Marcus RichardsWhen you’ve got a new product that you believe in, it can be scary to take it to market. You know that how you position the product, how you advertise it, and the press coverage it gets will impact how well it fares. You know that people’s first impression is worth a lot, and so even if you decide to re-launch it later on, you’re never going to be able to get back that precious initial impression.
The following aims to help soothe some of your worries by exploring some critical factors involved in marketing a new product. Of course, every industry is different, and this means there might be additional factors you need to keep in mind depending on what field your product is in.
Test The Market
Before releasing a new product, you need to be testing the market. While this will delay your release time, it should be viewed as a dress rehearsal where you see all aspects of your product together within the market. It’s going to let you know if aspects of your marketing strategy are accurate and what the consumer response is to the product. If less than 60% of people within your target market are not interested in the product, then you need to return to the drawing board. Perhaps you’re targeting the wrong people for the product. Perhaps your product doesn’t offer enough value at a given price point. Maybe a competitor has a much stronger hold on your target audience than you first understood. Rework the product and test again until you’re happy with the results. All the brilliant marketing in the world isn’t going to help you overcome a dud for a product. Get the product into the best possible position you can before launching and spending money on marketing.
Think About Packaging
The experience of your product isn’t simply limited to your product. Packaging is part of marketing and part of your product. Work with a brand strategist and a graphic designer to create unique packaging that makes it clear to people what the product is and why it would benefit them. The professionals at carepac.com emphasize that if your product is food-based, you need to also think about FDA-approved commercial-grade packaging that keeps food fresh and clean. You might also want to consider eco-friendly packaging, especially if your target demographic is younger.
Conduct A Sensitivity Test
If your product is going to be available in different places where people participate in different cultures, you need to have people from that culture look over your marketing strategies. Business terminology and etiquette in Canada are different than business etiquette and terminology in Guatemala. You need to know if your product name means anything in another language. You need to know if referring to certain problems that your product solves is inappropriate in some cultures. Major faux pas is possible when marketing is approached with a one-size-fits-all mentality.
Focus On Micro-Marketing
Once upon a time, big television ads on primetime tv were the best marketing a business could hope for. Now that we have the internet and millions of niche online communities, that’s no longer the case. Instead of going wide with your marketing strategy and getting your product in front of as many faces as possible, direct your efforts to smaller communities built around a niche that pertains to your product. If you’ve designed a new watering can that waters plants better than the old-fashioned ones, what do you think will bring more results? An advertisement on a news show with 60,000 viewers? Or an advertisement on a gardening YouTube channel with 6,000 viewers? Almost always, it’s the latter.
Don’t Overvalue Traditional Media
While traditional media still has a feeling of professionalism and prestige associated with its advertisements, the numbers are not what they used to be. More than half of millennials don’t ever watch traditional television, and generation z is even less than that. If you call and ask for the viewership numbers, you might be shocked to learn that random podcasts are getting the same or more viewers than traditional media outlets. Always ask for the numbers rather than assume that because an outlet feels fancy, it has a strong viewership.
Hire A Copywriter
Most people can’t write good copy. This is because the school system overvalued academic writing and hammered into everyone’s skulls how sentences are supposed to be formed. It turns out that conversational writing with an awareness of buying psychology makes for great copywriting and most people really struggle with this. If you don’t have someone with this skill on your team, hire a professional. Bad copy can destroy a launch.
The above information should help you develop a strong marketing strategy for a new product. It might take a bit of time to meet these criteria, but in the long run, your product will be better for it.
