What is Product Marketing, and How Does it Work?

Product marketing is about clearly communicating a product’s unique value to customers. A secondary aspect is communicating this well to internal teams. There are three key elements to communicating this value:

1. Identifying what customers need.
2. Showcasing how your product solves those challenges.
3. Positioning your product within the market.

These are the bread-and-butter aims of product marketers. They look to ensure each product resonates with its target audience and stands out from competitors.

Though they’re closely related, product marketing and product management focus on different stages of a product’s lifecycle.

Product managers guide product development. They work with teams to create features, gather customer feedback throughout the process, and oversee the product roadmap from start to finish.

The key purpose of their role is to ensure the eventual product meets market requirements and business goals.

On the other hand, product marketers concentrate on positioning and messaging. They work on translating product features into tangible benefits that will attract customers. They’ll craft go-to-market strategies to ensure the product lands well and communicate clear talking points to ensure alignment with the sales team.

In other words, while product managers oversee what gets built, product marketers work on communicating why it matters to potential customers and internal teams.

Traditional marketing usually emphasises and refers to the broader strategy of the brand, encompassing brand awareness, mass media campaigns, or general digital marketing efforts, among other marketing activities.

The overarching goal of traditional marketing is often to build a brand’s reputation or reach new audiences at scale.

Product marketing is always narrower in focus, zeroing in on a specific product or service. A product marketing team will complete tasks in service of a particular product, including:

• Conducting in-depth competitor analysis
• Defining unique value propositions/unique selling propositions
• Creating messaging or a story that speaks directly to a product’s features and benefits

So again, the best explanation often lies in comparison. While traditional marketers might concentrate on driving demand and leads for the business or brand overall, product marketers ensure each product’s story is compelling to resonate with the right buyer persona.

Of course, they still ultimately drive sales and customer engagement, but in relation to a specific product or service rather than the whole business.

Effective product marketing campaigns bring about several benefits as the product goes to market.

Product marketing helps you stand out from competitors by refining messaging and positioning in the market. A well-thought-out positioning strategy helps customers immediately see why your product is the best fit for their needs, cutting through the distracting noise of competing offers.

The key to a successful positioning strategy is not to be the best option in the market for everybody — this is usually impossible and results in a message too broad. Instead, product marketers look to position their product as the clear best option for a particular niche.

Focusing on what truly solves a specific user’s challenges can boost customer success and loyalty. Imagine a tailor who fits a suit perfectly — you’d go back for every alteration.

That’s because a bond can often form between a customer and a product that perfectly meets their needs. A product marketer needs to facilitate this relationship with tailored messages that highlight benefits over features alone.

Think of product marketing as the conductor of an orchestra: It ensures that development, sales, and customer success teams stay in harmony and all play from the same hymn sheet.

A well-defined and well-shared strategy ensures everyone is up to speed on the product’s fundamentals and value. As a result, updates, campaigns, and overall messaging remain streamlined, reducing confusion and keeping everyone in sync.

A compelling product story can spark interest, much like a captivating movie trailer that gets people talking and eager to watch. By highlighting the product’s unique value at the right time and in the right places, product marketing drives more leads into your funnel.

We’ve danced around some of the responsibilities of a product marketer already, hinting at what’s likely to make up a day in the life of a product marketing team. You can roughly put the core responsibilities into four groups:

Market research forms the foundation of all marketing activity, and product marketing is no different. You need to make informed decisions about your product marketing efforts to give it the best chance of success. The only way to do that is to gather info:

• User surveys
• Analytics data
• Competitor reports

Product marketers will dive into these documents to understand what potential customers genuinely value.

For example, they might run focus groups to test a new feature idea and then compare feedback against what competitors already offer. Note that they are not changing the product here since they are not product managers. Instead, they’re gauging how customers feel about the product and its new features.

These insights shape the product roadmap by highlighting genuine customer needs.

After gathering research, product marketers craft positioning statements that differentiate their products from other offerings available.

This could involve:

• A detailed comparison of your product’s features, pricing, and customer experiences against competitors. This helps to identify unique differentiators.
• Identify which product benefits resonate most strongly with your target customers.
• Outline the product’s core value messages for all teams.
• Developing taglines and slogans that capture the product’s standout advantage.
• Validating with stakeholders (running ideas by other teams and/or potential focus groups with customers).
• Refining messaging for specific marketing channels (social posts vs. landing pages vs. product demos).

When the product is ready to launch (or re-launch), product marketers plan and execute a rollout.

What constitutes a rollout will look different in scale depending on the business size and the excitement around the product. However, the rollout will likely include things like social media teaser campaigns, live webinar demos, and special introductory promotional packages.

