Positioning and Segmentation: What Product Marketers Have Forgotten

I am spending a lot of time right now talking to high tech marketing and business executives. Everyone, justifiably, is focused on their sales numbers, even to the extent of relegating product marketing toward a field marketing role. There's no doubt that any activity in this economy that more closely aligns marketing and sales is a good thing, and the more competitive, product and business information that the sales team has, the better.

However, some very valuable product marketing fundamentals are being lost in the process, the sophisticated use of positioning and segmentation. When product marketing is focused on field marketing, positioning becomes messaging and value proposition. That's great for an individual deal or even types of prospects, but it's not sufficient to move markets and increase market share.

Markets, of course, are dynamic, even in struggling economies. If your company still innovates, and your competitors become vulnerable, then there is even more of a need for positioning to be treated as a frontline asset that aligns your product and services to the changing needs of the market.

Sophisticated segmentation enables the product marketer to fully exploit the positioning of their products and services. With sophisticated segmentation, the product marketer is able to multiply their opportunity to penetrate a market through innovation in packaging, pricing, partner relationships and go-to-market strategies and tactics. In fact, it's almost like three dimensional chess. Effective segmentation should encompass such factors as size, geography, role, vertical, and even business model. For example, enterprise staffing and recruiting firms contain different business models that can be exploited through segmentation. These business models include organic growth, M&A, franchising and several others, by vertical.

I just saw a government economic forecast that predicts unemployment will be at 9.2% one year from now. The overall condition of the economy is not changing that rapidly. Product marketers need to look at more effective and sophisticated strategies to increase market share, beyond tweaking the efficiencies of the sales team.