With a quick glance at this guide learning how to market a product seems like a lot of work. The truth is it does take a lot of time and effort. Product marketing isn’t difficult, though it is tedious.
When you market your product to the right audience, you are bound to purchases. Your products will start flying off the shelves or if you sell e-commerce, then you may start labeling products out of stock.
Marketing a product will take time, so don’t expect your business to blow up overnight. Although going viral may happen, it takes an abundance of effort leading to a climax. Easily going viral just doesn’t happen. We all wish it worked that way.
Below we explain how to market a product efficiently, it is important to comprehend exactly what product marketing it. Keep reading!
What is Product Marketing?
Product marketing in simple terms is bringing your product or service to a market and selling that product successfully. It bridges the gap between managing your product and communicating your product to the outside world.
As a product marketer, you are responsible for a good sales strategy. You need to understand the pros and cons of the product or service you are selling and know who your audience is.
One of the most important things to know within product marketing is studying and defining who your market is. How old are they? What are their buying habits? What social media channels do they live on? Once you’ve discovered the who, then you move on to the how.
10 Ways to Market a Product
There are many ways to market a product. Below we’ve given you the top ten ways to market products and be successful with them.
1.) Build SEO
Building SEO certainly isn’t the, “fun” or, “sexy” part of marketing, but it is certainly the most effective. When you think SEO, think Google. When someone searches for a product, if you are the first to pop-up, you are more than likely to win sales. (Do not get confused with the Google Ads which pop up first, we are talking about organic search results).
Check out our example below. You can see there are some Google ads followed by one of our clients, GenZ Outdoor. They rank #1 for “Anti Theft Hydration Pack.” This means they are not spending money, rather google believes they are the best option for an anti theft hydration pack. We will dive deeper into understanding how we got GenZ Outdoor to that #1 spot, but let’s give you a better understanding of SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of improving the content on your website’s web pages that brings more traffic to your business.
You can build SEO in a few separate ways:
- Acquire backlinks from high domain authority websites
- Guest posting
- Write articles and post videos that solve problems
How to Acquire Backlinks
You can acquire backlinks in multiple ways. Here are three of the most frequently used ways:
- The broken-link method
- Backlinks through infographics
- Study your competitors
The broken-link method requires you to reach out to a website in your niche and let them know one of the website resources they linked to is no longer there.
Through the broken-link method, you are doing the website author a favor and they may automatically give you a backlink to your website. If they don’t automatically do so, be friendly and give them alternative links including a link to your website.
Backlinks through infographics are getting extremely popular because who doesn’t like a data-driven photo? You’ll research and gather information for the infographic, create the visual infographic, add it to your website, and then distribute it to other similar websites.
Studying your competitors is a fantastic way to get backlinks. Knowing when and what backlinks your competitors are earning and building, will help you replicate them and promote them on your website.
When Google sees someone with web authority and is trusted, they award you by boosting your rankings on Google. Super neat!
How Guest Posting Builds SEO
Before going into the details, you need to know what guest posting is. Guest posting is writing paid or unpaid content on another person’s website. Contributing a post to someone else’s blog builds relations, authority, exposure, and links.
When you guest blog, or guest post, on someone else’s website, you are exposed to potential buyers or potential clients. If you’re able to mention your products and services, that’s super helpful too.
Write Content on Your Website and Post Videos
People search the internet for one thing: solutions. If you can answer your customer’s questions through article/blog posts or videos, then you are on your merry way to building SEO.
Blog posts that use several on-page SEO tactics can help you rank better on search engines which draw in more leads. Posting videos are a terrific way to build SEO too because more people are leaning towards visual and audio advertisements.
When it comes to content writing you have three options:
- Write blog posts yourself (a minimum of three times a week),
- Download AI to write your posts for you, or
- Hire a professional content writer.
SEMRush
One super helpful tool we like to Utilize is SEMRush. SEMRush gives you access to tremendous web data. You are able to understand what people are searching for and the volume at which they are searching it. Let’s take “how to create a product: as an example. According to SEMrush, that exact phrase is searched 720 times a month on average. Now we are aware 720 people are searching that a month. We may be able to provide value to that individual by giving them a quick guide on how to make their idea come to life. Since we show that we are knowledgeable in the space, they may trust us enough to be hired to help them design their product.