Marketers will coordinate with designers for eye-catching visuals and with the sales team to ensure everyone knows how to pitch the product’s benefits.

A go-to-market push is a delicate moment, the culmination of a lot of prep and effort to get to this point.

But the work isn’t complete once you’ve launched the product. You need to keep the customer in mind well beyond the initial product release. Product marketers will monitor online reviews for insights into user experiences. They’ll send post-purchase surveys and contact support teams to analyse any issues with the product (and celebrate what’s hopefully working and resonating).

If common questions arise, they might update product documentation or run a mini-campaign to address those concerns. This ongoing dialogue ensures that the product evolves in response to real-world customer feedback.

Let’s spotlight a couple of product marketing examples, paying particular attention to evidence of incisive decision-making.

Afterpay managed to set itself apart in Australia’s competitive fintech market with a product marketing strategy that focused on solving a common friction point.

Afterpay is a “Buy Now, Pay Later” payment solution. Afterpay noticed many shoppers abandoned their carts at checkout due to hefty upfront costs.

This upfront payment anxiety was the real customer pain point their product marketers identified.

The product tackles the pain point by allowing customers to pay via interest-free instalments. Product marketers and product managers understood that it was critical to communicate this benefit with potential customers. Their messaging emphasises financial flexibility and ease of use, highlighting why “Buy Now, Pay Later” is a compelling value proposition.

Take a look at the screenshot above. Rather than burying customers in fine print, Afterpay’s marketing materials clearly outline how fees and payment schedules work. The focus is on building trust through transparency about how Afterpay works, directly addressing and understanding customer concerns about money.

People will often panic about late fees or hidden charges. Afterpay addresses this dynamic head-on via a page titled ‘Misconceptions’:

This message is all about understanding customer concerns and aiming to remove these obstacles for the customer.

There’s a further FAQ section in which the brand voice is helpful, conversational, and clear, further assuaging any uncertainty.

Yet, the product marketing team also realised they needed to offer another angle beyond cost-savings and the removal of that payment anxiety.

The solution was to tie their product to lifestyle needs.

Collaborations with influencers and strategic social media campaigns showed how easy it is to budget for big-ticket items and benefit from Afterpay perks. This made their product marketing feel more like a friendly, empowering tool than a traditional finance offering.

The choice of the word ‘experience’ is revealing here. You can see how it moves Afterpay beyond a financial helping hand to something trendy or even a must-have for online shoppers.

The implication is that the benefits can go way beyond just spreading out costs. Once users sign up, Afterpay continues to communicate exclusive retailer offers or seasonal deals. Their user dashboard and app layout further reinforce simplicity, empowering you to ‘level up’ your experience.

These choices encourage loyalty and repeated use. Here’s the key takeaway.

By addressing a well-known hurdle (up-front payment costs) and maintaining a transparent, user-friendly approach, Afterpay’s product marketing created a massive following. They have managed to convert a finance solution into something almost trendy for Australian customers.

Xero stands out as an Australian-born brand offering cloud-based accounting software. The magic of its product marketing stems from how simply and directly it targets small businesses and sole traders—a segment often overwhelmed by the complexity of bookkeeping.

Their homepage reflects this dynamic simply, acknowledging that small business owners often don’t even want to bother with accounting since it takes them away from what they ‘love’. The core message here is one of lightening the burden for users: Xero will do the work for you.

Another of Xero’s key insights was that business owners dread dealing with intricate accounting jargon. For many, accounting is dull, yet business owners know they have to deal with its tedious complexity to run a successful business.

Xero’s product marketers addressed this head-on. The website clearly emphasises the notion that Xero ‘makes lives easier’ for business owners. It does so by highlighting that Xero saves time and money and ensures compliance with the pesky ATO regulations.

Each Xero feature is well-explained on a standalone page, always prioritising the benefits of aspects like automation rather than going through the intricacies of what each feature does:

In addition to the core messaging, Xero’s marketing team publishes educational content and tutorials explaining industry terms or compliance deadlines.

This framing evokes Xero as more than a product provider: They’re an educator, too.

This value add-on resonates with busy entrepreneurs who lack time to trawl through dense documentation. They want a guide that simplifies and explains accounting in a concise, easy-to-follow way.

By focusing on everyday scenarios — say, managing payroll or filing GST — Xero demonstrates empathy for a small business owner’s real hurdles.

Finally, Xero’s product marketing team is keenly aware that modern customers value peer recommendations over anything a brand tells them. As such, they invest in community-driven marketing to provide social proof of the product’s benefits.

Across the website, you’ll see success stories, customer quotes, and references to how the software can work for you.

They supplement this with real screenshots or even video demos of the interface for every Xero feature. This illustrates precisely how the software helps you file for GST, claim expenses, pay bills, or other tasks.

