Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence: Step Two - Product

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence: Step Two - Product

The Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence are:

  1. Strategy
  2. Product
  3. Market Segmentation
  4. Brand
  5. Communications
  6. Lead Generation
  7. Sales Qualified Leads

Step Two – Product

I got my start in marketing by way of Product Management and Product Marketing. It is important to understand that there is a difference between Product Management and Product Marketing but both functions work in close collaboration from product inception to delivery. So, I find Product Management and Marketing (PMM) needs to be closely intertwined with Engineering and the Marketing team to successfully deliver the specified product to the marketplace that meets the brand promise. PMM must be able to excel at strategy development and tactical execution. My top priority roles for a successful PMM team are:

  • Strategic business planning
  • Creating product strategies
  • Establishing product requirements
  • Developing and managing product life cycles
  • Developing and monitoring go-to-market plans
  • Providing product and market expertise
  • Supporting sales enablement for the product
  • Discovering and understanding new and existing market opportunities

PMM personnel need to understand the product, the marketplace and competitors. They also need to communicate the value of the product to assist marketing communications in developing collateral, videos, webinars, etc. Concluding with an overall product life cycle plan covering the initial launch through its evolution towards maturity. At which point, the product is either materially updated, replaced or discontinued.

Whether the product is a tangible item such as a phone, wearable tech, computer, or software or a less tangible item such as a service, the product benefits, features and cost need to be defined before marketing can communicate to the target markets. Without this understanding of the product and a clear set of value propositions then marketing will have difficulty marketing the product to perspective buyers. Surveys show that identifying and eliminating weak product ideas before product delivery result in companies having a greater likelihood of successful new products. Any misalignment between the product and the value expected by the buyer, will result in a poor experience, fewer referrals, potentially bad reviews, and ultimately disastrous results.

Raven Guru Marketing believes the pursuit of Marketing Excellence integrates the skills of PMM and the other marketing disciplines for a successful product rollout.


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