How does marketing help your product or service?

Marketing is more than just an advertising campaign; it should result in revenue for your business. Understanding the different ways to promote your product or service can help you make the right choice for your business.

PRINT AND GRAPHIC ARTS MEDIA

Depending on the type of message you want to communicate to your customers, print media offers different options, including: brochures, business cards, newspaper ads and magazines.

• Brochures, posters and packaging are a cost effective way to provide a variety of messages and detailed information about your products and services.
• Business cardscan be used to support your networking activities and give potential customers the information they need to contact you.
• Local newspaper advertisingisa way to reach people in your community and repeatedly exposes them to your message in order to create a stronger local presence for your business.
• Magazineshave the advantage of targeting a more specific audience of subscribers who are interested in the topics it covers.

ELECTRONIC MEDIA

Electronic media is a general term for any media that requires an electronic device for the content to be accessed. Some of the most common forms of electronic media include television, radio, internet and content for mobile devices.

• Television content captures more audience time than any other media and is targeted at home audiences.
• Radio is cost effective, and the audience is usually loyal to a station's program format.
• The internetoffers you a variety of different ways to market your product or service on a website or by email.
• Cellphones and smartphonesallow for marketing tactics that let you reach customers directly on their mobile devices.
• Social mediamarketing encourages online interaction between your customers and your business using various social networking sites.

ADDITIONAL PROMOTIONAL IDEAS

Promotional gifts, like pens, key rings and calendars, can be given to individuals and groups that you know personally to help create a positive opinion of your company and improve its reputation.

Networking and community involvement can also support the promotion of your business. You can make new contacts and reach out to potential customers by participating in trade shows, conferences, community activities and other networking events. Speaking to people about your business can be one of the most effective ways of promoting your product or service.

Planning your marketing strategy will help you determine the best way to promote your product or service, allow you to measure your success against set goals and provide you with a clearer idea of where your strategy may need adjustments.

(Source: Canada Business Ontario)

You’ve created an online store, you’ve sourced the perfect product, and now you just need to tell people about it. This is where product marketing comes in.

In this blog, we’ll go over how to market a product, the difference between product and conventional marketing, and why it’s important.

What is product marketing?

Product marketing is where you bring a product to market by promoting and selling it to customers. Effective product marketing takes that a step further by targeting specific audiences and using strategic campaigns to drive demand and sales.

Product marketing differs from conventional eCommerce marketing because it’s much more narrow in focus. Rather than promoting your brand or an overview of your SKUs, you have to promote a product individually. Product marketing concentrates on one specific item or bundle, which requires an in-depth understanding of the product, its positioning, and its audience.

Since your products lie at the heart of your sales, marketing, and product development strategies, product marketing is key to the success of all three.

Why is product marketing important?

You know the importance of marketing your store to generate leads, win sales, and boost revenue. Well, product marketing supercharges these benefits across three key areas.

Go specific instead of broad

Product marketing gets your product in front of the people who need it most.

When you can get a specific item in front of a consumer who is primed to buy it, you cut the steps to purchase down to a simple click. For example, when someone needs a hairbrush and sees yours in the search results, that’s better than if they saw your brand or store instead. By promoting a product directly to someone, you put it in front of them when they need it, bringing them closer to the conversion point.

Enhance your brand while you’re at it

Product marketing pushes hot leads to your store, but it also positions your brand as one that understands its audience’s needs and caters to them. Make sure to promote products that are relevant to your target audience to boost recognition and conversion rates.

This also makes converted customers much more likely to become repeat customers. When you deliver a seamless experience, it can make them more likely to recommend your brand to family and friends.

Become more competitive

When you understand your product and audience, you position yourself better in the market, which naturally reduces your competition and helps you stand out and be seen.

This enables you to focus your marketing activities and increase your ROI and overall success, further fueling other marketing efforts.

There are a few basics steps to effective product marketing.

1. Position your product

To market your product effectively, you must correctly position your product in the market. This requires knowing your product inside out.

