6 Stages to Getting Your Product Marketing Strategy Up and Running

The process of presenting and selling your products to clients is known as product marketing. It entails figuring out who your product is for, figuring out how to deliver it to them, coming up with a compelling message, and continuing to utilize insights and smart planning to move your product ahead.

Here are six stages to getting your product marketing strategy up and running and producing revenue.

1. Determine who your target market is.

Product marketing’s ultimate goal is to bring your product in front of those who are most likely to become consumers. To do so, you must first establish who those folks are—those who are most likely to desire to buy your goods.

Knowing who your target customer is can help you create a compelling product narrative and choose which tools and channels to utilize to reach them.

Your target market is often defined by area, gender, age-range, socioeconomic status, and/or general interests and preferences.

Consider your items and the demographic group that will be most interested in them when determining your target market.

Knowing both your goods and your clients is essential to defining your target market and efficiently reaching them.

• Know What You’re Selling
• Get to Know Your Clients

To determine who your product will appeal to the most, you must first comprehend your product and its distinct value, both in terms of pricing and what it provides to the buyer. Consider the following questions:

• What exactly is my service or product?
• What is the mechanism behind it?
• What value can it provide to people’s lives?
• What makes it special?
• What issues might it help with?
• What distinguishes it from the competition?
• How much does it set you back?

Make sure you can answer all of these questions, as well as any additional that may assist you in determining the appropriate target market for your product.

You must be certain that you have a thorough understanding of your target market in order to develop a product marketing strategy that will reach them and appeal to their sensitivities. Understanding how to grab your consumer’s attention and persuade them to make purchases boils down to knowing your customer.

When getting to know your consumer base, consider the following questions:

• What are their inclinations?
• What are their shopping habits?
• What are their passions?
• What motivates them to participate?
• What motivates them to stay loyal?
• What else do they purchase?

My shop, for example, was a young, western-bohemian-inspired apparel business with a cheap price point, ideal for ladies aged 15 to 30, particularly high school-aged girls and young moms. We looked at how this demographic interacted and shopped, and based our marketing efforts on social media, in-store events, and SMS messaging. We also developed a product narrative that was youthful, lighthearted, and embraced the bohemian image.

2. Look for ideas from your competitors.

When most goods first hit the market, they encounter competition, but this isn’t always a bad thing. It may be beneficial in three ways:

1. The competition demonstrates that there is a demand for the goods you want to offer.
2. Examining current rivals will help you figure out which sales channels and marketing strategies work and which don’t, as well as what customers anticipate from your product.
3. Understanding the tactics of your rivals might help you come up with a distinct approach for your product marketing plan.

Start by doing an online search using the terms that define your product to see what your competitors are up to. Search engine results pages (SERPs) provide a plethora of information that you may use to examine the current market and competition for your product.

Searching for phrases that describe your product on Google will bring up websites that offer comparable products. Some of them may be resellers, while others may be the official website of the manufacturer. Both can provide you with useful information, such as price, user product reviews, and detailed listings.

While determining the actual consumer base from an eCommerce shop might be challenging, you can learn a lot from your competitors’ websites. You can figure out:

• What kind of message is most attractive to consumers who buy comparable items to yours?
• Whether they have a physical storefront or not
• Whether or not they have wholesale distribution networks
• They target a certain demographic in their advertisements.
• The price point at which your items are most likely to sell

Use the websites of your rivals to discover more about your target market and the product marketing methods that are working.

On Amazon, eBay, and Walmart, look for the same or comparable goods. These are mostly direct-to-consumer markets that reveal a lot about the degree of competition you’re up against. Although certain areas, such as personal care, cosmetics, pet supplies, and mobile technology, are fiercely competitive, there are plenty of profit prospects for high-quality, reasonably priced items. Look through these markets to see how many merchants are selling similar items and what their prices are.

Let’s pretend you’d want to offer glow sticks at your gift store. To make sure you’re remaining competitive, visit Amazon to see how much they’re selling for.

To guarantee that your price is competitive, use a marketplace listing. (Image courtesy of Marketplace Strategy)

Knowing and analyzing the pricing range for competing and comparable items is critical. Determine why competitors’ items sell at substantially higher or lower prices than your intended price point.

Check product descriptions to discover whether competing items are created in the United States or elsewhere and if they employ higher- or lower-grade materials to appeal to high-end or budget shoppers. Consider the brand’s entire market and look for distinctive features or adaptations. All of this information will assist you in determining what variables influence pricing and where you fit into the product market.

Comprehensive price research can also assist you in identifying profit possibilities as well as potential problems. If, for example, the cost of your competitors is greater than your targeted price point but the quality is comparable, you have two alternatives. You may either price your thing higher to make more money or cheaper to attract more consumers. However, if multiple rival items are priced at or below your intended price range, you may have difficulty selling.

