Solutions Marketing: The Evolution of Product Marketing
To look at their Web sites and read their collateral, you might think that the majority of b-to-b organizations have effectively made the transition into becoming “solutions providers.” Peel away the veneer, however, and we continue to see shockingly little evidence of a shift away from the same-old product focus. One of the major red flags is the lack of changes in the staffing and processes around product marketing, a function that should be dramatically impacted by a move toward solutions. Here we identify 10 critical product marketing activities that are retained in any transition to solutions marketing, albeit with different requirements and tasks.
1. Messaging: Instead of focusing on specific products and features, solutions marketers focus on value propositions and core business needs within specific solutions groups. The key is to build a strong solutions architecture that teaches prospects (as well as salespeople) how their problems can be better solved with a broader solutions versus a point product.
2. Positioning: Traditional product marketing compares one product to similar products within a competitive space; solutions marketing casts a wider net as it tries to solve a range of business pains. When positioning this change, it is important not to negate or cannibalize the value propositions of individual products, which for certain groups are still very viable on their own.
3. Defining target markets and buyers: Target markets for solutions are much wider than those for products, and must include the full range of audiences that play a role throughout the buying process. Product marketers must learn to work together and to leverage their individual target market exercises to understand commonalities that may lend themselves well to solutions positioning.
4. Launch plans: A product launch plan is a repeatable process with little variation: release dates are set; sales objectives are defined; customer service and sales are trained and armed with new collateral; and public relations efforts, analyst briefings and advertising campaigns are created and scheduled. A solutions launch should share the same repeatable nature, but will be much more complex, and involve numerous product marketers as well as sales readiness to have any chance of absorption and success.
5. Competitive threats and opportunities: Product marketing identifies competitors for each product and regularly tracks them. Selling solutions introduces the organization to a new universe of competitors, forcing marketers to cast a wider research net. A win/loss database should house relevant data to create institutional memory and expose additional opportunities and strategies for dealing with specific competitors.
6. Pricing: Marketing groups that influence pricing decisions typically produce a pricing book that details guidelines for each product and any available discounts. In pricing solutions, there is often a tendency to total the prices of the included products and services, an approach that not only ignores the realities of what the market will pay, but doesn’t take into consideration what the competition is charging. As a result, solutions require more complex pricing models, and should leverage the knowledge of other organizational constituents including sales and finance.
7. Demand creation programs: Product marketers are historically used to developing programs and incentives in a competitive fashion, as they are constantly trying to get the attention of sales to spend time on what they sell. A shift to solutions marketing means that these product marketers must now be collaborative, building, sharing, fielding and measuring programs together, and finding success not only when their own product is sold, but when it is part of a greater solution.
8. Collateral: The process for creating product collateral has historically been fairly straightforward; list features and benefits of the product on a data sheet or white paper, throw in a couple of customer quotes and post it on a sales portal for reps to decide which audience gets what piece. Solutions collateral must be created dynamically, in order to tailor it to the wide range of prospect needs and interactions that will now occur.
9. Sales tools: Similarly with collateral, sales tools need to take the “next step” in a solutions environment; specifically, salespeople should be able to search a Web portal or go through a guided process to find or create a targeted presentation or script. Customized Sales Communications (CSC) platforms can be helpful with this need, and are especially necessary once the number of solutions groups and options becomes sufficiently complex.
10. Sales and channel training: Product-focused training modules are relatively easy to create, as they generally go through a product’s features and competitive position. Marketers creating training modules for solutions will find that more in-person, interactive sessions are necessary to allow role playing and question/answer sections that cover the range of features and competition that sales reps will encounter when selling the solutions.
In summary, the move from product marketing to solutions marketing requires more than just flipping a switch or repackaging existing products and services. It requires an honest evaluation of current in-house marketing talent and, if necessary, the willingness to acquire the skills needed to make the transition happen. But the commitment to becoming a solutions marketer can reap numerous rewards, including a broader and more loyal customer base.
