Product marketing is a process startups should begin before hiring a business development representative.
This playbook is for startups, scale-ups, or companies who are having an identity crisis.
It’s not about AI trends or how to use Claude Code. This is about fundamental processes, some of which you are already familiar with. It will help you identify potential gaps in your go-to-market strategy.
It’s for leaders who want to start selling on the right foot or those who have already lanched several products in the market but are losing sight of their positioning.
In this guide, I will share with you our approach for evaluating go-to-market readiness. I hope you will find it useful.
Email me your feedback: avi.saha@klarbio.com
General information-
I have worked in marketing roles in the life science industry for 9 years, both as a full-time employee (ChemoMetec, Svar Life Science, and Visiopharm), and as a consultant with over a dozen vendors where my work centered on marketing communications and collaborating with sales, product, and marketing teams to improve positioning, brand awareness, and product communication.
Most of my work experience has been with companies selling products for research use, manufacturing (GMP), bioprocessing, and diagnostics. This work spans the entire pharma value chain from discovery to development to clinical trials to market access and included projects with 3 top 20 pharma companies.
I have an MSc in biomedical studies from a holistic medical college called the National University of Natural Medicine and a BSc in kinesiology and neuroscience from the University of Maryland, College Park. I completed further executive training at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in marketing strategy, digital transformation, and finance.
At KlarBio, we are turning commercialization of innovative life science products into a science. -
Product management owns the roadmap whereas product marketing shapes it with market research and insight. A product manager that is technical will shape the product. A commercial product manager on the other hand is according to our definition, a product marketer as well.
The product marketer or commercial product manager will take market insights, customer feedback, and competitive intelligence to improve the product. -
The difference is in the word “product," as strategic marketing can be applied to not-for-profit entities and other companies that do not sell products. For service firms, strategic marketing would employ identical processes as in product marketing to shape commercial strategy and the go-to-market roadmap.
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Companies selling innovative products, like those that claim to do things that were not before possible, must realize that a product will only be successful not because it is technically strong but because the market is willing to pay for it. Therefore, product marketing is essential in an industry that is naturally technical and can struggle to build commercial strategies based on evidence.
It’s also important because these companies acquire customers through sales-led approaches, where as in B2C tech customers can “add to cart” and “checkout” by themselves and do not need experts to show them how the product works.
That’s why companies try to sell first to understand the market but quickly encounter roadblocks when they skip over product marketing. Sales reps and business developers and then the “marketers” struggle when leadership has not built a strategy based on fundamental principles outlined in this ebook and numerous other strategy books, courses, and accelerator programs. -
There is no industry-wide consensus that we are aware of on the difference. Product commercialization however can start much earlier than product marketing as it can involve technology transfer from universities to company formation.
But job descriptions for these two terms largely overlap.
In our view, product commercialization is a term we favor, as B2B industries have an overly narrow view of product marketing, which is lowering its overall impact. -
We provide tailored strategies based on the unique gaps identified through our 2-4 week sprints. This plan is based on our 4-phase framework as depicted in this playbook. These strategies will involve positioning your product, interviewing buyers, and creating an evidence-based plan to acquire more customers, with the help of your external marketing partners (we guide them on messaging).
We also help educate your potential buyers with in-depth resources that we develop with your technical team, like application notes, white papers, and blogs that will bring more people to your website.