The elements of product marketing

Ever found yourself swimming against a deluge of product marketing jargon?

We won’t hold it against you - not by any stretch of the imagination. Product marketing is loaded with a plethora of industry-specific terms you need to know as part of your role.

So, with this in mind, we’ve created a Product Marketing Periodic Table to help you understand everything you need to know as part of your product marketing strategy.

Strategies to build

Se 1 - Sales enablement

Sales enablement is the process in which a sales team is given the appropriate tools and resources that’ll help them to effectively sell your product to prospective customers and close more deals.

Ci 3 - Competitive intelligence

Competitive intelligence is the practice of gathering and analyzing information relating to an organization’s competitors and using these insights to create a competitive advantage.

This tactic helps businesses to understand their competitive landscape and the opportunities and threats that might be present.

Cq 4 - Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new clients or customers.

Whether you work for a scrappy, small scale start-up or a huge, well-established corporation, gaining new customers is the aim of the game.

An 11 - Analyst relations

An analyst relations programme helps product marketers identify which analysts they ought to work alongside, best methods for reaching them, whilst also recording objectives, and keeping track of progress.

Po 12 - Positioning

A positioning strategy is a set of actions and processes that’re designed to improve the image and visibility of a brand, company, or product.

Successful positioning strategies not only focus on where the product is today but how the product could potentially progress to where you would ideally like it to be in the near future.

Pr 19 - Pricing

A pricing strategy is a model and/or method a company uses to price its product or service suitably and optimize its sales volume and market share.

Pricing strategies differ depending on the nature of the company and circumstances, which makes teaching it somewhat tricky because there really is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution.

On 20 - Onboarding

The customer onboarding process is the post-conversion phase whereby companies help their customers get the most value from their product.

Gt 37 - Go-to-Market

A Go-to-Market strategy fuses together all of the elements that drive a business, such as marketing, content marketing, customer intel, and brand development and provides an action plan for how you can better reach your customers.

Ch 54 - Customer research

Customer and market research is fundamental in helping product marketers gain an understanding of the sphere in which they’re operating, the people they’re targeting, whilst also gathering essential feedback to improve their product or service.This phase is critical in gauging an understanding of:

1. What you need to provide for your customer,
2. How well a product or service has performed, and
3. Where changes can be made in the future.

Mr 85 - Market research

It’s impossible to build a successful product unless you communicate with prospective customers. Market research provides a set of definitive answers to key questions, including:

• Who is your product aimed at?
• Who are your customer personas?
• What features do they want from your product?
• How much are they willing to spend?

Things to define

Bp 21 - Buyer personas

Personas are fictional characters you create based on research, and they represent segments of your market.

Uc 22 - Use cases

A use case is a specific situation in which a product or service is used. Given people buy the same product for different reasons, use cases can vary depending on specific circumstances.

Bd 23 - Brand identity

Brand identify is a set of distinguishable features that are affiliated with your brand. These include specific colors, design features, and logos that make your brand immediately recognizable in the mind of the consumers.

Bf 24 - Buyer funnel

The buyer funnel is a marketing model outline of the four-stage process a prospect undertakes en-route to buying a product: awareness, interest, desire, action.

Ta 38 - Target audience

The specific segment your product is aimed at.

Sg 39 - Segmentation

Market segmentation is the first step in determining who your target market is.

By segmenting potential customers into groups that share similar characteristics, you can identify groups to target further down the line. Traditional market segments are identified using the following characteristics:

• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Geographics
• Behavioral

Jt 40 - Jobs-to-be-done

The jobs-to-be-done principal involves getting to the root of what people purchase your product for. Every purchase a person makes has a job-to-be-done behind it.

Vo 41 - Voice of the customer

Voice of the customer outlines the expectations, preferences, and dislikes of your customers.

Me 55 - Messaging

Product messaging is the message your product is sending to your potential customers.

St 56 - Storytelling

Storytelling is a process used by product marketers to communicate a message to their audience, via the combination of fact and narrative.

While many orgs use stories based on fact, others combine fiction and improvisation to drive home the key components of their brand's core message.

