits will sometimes accept products in lieu of payment.

Giveaways

                     You’re probably wondering how you can make money if you give away product! Well, it can be a lot easier and less expensive than advertising. In fact, giveaways have their place in just about any type of business.

                 Selling business-to-business, you can generate goodwill with the people you choose—your best customers or a select roster of potential clientele—by occasionally giving them a small gift when you call on them. The giveaway should not be so expensive that a feeling of bribery is conveyed, but nice enough that it doesn’t end up trashed the minute you leave.

                     For consumer service businesses, you may want to offer your product for free trial periods, or offer free estimates if you are in a service-oriented business.
Retail businesses may hand out balloons or other novelty items to build traffic or retain customer interest.

                    I think of a sandwich shop that built a huge business quickly by heavily promoting free sandwich giveaways on their opening day.

New Customer Offers

                           Attracting new customers is one of the most difficult marketing challenges to achieve even with powerful advertising or a dedicated sales force. That’s why different businesses—from national greeting card manufacturers to local oil delivery services—offer incentive pricing, freebies, or extra advertising allowances for new customers. Even lawyers customarily offer a free first consultation.

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Market Update

-To DAY:-

The S&P 500 remains flat with four sectors trading in the green offset by seven sectors trading in the red.

 Europe finished the day strong with the major indices posting gains: the UK's FTSE +0.5%, Germany's DAX +1.8%, France's CAC +0.9%, and Italy's MIB +1.6%. The gains can be credited to today's European Central Bank meeting in which the ECB decided to leave interest rates unchanged and extend its asset purchase program through the end of 2017.

 Crude oil has fallen a bit from its high. WTI crude is currently trading at $50.18/bbl, an increase of 0.8%.

Economics of Production and Marketting of Cabbage

  The present book" Economics of production and marketing of cabbage" is a research base book on cost of production of cabbage and suitable marketing channels in the cabbage growing belt of west Tripura state of India.This book  could be useful to the researchers, policy makers as well as agricultural economic background students. The authors discussed the various aspects on cabbage production, economics, marketing efficiency and critical analysis of growers educational, social impact on cabbage marketing and profit status in this book.


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What isAffiliate Marketing...?

FULL ANSWER

Pay-for-referral marketing programs predate the Internet, but the concept was restructured for e-commerce in 1994 by William J. Tobin, the owner of PC Flowers & Gifts, as noted by Wikipedia. Affiliate marketing is a popular way for online retailers to increase Internet sales by engaging individuals and other businesses as promoters. The ideal affiliate has a strong relationship with a core audience that does not overlap the company's existing client base.

A simple example of affiliate marketing as of October 2014 is Amazon.com's associates program. An individual with a lifestyle website can display ads for Amazon.com merchandise on it. Anyone who clicks on an ad is redirected to Amazon.com's website. The retailer keeps track of that visitor using browser cookies, and if the visitor makes a purchase, the owner of the originating website gets a percentage of the sale.

According to Forbes magazine, affiliate adware can subvert a person's browser, attaching affiliate cookies to shopping sessions even when the shopper attempts to navigate directly to an online retailer. The retailer ends up paying out commissions on sales that the retailer would have acquired directly.