Some questions to get you started include:

• Why does this product exist?
• What problem does this product overcome?
• What makes this product unique?
• What makes this product better than similar products?
• Why should people trust this product?
• What is the market looking for right now?

Tip: Don’t forget the value-add benefits that come with your product. Look at fast shipping, service guarantees, and subscriptions.

2. Identify your audience

The information gathered from positioning your product should help you answer the all-important question: Who is this product for?

To market a product well, you must understand the audience you’re targeting, how your product meets their needs, and how best to target them. This requires a customer persona much narrower than your store’s target audience.

For example, an online pet store might target pet lovers and owners who need basic pet supplies at affordable prices. However, its product persona will be more specific, for instance, Ben, aged 75, who’s having trouble seeing his dog when walking at night and could benefit from your light-up dog collar.

Key characteristics to consider when building your product persona include:

• Demographics, such as age, gender, occupation, marital status, and income.
• Individual pain points that your product solves for them.
• Where they read, connect, research, and shop online.

3. Research your competition

Like conventional marketing, product marketing is a competition between brands to see who can reach, engage, convert, and retain customers best. Therefore, it’s useful to know what your competitors are doing, so you can do it better.

Research your competitors to find out how your products compare, who they’re marketing to, how they’re marketing, and how successful they are. Understanding their target audience could also reveal any gaps in your own.

Tip: Look at your competitors’ reviews to see if there are any service or feature gaps your product fills instead.

4. Find the right price

One of the most impactful product marketing tactics is pricing. Product price gives your product a status (affordable or high-quality), an audience (based on disposable income), and competitors.

Use your product, audience, and competitor research to identify the perfect price point for your product, considering product costs and profit margins too.

Note: There are many eCommerce pricing strategies to choose from, but the most common include competitive pricing that undercuts your competition and value-based pricing that highlights the benefits your product delivers.

5. Create a product marketing strategy

A product marketing strategy puts all of this information to work by creating, building, and executing product marketing campaigns, tactics, and content.

Like all marketing campaigns, you’ll need to lay out your research by defining:

• Goal – What is the overall aim of your product marketing?
• Audience – Who are your targeting with your marketing?
• Tools – What tools do you need to execute your product marketing?
• Channels – What platforms do your audience engage with and can you use to market your product?
• Content – What messaging excites your audience?
• Calendar – When will you market your products, and how often?

6. Launch your product

If you have a new product that’s previously unreleased, you should be planning your product launch to generate the most awareness and demand for your product. Think about what you can pre-launch, during launch, and post-launch, since all stages require different messaging and tactics.

Marketing a new product means you start from the ground up, but the good news is you get three different product stages to talk about, giving you more to say without repeating yourself.

7. Refine

Your product marketing plan will need continual refinement. Seasonds and trends change, which means you need to constantly work to keep your product relevant.

For example, a battery-powered light-up dog collar may no longer be relevant once a rechargeable one exists. And 75-year-old Ben who shops on Facebook and Amazon will one day be replaced by 75-year-old Amber who grew up on Instagram and shops exclusively on apps.

Routinely review, test, and refine your product marketing strategy to ensure it’s marketing the products of tomorrow to today’s audience.

Bonus: 10 product marketing ideas

To give you a flavor of what product marketing looks like in practice, let’s look at 10 creative ways to market your product.

1. Ads – Use Google Shopping, social media, and marketplace ads to get specific products in front of targeted audiences.
2. Gift guides – Get your products into high-traffic gift guides or create your own.
3. Blogs – Use internal and external bloggers to review and write about your products.
4. Social media – Add product tags and links to content on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.
5. PR – Get product coverage through press releases and news coverage.
6. SEO – Research keywords and create a content strategy that drives customers straight to your product pages.
7. Referral marketing – Use existing customers to share your products to their family, friends, and followers.
8. Email marketing – Email existing customers about new products relevant to their interests.
9. Affiliate programs – Use a network of affiliates to promote your products in return for a commission.
10. Competitions – Run contests and giveaways to draw people and attention to your products.

We hope this guide and selection of ideas gets your product marketing strategy on the road to more impressions, click, and conversions.

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