Ps 57 - Positioning statement

Positioning statements describe your product or service, and more specifically, how they can fulfil the needs of users and the market.

Pa 72 - Packaging

Packaging strategies are important because they help your target market identify which kind of product you’re producing.

Research methods

Bc 25 - Business case

Business cases are designed to answer the four essential questions:

• Why are we doing this?
• What are the benefits?
• How will we do it?
• Who will we need?

WI 26 - Win/loss

Win/loss interviews are meetings you set up with past leads—both those that became customers and those that didn’t—in order to learn why they made the decisions they did.

Qu 27 - Qualitative analysis

Qualitative analysis uses subjective perspectives to examine an organizations prospects using non-quantifiable insights.

Ab 42 - A/B testing

A/B testing, also known as split or bucket testing, is a statistical method of comparing two or more versions of one variable (like a blog post, web page, or advertisement) against each other to determine which version performs the best, and also to understand if a difference between the versions is statistically notable.

Ca 43 - Cohort analysis

Cohort analysis is a technique used to categorize and divide data into groups based on common characteristics before an analytical process takes place.

Cv 44 - Competitive landscape

Competitive landscape analysis involves identifying, researching, and evaluating your market rivals, before applying insights to your product marketing strategy.

Fg 45 - Focus group

A focus group is a form of research in which a group of customers are brought together in a controlled, moderated setting to answer questions about a particular topic.

Ap 73 - Advocacy program

Customer advocacy is when companies take proactive steps to build and nurture relationships with loyal, long-term customers. These customers serve as spokespeople and patrons for your brand, products, or services.

Ga 74 - Gap analysis

Gap analysis process is conducted by companies to try and establish areas in the market whereby demand outstrips supply. It allows them to therefore produce products that’re underserved in their respective markets and gain a competitive advantage over market rivals.

Co 75 - Customer observation

Customer observation research is used by companies to enhance their understanding of customer needs, and how buyers use their product and/or service.

Sv 76 - Surveys

Surveys are a research method in which a company gains qualitative and/or quantitative feedback from subjects, by asking them questions. They can be completed via questionnaires, telephone conversations, social media polls, or in-person interviews, to name a few.

Bt 103 - Beta testing

A type of user acceptance testing (UAT), beta testing enables real users to offer their feedback on a “beta” version of a new product or new features that are due to be introduced to improve an existing offering.

During the beta phase, the development team liaises with users to identify potential flaws, bugs, and areas for improvement. Improvements are then made based on the feedback to ensure the product performs to its optimum and the user experience isn’t compromised.

Sw 104 - SWOT

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

By tracking these four areas when analyzing your competitors, you can gain valuable insights into their strategies and use them to improve your own.

Qa 105 - Quantitative analysis

Quantitative analysis is the process of conducting and analyzing numerical data.

C 106 - CRM

Customer Relationship Management is used to manage the number of interactions between existing customers and potential customers. The process is geared towards improving customer relationships, increasing retention rates, and reducing churn.

Metrics to track

Ck 28 - Click-through rates

Click-through rates is the ratio of clicks on a particular link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. This metric establishes how well your company’s keywords, ads, and free listings are performing.

Wr 29 - Win rate

Win rates represents the number of deals closed.

Cn 30 - Churn

Customer churn highlights how many customers opt to no longer use your product and/or service.

Cs 46 - Cost per lead

Cost per lead is a digital marketing pricing model, with the advertiser paying a pre-determined cost for each lead generated.

Cr 47 - Conversion rates

The conversion rate metric gauges your success when converting online users into fully-fledged paying customers.

Tp 48 - Time on page

Time on page is a web analytics metric measuring the average amount of time a user spends on a particular page on your website.

Ar 77 - ARR/MRR

Annual recurring revenue (ARR) refers to the revenue generated for a product or company across the course of a year. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is the monthly amount.

Cp 78 - Cost per acquisition

This metric measures the approximate cost attributed to securing the custom of one paying customer.

Ts 79 - Traffic sources

The traffic sources metric provides an indication of where your visitors are coming from.

