Connecting Product and Market: the crucial role of PMMs
Explore how PMMs bridge product and market, champion teams, overcome challenges, and ensure launch success.
Discover best practical product marketing tips to help you create an effective product launch marketing plan template and meet your sales goals on launch day.
So you have iterated, designed, developed, and are about to launch a new exciting product that your entire team and stakeholders are excited about.
What's next?
It's time to spread the word about this product to your audience! A good product launch marketing plan template can help you reach the right audience and achieve your sales goals.
Also, with 95% of the 30,000 new products launched each year failing, it's important to have all the necessary tools to set your product apart from the rest. A huge part of this lies in how well you market your product.
In this post, we will share 8 best product marketing tips or strategies in 2024. These tips will increase your chances of launching a successful product and smashing your sales goals.
Product marketing is a core part of any product launch roadmap. Unlike conventional marketing strategies, which are all-encompassing and focused on multiple categories of buyers and the general public, product marketing is more niche. It is completely focused on marketing a particular product or its features to a specific audience group who are interested in said product.
Product marketing goes deeper into understanding a specific audience's pain points and needs and developing a product to meet those needs.
Here are some more reasons why product marketing is important.
A solid product launch marketing plan template helps you better understand your customers. You will have to deeply research who the product is for and create solid buyer personas you can target directly. It gives you insight into what your customers want from you, whether it's to launch a new product or add new features to an existing one. Product marketing ensures you are building consciously and strategically instead of just launching multiple products and hoping one sticks.
Every successful product stands out and has a unique selling point that makes customers choose it instead of other available options. A product marketing strategy helps provide insight into what your competitors are doing while giving you the information you need to stand out. After assessing your competition, you will be able to ask yourself questions like:
These questions will give you the edge you need to grab your customers' attention and build momentum around your product even before launch day.
A standard product launch roadmap usually involves the efforts of cross-functional teams at different stages of the process. A solid product launch marketing plan ensures all teams are aligned at all times and have a working knowledge of the product's ins and outs and how it is connected to the overall company purpose. For example, when your sales team knows everything about the product, it is easier for them to communicate it to the customers. When all teams are aligned, product launch and marketing become predictable and easy to achieve.
When you build an effective product launch marketing plan template, you will have a deep knowledge of what your customers want and know how to communicate with them. You will also have good insight into the language, tone, and visuals your customers will respond to, which you can leverage to drive sales and boost revenue.
Tip: A product launch marketing plan template provides a 360-degree view of your product launch roadmap. When you lay everything out, it's easy always to know what milestone you've completed and what is left. With Luna, you can sync your go-to-market activities with your product roadmaps to ensure everything goes smoothly on launch day. Try out Luna for free today.
Promoting a new product effectively can be overwhelming, and it may seem like there is an endless list of things to do. Here are eight tips or strategies (in no particular order) to help you navigate the product marketing process more easily.
Your most loyal customers play a huge part in how well your new product does. By offering them exclusive access to try out the product before launch day, you're reinforcing your appreciation for their support and your commitment to creating products they need and love. This group of customers is very likely to purchase the product and even promote it to their networks. You can throw a pre-launch party, a special invitation for them to test the product, or provide a demo version of the product they can test out. It is important to keep your most loyal customers engaged and involved in your launch process.
When marketing a new product, you should try to include incentives in the campaign messaging in a way that pushes customers to purchase immediately. Some commonly used offers are discounted pricing, vouchers on purchases, BOGO deals, scoring loyalty points, free gifts for referrals after purchase, etc. The most effective marketing campaigns have time-limited incentives attached to them. So, ensure the special offers you add do not last forever so you can leverage customers' fear of missing out (FOMO) to increase your sales.
A good product marketing plan includes campaign messaging that clearly states your product's differentiators and unique selling points. When done properly, your USP should fully answer the questions your audience has about the product and what makes it stand out. Your campaign messaging or positioning statement should be able to answer questions like:
Ensure all cross-functional teams working on the product are fully aware of the answers to these questions so they can fully communicate it among themselves and to the customers.
Finding new customers is important as it signifies growth. However, you will often see that your existing customers are consistently bringing in revenue for your new and existing products. Sometimes, customers leave to try a new competitor, or they're just cutting back on spending. These are situations you cannot control, but you can implement retargeting strategies to reel them back in. A typical retargeting strategy can look like:
Your retargeting strategy should focus on reminding customers why they liked your brand or products in the first place and, hopefully, getting them to purchase again.
This should be a major part of your product launch plan checklist. Social media platforms are great for getting the word out about your new product. Sometimes, brands even run a social media contest on various platforms to get customers excited about the product.
The prize for these contests can be something as simple as getting the first view of the new products before the official launch date. The increased traffic from the contest will drive more traffic to your website and put the product right in front of your customers. Be sure to promote the new product and build anticipation on all your social media and marketing channels like Email and paid ads.
Updated pricing has a strong effect on consumers. It either turns them away from the product and toward your competitors or piques their curiosity and makes them even more interested in your offerings. For price changes, consider implementing the Good-Better-Best (GBB) strategy. This involves offering the same product to customers but with different pricing and value tiers. In this case, each tier is designed to meet different customer groups with varying price sensitivities.
For example, consider a SaaS company marketing a product management tool. A GBB pricing strategy would look like:
Good (Basic)
Better (Standard)
Best (Premium/Enterprise)
Each tier is designed to meet the needs and budgets of different customer groups—freelancers and small businesses can stay within their budget. At the same time, larger teams are persuaded to upgrade for more value. This enables you to target a wider range of customers and possibly break into new markets.
We all know and love the annual iPhone events Apple puts together when launching a new product. These events build up a lot of hype and momentum around the new releases and often result in high sales at the official launch. There is no reason why you cannot steal this model for your new product. Your event doesn't have to be as massive as Apple's, and you don't even have to host it in an actual venue. Instead, you can host virtual events like a Facebook live session where you talk about your new product.
Product launch events are great because they are a great opportunity to really tell the story behind your product and convince your customers why they should purchase. Be sure to focus more on your customer's pain points than product technicalities throughout the event and leverage them to build and maintain their interest in the products. Most people do not care about what the new processor in their phones is called; they only care about why it matters in their daily lives.
85% of brands, marketing agencies, and related professionals believe influencer marketing is a very effective form of marketing. User-generated content (UGC) is a major marketing strategy often used to showcase the functionalities and usage of products to potential customers. UGC is very effective as it shows your product from a user's perspective, giving your customers a clear idea of what to expect.
Most influencer marketing campaigns involve the influencer creating a video talking about and using the product and sharing this video with their huge audiences. This gets more eyes on your brand and results in more sales.
Tip: Influencer marketing can be quite cost-intensive, so try to find micro or nano influencers (those with fewer followers) as they may not cost a lot but are still super effective and even preferred by brands.
Bonus: Just having the right tool can streamline your product launch marketing process so you don't get overwhelmed when dealing with all the moving parts. Luna helps
This way, you can plan a successful product launch without hassle. Try Luna today for free.
The best product marketing tips all revolve around having in-depth knowledge of your product and the audience you are marketing to. Once you are fully aware of these, it's easier to devise the best strategies to showcase your product in the best light and ensure you market it through strategies your target audience will respond to.
You can take advantage of the tips shared in this post and build a powerful product launch marketing plan template!