The Importance of Product Marketing Throughout the Customer Lifecycle

Product marketers understand that an exceptional customer experience leads to long-term success. A well-crafted product story resonates with the audience and highlights product value, forming a connection beyond the business transaction. When touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle reflect the narrative created, product marketing makes a substantial impact. Here are a few reasons why this is important. ♻

🏅 You only get one chance to make a first impression, so the post-purchase experience needs to live up to the messaging. If you tout that implementation and time-to-value are seamless and quick, operations should reflect that. Here, product marketers can collaborate with customer experience teams to examine processes and identify areas that could be improved. Sending customers a survey around 30 days after implementation is also an excellent way to gain insights.

🔎 As customers interact with the product, there may be additional opportunities to gain insights to gauge effectiveness, ease of use, and other attributes against the value prop. Does the product genuinely live up to how intuitive you say it is? Are features performing as expected? Mechanisms to collect feedback via customer support, account management, advisory boards, and in-product surveys are some options. Analysis of this feedback can be shared with product management to help identify product enhancements.

🏢 Product marketing and customer experience are interdependent and can elevate or fall short of the company brand. Product messaging is seamless and more compelling when elements of the brand story are weaved in. A leading product without an exceptional customer journey may fail to deliver what the brand advocates. On the flip side, a spectacular customer experience can enhance a mediocre product. When both align, the brand builds trust, fosters loyalty, and transforms customers into raving fans.

😁 Raving fans are one of the greatest assets for a company and product marketers. They become a resource that can be used for testimonial statements, case studies, and joint presentations. Since authentic customer content is valuable for sales and marketing, cultivating a fan base is essential and much easier when the entire customer experience is exceptional.

Tightly integrating product marketing and customer experience can be a significant differentiator that propels a brand and is difficult for competitors to duplicate. As businesses strive to stand out in crowded markets, curating memorable end-to-end customer experiences is key to higher customer satisfaction and retention.