To dumb it down if you are a company that sells baseball bats you may look up on SEMRush and realize someone is searching “How to hit a homerun,” 2900 times a month. You can also see that the keyword difficulty (basically how hard it is to rank your website for that keyword) is on a 42 which is not that high.
This information may lead you to write an article on “How to hit a homerun every time” and post it to your website. If, let’s say, 200 of those 2,900 read your article, maybe 20 of them will believe that your baseball bat will help them hit more homeruns (if you are a good sales copywriter!)
SEMRush Example
If you enjoy writing, you’re a great writer and have time to spend, then the cheapest option is to write your blog posts yourself.
You can download AI to write for you at a decent price. The major downside with AI is it’s created for Google bots and not your readers. Your readability scores will drop and if there are too many spelling and grammar errors your readers won’t read it.
Your last option is hiring a reasonable content writer to write for you. Hiring a content writer can be extremely cheap, fair, or overly expensive. Just remember, you get what you pay for.
2.) Run Googles Ads
There are two types of Google ads you can use to market a product:
- Google shopping ads
- Google keyword/phrase ads
Google shopping ads use existing product data to decide how and where to show your ads. You send your product data to the Google Merchant Center where they create visual shopping ads for you. I would advise to incorporate keywords into your product name on your website. Checkout our example below.
Notice how we added words like, “Festival, Raves, Hiking, etc.,” into the product name. This will give Google a better indication when someone searches for the product. If someone searches “Hiking hydration pack,” or “Rave pack,” Google may bump us higher up on the ad results because those keywords are in our product name.
Google Keyword/Phrase ads
Google keyword/phrase ads are ads based on specific keywords and phrases people search for. When a keyword you entered matches a keyword/phrase a person uses, Google will show your worded ad to that person.
For our company, Persistent Design & Marketing, we run phrase ads for people who search “Product design Help,” You can see here that we got outbid for ad space on this search. Our competitors showed up, probably because they spend more money in ads. It is important to understand that in Google phrase ads, you pick which terms to show up for. In Google shopping ads you do not.
3.) Run Instagram/Facebook ads
As time goes on, more people and businesses are turning their focus towards social media platforms. If your products or services require visual proof to sell them, then running Instagram and Facebook ads is an exceptional way to market a product.
Running Instagram and Facebook ads can get expensive. Depending on your business budget, it may be worth hiring a creative ad copy specialist. Once you figure out the correct audiences and targeting, Facebook ads may be lucrative. Take a quick look at one of our clients
You can see is this ad set that we were able to obtain a 14 ROAS. That means for every dollar spent on advertising, we are gaining them $14 in revenue. That right there is what we like to call a profitable and sustaining business!
Surveying your Target Market
This is a great way to do research if you are balling on a budget. All you need is access to google surveys which is free with any google account. Here you need to ask non-leading questions. If you ask something like, “Would you buy a metal red solo cup?” You may get skewed data. An individual may think that is a great idea until they are presented with the $15 product. They then do not value the product at $15 and you were misled. Instead, you should ask questions like, “How much do you spend when you play pong? How often do you play pong?” “Do you care what kinds of cups you use when you play pong?” These questions also do not reveal to your target market what you are trying to produce.
4.) Utilize Influencers
Instagram influencers can be great but check their engagement level. Engagement level is followers divided by the average amount of likes per post. For a better visual, check out our detailed YouTube video, The Best Influencer Marketing Strategy.
TikTok has picked up popularity since its official release date in September 2016. Using a TikTok influencer gives you a great chance of going viral. Although it is certainly not easy to do, it is possible. We would recommend sending free product to influencers that TikTok already has a relationship with. Starting and creating your own TikTok content is ideal as well, but that will take consistent effort.
We had a client send a product to an influencer and it got over 4.2 million views and they gained over six hundred sales in three weeks from it! Bonkers. Check out TikTok here.
5.) Find the top ten blog pages and email the author
Search for the top ten blog pages in your business niche and reach out to the author. Ask to be added to their list in exchange for a product to try out. Some authors may want to add you just for an exchange of free product, others may ask for a lot. Some high domain authority websites may ask for $500-$1000. This may not be doable for many, understandably so. That is okay, keep searching and you will find more blogs that won’t charge as much.