Ap 107 - ARPU/ARPA

Average revenue per user (ARPU) is used to establish factors contributing to total revenue, while average revenue per account (ARPA) is a SaaS metric focusing on the revenue that can be attributed to each individual account.

Re 108 - Retention

Customer retention measures your company’s effectiveness at keeping customers onboard. It also establishes how happy these customers are during their experience.

Br 109 - Bounce rate

Bounce rate is a metric used to measure the number of people who visit a page on your website, only to ‘bounce’, and leave the page without taking no action, at all.

Tv 110 - Time to value

The amount of time it takes for your customer(s) to gain value from your product or service.

OKRs and KPIs to track

Rw 5 - Reason for winning

The reason why your company was successful in securing a deal over a competitor.

Sc 6 - Sales confidence

Your reps’ ability to speak with conviction, sincerity, and confidence about your product/service.

Au 7 - Active users

The total amount of unique users engaging with your site or app during a certain timeframe.

Np 8 - Net promoter score

Net promoter score (NPS) is a market research metric gauging the likelihood of whether a customer will recommend your product or service to a friend, relative, or colleague in the future.

Ms 13 - Market share

Market share is the percentage of total sales in an industry generated by a particular company.

Dv 14 - Deal velocity

The total time taken for a company to advance from the phase in which contracts are drafted, to the moment the deal is completed.

Us 15 - User satisfaction

A score generated by asking the customer to rate their overall experience of using your product or service. Using the responses, a figure on the scale of 0 - 100% is generated.

Ad 31 - Average deal size

Average deal size represents the average amount of money customers invest on a solution.

Tc 32 - Time to close

Time to close measures the total amount of time spent, from your first interaction with a prospect, right the way through to sealing the deal. This metric is calculated using an average across all won deals.

Re 33 - Retention

Customer retention is when a customer continues to buy your product or use your service despite the availability of others on the market.

Pm 49 - Product market fit

Product market fit is the combination of two major things:

1. The demand for your product (the gap in the market you have identified)
2. How your product satisfies this appetite and plugs that gap (features, pricing, etc)

Cc 50 - Campaign performance

The campaign performance metric tracks how well your campaign performs against a pre-determined set of goals and objectives.

Fa 51 - Feature adoption

Feature adoption measures how specific features within a software package are being used by a customer.

Az 80 - Asset utilization

Asset utilization allows you to measure the effectiveness with which you’re using the assets you have at your disposal.

Cn 81 - Content leads

The number of leads generated via your company content.

Uc 82 - Up and cross-sell revenue

Upsell revenue is the amount of revenue generated via upsell methods, while cross-sell revenue is the amount of revenue generated via cross-sell methods.

Ba 111 - Brand awareness

Brand awareness is the degree to which your target market is familiar with your brand, product, or service.

Tc 112 - Time taken to complete action

This metric generally refers to the duration a user or customer spends to complete a specific action or task within a product or service. It can be a crucial part of understanding user behavior, engagement, and the overall user experience.

Factors affecting approach

St 2 - Start-up

A start-up is a business in the initial stages of its life cycle.

Ph 9 - Physical

A physical product sold to customers.

Su 10 - Scale-up

A scale-up business is a step up from a start-up. It’s achieved enough success to make the step up and begin the next stage of growth.

B2B 16 - B2B

B2B (business-to-business) refers to transactions between businesses.

Pl 17 - Product-led

Product-led growth is a strategy whereby a business uses the product itself as the key driver in its customer acquisition efforts.

Gr 18 - Growth

Attributing a figure to your business’ success and performance; i.e., how much has it developed (grown), between X and Y.

B2C 34 - B2C

B2B (business-to-customer) refers to transactions between a business and a customer.

Sl 35 - Sales-led

This is a traditional business model used by companies in which sales teams and strategies are implemented.

En 36 - Enterprise

The term ‘enterprise business’ is often associated with ventures of an entrepreneurial nature. It’s an alternative phrase for a for-profit business or company.

B2D 52 - B2D

B2D (business to developer) is a type of sales whereby products are predominantly targeted towards developers or engineers.

Cl 53 - Customer-led

A customer-led companies is develop their policies, products, and goals centered on the desires and needs of their target audience.

