How to market software products: 7 easy steps

Software is a multi-billion dollar business—there are millions of apps available on the marketplace today. So how do you draw attention and customers to your new product? 

This is the question entrepreneurs, startups, and even the biggest, most established software companies ask themselves every day. Marketing software products takes skill, savvy, and a certain degree of digital chops. You need a firm grasp on product marketing and a solid strategy. And it doesn’t hurt to have a template to help you map out your early plans.

What is product marketing?

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of product marketing for software, let’s define product marketing more broadly. When it comes to selling software, apps, and other digital products, product marketing comprises all the marketing efforts, initiatives, tasks, and strategies it takes to bring the product to market successfully. 

Under the general umbrella of digital product marketing, you might engage in activities such as:

• Market research

• Focus groups

• Content marketing 

• Influencer marketing

• Social media marketing 

• Sales enablement 

All of these efforts aim to get the word out quickly, increase a software product’s reputation and cachet, and convert interested consumers into paying customers. In that way, marketing software products is not entirely different from marketing any other kind of product—a toaster, a sports car, a pair of rain boots. 

How does product marketing differ for software solutions?

But in some ways, marketing software is quite different from marketing other goods. Because software often includes multiple buyers and influencers, complex or custom pricing models, and long deal cycles, it requires a different skill set and approach.

Software products are used and purchased in a variety of ways—which makes launching new software products a complex, nuanced process. You first need to create brand awareness, particularly if your product’s function is “cutting edge”, or outside the bounds of what consumers know. While physical advertising (think billboards, direct mail campaigns, or events) can be extremely effective, most software companies spend the bulk of their marketing budget on digital channels. 

Read on for seven ways to develop a digital marketing strategy for software.

A 7-step digital product marketing strategy

Many of the steps to developing your software’s product marketing strategy are preparatory—as the old saying goes, measure twice, cut once. If you invest the time to research the market, your industry, competitors, and potential customers, you’ll be able to create a more precise, logical plan. 

Here are the steps we recommend if you’re  bringing a new software product to market.

1. Know your product and where it fits in the market

Your app is incredible—to you, this is an obvious fact. But can you convince an investor that it’s going to be wildly profitable? Even the smartest ideas don’t always translate into big sales.

Typically, marketers conduct exercises such as market research, focus groups, case studies, and expert reviews to answer relevant questions such as:

1. What problem does this product solve for the customer?

2. How is this product better than competitor products?

3. Who is the target audience?

As you’re conducting all this research, you’ll need a system for recording the data you collect. There are plenty of ways you can record information, from a pad of paper to the Voice Memo app on your smartphone. Ideally, use a tool that enables you to write down all kinds of findings, categorize them, refer back to them as you go, and share them with other people on your marketing team.

• For example, use Airtable’s User Research Template to record all of your findings as you conduct UX research, user outreach, usability testing sessions, and customer interviews. 

2. Know your competitors

You have this idea for a rideshare app that will connect riders with private drivers around the city. Or a similar idea, but worldwide lodging — travelers can find homes to “borrow” wherever they go. Both excellent ideas! Except… well… they’ve been done.

That’s not to say that you can’t be the next Uber or Airbnb. Just because an app idea already exists in the market doesn’t mean your upstart can’t beat it. But to win against an established incumbent, you have to really understand the existing landscape. Your research should answer questions such as:

1. Who are this product’s main competitors? (Note: in some cases, your competition isn’t a similar product at all—an events company might say their primary competitor is a TV streaming service.)

2. What does this product do that the competition cannot? 

3. Where is it weaker than competitor products? 

4. How are competitors marketing their version of the app, and to whom?

A SWOT analysis is an effective exercise here. SWOT stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This product marketing exercise can help you understand exactly how your software product stacks up against the competition.

• Use Airtable’s SWOT Analysis Template

• Or use Airtable’s Competitive Analysis Template

3. Know your customers

Along with gaining a deep understanding of the competition, you need an even deeper understanding of your potential audience. In your research, focus on developing customer personas, key messaging, and value propositions. You may find that you have more than one ideal persona to market to, which will entail multiple versions of value propositions and messaging. Use a tool that allows you to organize everything.

Hint: A relational database like Airtable is fantastic for this sort of research because you can create individual records for personas, messaging, value propositions, and more, then apply those records to different bases and projects within your product marketing planning.

4. Develop product pricing and initial offers

Software-as-a-service, or SaaS, products are often sold under a subscription model, where the buyer agrees to pay a certain annual, monthly, or per-use fee. Another popular model for SaaS products is the “freemium” model, where the product is free, but available for a paid upgrade that unlocks crucial desirable features. The hope is that a low barrier to entry will encourage adoption. After developing a certain degree of trust with the brand, and dependence on its utility, customers will opt in to a paid version of the software. 

