What is vertical product marketing?

Simply put, it's marketing to a niche audience centered around a specific set of needs. Examples include developing a deep focus in industries such as Real Estate, Education, Healthcare, or others. By comparison, a horizontally focused product marketing strategy aims to find how a given product can be used across these industries and how they may value that product differently.

That being said, a vertical strategy doesn't mean there's one marketing playbook. Within these verticals you're more likely than not to have a diverse set of groups that interact with the ecosystem differently and understanding those relationships is the key to success. 

Let's take real estate as a vertical for instance. While it may be considered 1 vertical, there are a variety of groups involved in any given home purchase. These include lenders, real estate agents, title & escrow companies, homebuyers and sellers, and a host of other vendors. Marketing to something like the "real estate vertical" then isn't just having one industry to market to, it's about understanding each participants role in the ecosystem. It's about understanding how to best solve their unique challenges within that ecosystem, how to best get each of their attentions, and how they each work together towards their common goals.

Vertical product marketing is a type of product marketing that focuses on a specific industry or market segment, rather than the broader market. In vertical product marketing, the product marketing team focuses on understanding the unique needs, challenges, and preferences of a specific industry or market segment, and develops marketing strategies and tactics that are tailored to that industry or segment.

• For example, a vertical PMM team might focus on marketing a product to fintech teams and would develop marketing strategies and tactics that are specific to this industry, such as highlighting the product's compliance with finance regulations or showcasing customer testimonials from fintech startups. 
• In contrast, a horizontal product marketing team might focus on marketing the same software product to a broader range of industries.

Overall, by focusing on a specific industry or segment, vertical product marketing teams can develop more effective and targeted marketing strategies, and drive better results for the business.