Product Marketing

We have compiled these articles to assist you in your efforts to market your new or existing products. It is a huge task, developing, launching, and then marketing. We are hoping that this compilation of ideas will help you to achieve your product marketing goals. At the bottom of the article are all of the reference links.

^[1]Coming up with a new product or service is a lot of work, which unfortunately does not stop once it’s ready—launching and promoting it is the other half of the equation. You could be offering the best new product or service around, but if you don’t promote it properly, you’re likely to miss out on opportunities or even end up losing money down the line. We thought it fitting to give you some guidance around this topic, with so many businesses pivoting their products and services due to COVID-19 and unable to afford opportunity losses.

The best ways to promote a new product or service

When it comes to promoting a new product or service for your business, it can seem like there are endless options. It can be difficult to figure out where to get started and which promotion methods will give you the best results. The truth is, there are many low-cost ways to promote your business, and what works may depend on your industry, offerings, and audience. Take a look at these 12 methods below and see which ones make the most sense for your business.

1. Offer loyal customers an exclusive preview

Your loyal customers are a key part of promoting your product because they are most likely to not only buy it but also promote it to their networks. This can take the form of a private, in-person, or virtual pre-launch party: an online tour, preview, or demo. Or, it could even be a special invitation to test it out and give feedback. These exclusive offerings to loyal customers reinforce how much you value them and help retain their loyalty.

2. Use a special introductory offer

Rather than just announcing your new product or service, you can make it available as a part of a special introductory deal. This deal can take many forms, including:

• Discounted pricing.
• Reduced-rate bundle or package.
• Joint promotion with a complementary business.
• Voucher or coupon with purchase.
• Buy one get one, free deal.
• Double the points if you have a loyalty program.
• Gift for every referral.

Whatever your promotion, be sure to emphasize that it won’t last forever. Customers whose purchase power is limited will feel a more pressing sense of urgency to buy either by time or inventory.

3. Make use of Google My Business

There are several ways you can promote your new product or service using your Google Business Profile, provided you have a Google My Business account. The first is via Google My Business posts.

When in your GMB dashboard, navigate to the Posts tab. From there, you can create an “Offer” or a “What’s new” post.

If you’re announcing the new product or service, you may want to go with a “What’s new” post. Just remember that Google My Business posts expire every seven days, so you’ll need to repost. On the other hand, if you’re running a special introductory deal, an “Offer” post would be best, as you can set a timeframe. Regardless of which post type you use, be sure to include a picture and a call to action to most effectively promote your business.

You can also promote your new product/service by uploading photos of it to your Business Profile via the Photos tab of your GMB dashboard, as well as adding it as a new item via your Products/Services tab.

If applicable, you might even want to post some FAQs on the new product or service in the Q&A section of your Google My Business account.

To get the most out of this method of promotion:

• Use all four sections of your Google listing mentioned above (Posts, Photos, Products & Services, and Q&A).
• Make sure your Google listing is optimized for maximum visibility.
• Refer to Google’s guidelines for photo sizes.

4. ^[2]Gift guides

What do you do when you’re struggling to find a good gift idea? If you’re like most people, you Google “holiday gift ideas for co-workers” or “unique birthday presents.” Then you scroll through the piles of gift guides that pop up in the search results.

Why not get your own product included in these gift guides? They exist for just about every industry, type of person, and holiday you can think of. Look for the lists that rank on the first few Google pages and reach out to see if you can be included. They could drive a lot of traffic back to your store.

Remember, you need to provide a reason why you should be included. Mentioning your product on the list has to add value to the author or editor of the post, so be sure to highlight what makes your product a distinct or unique addition to their current list.

5. Email marketing

Email is one of the most consistently effective channels for acquiring new customers. And while channels like search can take a while to generate organic traffic, email marketing can start working right away. That’s why you should be using email to promote your store.

There’s no need to spend all your time writing and sending emails. Make it easy on yourself by setting up a collection of automated email campaigns designed to increase your revenue. There are many options available, such as:

• Emailing new subscribers and offering them an incentive to shop.
• Emailing new customers a post-sale email to upsell and delight.
• Emailing visitors who abandoned their cart and reminding them to finish their purchase.

6. Affiliate programs

If you’re struggling to make sales and don’t have the cash to hire sales or marketing help, consider adding an affiliate program to your store. Affiliate marketing programs enable other people to promote your product for a commission. You’ll only have to pay them if they make a sale.

Affiliate programs typically work by creating a custom URL for each person promoting your products. They can share this link on social media, in a blog post reviewing your product, or even in a YouTube video where they’re showing it off. Through the custom links, you’ll be able to track who is driving sales for you so you can compensate them.

A little bit of education is usually helpful if you plan on introducing affiliates. Remember: they’re promoting your products for you, so in some sense, they’re handling a marketing function of your business. If you don’t provide best practices, they’ll make up their own.

7. ^[3]Work with An Influencer

At the Social Intelligence Summit in Las Vegas, Penny Baldwin, CMO at McAfee, said: “80% of the Internet’s impressions are driven by just 6% of its users.”

But it’s not easy to promote your products when you’re a startup without an audience. So if your reach is limited, then tap into those who have a much larger audience.

Use larger channels to start building your own while promoting your product.