Companies often adjust and evolve their pricing models over time, but your team should be aligned on a preliminary model before you launch a product marketing strategy. Your pricing decisions should also include any initial promotional offers, discounts, or trials.

5. Develop your product marketing strategy

Initially, developing a product marketing strategy will be the heaviest lift of this entire process. You’ll need to think about:

• Which channels to use for your marketing, including social media, email campaigns, and paid advertising — best practice being to use as many as your budget and resources allow.

• Who will be involved in your product marketing efforts, including outside vendors or freelancers that will require insight into your marketing plan and access to information.

• How you’ll target customers at every stage of their buying process, from those who’ve never heard of your digital product to those who need just one last nudge before opting in.

As you formulate and enact your product marketing strategy, you’ll need to put processes in place to ensure that everyone involved can collaborate and communicate fluidly. Product marketing plans typically involve coordination with various departments, vendors, and agencies to manage initiatives such as  website design and launch, paid and traditional marketing efforts, influencer marketing, live and virtual events, and more.

^{“The 2020 Omnichannel Statistics Report reveals that marketers using at least three channels for campaigns enjoyed 287% more sales than those only targeting a single channel.” — Linchpin}

6. Develop your content marketing materials

Once you’ve created a product marketing strategy, it’s time to start doing the actual marketing. For most product owners, content marketing is the first push.

Content marketing is the strategic creation and sharing of digital materials such as blog posts, email campaigns, social media posts, ebooks, and more. It involves not just written content but photos, videos, infographics, and memes. The purpose of content marketing is to educate your audience about your digital product without coming across as a “hard sell.”

Start with a template to keep all your content straight.

• Use Airtable’s Content Marketing Management Template

• Read about How to build a sales content creation pipeline

7. Define realistic metrics and KPIs for success 

The only way to know if your product marketing efforts are successful is to measure them. But “successfully marketing this product” is not a measurable goal. To assess your success, you need to define what “great job” means—product sales? Subscriptions? Social media followers? Press mentions? All of the above? How many?

One way marketers track their progress and success is with objectives and key results, or OKRs. With this system, you lay out objectives that you want to achieve, then map them to key results. In the example below, taken from an Airtable template, an objective might be “Build company recruiting brand,” but a specific key result looks like: “Sponsor 3 recruiting events” or “Publish 2 blog posts articulating company hiring philosophy.” One objective might have several key results attached to it. 

• Use Airtable’s OKR Tracking Template

Best practices for digital-only products

The way people discover and purchase digital products (such as software, apps, and websites), follows certain patterns. If you’re marketing a fun lifestyle app, you might find that fast-converting impulse purchases make of the majority of your sales. If you’re selling B2B software, you’ll find that buyers conduct a lot of research before making the final decision.

Here are a few best practices for marketing digital products, which you can assess for relevance to your marketing strategy:

Use video to show your product in action

Video is a fantastic way to demonstrate how your digital product works and convince people to use and buy it. High-quality, professionally produced video can be expensive to create, but even a simple, low-production explainer can help bring your product to life. According to the experts at Hubspot, 87 percent of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI, and 93 percent say it's an important part of their marketing strategy.

Create interactive elements to engage your audience

Other types of dynamic elements can engage customers-to-be: calculators, virtual tours, quizzes, and other digital doohickeys people can use to learn more about your product.

Stand out in crowded inboxes

If you have email addresses for your prospects, email marketing continues to be one of the most cost-effective marketing chnnels. As the conventional wisdom goes, marketing emails generate $38 for every $1 spent. Create email marketing campaigns that are targeted, clever, visually compelling, and have a clear call to action, or CTA.

• Use Airtable’s Email Marketing Template

Keep an eye on the competition

You analyzed your competition early in your research—don’t take your eye off of the ball. This means staying on top of their product development and their marketing campaigns. Tools such as Wachete can automatically scan your competitor’s websites on a regular basis and input any changes in messaging into an Airtable base so you can keep track of the competition.

Start marketing your digital product

If you’re just getting started with digital product marketing, or product marketing for software in general, you’ll need to establish a single source of truth for your planning and campaigns. Marketers use Airtable for specific use cases (such as a product launch plan or an ongoing social media calendar), and find themselves bringing more and more of their work into an Airtable base. Use any of the templates below to get started.

• Marketing campaign tracker

• Product planning template

• Product launch template