Product Marketing encompasses how a product reaches its audience, from development to long after its launch. But what exactly are a Product Marketer‘s responsibilities?
The role a Product Marketer has varies from day-to-day. While providing dynamic direction to a product’s marketing efforts, they collaborate with various teams such as research, sales, and media to provide optimal solutions that meet business objectives through marketing.
Being a Product Marketer includes, but is not limited to, the following tasks and responsibilities :
Research
Strong, insightful research is the first rung of the Product Marketing ladder. Researching the marketing efforts of competitors, studying national and global market trends, and utilizing the derived data to further product growth and expansion is an integral responsibility of a product marketer. It is also their job to ensure that this collated research then reaches the right teams as well.
Strategy
Even the best market research is useless if it can’t be turned into actionable data. This data can then be used to create a product that is loved by the audience. It’s a Product Marketer’s job to always be at the center of this action. Devising, developing, and strategizing more and better ways to ensure that the marketing efforts take the right message to the right audience is crucial.
Communication
It takes consistent involvement and efforts of several teams at different stages to successfully market and grow a product. One of the most important jobs of a Product Marketer is to facilitate transparent, open lines of communication between everyone. This is necessary to ensure that all stakeholders involved work in tandem towards the product’s marketing efforts.
Press Relations
A Product Marketer’s job is continual. Post-launch, they are responsible for ensuring that the right information reaches the press and PR teams involved. They work with everyone to align on the overall marketing strategy designed for the product’s growth. This allows for a coherent brand voice through all publicity channels.
Pricing and Budget
Besides quality, price is a highly influential factor when it comes to customer preferences regarding a product. This is even more important with heightened competition in virtually every industry; a range of options for the customer to choose from means brands must work harder to prove themselves. A Product Marketer uses customer insights, market surveys and sales data to play an important role in a product’s pricing.
Marketing Collateral
Product Marketers are usually not directly responsible for creating marketing collateral, but they are in charge of ensuring that the collateral in question is coordinated with the product’s overall marketing strategy. However, in smaller companies with fewer levels of management, a marketer may be more directly involved in curating marketing content. Press releases, brochures, social media posts, blogs, campaigns, and landing pages all fall under this umbrella.
Product Testing
A small but important part of a Product Marketer’s responsibilities is to test out a product both before and after it reaches the market. While pre-launch product testing is important to find and fix any errors that may displease the customer, post-launch testing is just as important. This allows for improvement that goes hand-in-hand with constantly-evolving audience preferences.
The role of a Product Marketer is a multifaceted one that requires one to be a problem-solver, decision-maker and analyzer all at once. While there are many hats to wear in this role, it makes it incredibly rewarding and exciting.
If you want to find out more about being a Product Marketer, check out Chet’s microcourses curated by top leaders in the field.
