Cythes Health Blog

Why isn't my product marketing working?

There are more healthcare and technology solutions than ever before. As a result, there is a bigger focus on product marketing as a way to drive market adoption and sales. Rightfully so.

Unfortunately, in many organizations product marketing is primarily evaluated based on lead generation. Although this is one part of the equation, the role should be viewed far more strategically. Product marketers need to be focused on the bigger picture-the impact to the company in terms of revenue, both through their products and the organization's portfolio as a whole. This includes the strategic implications between products, profitability, lifetime customer value, partnerships/alliances, and technology roadmaps.

Product Marketing Expertise

Beyond a mastery of marketing techniques, product marketers must have the technical acumen to understand the underlying technology and use cases of the products at hand, as well as the competitive, synergistic, and adjacent solutions. Only by having this knowledge and vision is it possible to effectively identify the uniqueness of your solution, and thereby create the messaging necessary to make this transparent to the market. Furthermore, product marketers need to be the experts in not only presenting their solutions to the market, but providing sales with the necessary tools to increase close rates.

Transactional Marketing

One organization I worked for required product marketers to report marketing and sales qualified leads on a weekly basis. Furthermore, they required all of the product marketers to be intimately familiar the use of all of the marketing technologies, but not necessarily their own solutions. It was more important for them to be able to handle all of the aspects of lead generation, from creative to tracking KPIs in the CRM system than it was to fully understand the market they were selling into. As a result, the product marketers spent all of their time creating and reporting on generic lead generation activities instead of uncovering those 'hidden gems' that would create separation for their solutions. As a result, with each uninspiring message, the number of leads spiraled downward.

Strategic Product Marketing

If the primary focus of product marketing in your organization is lead generation, therein lies the problem. Product marketing should be focused on first understanding the products, market(s), and customers, ensuring you have identified the appropriate customer needs and effectively position your product attributes to align with those needs. This includes creating and managing competitive information, detailed SWOT analysis, customer personas, and the customer journey. Additionally, these activities need to be fluid to ensure your products, messaging, and tactics evolve as the market changes.