Pay close attention to customer feedback as you examine competition websites, marketplace listings, and social media participation. These are some of the few venues where you may obtain direct feedback from customers.

Make a list of rivals with high, moderate, and poor ratings, as well as the number of reviews they have. You can tell whether an item sells well if it receives hundreds of reviews each month. If it just gets a few reviews each month, it’s definitely a flop, and you’ll have a hard time finding an audience.

Product reviews assist new product marketers in determining customer interest in a product or idea, as well as identifying competitive items that meet (or fail to meet) consumer expectations. Make a list of what customers like and dislike about the competition’s items and adjust your product strategy appropriately.

3. Construct a product narrative

You’ll need to create a compelling product narrative or picture of how your product will operate for your consumers once you’ve defined your product and target market and investigated your competition.

The most important thing to remember when conveying your product narrative is that features alone will not sell your product. Your consumer should be able to see how your product will benefit them, solve their issues, or fit into their life.

For example, as previously said, the majority of my boutique’s promotion was done via social media (in our instance, Instagram) and text messaging. Our product narrative was youthful and charming, with people dressed in our attire going to farmers’ markets, brunch, and playing with their children in the park. Our tale demonstrated to prospective buyers how they, too, could wear our products and how they could simply incorporate them into their daily routines.

When creating a website and marketing content, consider the advantages of problem-solving. When thinking about your product narrative, always ask yourself, “So what?” What if this outfit is adorable? What does it mean for my consumers, and how can I demonstrate it in my product narrative?

Product pages are an excellent place to convey a narrative about your product and get people thinking about how they may utilize it in their own life. (Image courtesy of AB Tasty)

In your email promotions, show how different goods may function together and build a story. (Photo courtesy of SendPulse)

4. Determine the tools and channels you’ll use to promote your business.

Now it’s up to you to bring your product’s narrative in front of prospective buyers. Your product’s reach and the audience will be determined by where you advertise it.

In today’s world, you must meet the customer where they are. When deciding which channels are best for you, consider how your target market interacts and where they shop. Then you’ll want to meet them there, putting your items in front of the right people and giving them the chance to interact and buy.

When deciding where to sell your items, keep the following marketing channels in mind:

Your Site

Your website is one of the most effective methods to generate traffic and promote your goods in front of potential buyers. While marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are valuable resources to have in your product marketing arsenal, having your own website gives you total control over how it appears and performs, as well as the ability to avoid paying marketplace fees.

Here are some suggestions for making your website simple to locate and use as a product promotion tool.

• Choose a website name that is simple to spell and remember so that clients can find you quickly.
• Remarketing and retargeting methods may help you retain people in your marketing loop so you can begin to establish loyalty.
• Product descriptions: Make sure your product descriptions include all pertinent information as well as excellent photographs. You want to make sure that all of your consumers’ queries are answered in your descriptions.
• Blog posts: Include a blog post area on your website to assist increase traffic and building a following.
• Update: Keep your website up to date with all of your new items and company announcements.
• To broaden your market, consider adding a password-protected wholesale purchase page to your main website.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO), for example, is a low-cost or free strategy to help your website rank higher in the search engines. Others, such as sponsored promotion, might help you draw clients faster but at a higher expense.

The method of generating website content to rank high in search engines for certain keywords is known as SEO. When building your retail website, you’ll want to consider eCommerce SEO best practices. This will cover topics such as website layout, URL optimization, and product page and description design.

From the start, every product marketer should include SEO in their website marketing plan. Learning requires time and effort. However, it is a highly cost-effective strategy to boost site visitors and create revenue in the long run.

AdWords by Google

While free SEM approaches are a fantastic place to start, you should also consider using paid Google ads to expand your reach and enhance your site’s ranking in the SERPs. Google Ads is an online advertising network where you may place bids to show web visitors short commercials, product listings, or videos.

Google allows you to establish your budget and other cost limitations, making it an excellent approach to drive traffic to a freshly launched website. Even with cost constraints in place, you should check the money generated by your ad to verify that it is sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining it.

Most internet advertising is pay-per-click (PPC), which means you’re paid each time a viewer clicks on the ad and visits your site. Others, known as cost-per-thousand (or cost-per-mille, CPM), charge based on the number of times your ad is shown (usually in blocks of 1,000), regardless of whether or not visitors click on it.

Social Media

People will increasingly locate your items and learn about your company via your social media presence. Social commerce revenues, or sales generated by social media leads, reached about $27 billion in 2020, and are expected to reach nearly $80 billion by 2025. You should utilize your social media profiles to promote your items and grow your target market now more than ever.

