Understanding Product Marketing:
The last P in the 4-part marketing mix is the product or service you’re offering. If you’re still going by the 4 Cs, we’d call this C the “Customer,” instead of the product. Here is where the focus of the 4 Ps and Cs differ. If you’re selling in the modern brandscape, you’d want to focus on the customer wants and needs instead of the product, as that is what drives demand for your offering. However, to keep things simple, we’ll stick with the “product” label, as that is usually the most familiar to clients. Although products are usually already in the brandscape by the time we’re involved, there’s still some product-based research options that allow us to fully understand and align the market with your offering.
To start, we need to identify a clear, singular purpose or benefit for your offering. This concept is usually referred to as a positioning statement, which provides you with surgical precision when designing product marketing campaigns. But, what if you have multiple benefits or unique selling points/propositions (USPs), as many products do? How do you decide on just one and which one is the most important? If you’re asking those questions, this is where a market and competitive analysis will strengthen your brand and your position in the marketplace.
What’s the main take-away in Product Marketing? Create something worth selling.
On the customer-side, a market analysis will develop your target market and identify potential buyers, competition and positioning. Because the brandscape is both vast and easily accessible, it’s important to segment the market into primary and secondary targets, also known as your “relevant markets”. A good market analysis also identifies base market size, trends, growth rate, profitability, industry structure, distribution channels, and key success factors.
On the product-side, a competitive analysis will provide background for each individual competitor’s offering that fully elucidates both their strengths and weaknesses. It also provides insight into how your competition is positioning alternative solutions. At Strategic MMC, we visually map the brandscape competitive offering on a USP&P scale (unique selling points and positioning scale). Not only does this help identify a complete list of unique selling points/propositions (USPs), it also helps to prioritize your own list, based on your competitive advantage and differentiation strategies. In the end, you’re able to better position and assess value based on the current state of the market.
Having both of these strategic elements at your disposal will enable you to appropriately back your decision-making process in balancing your marketing mix.