How to Effectively Market a Product or Service

That’s 4.62 billion people you could potentially be marketing your product or service to. Realistically not all of them will be interested in what you sell, but the further your reach is, the more success you will have.

Best Ways to Promote a new product or service

To increase the exposure of your business and people’s interest in it you need to market your product or service effectively. For some business tips to help you do this, keep reading.

Find Your Target Audience

To successfully market a service or product you first need to know who you’re marketing to. This means knowing who they are, what they want, and why they want it.

To do this you need to look at your product or service and think about who will benefit from it. What you’re selling shouldn’t be too niche as that will limit your audience, but also bear in mind you can’t sell to everyone. You should aim for the mid-ground.

Offer loyal customers an exclusive preview

Your loyal customers are a key part of how to promote your product, because they are most likely to not only buy it, but also promote it to their networks. This can take the form of a private, in-person or virtual pre-launch party, an online tour, preview, or demo. Or, it could even be a special invitation to test it out and give feedback. These exclusive offerings are not only a great customer engagement strategy, but they also reinforce how much you value them—and engagement and loyalty are essential for any successful growth marketing strategy.

Offer a complimentary upgrade

If your business is more service-based than product-based, like a salon, spa, fitness center, or consulting business, you can offer an upgrade for customers to try out your new service. Promoting a new facial or massage type at your spa? Provide a complimentary (but perhaps temporary) upgrade for existing customers to try it out. Expanding your agency’s PPC offerings? Add the new service to existing clients’ packages at their legacy pricing. Another option would be to offer free shipping of your new product, for a limited time.

Refine Your Products or Service

Before you can market a product or service properly you need to make sure it meets the wants and needs of your audience. Figure out how you can best serve them, then you can market it based on the decisions you’ve made.

This is best done by identifying a problem and determining how you’ll solve it. You also need to make sure your product or service stands out from similar ones available. You have the best chance of succeeding if you’re the best option your customers have.

Seeking client input is great for this as you can use any information your audience gives you to fine-tune your product as needed.

Use a special introductory offer

Rather than just announcing your new product or service, you can make it available as a part of a special introductory deal. This deal can take many forms, including:

• Discounted pricing.
• Reduced-rate bundle or package.
• Joint promotion with a complementary business.
• Voucher or coupon with purchase.
• Buy one get one free deal.
• Double the points if you have a loyalty program.
• Free gift for every referral.

Whatever your promotion, be sure to emphasize that it won’t last forever. Customers whose purchase power is limited, either by time or inventory, will feel a more pressing sense of urgency to buy.

Run a social media contest

Social media contests are a fun, easy way of connecting with customers and bringing in more fans/followers and prospects for your business. Facebook contests garner an average of 34% new customers per campaign, which is a great way to combat the platform’s low organic reach.

As far as positioning is concerned, the winner(s) of your Facebook or Instagram giveaway should gain the opportunity to be the first to get their hands on your new offering and get it for free or at a discounted rate.

Promote Effectively

Branding is essential here. Your brand image will help you stand out from the competition and establish yourself as a business. Some things you need to establish include your brand name, your brand’s mission statement, a logo, and branding colors/fonts.

After this, you need to put an effective marketing strategy in place. There are various elements to marketing, with some of the most important being the following:

• Website
• Social media pages
• Blog
• Printed advertisements
• Email marketing
• Local advertising (commercials, signs, billboards, etc.)

The way these all work and the content they feature will depend on the nature of your business. Ensure your marketing is primarily geared towards your target audience. For example, if you have a younger audience, social media marketing is one of the best tools at your disposal.

Write a blog post

When promoting your new product or service, you may not have a landing page for customers or subscribers to go to. After all, your new offering could just be an upgrade on an existing platform or account. In this case, your goal may not be to get more customers, but to get your existing customers engaging, or to re-engage dormant customers.

Having a blog post written on the newly launched item is a great way to go into depth on all of the details, features, and benefits you would otherwise include on a landing page, and you can share the link to the blog post via your emails or social media channels.

Make Use of Reviews

As soon as customers have started using your product or service you should be looking for feedback. Reviews will tell you what customers think, both good and bad. You can then use this to further adapt and improve your business.

Going through reviews can be times consuming, so using an automated service such as we can be a good idea. If you get to a point where you think “I can’t keep track of the google reviews for my business” then can help by tracking reviews, filtering through negative reviews, sending automatic follow-ups, and more.

Host an event

Events not only get customers excited about your new product or service, but can also get new prospects personally engaging with you or other employees of your business—a great way to win them over as customers.

Events don’t have to be fancy and super organized; something as simple as an open house or an info session will work for locations like salons, fitness centers, yoga studios, spas, and retail stores.If your business is in a location with other local businesses, you can work together to have a sidewalk sale or outdoor open house to draw even larger crowds.

During the pandemic, virtual events still serve as an effective promotion tool. You might:

• Host a Facebook Live session demoing the product and highlighting its features.
• Run a live or recorded Q&A on the product itself.
• Center the event around an influencer who has expertise around your new product or service, with the promise to unveil the new offering at the end.

The Importance of Marketing Your Product or Service

Properly marketing your product or service is key to business success. No matter how good what you offer is, if people don’t know about it and what makes it special you’ll be missing out on a huge amount of sales.