Product marketing facilities the sales of a company’s products and services. Its goal is to increase awareness and understanding, as well as support the sales channel’s needs by developing:
- commercialization and sales enablement strategies
- product positioning, messaging, competitive differentiation
- sales materials to grow awareness and spark lead generation
Product marketers often bring broad and diverse expertise and industry knowledge. Thus, they sit at an important intersection of:
- product management
- sales
- customer success
- service
- operations
In any growing business it becomes easy to tap marketers for non-marketing tasks. These assignments distract from their ability to drive the business toward its goals.
In this blog, we discuss where marketing intersects with overlapping business functions. We also cover the strategic importance of letting marketers do marketing.
Product Marketing vs. Product Management
Product marketing brings deep knowledge of the healthcare market segments and workflows. It also highlights problems faced by key clinical, technical, and operational stakeholders. As such, it is often the go-to function for specific information. Details support development of product requirements, pricing models, and other upstream strategies.
Product marketing relies on product management to be successful. Management professionals provide information on:
- solution portfolio
- product capabilities and features
- future product roadmap plans
These all inform product positioning as well as competitive and content strategies.
It is a necessary and symbiotic relationship. Partnering this way results in the development of strategic products and promotional strategies. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that these are unique and distinct roles.
- Product management brings technical and operational skills to drive product development.
- Product marketers leverage communication, creativity, and credibility to commercialize and promote the product.
Product Marketing vs. Customer Success
Product marketing intimately understands customer problems and use cases. They are sometimes brought in to help understand why:
- a customer might not be using a product for its intended purpose
- the cause of specific customer problems
- how to best plan for and communicate a solution that is coming down the pipeline
Product marketing brings valuable information about competitive support offerings. It focuses on unique problem statements of different healthcare organizations and stakeholders. These inform the development and promotion of customer support and professional services programs.
But, product marketing is not well-positioned to dive into solving specific customer issues. Instead, companies should staff customer support teams with enough clinical and technical expertise to support the company’s customer portfolio. This includes existing and planned implementations.
In some cases, product management aligns customer expectations and needs with product capability. Product marketing should focus on new customer acquisition. Or, facilitating the sales of more product to existing customers.
Product Marketing vs. Sales
Marketers provide significant value to sales teams. They provide training, customer-facing materials, and qualifying leads that feed the sales funnel. As such, product markers are often called upon to support sales activities like:
- Product demonstrations
- Sales visits and presentations
- Authoring RFP responses
Product marketing can (and should) support the above activities. Yet, these are sales operations functions. They are the responsibility of experienced sales personnel. Sales members who have the requisite personality and skills required to convert a lead into a paying customer.
When marketers are too involved in these activities it pulls them away from their core responsibilities. Which impacts the company’s ability to attract new opportunities. Instead, marketers are best positioned to arm sales teams with the tools and information they need. This includes competitive intelligence, targeted messaging, and materials that generate and capture opportunities.
Product Marketing vs. Trade Shows
Trade shows are a big marketing responsibility. They often involve serious financial investment. Yet, they offer significant opportunities to meet and develop relationships with key stakeholders. As such, the trade show responsibilities of a marketer include:
- Developing the trade show strategy
- Crafting messaging and leading booth design activities
- Promoting the company’s presence and generating meetings with current and potential customers
- Producing content (e.g., social media, blogs, press releases, etc.). These assets support pre, during, and post-show engagement between sales and prospects/customers.
But, it is not uncommon for operational tasks to fall under the purview of marketing. For example, booth management and organizing travel logistics. After all, they’re all related to marketing’s main event… right?
It is true that trade shows are a big part of the marketing mix. But logistics are best left to administrative or operational personnel. This allows marketing experts to be free to do what they do best:
- define strategy
- align the organization around common business goals
- run campaigns to attract the right audience
- capture leads
Importance of Letting Marketers Do Marketing
Product marketing is an essential role within any healthcare IT organization. It drives the commercialization strategy. Marketing builds awareness of the company’s products and the problems they solve. It also builds credibility across targeted healthcare IT stakeholders. Finally, product marketing generates leads that drive sales growth and success.
Product marketers’ expertise serves as valuable input to other departments across the organization. Still, it is important that dedicated people with aligned expertise drive:
- product management
- sales
- customer success management
- service
- operations
Are you looking to augment your team with healthcare IT product marketing expertise? Our product marketing experts can help address your specific project needs. Or, help you develop a strategic program focused on accomplishing your broader business goals. Contact us to learn more.
