What do you need to market products in tech?

To successfully market products in the tech industry, it's crucial to have a deep understanding of the product, identify the target audience, and create a compelling value proposition. Building a strong online presence through a professional website, social media, and content marketing is essential. Leveraging influencer marketing, email marketing, and paid advertising can help reach a broader audience. Providing exceptional customer support and staying updated on industry trends contribute to building trust and credibility. Adaptability to the evolving tech landscape is key for a comprehensive and effective marketing strategy.

Define your target audience based on demographics, interests, and pain points. Tailor your marketing messages to address the specific needs of your target customers. Implement analytics tools to track the performance of your marketing campaigns. Use data to refine strategies, identify successful channels, and optimize for better results.

I agree that understanding the product is essential for a product marketer in tech. However, I think that it is not the first thing, but rather the ongoing thing that a product marketer should do. The product is not static, but dynamic. It evolves over time, based on customer feedback, market trends, technological innovations, and competitive pressures. Therefore, a product marketer should always keep learning about the product, and update their knowledge and skills accordingly. A product marketer who stops understanding the product will soon lose their relevance and effectiveness.

You can't position or market a Product you don't have the full knowledge. Hence, as a Product Manager, it is salient to understand the nitty-gritty of the product By doing so, you will find it easier to craft a compelling message that resonates with your product target audience. Also, conveniently and excellently, you will be able to be handle any inquiries or concerns of your product users when you truly understand the product.

Besides the classic armchair methods, I propose to be out there - especially for B2B marketing. Go into the field, meet customers at trade shows, events, and conferences - these occasions are the spot where you are closest to the heartbeat of an entire industry. But also, venture right into the heart of it all: Meet your customers in their natural habitat - at their workplace. Observe their processes, their culture, find the sore spots and their happy places. This will give you priceless insights.

Completely agree with you @LisaGruber, there is no replacement for interacting at the "heartbeat"! This is the only way to really understand the nuances of the market and the product-market fit. This qualitative market research always uncovers insights that inform a robust product development and commercial strategy. Additionally, the competitive landscape can be quite complex, with many companies offering similar products. So, it's important to identify what makes your products unique, whether it's their performance, price, or the support and services that come with them.

One area I have found that has significant impact on the overall success of large projects is the defining of the positioning, messaging and value proposition right at the beginning. This helps teams picture the end product/solution, speeds up both the marketing requirements documentation & development process and is really helpful for the product marketeers when it comes to launch.

To me, building the strategy is often too much about output, not about outcomes. And that is overcoming the challenge of getting predictable traction. So how to design for that? I always approach this as 3 buckets and 10 steps: 1 – Traction Foundation Step 1: The segmentation cocktail Step 2: Take position Step 3: A Remarkable value proposition 2 – Traction Momentum Step 4: Surprise and hit the right nerve Step 5: Kill silos – shift from speed to velocity Step 6: Stop selling – start making it irresistible 3 – Traction Resilience Step 7: Set clear direction – a strong vision Step 8: Be obsessed with what’s changing & challenging Step 9: Ensure resourcefulness Step 10: Eliminate bias – get out of the bubble The power is in the mix.

You will very rarely get marketing right the first time. How quickly can you learn and iterate? Especially at early stage startups, you need to be able to balance strategy with implementation. When building a strategy, try to make it as much of a controlled experiment as you can. What are your hypotheses? What are the controls and variables? What is the largest threat to your success? In execution, you should balance seeing an experiment through to gain insightful data with pivoting quickly enough to ensure success. There are plenty of tools to help with this including your CRM, web analytics, and most importantly (IMO) customer feedback. Being successful is as much about your ability to listen as it is about your ability to execute

What I've seen to be a challenge is relaying the marketing message to the actual users of the products. Especially in b2b scenarios where platform components or more complex technical solutions are in play the buyer is a complete different persona from the ultimate user. You need to make sure you have reasonable enablement plans for all your anticipated target personas and not just the marketing layer on top. Some call this technical marketing. Some developer relations or other names. As a matter of fact, one rarely exists without the other and is a make or break decision when talking about marketing for technical products.