Make use of your social media profiles to promote your items and expand your audience. (From a later source)

Find a social media network where your target market is active, establish a following, publish often, and increase your online visibility. Investigating your competitors’ social media activity might help you figure out which platforms and messages are most effective for your target market.

You may also sell things straight from your social media profiles or run sponsored advertising on them. Most, if not all, social media networks run advertising and employ their algorithms to guarantee that your goods reach the correct audience, from Facebook to TikTok to YouTube to Instagram. You want to make sure that your advertising reflects your brand’s voice and encourages people to click on them. Offering unique discounts, promotions, or events is one of the finest ways to achieve this. To increase traffic around important events, consider running advertising around discounts and promotions.

You may sell your items on Facebook and other social media platforms by purchasing ad space. (Image courtesy of Business to Community)

Social Media Storefront

Social media stores are on the cutting edge of social media marketing. These are online stores that are linked to your company’s social media presence. Customers may purchase immediately on your profile without ever leaving their social app or going to your website, even after completing a transaction.

Shoppable social media stores are a great method to boost the chances of a social media ad being converted into a sale. You may overcome some of the inertia of beginning to shop by meeting people where they are already browsing. Furthermore, most social media stores make use of user-generated content (UGC), which makes it simpler to build confidence in your brand and items.

What if I told you:

Customers trust user-generated content more than brand-generated material, according to more than 90% of marketers.

Affiliate marketing

Another approach for increasing traffic to your website and improving its ranking in the SERPs is affiliate marketing. You pay a third party to create leads or traffic for your website when you use affiliate marketing. Then you pay your affiliate depending on the quality of leads they generate.

Let’s imagine you decide to partner with local salons and urge the stylists to distribute scannable QR code business cards that direct customers to your website. The stylists are then rewarded depending on their effectiveness in generating visitors to your site using a QR code tool to help monitor the QR code-generated leads.

The most successful affiliates have access to a consumer base that is comparable to yours, but they are beyond your present reach. Use affiliates to expand your consumer base and reach people you wouldn’t otherwise be able to contact.

Tip: Affiliate marketing is a popular approach for companies to collaborate with influencers and get access to their social media following.

Partnerships with Influencers

Influencer collaborations are another approach to leveraging social media to support your product marketing plan. In this situation, you form a relationship with an influencer, and they wear, advertise, demonstrate, and otherwise promote your product in the hopes of increasing sales and raising brand recognition.

When choosing influencers to work with, be sure to look into their target audience, conversion rates, and prices. Influencers with enormous followings will cost more, whilst micro-influencers would cost less and have a limited reach. Working with a micro-influencer, on the other hand, maybe just as beneficial without the exorbitant price tag if the micro-following influencer’s base is more in line with your target demographic.

When working with influencers, you should also think about how you want to organize your contract. Your payment conditions, as well as how the influencer advertises your product, are totally adjustable. You could trade tagged postings for free products, or you could work on a commission basis. Consider your alternatives and figure out what will work best for you.

Email and Text Campaigns

It’s time to start creating your consumer contact list after your website and/or shop are up and running. This is a fantastic approach to not only get your items in front of as many people as possible but also to develop long-term loyalty.

Most email and text marketing services, such as Klaviyo, have free starting accounts that can be integrated with eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Shopify. Once you’ve got everything set up, you can start gathering email addresses and phone numbers from your clients and start marketing to them right immediately.

One of the most successful strategies to rapidly grow your contact list is to give a discount or a free item relevant to your product, such as an instructive e-book. You may also develop a customer loyalty program that compensates customers for providing information in return for advantages and prizes.

You’ll need to figure out where your target market is active before deciding on which outreach channels to employ. We found that text was the greatest approach to reach our audience at my boutique, for example, by looking at our consumers’ actions and doing demographic research.

You’ll also want to make sure you’re discovering out what message works best for motivating your customers to buy. Is it when you let folks know about a good deal? Is it when you make an announcement about fresh arrivals? Is it individual notes that remind them you’re still around, or is it something else entirely? As you plan your outreach marketing approach, be sure to match your message to your brand voice and consumer reactions.

Merchandising in-store

One of the most important aspects of product marketing for your brick-and-mortar shop is merchandising. All of the nonverbal methods involved in displaying retail items in a manner that encourages their sale are referred to as merchandise. You may employ a variety of merchandising tactics, but in general, you want to make sure that your merchandising presents your items in a manner that matches your brand and appeals to your target market.

For example, if you’re aiming to attract visitors and gift-givers with an artisanal products business, you may highlight local sourcing, use cozy, warm colors, and include a gift area in your merchandising. Merchandising should be guided by your audience and brand image in order to attract customers and drive product sales.

