4 Tips for Successful Product Marketing
By Eric Corl

When it comes to product marketing, everyone thinks they are an expert, but few can produce results. Why is this so? Most of the problem comes from marketing books, seminars, and courses that detract from the heart of marketing: translating features into benefits. Much of today's marketing is based on product hype . However, the simple truth of the matter is that people buy things to gain pleasure or avoid some sort of pain. It is critical to understand this as it is the supporting motivation for every purchase no matter how little or large it may be. Think about the last two items you purchased. Why did you buy them? You can boil every purchase down to gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

That being said, there are four key tips to better connect with your customers:

New Product Marketing - Promoting Before the Product Launch
By Scott Hepburn

The Challenge: Your company is launching a new product, but you don't even have a prototype. For the new product to succeed, you need to generate buzz in advance of the release. How do you market a product you can't show to your customers because it doesn't exist yet?

Removing Inventoritis from the Innovation Process; Lessons from Thomas Edison, World's Greatest Product Marketer
by Peter P. Roosen & Tatsuya Nakagawa

To make R&D dollars count, the optimum product development and commercialization processes are marketing-led, engineering-supported and driven by customer feedback and insights with a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape and one's place in it.

Tom Peters - 1985 COLUMN ARCHIVES
No Such Thing as a Commodity
Posted on January 21, 1985.

NO SUCH THING AS A COMMODITY

By Tom Peters

If I were allowed to be business czar for one minute, and were granted one wish, I know exactly what I would do. I would expunge the word commodity from the businessperson's language. I detest it!

The 3Cs of Successful Positioning - Part III: Get your channel involved in positioning. It's good for both of you.
By Lawson Abinanti, Messages that Matter

If there's a disconnect between your channel and your marketing team, neither will reach their full potential. In this column, you'll see how involving your channel in the positioning process is a key ingredient in successful marketing and sales. It also helps establish and maintain a relationship that pays off for both you and your channel. Whether you sell direct, your channel is the sales department down the hall, or your channel partners are value-added resellers (VARs), it works like a charm.

It also takes a lot of work. But it's worth the effort because the benefits are so compelling. Channel involvement equals improvement - in relations, and in the quality of research you receive to support the positioning process. Getting closer to your channel brings you closer to the battleground, so you can gain a better understanding of what your channel needs to win. An unexpected benefit might be the most important of all - your sales team learns how to communicate more effectively with prospects.

This is the third column in a series on the 3Cs of successful positioning - your Customer, your Competition and your Channel - to help you understand how each is vital to developing a unique and effective marketing position for your B2B software or service. In my last column, I explained how your Channel gives you fast access to the other 2Cs - your Customer and Competition, and can provide important information about them and from them. The next column will emphasize how critical it is to really know your customer; more to the point, why you need to know your customer as well as you know your product.

3Cs of Positioning - Part II: The Channel

To speed up the positioning process. Start with your channel
By Lawson Abinanti, Messages that Matter

There are obvious benefits of maintaining good relations with your channel, whether you sell direct or through a reseller. One not-so-obvious benefit is the pivotal role your channel can play in positioning your business-to-business (B2B) software for success. In this article, the first in a series on the 3Cs of Positioning - Channel, Customer and Competition - we'll explore how the channel can enhance your positioning process. (The articles are adapted from our monthly workshops offered in Seattle, and other parts of the country. See sidebar.)

"The Three C's of Successful Positioning"
By Lawson Abinanti, Messages that Matter

Effective positioning of B2B software products is written in the key of C. Actually, three C's. Because positioning requires a thorough understanding of your Customers, your Competition and your Channel.

Getting Management to buy-in on positioning
By Lawson Abinanti, Messages that Matter

When members of your executive management team communicate with key marketinfluencers, are they delivering the right message? Or winging it? Are your productpeople muttering that management doesn't listen to them - or worse? Ouch!Did I hit a sensitive nerve? If the message that key influencers hear from topmanagement is different from the one going out in the rest of your marketingcommunications, you've got a problem and a half. Not only is confusion inevitable, butyour brass is not going to enjoy being put in an awkward spot.The best way to solve this problem is to make sure it doesn't happen. Adopt apositioning process that includes executive management approval of your messagestrategies.

Branding and positioning: What's the difference? And can you afford it?
By Lawson Abinanti, Messages that Matter

A few years ago, I had just finished an all day meeting with our company's new ad agency when I got an uneasy feeling that, despite the agreeable head nodding and diligent note-taking, we were not really synched up. My product marketing team had presented positioning statements for our product offerings in several broad categories (financials, e-business, supply chain management, etc.), plus the product suite. The agency's mission was to use the positioning to create our 'brand'.

5 Steps for Developing a Tag Line for Your Product, Business, or Website
By Bobette Kyle

A tag line is the one or two line descriptor that often comes after a product logo or company name. It is one of those things that looks simple but isn't. Large companies pay advertising agencies a lot of money to develop tag lines for their companies and brands.

Many companies, however, do not have a large enough budget to hire an advertising agency. If you belong to one of these small budget businesses, do not despair. With some creativity and persistence, you can develop your own tag line.

First, decide what you want to communicate with your tag line.

If you have a positioning statement and/or unique selling proposition, write them down. Your tag line should reinforce them.

Ask yourself these questions.

• Who are your customers?
• What benefits do you give your customers?
• What feelings do you want to evoke in your customers?
• What action are you trying to generate from your customers?
• How are you different from your competition?

Is Your Product Promise Really A Promise?
By Brian Lawley
President, 280 Group

A product promise is the implied commitment made to customers by a company. It embodies everything that the company, brand, marketing, features and benefits and product description convey. Put simply, a product promise is kept if the customer has an experience that is at least as good as what they expected based on what the company told them beforehand.

Products that keep their promises tend to build loyal fan bases and succeed. Products that don't, often fail (though if they solve a burning need for the customer and are the only available solution they sometimes succeed anyway).