According to Harvard Business School, companies face the greatest challenge when launching new products.
This is why 30,000 new products are introduced each year. At least 95 percent of them fail.
Although products can fail for many reasons a solid product marketing plan can help you to minimize risk factors and increase your chances of success.
What is Product Marketing?
Product marketing encompasses the entire process of bringing new products to market, including the research and development phase through to launch.
Companies of all sizes use it to understand and fulfill customers' product requirements.
A solid product marketing strategy can help you launch your first product, or your fiftieth.
Product Marketing
Product marketing's main purpose is to increase sales. A product marketing strategy that is effective can bring more than just profit.
Product marketing is a great way to market your product and get more targeted advertising.
A strategy should answer questions such as “What product gap is required?” and “How does my product differentiate from the rest?”
Product marketing gives you a better understanding of your customers.
- Who are your target audience?
- What are they buying?
- What is the main reason they make a purchase?
You can improve your value proposition up to 82% by creating buyer personas.
You'll also be able to gain new insight about your competitors. This is not a problem for small businesses but it can be a concern for larger companies. However, nearly 90 percent Fortune 500 companies use “competitive intelligence”, which must speak for its value. Get ahead of your competition if you want to grow.
Examples for Product Marketing
Let's first look at two successful brands for their product marketing campaigns before we dive into our own strategies.
1. Poo Pourri
Poo Pourri is an excellent example of a company that successfully promoted a product for a taboo topic (a toilet spray that removes unpleasant odors from the bathroom). Because everyone poos, it does this with humor and relatability.
They placed their product in the best possible way.
Their first ever video advertisement was ranked number five on the platform in 2013. It also earned the brand a cult following, which has grown over the years.
What can other brands learn from Poo Pourri?
Find your platform first and work hard. Poo Pourri used video ads in its early years to expand its audience. The brand could also use online and television advertising, where it was able to be funny.
Brand also used customer personas in its favor. Everyone poops. But not everyone needs to use the toilet.
Instead, they targeted specific markets and situations in order to make their point.
2. Tesla
What comes to your mind when you think about Tesla? Electric cars. Clean energy. Solar power.
These keywords are what you will associate with Tesla. This is because they have built their entire identity around their brand statement.
Here's a small excerpt of Tesla's brand message:
Tesla builds all-electric cars, but also infinitely scalable clean power generation and storage products. Tesla believes that the faster the world moves away from fossil fuels, the better.
Tesla was able to effectively dominate the electric vehicle market. Although it knew that it had a target market in this space, Tesla never changed its brand statement when it developed electric vehicles and other clean-energy products.
How has this success been achieved? Tesla currently holds about 75 percent market share in electric cars, with the Model 3 being the most-sold vehicle globally in 2021.
6 Product Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business
These six product marketing strategies will help you to become a success story, just like the ones above.
1. Combine with robust content marketing
Have you ever thought your product was too boring for content marketing to make an impact on it? You might be wrong!
Blendtec, a manufacturer of commercial and residential blenders, has launched a series videos to make their boring product more entertaining. It was called “Will It Blend?” and is exactly what it sounds.
To inject humor and curiosity into their product lines, the company would experiment with blending inedible ingredients in blenders.
What did it result in? The result? A 700% increase in sales during its first three years.
Your content marketing strategy does not have to be extravagant, but it can still be very successful. You can include a variety of content types in your strategy.
- blog posts
- Videos
- podcasts
- Infographics
- White papers
- Downloadable guides
It is enough to make sure your content marketing is engaging.
- First, find out what your customers want.
- The second step is to push them on their pain points.
- Through storytelling, you can agitate that pain.
- Offer to solve their problem.
These four points will ensure that your content marketing strategy is strong.
2. Create a product launch plan
Product launches don't always go as planned.
Gartner estimates that 45 percent of product launches are delayed for at least one month. This can cause poor results and a chain reaction.
This is a hard pill to swallow but it should be enough to motivate you to create a detailed product marketing plan.
It must be efficient, timely, and effective. Consider these three steps:
- Pre-launch.
- Launch.
- Post-launch.
The pre-launch is heavily centered on research and development. Think about your industry, your customers, and the benefits your product offers that no other product can.
This stage will require extensive involvement in beta testing and finessing the messaging for your target audience.
- What are some unexpected pain points that arise during beta?
- What does feedback look like?
- What could you do to improve your product and messaging?
Launch is about getting your message across to the right people. This includes choosing the right channels and hosting multiple events online and in person to create buzz.
post-launch requires you to compare your actuals and targets. Did you do as well as you expected? If not, what is the reason?
An unsuccessful launch does not mean you are losing your momentum. You should not lose momentum after the launch and shift your focus to keeping existing customers.
3. Retarget your existing customers
Why?
Your greatest source of revenue will be your existing customers. You can double your company's revenue with a mere 5 percent increase in customer retention.
