Role, missions, and skills of the product manager

• Definitions of marketing.
• New concepts in marketing: Toward interactive marketing.
• The marketing approach: Market, needs, products, segmentation, targeting, positioning, marketing mix.
• Scope of marketing.
• Different types of marketing: Product, relationship-based, one-to-one, interactive.
• Viral communication.
• Job definition. The versatility of the product manager. Changes to the profession.
• Three key missions: Analyzing, recommending, implementing.
• Key factors to success.

A genuine internal and external interface

• Product manager: A team motivator.
• Marketing-sales synergy: Best practices.
• The advertiser-agency relationship.
• The agency brief: Funnel method.
• Evaluation grid after the brief.

Knowing your market

• Analyzing the company's environment: PESTEL. Macroeconomic analysis.
• The marketing plan.
• Different sources of monitoring.
• Looking for external issues.
• Analyzing and classifying competitors.
• Analyzing Porter's forces.
• Each competitor's profile.
• Benchmarking or calibration.

Collecting information

• Internal and external sources of information.
• Choosing the type of study.
• Qualitative and quantitative studies.
• Permanent panels: Usefulness and usage methodology.
• Customer satisfaction studies.
• Documentary, marketing, and customer satisfaction studies, usage tests, audience studies.

Diagnosing the product

• Pareto analysis of the customer portfolio.
• The BCG matrix (Boston Consulting Group).
• Analyzing the product's life cycle.
• The performance monitoring dashboard.
• Summary of internal and external analysis: SWOT.

Crafting the marketing strategy

• Setting strategic goals. SMART goals.
• Defining your goals by product/segment pair.
• Product strategies during the life cycle.
• The segmentation phase: BtoB and BtoC criteria.
• RFM segmentation (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value).
• The targeting phase: Choice criteria, possible strategies.
• Positioning: Definition, positioning criteria.
• Positioning opportunities. Types and mapping.
• Choosing what business to develop, maintain, and abandon.
• Analyzing a market's appeal. The McKinsey model.

Becoming proficient in the marketing mix

• The mix: Consistency and optimization of the mix.
• Defining product quality assessment criteria.
• Product life cycle curve.
• Identifying characteristics of the product mix.
• Studying the brand: Different types, functions, protection.
• Price-setting strategy.
• Price-influencing factors.
• Calculating the elasticity coefficient, the acceptance price, the break-even point, and the profitability threshold.
• Evaluating the sales networks. Making the product available to the end consumer.
• Selecting a distribution network. - The distribution contract.
• Different tools and communication methods.
• Conducting promotions: Street marketing, public relations, athletic sponsorship, arts patronage, etc.
• Communication by the sales force: Creating the sales kit.

Building the marketing plan

• Determining the contents of the marketing plan.
• Defining one- and three-year goals.
• Presenting and planning action plans.
• Putting the plan into operation.
• Tracking and controlling actions: Preparing your dashboard.
• Putting corrective actions in place.