Many companies shortchange themselves when it comes to marketing their products by not developing a proper product marketing function within their companies. Product marketing is a critical element of a functional organization that positions and promotes products, pushes them into the market place, and pushes them into the channels that youre trying to develop. Without proper product marketing many companies actually expend needless sales resources and support resources to try to makeup for the shortcomings of not having this function inside their company.

A lot of companies during the slowdown years of 1999, 2000 and 2001 decided to start cutting marketing staff functions. Product marketing and product management were two areas that were furloughed or greatly cut back in the face of trying to cut staff expenses in the sales and marketing area. As companies are getting healthier and the economy is strong again, some businesses are hesitant to replace those people but they still need to do good product marketing whether it be for managing the existing products or for launching new ones.

If your company is struggling to come up with the margin dollars to support a full time product marketing function, you should consider outsourcing that function or bringing in a fractional product marketing manager from a staffing firm or a sales acceleration consulting company. This will allow you to still complete your vital product marketing functions product management functions and use fractional resources that cost a lot less than a full time equivalent. You can still get the critical tasking done that will support accelerating your sales.

If your company is thinking about how it can improve the performance and sales of its certain products in the marketplace, throwing more sales resources or more lead generation at the problem is not always the solution. Product marketing seeks to fill the gaps between sales, marketing, customer service, engineering, and help companies to propel or push additional revenues from specific product lines that theyre trying to grow.