The Pragmatic Marketing Framework

The Market-Driven Model for Managing & Marketing Technology Products

What exactly is pragmatic marketing, and what are some good examples of it, and most importantly how can you implement it?

Strap in my friend, it's time to take a deep dive!

Pragmatic Marketing is a product creation and marketing process that adapts itself based on what your customers want or desire from your product. During adaptation, the marketing strategy is tested, tested, and tested even more and re-adapted to make sure that the product is relevant to what the customers’ needs (and use cases) are and meets the customer’s expectations.

It's certainly helpful to know the rules before you jump into this. I have been in product-focused leadership roles in SaaS and Crypto and here is what I have come to understand:

Here are the Pragmatic Marketing rules:

1. An outside-in approach increases the likelihood of product success.
2. The answer to most of your questions is not in the building.
3. We are all pragmatic marketers.
4. If the product team doesn’t do its job, other departments will fill the void.
5. The building is full of product experts. Your company needs market experts.
6. Win/loss should be done by someone not involved in that sales effort.
7. Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.
8. Only build solutions for problems that are urgent, pervasive, and that the market will pay to solve.
9. Positioning focuses on the problems you solve.
10. Create a separate positioning document whenever the personas’ problems are different.
11. Name the product after positioning is finished.
12. Positioning drives execution.

Pragmatic marketing: Objectives and basic approach

The main objective of pragmatic marketing is to try to deliver products that exactly fit a user or prospect's needs and solve their problems. This is why it is considered to be so effective…if done right.

The key is the product adaptations and tests to ensure that the final delivered product will satisfy the target market and the expected user.

Pragmatic marketing examples

The first step of pragmatic marketing; what does the customer want? After this, the product is created based on customer needs/specs and then tested multiple times until the final product is completed. Here are several examples of product testing within the pragmatic framework.

Product life cycle

Pragmatic Marketing is never about pitching an already finished product to make the customer think that it is the product they want, without any real input from the customers themselves.

Rather, pragmatic marketing is focused on matching the product to the market’s needs during the product development process, then truly launching a product customers want as a result.

Product developers and marketers who use the pragmatic approach keep testing and revising the product, even after the first launch, so they can be sure it meets the user’s needs. They are concerned with creating a customer-centric product, then continuously improving it to sustain its product life cycle.

How to implement this approach?

• First, interview your customers and ask what they want from a product in your niche.
• Then, create a prototype for them that incorporates as many of their requests as possible.
• Once it’s ready, have a beta group of your customers test out the prototype.
• Collect their feedback on the prototype, and apply it to make a stronger second prototype of the product.
• Take the product to them again, hear what they have to say, and improve it further.
• Keep cycling through the testing and development processes until all the feedback you receive is positive
• Once all testers have given positive feedback, it is time to launch the product to the public.

Marketing channels

Many companies launch their products using splash parties and followed by marketing. What makes pragmatic marketing different is that it continues with the product’s life cycle.

Apple is an absolute master of pragmatic marketing, including in its use of multiple channels. the Apple marketing armada always creates a buzz about the rumored new iPhone. Weeks before the iPhone is launched, the customers always know exactly what to expect from the product.

Timing of launch

The best time to launch your product is when the customer’s curiosity is excellent. In case distractions come, create your diversion to help you get a perfect time to launch your product.

That will make your customers become your salesman. Perfect times to launch your product are during holidays, major national sports games, national television events, and industry trade show… or during your own brand’s consistently scheduled events that customers expect and love. Apple has effectively created its own “holiday” with its annual keynote events, where the company consistently launches its new products.

Positioning and messaging

Yes, we’re returning to Apple again for this example, because Apple knows exactly how to use positioning strategies in marketing. They used billboards and TV commercials to market their iPods when they first launched, and still use these strategies to market each latest iPhone. Apple also uses graphics to set the products in the mind of the customer.

For example, prior to the iPod launch, they placed posters of people enjoying listening to iPods on countless street walls, so buyers would not be confused about whether they would enjoy the new digital music player.

Pragmatic marketing framework: Why use it?

The pragmatic marketing framework offers many benefits, as it creates a standard language for your entire team and contains the blueprint of activities that are required to bring a profitable, problem-oriented product to the market. Of course, like any marketing strategy, it also carries some disadvantages.

How pragmatic marketing differs from agile development

Pragmatic marketing is very similar to agile software development.

• With both approaches, you must find out what the customer wants to buy, then test and re-adapt the software (or other product) until the final result evolves.
• And theoretically, both approaches revolve around the idea that presenting an optimum product in the right way will result in rapid sales.

Pragmatic marketing has been used in the tech industry because its concepts are similar to those of agile software development. However, meshing the two methods can create poor results.

Agile methodologies involve rapid changes in product requirements. Thus, it is an ideal method of dealing with inconsistent changes from product managers and executives.

However, agile methods cannot help a business if they fail to decide what must be built or give properties to competing concerns. That is why you can build software using agile marketing, but you won’t sell more software. Agile methodologies deliver products sooner, not necessarily products that people want to buy.

Many authors recommend agile development over methods like waterfall marketing if you’re working on a long-term, cyclical product development process. After all, agile marketing creates an emphasis on long-range planning in software development. It helps businesses develop products that people want to buy.

However, long-term plans do not capitalize on the feedback that has been capitalized incrementally. Either way, the product must help the business know the kind of product to build and the cost.

Pragmatic marketing targets software and hardware. Useful innovation not only listens to the market but also shows the market what they did not expect to be possible. (Like the iPhone, for example.)

Pragmatic marketing involves agile marketing methods because agile values and principles are useful in contributing to the success of the business. Pragmatic marketing addresses areas where agile methods are failing the company and recommends what must be done.

In conclusion

Every company that produces new products, introduces new solutions or consistently rolls out product upgrades uses a product roadmap. These roadmaps outline the vision and strategy of the product and facilitate the making of informed decisions for internal and external stakeholders.

However, traditional product roadmaps are becoming outdated.

Traditional roadmaps fail to show the vision of the problem the company is trying to solve. A good roadmap must bring out the exact problem to be addressed and explain why the prospects, customers, and the market must care.

Taking a more granular view, as in pragmatic marketing, ensures all aspects of the product development cycle are covered. It requires you to have all the info you need from customers on a high level so you can deliver the best solution to the market.