Reviews from influencers in your niche can dramatically improve reach and generate instant social proof with your target audience.

And as high as 59% of consumers base purchase decisions on recommendations from people they know and trust.

Now some influencers may be willing to sell and promote your products in exchange for free units. In contrast, others may require payment to advertise a product for you. In either case, the ROI is substantial and worth the investment.

Convince and Convert shared the results of Silk Almond Milk running an influencer campaign. And it shows how influencer marketing blows traditional and digital advertising out of the water.

• Households exposed to influencer marketing purchased 10% more Silk products than the control group.
• Every 1000 people viewing influencer marketing purchased $285 worth of Silk products over the control group.
• The blog posts’ ROI (not including social promotion) is 11X the ROI of banner ads after 12 months.

8. Create a Featured Video

Look, you don’t have to rely on customers to create videos for you. Any product promotion should have a video included as part of a promotion and content marketing strategy.

And you don’t need a huge production budget to create videos.

So with a $30 camera mount or tripod, a little time, and a smartphone, you can create videos that sell a product effectively by telling a story.

You don’t need anything professionally scripted. Grab your product and put something together focusing on value.

It might look professional, but it’s a simple video that didn’t require a lot of production. The video is entertaining and tells a fun story about the product.

Now the value is the key. And the goal is to advertise your products, but your customers don’t really care about the product. They care about the value and what it can do for them and the problem it solves, etc.

With that in mind, you can create simple videos like:

• A product how-to that shows the benefits of the product, the problem it solves, and how it solves the problem
• Unboxing videos that show the benefits of the product
• Behind-the-scenes videos showing the product history and how it was made, and why it was made

9. Use Custom Audiences with Facebook Ads

Ideally, you want to use the most cost-effective methods to promote a product. Therefore, paid campaigns can generate a significant ROI. But many marketers have launched ad campaigns and made zero profit.

The key is in the audience targeting.

Like organizing your email lists, the tighter your audience targeting is, the better your results. You’ll reach a much smaller audience, but those who see your ad are far more likely to buy something.

Rather than clicking through behaviors and demographics to build an audience. Upload a customer list or email subscriber list to build a lookalike audience closely matching your customers.

You can also use a Facebook Pixel to create custom audiences and do some seriously effective remarketing campaigns based on customer behavior. This includes targeting people based on:

• Specific pages they visited on your website.
• Purchase events and past purchase behaviors.
• Time spent on your site or certain pages.
• The content they read or downloaded.
• Account registrations on your site.
• Products they viewed or added to the cart.
• Search queries.
• Lead form or opt-in completions.
• Most active customers or least active customers.
• Video engagement (like how much of a video they watched)
• Facebook page engagement.

There are many ways to create custom audiences to ensure your ads have the most impact. So save your audiences and continue to tweak them for future ads.

The biggest benefit to custom audiences is creating ads that are far more relevant to the specific audience.

As your relevance score increases (to a max of 10), the more exposure and click-through you’ll see while also experiencing a significant drop in cost per click.

10. ^[4]Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is when your website is at or near the top of the page when someone searches online. Using carefully chosen keywords that are most commonly used when someone searches for your product will boost you higher in page rankings to make it more likely that someone will click on your site. Businesses exist to help optimize your SEO, or you can learn to do it yourself, but it’s probably faster to hire experts.

11. Billboards and Print Ads

These days, digital as well as traditional billboards offer a fantastic way to market your product. Placing print ads in magazines and newspapers is relatively inexpensive and ensures that a certain clientele will see your product.

A delicate yet thorough balance of marketing via different media will virtually ensure a healthy market saturation. Remember, your product is worth something. All you need to do is to get enough people to hear about your product for it to take off. By mixing contemporary tech-marketing strategies with tried-and-true methods, you’ll be selling out in no time.

12. ^[5]Write a blog post

As you learn how to promote a product, you’ll want to build your content calendar.

Weave in a blog post announcing your product. This can be as simple as a post exploring the benefits of the new product and the needs that it can meet, then including a button or widget that allows your customers to buy it easily.

Blogging is a smart way to increase your SEO, and it also gives you opportunities to gain exposure for your brand in creative ways. Social platforms can limit your access to customers if you don’t pay for boosted content and ads, so moving leads and existing customers to a blog post with a call-to-action is smart to promote a product without spending money for your audiences’ attention.

13. Run a social contest

If you want to promote a product on social, consider running a social media contest to spread awareness among your ideal audience.

Encircled, an eco-friendly women’s travel clothing company, recently ran a road trip contest to promote their leggings. To enter, there were multiple ways you could engage:

1. Following them on social
2. Subscribing to their newsletter
3. Commenting on their blog post

Each activity earned points and resulted in 4 winners. These kinds of digital promotions are powerful because they involve customers describing the value they get from your product in their own words on their own social channels.

Conclusion:

Many great ideas, and should you get stuck or need motivation or just someone to talk to, please call hughesagency.ca today.

Reference Links:

1. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/07/29/how-to-promote-a-product ↑
2. https://www.shopify.in/blog/how-to-market-a-product ↑
3. https://startupbros.com/promote-a-product/ ↑
4. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/promote-new-product-marketing-activities-1722.html ↑
5. https://founderu.selz.com/10-smart-and-effective-ways-to-promote-a-product/ ↑