Solutions Marketing for Software

What's the difference between product marketing and solutions marketing? As a software product company what solution marketing do you do in addition to product marketing? Do you always need special focus on solutions marketing separate from product marketing?

After all, we should all be selling solutions that solve real customer problems, not peddle products!
As you are thinking about outbound messaging, there are scenarios where you need to think about solution marketing separate from your "regular" product marketing (the following is by no means an exhaustive list):

Very technical products
Well ... all software products are technical in nature. However, some products require more "solution centric" messaging than others. Let's take the example of a software company building software tools that are used by application developers and architects in an IT organization. Since the users of your product are very technology savvy, it's tempting to keep the messaging only technical. However, you also want to have solution centric messaging to ensure that your message resonates well with the buyers and influencers from the IT and business leadership involved in the buying process.

Solution involving a partner product
A combination of your product and another partner product could make up a solution that a customer is looking for.

Product Suite
How would a customer solve a business problem using a combination of products from your product suit? Instead of selling point solutions involving your product you need to sell solutions involving a set of products from your product suite.

An important thing to keep in mind is that a solution involves not just the technical product you provide but also people and processes required to make it effective. For example, as a provider of solution for master data management you would talk about not only the technical product you have but also the recommended processes for data quality and the people involved (e.g., data stewards).