Retargeting existing customers is an important step to increase retention rates. Customer service is a key factor in customer satisfaction. This is marketing to existing customers directly to address their needs, and to instill brand loyalty.
How does it look?
Here are some ways to retarget customers already in your database:
- Create customized ad campaigns to reach customers who are not already customers. This should emphasize brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. What keeps customers coming back to you? Profit from it.
- Create a retargeting campaign email for customers who haven’t bought in a certain time frame. Segmentation can be used to create different campaigns for customers who have not purchased in the past 3 months, 6 months, or more.
- Be more aggressive in retargeting campaigns. Customers who have converted before are more likely than those who are new customers. This means that you can afford a higher Cost per Conversion (CPC), for retargeting campaigns.
Your retargeting strategy should remind customers why they bought from you. You should place a lot of emphasis on the first experience and the value you offer.
4. Resolve Customer Problems
It is estimated that 63% of B2C customers and 76% of B2B customers want businesses to anticipate their needs and respond accordingly. Understanding your customers' needs and providing solutions is key to unlocking their potential value.
Although pain is an essential part of any marketing strategy it can be easily overlooked by e-commerce. Here are some reasons pain is so important.
- A customer can be moved to action by pain.
- A customer can feel relief from pain.
- Conversion funnels can be squeezed by pain.
- Conversion rates can be improved by pain.
As we have discussed in the content marketing section of this article, the key to a product marketing strategy that works is to identify the pain of your customers, remind them about it, and then offer the solution.
These insights are a result of a solid market research strategy that includes keyword research, competitor reviews analysis and customer surveys.
Qdoba is one example. Qdoba knows that adding ons such as guacamole and queso can be a problem for their customers. They don't add any extra charges:
Your product purchase doesn't end at the pain points. As part of your customer service journey, you should have a plan for customers who experience pain. An example: A problem with the product.
This includes customer reviews monitoring, live chats with customer support agents and reading the results of customer surveys.
5. Reevaluate Product Positioning and Enhance It
You don't have to abandon the markets or marketing strategies you used when you launched your product. Launch may have opened up new markets for your product, or provided a unique value proposition.
You and your product team should have answered these questions prior to launch:
- What was the purpose of this product?
- Who is this product for?
- What problems does this product solve?
- What makes this product so special?
After the launch, it is time to evaluate whether your answers and those of your team were correct. What are the new answers and how does it differ from the original plan if they don't?
This difference can help you to reposition your product in an ever-changing marketplace.
How you reposition a product is dependent on its cost and the product. Repositioning a product that is not profitable can be done in a number of ways, including repackaging it, remarketing to a new audience or adding new features.
You have access to customer feedback and insights that are invaluable. This is something you didn't have during the product launch. This information can be used to create a complete product positioning strategy.
6. You might consider changing your pricing structure
A change in your pricing structure is another way to reposition your product. If you are not seeing a profit on your product, this is a good option.
It is easy to change your pricing by lowering or increasing your price, or running special promotions.
Follow the example of Peloton or hundreds of companies that have successfully adopted the “good-better best” pricing approach.
The good-better best pricing strategy involves three levels of the same product, each with an increasing value. This allows you to make your product more available to new customers and increase spending for customers who are more discerning.
You have four choices to choose from, if you want to continue the Peloton example:
- The Peloton Bike, starting at $1195
- The Peloton Bike+ starts at $1,995.
- The Peloton Tread (starting from $2,345)
- The Peloton Tread+ (beginning at $4,295)
The Peloton Bike, and the Peloton Track are both unique products. However, they offer one experience: a home exercise device.
You can offer your product at different price points to increase the availability of the product to more people. This is a great way for companies to expand their market reach.
Product MarketingFrequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the four types?
There are four product categories that can all benefit from product marketing. These are convenience goods and shopping goods as well as specialty goods and unsought products.
How can product marketing benefit companies?
You would be wrong to think that product marketing is not possible for your business. A planned approach to product launches and sales can be beneficial for any company, regardless of size.
What types of product marketing are there?
Product marketing can encompass more than 20 different marketing activities. Advertising, branding, product management and product development are all possible examples of product marketing.
What's the difference between product marketing and marketing?
Marketing is only one subset. Marketing can be described as a broad term that includes activities such as marketing communications, operations and project management.
Marketing strategies for product products
A product marketing strategy will help you reach all milestones within a given time frame, from product development through customer analysis and launch.
This will allow you to launch your product on-time and increase your chances of success.
You'll have a much better start to your business if you have a solid plan for product marketing that anticipates customer needs and mitigates risk.
What product marketing strategy will you use to promote your product launch?
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By: Neil Patel
Title: 6 Product Marketing Strategies That Will Get You More Sales
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/product-marketing-strategies/
Published Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2022 19:00:00 +0000