Marketing’s Value Across the Product Lifecycle

When launching new products, we see many manufacturers utilize marketing strictly as the "announcement team," brought in to tell the world about a new product through creative assets. But this narrow view misses an important truth that we’ve observed: marketing can have a much greater impact with sustained involvement across the entire product lifecycle.

A product's success isn't driven primarily from a single launch moment. It's cultivated over time with critical involvement from several internal departments and the distribution network. When everyone is working together well, products have a great chance of success.

The Product Marketing Ecosystem

In many industries, there has long been a dedicated Product Marketing seat in the org chart that is separate from the general Marketing team. This is particularly common in the B2B and B2C spaces where products are often created to address very specific market gaps or customer pains. The expectation of Product Marketers is to develop an understanding of how a specific product serves a specific market and customer.

While some manufacturing businesses—including those with a dealer distribution model—are less likely to have dedicated Product Marketing roles or teams, there has always been value in a well-understood product-market fit (note: some OEMs do indeed have roles like this under another name like the head of marketing for a given vehicle line or category). When done well, those responsibilities are absorbed by a well-resourced marketing team that collaborates closely and continually with an ecosystem of other go-to-market teams:

• Product teams develop new solutions that address portfolio gaps or seize market opportunities
• Sales teams leverage distributor, partner, and customer relationships to drive revenue growth
• Dealer networks represent the OEM to customers through localized, hands-on experiences
• Marketing generates customer understanding and amplifies brand and product stories
• Service teams foster lasting customer relationships through quality service and support

These functions must combine and conquer to produce the greatest product impact—they can’t simply be independent functions passing information. In our experience, Marketing is the team best-equipped to play the role of connector.

Marketing’s Value Across the Product Lifecycle

When a customer is in the market to buy a product, they aren’t likely to buy something they can’t see themselves in from a company they don’t know about. This is exactly what marketing is intended to solve: grow brand awareness and communicate product fit to the right audiences at the time.

For that to happen, the Marketing team can’t operate siloed away from the other pillars of the product marketing ecosystem—they must be accountable for driving value across four key lifecycle stages: Develop, Prepare, Launch, and Sustain.

Develop: Informing What to Build

While product teams typically lead research and development activities, marketing’s role is essential in surfacing market intelligence and developing a foundational product story.

• Conducting customer and competitive research that informs product decisions
• Analyzing first-party customer data generated by marketing, sales, service, and dealers
• Developing value propositions that reflect a shared understanding of target customers
• Partnering with sales, service, and dealers to test messaging concepts with key audiences

As an example, we recently synthesized ten years of first party marketing data for an RV manufacturer client and observed that most of their repeat customers buy the same product or upgrade to something more expensive, and also saw that second-time buyers are more likely to engage with digital brand experiences than any other repeat buyer cohort. When this client decides to add a new product to their portfolio, their existing marketing data can inform messaging and audience testing based on past buying behaviors.

Prepare: Priming the Distribution Engine

Before any new product is released there are critical steps that must be taken to prepare the company and its dealer partners to sell and service the product. This is a critical partnership moment between the marketing and product teams, with marketing having clear responsibilities.

• Craft and test the story and creative that marketing, sales, and dealers will deliver to the market
• Partner with the product team to facilitate training for sales, service, and dealer teams
• Develop on-brand and on-time sales enablement materials for customer-facing teams
• Build anticipation amongst target audiences by teasing new products ahead of the reveal
• Establish product performance measurement frameworks and reporting cadences

Only a small percentage of the product’s target audience will actually be in-market to buy when the product is announced. To ensure you don’t miss out on any day-one sales, a pre-reveal ad push might “freeze the market” effectively convincing some in-market shoppers to wait to make a purchase until the new product can be in their consideration set.

Launch: Coordinating the Reveal

There is a saying that goes something like “product teams release a new product, but marketing launches new products.” This applies to the B2B2X manufacturing space as well. Put simply, marketing’s job is to facilitate a big launch moment that draws attention and drives immediate brand lift.

• Orchestrate the official announcement, keeping sales and dealer teams informed throughout
• Jump-start sales with specialized programs, such as limited-time offers or dealer co-marketing
• Deploy ad creative with aspirational lifestyle content while layering in compelling product details
• Refresh and expand existing brand awareness campaigns to incorporate the new product story
• Synthesize and share immediate marketing data and activate rollout contingencies as needed

We often talk with our clients about building contingencies into their marketing plans. It’s important to have a structure for activating alternate or additional tactics as needed. For product launches, this could be a secondary ad push that targets a different audience based on early sales results, or it could be adjustments to website shopping tools to refine the digital buying experience.

Sustain: Supporting Long-Term Success

When done well, product launches are major marketing moments for any manufacturer, but the impacts can fade quickly. This is where marketing needs to play the long game: you can’t just make a splash, you have to maintain market presence so your product is considered whenever a customer begins their buying journey.

• Integrate the new product’s story and audiences into always-on awareness marketing tactics
• Partner with the sales team to regularly refresh sales tools and develop relevant, current case studies
• Enable dealers with ongoing channel programs, co-marketing initiatives, and local market support
• Synthesize customer, marketing, and competitive data to share with the product and service teams
• Keep the entire ecosystem informed of marketing performance and trends on a recurring basis

When we build marketing plans for our manufacturing clients we work to build the right mix of always-on, periodic, and one-time tactics. Because most of them launch new products every year, we think of these as periodic spikes in focus on specific products, followed by an intentional integration of that product into our always-on tactics.

Taking Action Tomorrow (Or Whenever Your Next Product Launches)

Whether your next product launch is tomorrow or next year, start by examining your current approach to storytelling and measurement. Are you investing enough time in testing and learning during pre-launch? Have you planned how your new product will integrate into ongoing marketing after the initial splash? Consider these immediate actions:

• If you're pre-launch: Start testing different messages and audiences now, even if your product isn't complete. The insights will shape both your launch and long-term strategy.
• If you're launching soon: Plan beyond the launch moment by mapping out how this product will fit into your sustained market presence.
• If you're post-launch: Look for opportunities to integrate your product story into your always-on marketing while maintaining the right balance of lifestyle and product-specific content.

Remember: Launch success isn't measured in days or weeks - especially in manufacturing where sales cycles often extend beyond a year and a small portion of your target audience is ready to buy at any time. By thinking about both the immediate impact and long-term integration from the start, you'll set yourself up for sustained success.