Marketing your product online isn’t what it used to be. In fact, it has gotten a whole lot more difficult to get consumers to notice your business among all the competition. Without a sound marketing strategy to guide you, you’re certain to face an uphill battle simply to establish long-term customer relationships. Yet, hope is not all lost when it comes to reaching your target audience. There are still a few tips and tricks that could help you connect with consumers. Here are a few ways you can effectively market your product.
- Focus on social media: No marketing campaign is complete without social media. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent free or inexpensive — depending on whether or not you opt for paid advertising — ways to spread the word about your business and reach out to interested consumers who may be more amenable to giving your product a try.
- Build your market first: It’s never a bad idea to begin by selling your products to end-users before investing in a full-blown marketing campaign. Then these initial customers can offer invaluable feedback on your product and its packaging that you can use to punch up your approach. You may want to create product listings on a site like eBay to get your first few sales through or reach out to friends, family, and acquaintances as well as your local community.
- Start a crowdfunding campaign: In recent years, crowdfunding has become all the rage. While it’s often used to fund a project from the start, you can also leverage this resource to propel your product development further. This might not be the best option for your industry, but it’s still worth exploring as a possibility since your business can reap some startling benefits as a result.
- Offer free product samples: One of the biggest obstacles you have to overcome with new customers is the purchase decision. People are often so anxious about spending money on a new product, but if you provide a select number of your product to consumers as free samples or as an incentive for a greater purchase, you are boosting exposure to your product and, in turn, its future promotion.
- Launch an affiliate program: As passive income has continued to grow in popularity, so too has the concept of online affiliate programs. For a commission, sellers will help you promote your product online, essentially doing the job of marketing it for you. While this is more of a slow burn approach than other methods, affiliate marketing continues to prove that it does work wonders for certain kinds of products and services.
- Provide free webinars: If your product is a software system or some other subscription-based model, you might find free webinars to be an effective way to (as we mentioned earlier) overcome the purchase decision. Seeing your product in action could alleviate consumer concerns regarding its functionality and practical application in their lives. Of course, webinars wouldn’t be a feasible option for simpler products.
- Engage in content marketing: Blogs, podcasts, whitepapers and other forms of content marketing can be a great way to take advantage of search engine optimization and lead consumers directly to your product. Topics can range from your industry to specific issues that your product can address. The important thing is that it serves the purpose of establishing either your product or your business as an authority in your field.
- Create an email list: Data is arguably the most important currency of any business but especially those selling their products online. So building an email list is understandably an indispensable way to create a lasting bond with your customers. Be sure to offer some kind of incentive to encourage users to enter their email address, and then follow up on content, supporting your business and its product throughout.
Market to Success
Given the specifics of your industry and your business itself, there’s no telling which marketing strategies will prove to be most effective. The approaches we’ve detailed above are just a few of the possible routes you can take to market your product, and we recommend extensive testing to help isolate which methods work best for your specific needs.
In the meantime, we recommend that you invest the time necessary to get to know your ideal customer and fine tune your pricing in accordance with your marketing goals. The future is only as bright as you make it, and marketing your products is the first step to lighting up your business.