By showcasing how real users solved challenges using Xero, they transform just another software tool into something that enables growth.

Here’s the key takeaway: Xero’s product marketing excels at keeping the brand’s promise — making accounting more user-friendly and enjoyable. They achieve this by simplifying their messaging, demonstrating real-world usage, and consistently educating customers so they feel supported at every stage.

As shown by the two examples, effective product marketing starts with a genuine understanding of who your target audience is and what they’re looking for. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

Begin by asking, “What action do we want potential customers to take? Are we looking to drive immediate sales, encourage a product trial, or grow brand awareness?”

Then, outline the buyer persona — demographics, pain points, and typical online behaviour. You should have a deep understanding of who is going to buy your product. Getting this right means you can tailor your messaging to this specific target audience. Often, the more niche you can get, the better.

Gather insights on competitors, market trends, and user needs through surveys, interviews, or social media listening. For example, you might discover customers prefer a simpler product UI or additional features to solve specific problems. This research can shape product development and your marketing plan.

Insights from this research will help both your team and the product development team.

Don’t just sit on your research; you’ll use it to inform everything that you do to promote the product, from your content marketing efforts to your product positioning.

What core value or benefit are you offering? How does it outshine competitor products? Summarise these findings in positioning statements that guide all your marketing channels. These will be a reference point for content creation for website copy, social media content, and more.

If the product is new, map out a product launch plan. Which platforms will you use (blog posts, social media, email campaigns)?

Will you tap into influencer partnerships or a targeted ad strategy? Obviously, again, understanding your buyer personas and your messaging/positioning will determine which product marketing tactics you’ll use here.

Outline a timeline to keep everyone on track.

Sales enablement means giving them everything they need to effectively sell the product. Share materials that help them understand the product story. Provide them with ready-to-go talking points and quick reference guides.

Essentially, you’re doing their homework for them, helping them engage in meaningful conversations with customers, addressing concerns and highlighting benefits in a way that best shows off your product.

Any reader of marketing advice pieces will know that the work never stops after launch. Data is the lifeblood of all marketing, so tracking performance using marketing analytics tools is your next step. Look for indicators of success, such as conversion rates, sign-ups, or customer retention. Do these suggest you’re hitting your goals?

Collect customer feedback through a variety of means. What’s working? What isn’t? Both in relation to your marketing efforts and the actual product.

The purpose of all this tracking is to identify any areas for improvement. You may need to tweak your promotion strategy or you may need to share issues with the product team itself.

The aim is to iterate to optimise performance and ultimately drive a better outcome for the business.

Perhaps you’re considering a career in product marketing, and you’re wondering what skills buzzwords you’ll need to include on your resume.

Here are a few general traits you’ll need to be successful as a product marketer:

You need the skill and narrative chops to translate sometimes complex product features into a compelling story that connects with customers’ problems or desires.

One of the most famous examples of this was the intelligent product marketing choice from Apple when advertising for the original iPod. Instead of focusing on the product feature (the amount of memory), the ad instead chose to say, “1000 songs in your pocket.”

This creatively tells a story, demonstrating the value of the product rather than listing a feature. It shows rather than tells.

You’ll need to have an aptitude for interpreting customer insights and competitor data. As we’ve shown, this is absolutely vital for crafting effective strategies.

You’ll also need to love diving into the details. From marketing analytics dashboards to user surveys, product marketers need to evaluate data and sift through it for actionable takeaways. Even though the latest developments in AI help automate many aspects of data collection and analysis, marketers still need to have a head for the implications as they look to make the final decisions on strategy.

Aligning any product messaging with larger business goals and working with other stakeholders across the business requires solid planning skills and big-picture thinking.

You won’t be doing this all on your own, and the best marketers understand the value of collaborative relationships. Product marketers frequently work with development teams, sales teams, and even content marketers to build cohesive campaigns.

Product marketing is all about the process you undertake to ensure a product’s value resonates with the right audience. While you may think your gut instinct would suffice, a lot of research and creativity goes into getting that just right.

Product marketers effectively bridge the gap between product development teams and the eventual targeted marketing campaigns.

The overarching purpose of getting the marketing of a product ‘just right’ is to ultimately drive demand for the product and delight customers. Of course, the overall brand/business benefits from this success, but thinking about the overall brand marketing is beyond the product marketer’s scope. Their job is to zero in on the product and the product only; how can they bring it to market in a way that maximises its appeal?

There are plenty of marketing platforms available to boost your product marketing efforts. Explore Salesforce’s Agentforce Marketing Agents for tools that can help with campaign planning, marketing automation, and analysis of audience insights.