After having built your brand, it is time to introduce your product to your customers. This is a lot of hard work. Having known your probable customer, the next item you need to keep in mind is how to deliver your branding to make it well known effectively and in a short time. Nowadays developments in technology and the internet give your marketing team the flexibility to reach out to more people than ever before. But do not ignore the fact that there are some ways to present your customers that have proven effective even from decades ago. Here are the most efficient ways you can introduce your products efficiently and sooner.
1. Gift Guides:
You can use special occasions such as holidays as an opportunity to introduce your new products. First try this little exercise by keying in this search query: “gift ideas for 8-year-old daughter” (if your product caters to 8-year-old girls such as hair clips). Next, check which ranks first in Google. Try to reach out to those sites that come out if you can have your products included. It is a proven way to drive traffic to your website. Just make sure your products are fit to the occasion when it is offered, and have been provided a reason to be included in the list. Most importantly, you need to mention your product and a repurposed description should add value to the editor and the post. This means you need to make sure to highlight what makes your product unique and distinct addition to the list.
2. Email Marketing:
Email marketing is cited by marketers as the most cost-effective marketing channel of all. According to studies, email marketing returns $35.00 for every $1.00 spent. However, you need to secure a hefty email list. Legally securing an email list (either through engagement with your website or responding to a social media post) means you are interacting with an already engaged audience. But once you have them the benefits far outweigh the cost. Moreover, the impact is immediate and easily trackable. Most positive responses are felt within 24 hours of sending an email offer. The best way to yield the most from your email campaign is by personalizing your content since you know your target audience already. Consider also the time when you send your emails. Best time to send emails is between 10AM and 4PM on a weekday.
3. Land Your Business in the Press
This is the most challenging of all the presentation ideas cited in this article. Most small businesses do not have leverage on the press. But once you have contacts with print media editors and article writers there is a good chance your product can get a higher possibility of visibility especially in markets with low bandwidths (read: slow internet). Moreover, note also that 80% of the people do not click on banner ads despite having 4 ads per page view. Getting publicity is a sure way your product gets heard. Since getting access to print-media practitioners is getting increasingly difficult, you may target bloggers instead. Reach out with a personal email and ask if you can send a sample. You can target bloggers relevant to the industry your product belongs to. You can also reach out to influencers. Influencers already have loyal and engaged fan support. Your target audience will trust an honest testimonial by an influencer over an advertisement that sings praises about your product.
4. Through Your Social Media Page
Consider the following statistics why your business should engage seriously in social media: 1 in 3 internet users say they go to social networks to look for information about a product. Over 50% of marketers have reported a growth in sales after 2 years in engaging in social media. 90% of marketers have noted an increase in exposure to their business.
Engaging in social media ad campaigns is imperative for even small businesses. This is one of the fields even small companies can go toe-to-toe with bigger companies by posting impactful content in a medium with seemingly limitless potential for reach and engagement. The cost of producing an ad for posting on social media pages are not prohibitively expensive. The availability of tools and know-how are within reach of consumers. There are companies that specializes in helping businesses produce social media ads at affordable rates if businesses need help.
For a social media ad to stand out, the objective is to make the ad relevant, unique, and valuable enough for the users to click on these willingly. With the amount of noise and clutter on social media feeds, following the tips discussed in this article can help your ad gain the attention of consumers for that 1.7 seconds they will pass through it.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Consider these statistics: only 4.8% of searchers make it to the second page of search results. Worse yet on Page 3, only 1.1% of searches take that far. If your business competes with a product that has a lot of competition, there is a big chance your website won’t make it to your target audience. This is where SEO service comes in. An effective strategy involves several steps: first is by finding a specific domain name, consider having searchable keywords in your content, build links back to your website, and optimizing your site architecture. It will be very difficult for your website to make it to the top searches for starters, but try to always keep this in mind.
6. Referral or Word-of-Mouth Marketing
This is something you can start from the counter or storefront for any size of business. Building a business does not end with making a sale, it is all about building relationships. If you do this well then you can use this good relationship with your customers in other ways. One of the most effective is by referral or word-of-mouth marketing. By consistently delivering on your promise, your customers will like your products so much that they will advertise these for you for free. You may also do this by directly engaging in social media where you can sniff for customers who can advertise for you.