B2H 83 - B2H

B2H (business-to-human).

Ml 84 - Marketing-led

Companies adopting a marketing-led approach to identify their customer’s needs by conducting market research before releasing their product or service.

Sa 113 - SaaS

SaaS (software-as-a-service) is a cloud-based model that enables its customers to access software via the internet.

Cu 114 - Community-led

Community-led processes are characterized by a collective, community approach, not exclusively that of a business or organization.

Ingredients to a strong PMM

Cbr 58 - Collaboration

Working with others in your team and across the business to achieve a common goal.

Cfs 59 - Customer focus

Product marketers need to focus on the ways in which they can support the customer at every single point in the customer journey.

Da 60 - Data analysis

Data analysis involves assessing data sets and drawing conclusions to inform future strategies.

Cf 61 - Cross-functional

Cross-functional working involves working with teams outside of product marketing, sharing different skill sets to facilitate success.

Ct 62 - Curiosity

The willingness to ask questions, seek new ideas, and learn new practices.

Cy 63 - Creativity

Applying your imagination to think of new ideas that aren’t being used at other companies to help your product/service stand out from the crowd.

Pb 64 - Problem-solving

Thinking outside of the box to come up with practical solutions to potential obstacles being faced by your team.

Le 65 - Leadership

Product marketing leaders have the ability to motivate and inspire their fellow team members, encouraging them during tough times, and praising them when they do things well.

Pg 66 - Progressive

A progressive product marketer embraces the opportunity to take on new challenges, experiment with different approaches, and improves their knowledge with new training and career opportunities.

Mu 67 - Multitasking

Product marketing is a busy profession. You need to have the ability to work on more than one task at the same time.

Tt 68 - Tactical thinking

Tactical thinking involves reacting to things as they happen, and in many cases, anticipating such events with a predetermined plan of action.

Or 69 - Organisation

The ability to organise your own workload, and coordinate the work of others.

Ac 70 - Accountability

Taking responsibility for your own actions and mistakes.

Pm 71 - Project management

The ability to oversee and manage a project from the ideation phase, all the way through to completion.

Cm 90 - Communication

Communication provides an opportunity for product marketers to bring their skill sets to the forefront and boost understanding of the role within the organization.

Pn 91 - Product orientation

Product orientation is when a company manufactures products guided by its respective strengths, as opposed to what the customer demands.

Em 92 - Empathy

An empathetic approach is essential in product marketing. It’s a contributory factor in customer retention, innovation and high morale amongst staff, and supports wellbeing during challenging times.

Ad 93 - Advocacy

Advocacy is an important personality trait for a product marketer because it allows them to demonstrate their perspectives to the community, whilst also serving as a voice for change.

In 94 - Insatiability

It’s essential for product marketers to maintain an insatiable appetite to continually progress and improve; there’s no such thing as ‘reaching the ceiling’.

Pv 95 - Productivity

In product marketing, time is of the essence: make it count!

Sr 96 - Strategy

Successful product marketers don’t make things up on the spot and see where the wind takes them - they strategize. Map out every stage of your strategy, and ask yourself “Why?”. If you’re unable to justify your actions, go back to the drawing board.

Pt 97 - Prioritization

As we’ve mentioned already, time truly waits for no product marketer. Focus on the things that need to be done, then complete the ‘nice-to-have’ tasks later.

Cw 98 - Copywriting

Copywriting plays a critical role in supporting product marketing teams position their brand, demonstrate the value of the product, and highlight USPs to the target audience.

Li 99 - Liaising

“Teamwork makes the dream work…”

Rb 100 - Relationship building

Focus your efforts on building unassailable bonds with your team members, customers, and other companies. Nobody wants to do a favour for somebody they don’t like.

Pa 101 - Passion

Product marketing isn’t a role you can do half-heartedly. Go into every day with a vigor and appetite like no other; give nobody a reason to question your commitment to the cause.

Ag 102 - Agility

If you’re an agile product marketer, you’re able to adapt to market changes and amend your strategy, accordingly. Do everything in your power to ensure you don’t get left behind - you could struggle to catch up.