How to Market a Product: 5 Effective Ways

Where do you start figuring out how to market a product? It’s a simple question that can have multiple answers. 

It’s becoming more and more difficult to effectively market a product to potential customers. More competition, over-saturation and an increase in customer demand are just a few of the reasons why. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible.

Taking the right approach to market your product needs to align with the industry that you’re in and your specific customer base. And there’s an opportunity to get more creative to reach your target customers in a more authentic way. So how do you know which tactics to use in your strategy?

The old concept of getting as many customers as you can to increase sales doesn’t work the same way that it used to. Consumers are becoming more aware of how a product’s features can benefit them personally. Plus, consumers are choosing to follow brands that have similar interests when it comes to social causes. 

With so many new products released every year, it’s crucial to stay on top of new and evolving marketing tactics. Here are 5 effective strategies to market your product in a meaningful way. 

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

1. Know Your Audience on an Emotional Level

2. Know Your Competition as Well as You Know Yourself

3. Use Storytelling to Create Authenticity 

4. Establish Your Primary Lead and Sales Channels

5. Develop a Strategy and Implement Your Plan

Key Takeaways

1. Know Your Audience on an Emotional Level

Understanding your audience on an emotional level will set the stage for your overall strategy. Who are they? What do they like? What do they not like? When you answer those questions, you can identify any problems and how your product offers a solution. 

You can even think about this from an opposite perspective and envision your perfect buyer. You can get a better understanding of your target demographic by knowing traits like age, interests and location. When you have those details you can then implement your strategy towards your target market. 

The information you gather will give you a deeper understanding of any opportunities and challenges. You can then make any necessary adjustments to your product, how it’s priced or the sales channel in which consumers can purchase it.

As mentioned above, understanding your customers and your product will set the foundation for the rest of your strategy.

2. Know Your Competition as Well as You Know Yourself

How are you supposed to set yourself apart if you aren’t aware of what your competition is up to? Knowing what they’re doing and how they’re doing it can help identify any opportunities and areas for improvement. Having competition doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

To see what your competition is doing, research their marketing material and social media platforms. Are you not sure who your competition is or what marketing channels they use? Use some of the information you found when researching your audience to help you find out. 

You can do this by putting yourself in the consumer’s shoes. 

Try and search for any problems or challenges you have identified for your own product and see what solutions show up. Or do a search for your type of product and see where the competition sets their price point. It will give you a good sense of some of the tactics your competitors are using. 

You can then take that information to see how your product stacks up against them and identify any opportunities. 

3. Use Storytelling to Create Authenticity 

Storytelling has been around for generations, and for good reason. They tap into our emotions and allow us to escape reality for a brief second. They inspire and motivate and allow people to relate with them in personal ways.

When you can get someone to relate in a personal way it establishes a connection. And having a connection is important. With steady competition, your customers want more than just an overview of the features or benefits your product will give them.

Tell a story about how they will get those features and benefits. Using effective storytelling will allow your audience to relate to those details on an emotional level. Being able to be authentic will also establish a level of trust.

Consumers can easily recognize when a brand isn’t being authentic or is being dishonest. First impressions go a long way. If you don’t relate with your audience from the beginning then you may find them purchasing a competitor’s product instead.  

4. Establish Your Primary Lead and Sales Channels

Where are your customers buying your product? Is one channel proving to be better than another? Are you stretching yourself too thin by focusing on too many different areas? If you simplify and streamline where your customers can purchase your product, sales can increase.

There’s no point in spending time and money to market your product in the wrong places. Using the information that you found about your audience, you can identify the most beneficial channels to use. But it’s important to remember that this is entirely based on your type of product. 

Some products can be effectively marketed through certain channels while others won’t see the same benefit. For example, you might see a product being marketing through social media in an incredible way. But maybe your target demographic isn’t as active on social media. So a different form might work better, such as a press release or search engine optimization. 

Understanding your audience and doing competitor research will help you to establish which channels to focus on. Everything from your website, search engine marketing, online advertising and social media are just a few of the channels you can use. 

5. Develop a Strategy and Implement Your Plan

Just because you know all of the features and benefits that your product can offer doesn’t mean the consumer will. It might seem like a no-brainer to put a product marketing strategy in place, but without a defined plan your efforts will be all over the place. And that can lead to a waste of money, time and potentially a loss of customers. 

There’s no point in focusing on areas where your customers aren’t. 

However, by going through steps 1-4 outlined above, you will have the foundation to create and implement the best possible strategy. You can use that information to determine the price of your product, the location it will be sold and how you will promote it.

Putting an online marketing strategy in place and implementing it properly will make sure you maximize your efforts. You’re able to focus on the main areas where you will see the most return. And you can be flexible through the process to adapt or make adjustments as needed.

Key Takeaways

An effective product marketing strategy takes more than just overloading your audience with ads. There’s a deep level of thought that goes into understanding them compared to conventional marketing. When you put the time and effort into developing a concrete plan you can then spend more time focusing on the important areas.

You won’t have to spend as much time fixing something that isn’t working and can avoid any tactics that won’t provide any type of positive return. Why spend time and money on a product marketing plan that won’t work? You want a seamless customer experience that ends with happy customers. 

Knowing your audience on an emotional level and being authentic in how you get your product to market are two crucial first steps to take. Once you understand that information you can make more informed decisions. This will allow you to prepare for any obstacles and identify the opportunities to set your product apart from the competition. 

Learn more about marketing and other small business topics on our resource hub.

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