7. Blogger Outreach
This is an effective way to reach your target audience if you do not have much traction on your website yet or with your target audience in general. You may use someone’s engaged audience already. Good bloggers have a special kind of rapport with their audiences and are quite adept at getting near the top of search engine results. Select bloggers that are already well-known in the industry your product is being introduced to. This way your traffic and sales can be driven up if the blogger you selected already has a lot of engagements. This is one of the best ways business owners introduce niche products such as expensive electronics or even capital equipment.
8. Pop-up Shops
Scan the city for unused space or ask around if there are events where you can have an opportunity to set up a small booth to run a small store. This works a lot during holidays when people look around for a bargain. This can also serve as an opportunity to offload excess inventory. Here you can engage directly with people and this goes a long way. Not only will you know more about your target audience you can also build good relationships with them and may drive sales for you through word of mouth. If you have an online shop this is one of the best way to introduce a product in person. This means this is can be a perfect opportunity to introduce new products through special offers. If you are lucky you may get some press coverage.
9. Blog Post
Having blogs on your website can help with your SEO. SEO researchers have found that long-form blog posts tend to perform better than shorter ones. Posting blogs regularly at nearly 2000 words long will drive more traffic than posting blogs at around 1300 words by more than twice as much. Moreover, posting blogs on your website regularly can keep your audience on your website for much longer giving more opportunity for you to post ads. Half of all searches are over 4 words long. For example, instead of searching for “hiking boots” people who search for hiking boots will probably search for “hiking boots for winter”. This means having blog posts with titles that are specific to your target audience will have a higher probability of ranking in search engines when specific queries are made. Posting blogs regularly on your website keeps your website current. If your content is not updated regularly your audience might think your business already went bust. Having regular blog posts can build trust and an air of authority to your site. Once you have enough traffic then this is a perfect platform to introduce your product as your audience will read posts they love.
10. YouTube
YouTube is now the second most used website in the world right now. 45% of all internet users spend at least more than one hour watching videos on YouTube and Facebook a day. This fact alone suggests that every business should consider using this platform to introduce their products. Moreover, YouTube videos rank in traditional search engines. This means by applying SEO rules specifically targeted for YouTube content ranking, your business can gain traction better. Videos posted on social media sites, in general, have over 12 times more shares than texts and images combined. This helps lead marketers to grow revenue at 49% faster than those that do not use videos at all
How does a YouTube video for a product be made? Making a video showing your product spinning at 360 degrees will not be gaining as much traction. YouTube videos that tend to gain traction tell a story. An example is showing a product in use and how useful it can be in the most probable situations your most probable customers will be using them. The videos have to be short. For YouTube product videos the most probable length that could gain more views is between 3 minutes and 3 minutes and 30 seconds (for social media posting such as in Facebook, the ideal length should be much shorter). That means the content has to be concise and to the point. Lastly, you need to make sure the videos can increase the relatability between your product and your target customer. This means the video should show emotion and honesty with the aim of making the customer walk away with feelings that they understood the content.
11. Run a Contest
Running a contest is the first of the last two promotional strategies that can be considered traditional and have been in use for a long time yet still very effective. Running a contest by giving away your product can help you make sure you present and introduce your product to the right customers. This is one of the best ways to get relevant customer information such as email addresses, and other contact information. But be careful about using this platform to introduce your business. Asking too much information could make you drive away potential customers. Make entering your sweepstakes easy and make the duration of your contest at the right length (usually 2 to 4 weeks).
12. Freebies
We save the best for last. Offering freebies to introduce a new product can help drive sales further down the road. It may seem counter-intuitive. But the reason why marketers do not abandon this tactic is because of its effectiveness. Consumers love freebies and you love your products getting to your customers. But how does it work even for small businesses?
Freebies create a buzz. Word moves around. Chances are more people behind those that availed of your free offer probably heard of the buzz. It encourages people to try your products risk-free. People, once they like your product after having tried it, will probably come back to pay for it to get more. This is a tried and tested tactic for businesses that just opened. Once your customers are hooked, they are willing to spend more. It will create a buying habit once they have a positive experience dealing with your products.