With colorful tables and cozy lighting, an artisan store promotes local wares. (Photo courtesy of Wilmington NC Magazine)

Mobile Stores or Pop-Up Shops

Pop-up shops are pop-up stores that serve as temporary retail sites for new and established businesses. They are a great product marketing strategy for showing new or highlighted goods, as well as an efficient approach to boost your reach and broaden your product market.

For example, you may conduct a pop-up store to promote your new jewelry line while also introducing accessories to your boutique. Pop-up stores are ideal for showcasing single or several things, however, showcasing a single item allows for greater concentration and enthusiasm to be focused on that one item.

Your pop-up success will be determined by your specific target market. Set up a pop-up shop at a farmers market, another business, a flea market, or any location that allows for temporary shops. A supplement company may not perform well at a farmer’s market, but it might do well at a fitness expo or at a gym.

Pop-up stores are a terrific way to broaden your reach and generate buzz for your items. (Image courtesy of The Pineapple Agency)

Trade Shows, Password-Protected Stores, and Online Marketplaces

You may offer your goods wholesale in online marketplaces, password-protected stores, or trade exhibitions to extend your potential consumer base.

• Online Wholesale Marketplaces: Online wholesale marketplaces are a cost-effective approach to get your product in front of resellers looking for wholesale items on the internet. Vendor marketplaces such as Faire, Shopify’s Handshake, Etsy Wholesale, and the US Made Wholesale cater primarily to niche and small product makers, while others, such as Alibaba and Wholesale Central, offer manufacturers of all sizes and sorts.
• Password-Protected Storefront: A password-protected storefront is an online shop that uses a password system to limit access to company owners or bulk purchasers. Shopify makes it simple to create a password-protected store, or you can use an app like Wholesale Club to add wholesale features to your current site.
• Trade Shows: Trade shows are purchasing events for retailers when a group of wholesale companies get together to show off their wares and make substantial purchases, usually for a season or quarter.

A trade fair brings together a large number of wholesalers under one roof. (Image courtesy of Artsy Shark)

5. Make long-term plans and goals

Long-term objectives and strategies are necessary to guarantee that you keep on top of your product marketing and continue to advertise your items and drive sales. Consider a marathon with sprints when thinking about how to promote a product.

Your website, email marketing, social media pages, marketplace listings, and brick-and-mortar business are all long-term players. You may sell things every day, establish a following, and draw consumers over time using them.

Then there are trade exhibitions, internet marketing, and influencer relationships, which are all short-term sprint methods. These will let you reach a wider audience with short-term expenditures and increase engagement for a brief time.

As you consider how to advertise a product, start by being judicious about the channels you choose. Don’t feel obligated to try everything at once. Plan to start with a few long-term channels, then experiment with audience-specific and short-term techniques to discover which ones perform best.

Begin by establishing your three most important product marketing channels. These are some of them:

1. Include SEO-friendly product listings and information that communicates the narrative of your product on your website. To assist tell—and selling—your product’s narrative, you may add blog entries, product instructions, and even how-to or product demonstration videos.
2. Email marketing: Begin gathering emails from visitors to your website right away and send marketing emails on a regular basis.
3. Set up company pages on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter right once and start publishing compelling content and following relevant persons.

After you’ve established your main channels, you may broaden your reach by using a range of long-term, audience-specific channels and marketing methods, such as:

To increase site traffic or brand exposure, you may also employ certain sprint-style marketing methods, such as:

• Google Ads
• Taking part in trade fairs and buyer’s marketplaces

The message here is that when it comes to marketing channels, you have a lot of alternatives, and no one channel is an expressway to fast sales. Starting with your long-term traffic-building techniques, such as a website and social media channels, you may plan how to advertise a product. You may then branch out into audience-specific channels. All of this lays the groundwork for long-term development while also allowing you to capitalize on short-term marketing boosts like market attendance and ad campaigns.

6. Examine your triumphs and setbacks.

You’re not finished with your product marketing strategy even after it’s up and running. You’ll want to monitor your sales and transactions either manually or with an integrated POS system to determine the effectiveness of your product marketing activities. This will allow you to discover areas where you excelled so that you can repeat similar actions in the future, as well as areas where you struggled so that you can improve.

When it comes to tracking your product marketing, the most important measure to keep an eye on is sales. Let’s imagine you decide to purchase Instagram ad space for your new auto component at your business. You paid roughly $75 for the facility and ended up making $300 in sales. This demonstrates that Instagram advertisements are an effective way to promote your items and increase sales.

Conclusion

Product marketing encompasses all aspects of putting your product in front of the appropriate people and properly promoting it to encourage sales. Creating a product marketing strategy that can expand your firm requires selecting the correct marketing channels, developing a product narrative, and developing long-term strategies.

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