If you don’t see an article about your product’s niche, then reach out to a writer that gets high traffic to their website and is relative to your industry. For example, if you are selling a surf board and the blogger is a travel enthusiast, that will coincide.
6.) Sponsor Events
Sponsored events help build credibility in your brand. Sponsoring events also improve public image and prestige. It should be used in a strategic way to target your specific audience. Note that you won’t see an immediate response in sales from sponsoring events. Like building SEO, this strategy is very long-winded. You must be patient.
Think of event sponsorships as an opportunity to craft your image. If potential customers have an amazing experience engaging with you at an event, you are more likely to win them over once it becomes time for them to make a purchase. So when sponsoring events, be sure to be on your best behavior.
7.) Upvote your brand on Reddit
Facebook and Instagram are popular ways on how to market a product, but so is Reddit. Instead of paying for ads, you’ll go to Reddit and search your product’s niche, then post a comment on your product or service as a recommendation.
Another way to promote products on Reddit is through hosting an “Ask me Anything” thread. That’s another option if you don’t want to pay for native ads.
8.) Partner with Supplemental Brands
Partnering with supplemental brands can help you market a product quicker than on your own. This strategy of product marketing takes advantage of the one-stop-shop mentality.
Our hydration pack client partnered with a company that makes a mixture of electrolytes to add to your water for nutritional needs. If someone is interested in one product, they are most likely going to be interested in a product they can use with the other similar product.
If you don’t sell services and not physical tangible products, partnering with supplemental brands still works for you. A good example is a logo designer partnering with a content writer. Another example is a pet sitting service partnering with an essential oil brand that sells anxiety relief for pets.
9.) Email Marketing
Email marketing is used to inform, drive sales, or build a community around your brand through newsletters. You can use promotional or information marketing emails to attract or keep new clients.
Some email marketing techniques known to increase conversion rates are abandoned cart emails and emailing discount coupons and exclusive offers. It also boosts brand awareness and customer loyalty. The more they see your brand, the more likely they trust the name.
Email marketing can be a hit or miss. It doesn’t normally work the best with a small audience, but it usually works well once you have a larger email list.
10.) Share Customer reviews & Testimonials
Customers can help market your brand for you through reviews and live testimonials. If the product or service you sell is amazing by itself, then your customers will review your product without you even asking because they are that satisfied with the product.
It doesn’t hurt to request reviews and testimonials either. Once someone gives you a positive review or testimonial, post it on your website to show others your brand and products are worth trusting.
Reviews can make or break a brand and how and if you respond to reviews will determine the success of your business. Any time you receive a negative or positive review, make sure to comment.
when you comment, make sure to address the person by name and give them the best customer service reply that you can. This will show other customers that you care about their concerns or appreciate their reviews.
Most Important Factors to Remember When Marketing a Product
Sometimes you get too deep over your head that you forget the most important things when it comes to product marketing. Here are seven things to remember:
- Stay within your budget
- Never slack on packaging
- Remain aware of various marketing channels
- Your audience’s likes and dislikes
- Your competition
- Don’t fear asking for reviews and help
- Take a break
It’s too easy to overspend trying to promote your brand. Sometimes it is necessary but other times, it can wait. Stick to your budget!
Packaging is a huge sales point to customers. It might be worth spending an extra dollar to have your brand name stamped on a package.
Don’t forget about the multiple channels when it comes to product marketing. If one channel isn’t working for you, try another.
Remember your customer’s likes and dislikes to prevent further decline in future sales. Pay attention to reviews because oftentimes they will pinpoint what exactly is wrong with your product or why your sales are decreasing.
Your competitors are more helpful than you think. You don’t have to knock on their door and ask for help, simply pay attention to what they are doing that’s causing them to succeed or fail.
Reviews go a long way. Reach out to your best customers and give them a small gift or discount to leave a review.
Lastly, take a break! You can easily burn yourself out when it comes to promoting your brand and company products. Your products will still be there tomorrow.
Conclusion
Now you know what product marketing is and learned how to market a product yourself. There are many types of strategies you can use with marketing products.
For visual products, it’d be smart for you to promote them on Facebook and Instagram. You can utilize influencers to show what your product does and how it benefits your buyer.
No matter which way you decide to market a product, it’s going to take time. So, stay persistent. Your product could be a link away from success!
Posted by: Ryan Lange Guides, Marketing