Having an idea for a product that you think people will love is just the first step to getting it into consumers’ homes. Unless you have a clear plan to market that product so people can learn about it, you might just be stuck with a product that never goes any further than the drawing board.
Successful marketing is a clear strategy that helps you deliver a product to people that they really believe they want or need. The right marketing strategy could even begin to help your product sell itself over time.
How to Market a Product: 6 Steps for Beginners
While the internet has made marketing products and services much easier for business owners, there’s still a lot to learn as a beginner. Start by becoming familiar with the 4 Ps of marketing. Then, follow this guide breaks down the product marketing process into six digestible steps for beginners.
Learn Who Your Audience Is and What They Need
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Who will be using your product? What kind of problems do they have that your product might be able to solve? Get inside the head of your ideal customer, as this information is going to be crucial in determining how you should market to them.
Start by creating a customer persona. Name your customer, figure out where they like to shop and how they live, and describe their personality. This persona should encompass important attributes of your average customer, making it easier for you to tailor your marketing to your customers’ needs.
Decide How Your Product Meets Those Needs
Now, decide how your product will fulfill the needs of your customers. You should consider several pain points your customer might have and follow up those pain points with features and uses your product has that address them. These features are going to come in handy when you begin marketing because you can use them in your product descriptions, ad messaging, and landing pages.
If you need some help deciding what your audience’s biggest pain points are, ask them! Open polls on social media or send out a survey to your email list to gather as much information as possible from your audience before you start marketing your product.
Consider Where to Promote
There are many avenues you can use to promote a product. First, there are offline forms of advertising, like radio and direct mail ads. Then, there are digital methods, like website banners and paid search ads. You’ll want to choose the pathways where you believe your audience will absorb your ad the best.
Younger audiences are more likely to be in front of digital advertising methods found on websites, search engines, and social media. However, business-forward and older audiences might be better suited for more traditional advertising methods. If you have a mixed audience, perhaps targeting a little bit of both is best.
Start Promoting
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Once you’ve figured out where to market your product, it’s time to jump in. Decide how you want your ad to come across to your audience. Will it tell a story? How can it exude brand awareness? Should it be funny or serious? What are your competitors doing well?
Right now, focus on breaking through the marketing wall. Put your best foot forward with your first ad or two. Once you start gaining some customers, it’ll become easier to see what your audience gravitates toward to help you shape your marketing in the future.
Test Your Marketing
It’s unlikely that an ad will have massive success right out of the gate, but you can usually learn a thing or two from unsuccessful ads. Testing your marketing is crucial to reduce your ad spend and get a larger return on your investment.
A/B testing allows you to put ads with minor differences against one another to determine which one is the top performer. Slightly tweak your messaging, change a photo, or test out two different calls to action to find the ad recipe that works best for your audience. You can also test ads on different marketing platforms.
Refine Your Plan
After spending some time marketing your product and testing ads, you can refine your marketing plan to make it more successful in the future. Consider what advertising methods are getting more eyes on your product and which types of ads your audience responds to. Then, focus on those methods to grow a client base; you can always branch out to other strategies as you grow.
Finally, don’t forget to remarket to customers who have already purchased from you. You can do this with Google advertising and with Facebook advertising. They’re already interested in and know about your product, so you don’t have to convince them how great it is. Use that to your advantage when creating ads to sell your product. Your email list and website are excellent sources for remarketing to current customers.
When you’re running ad campaigns, you’re using data collected about your customers and prospective customers when they visit your website or social media profiles. And that means you should be obtaining visitors’ consent to collect and use that data. ShareThis’ Consent Management Platform makes it easy to manage users’ consent preferences and stay compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR. It’s easy to install, free to use, and provides a seamless user experience.
