Product Marketing: How to Connect Marketing and Sales to Generate More Revenue

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Product marketing is a branch of marketing that aims to generate demand for the products and services that a company offers, directly contributing to the sales team's arguments.

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Key takeaways from this article:
To generate more demand and connect the right products with the right customers, product marketing must identify the ICP and map its purchase journey.
It is the duty of product marketing to develop the tone of voice for their marketing campaigns and use data and research to target them to the right audience.
By linking product marketing to sales, it is possible to reduce the sales cycle, increase sales team productivity and make it easier to deal with objections.
Furthermore, content marketing is also vital for producing materials that strengthen salespeople’s skills and abilities , increasing sales results.
Product marketing plays a key role in loyalty strategies, as it helps salespeople identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and gathers customer feedback that helps develop new product features. Learn more about loyalty in: The step-by-step guide to loyalty
Professionals in this department must be the spokespersons for the products. To do so, they need to define the product's positioning, have a good understanding of its ICP (ideal customer profile) and market, and develop a narrative that is capable of connecting the right people to a given product .

In this context, product marketing is essential to attract, convert, win over and retain customers.

However, there is another very relevant perspective on the actions of the product marketing team and it is related to the training of the sales force .

The product marketing team is aware of all facets of the product and, in addition, also knows its essence, as well as its competitive edge.

So, in practice, product marketing can produce materials so that salespeople know exactly how to approach each product or service, implement them and present them to their sales opportunities .

This way, salespeople are better prepared to deal with objections and customer doubts, they can visualize the viability of each project, identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and thus close more deals.

Content marketing is a discipline that should be studied by all companies that want to keep their products relevant in the market and make their sales team more productive.

If your organization cares about this, this content is perfect for you!

Read on to learn more about how to connect product marketing and sales to drive more revenue and longevity for your business.

After all, what is product marketing?
Product marketing is one of the many marketing paths. As we said at the beginning, the main objective of product marketing is to generate demand for the products and services that a company offers.

It’s not really about simply generating demand. It’s about connecting the right products to the right people. This means that it will be necessary to develop strategies to capture and convert the products to sell.

However, market research and studies related to the needs and expectations of active customers are also of strong interest to product marketing. This knowledge generates fundamental inputs to direct customer acquisition actions .

This is what makes product marketing efforts so strategic, and it is the reason why this discipline is cross-functional and relates to other important departments of a company in order to generate direct impacts on their respective results.

To give you an idea, the Product Marketing Alliance 's State of Product Marketing 2021 report showed that Product Marketing teams are mainly involved with Product Development (89%), Marketing (85%) and Sales (77%) teams .

What are product marketing skills?
To understand in a practical way how product marketing can strengthen the sales list of turkey cell phone numbers team, see what the main product marketing skills are:

Know the ICP (ideal customer profile) and map your customer purchasing journey ;
Define the product's positioning in the market;
Develop a narrative for the product;
Identify the competitive advantage of the product/service and highlight it;
Establish a clear message that connects the product with its potential customers;
Study the product life cycle ;
Manage releases;
Plan content that accelerates customer decision-making;
Create and distribute sales enablement content.
You can already see that these skills are a valuable source of insights that can serve as input for sales strategies , right?

Let's understand in more detail how these two areas are related below.

How is product marketing connected with the sales team?
We can already tell you: product marketing has everything to do with sales strategies!

This discipline should be taken seriously by all organizations that value the relevance and longevity of their business. This is because it is the duty of product marketing to set the tone for their marketing campaigns and direct them to the right audience.

Product marketers study the product life cycle in detail and understand its role throughout the customer purchase journey. This allows them to identify the best time to implement their sales approach.

This optimizes the purchasing decision-making process , and salespeople can identify and close deals more quickly.

During sales strategies, which are driven by product marketing efforts, indicators and metrics are generated that provide feedback and improve marketing actions.

In other words, one department strengthens the other, and that is why it is essential that they work in harmony.

The benefits of aligning product marketing and sales force
When this working relationship is well established, many benefits are perceived. Among them, we can mention:

reduction of the sales cycle;
increased revenue;
higher customer loyalty rates;
increased cross-sell and upsell ;
greater productivity of the teams involved;
more agility in validating the actions of each department;
ease in resolving customer queries and overcoming objections;
product alignment with ICP demands.
In addition to these benefits, we also highlight the production of content aimed at training the sales team. This is a fundamental aspect of product marketing and is directly linked to sales enablement .

We will explain in more depth how this works in the next few lines. Stay tuned!

Sales enablement and product marketing: how to empower the sales team?
If you are not yet familiar with the term “sales enablement”, we suggest reading the article Sales Enablement: what it is and how to use it to boost your team’s performance to learn more about the subject.

In short, sales enablement is a strategy that aims to strengthen the sales force. To this end, methodologies, tools, training, data and analysis are used.

Among these, our keyword here is: training . This is where product marketing professionals come in, creating content that talks about features and presenting the differences between products and services.

This content is strongly related to leads that have high purchasing potential, that is, they already know their needs well and have already identified a suitable solution for the challenge in question.

At this point, leads evaluate the differences between each alternative and compare the solutions to make a decision. Product marketing is crucial to converting leads at this stage , as the team knows exactly what message to convey and, above all, how to convey it.

However, in addition to converting more sales, bottom-of-funnel content is an important material for training the sales team and raising their awareness about the product they sell. This means that salespeople, through this content, are aware of the main features that the product offers and position it more strategically in their negotiations.

How does this work in practice?
Let’s break this down. Take a look at how customers’ decision-making processes work in general:

The 6 stages of the purchasing decision process
In the awareness stage, for example, the product marketing team can distribute content with research or articles about specific features to a potential audience.

Or, create content with updated competitive resources and distribute it to all business opportunities that are in the evaluation stage.

This content is aimed at the sales team, which accesses the knowledge necessary to facilitate the entire purchasing decision process.

In view of this, the contents must:

be developed with a view to practical assimilation of content;
be easily accessed at all stages of the commercial process;
have the seller's language and the most appropriate format for the team.
Furthermore, the product marketing team must be open to feedback and apply it to guide the necessary adjustments and improve content.

Better content empowers salespeople, who in turn sell more, sell better, and generate more revenue.

Is it clear how product marketing works to train salespeople?

Now, see what types and examples of content can be produced for this purpose.

What content can product marketing produce for the sales team?
As we said, one of the pillars of sales enablement is sales training . And, as you've seen so far, product marketing can develop and distribute content that's crucial to this end.

In this topic we list four examples. Check them out below!

1. Product videos
Product videos are great materials to inform the seller about how the products work. Especially those that are more easily understood in a visual way, such as technological solutions and SaaS platforms .

These are brief demonstrations of the product and its features. They are also recommended so that the seller has an overview of the limitations and possibilities of the solution.

An example of content in this format is the video below, where we at Agendor explain how our application for Android and iOS works:


2. Product pages
Product pages act as a guide that contains all the products' features, mentioning what the solution does or does not include.

If your product’s features are separated into different plans, this page is even more necessary. A simple table helps salespeople have their answers at their fingertips if customers ask about the terms and conditions of each plan.

See an example of a product page about Agendor CRM:


Additionally, product pages can also inform visitors how features apply to their daily lives. Here’s another example:


3. Blog content about product updates
To keep the sales team up to date with product updates, the product marketing team can develop materials focused solely on feature updates.

This means that salespeople are always prepared to receive new demands and do not let them pass by due to lack of knowledge.

Product update content can be brief and is highly targeted at the bottom of the funnel.