How to market a product: The ultimate guide [2024]

Marketing a product in 2024 requires combining traditional strategies and innovative approaches. This ultimate guide will explore the most effective methods to reach your target audience, boost engagement, and drive sales. 

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, our tips and techniques will help you navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape and achieve your business goals.

• Combining time-tested marketing materials and methods with new approaches is crucial for reaching your audience effectively in 2024.

• Clearly define what makes your product unique to attract and retain customers.

• Leverage analytics to understand customer behavior and optimize marketing efforts.

• Use social media, email, content marketing, and paid ads to connect with your target audience.

• Subscriptions can build steady revenue and customer loyalty by providing ongoing value.

A product marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan designed to promote and sell a product to a specific audience. A well-crafted strategy ensures that the product meets customer needs and stands out in the market.

Product marketing is essential for the success of any business. It involves understanding your target audience, crafting compelling messages, and using the right channels to reach potential customers. Here’s why it’s crucial:

• Builds brand recognition: Consistent marketing efforts help establish your brand in consumers' minds, making it easier for them to remember and choose your products.

• Drives sales: Effective marketing strategies attract potential customers and persuade them to purchase your product, boosting revenue.

• Creates customer loyalty: Engaging marketing campaigns foster a connection with your audience, encouraging repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.

• Gathers valuable feedback: Marketing initiatives often provide insights into customer preferences and behavior, helping you refine your products and strategies.

Understanding the differences between product and conventional marketing is essential for crafting effective strategies. 

Here are the key differences that will help you determine which strategy suits your needs best:

• Focus: Product marketing concentrates on specific products, highlighting unique features and benefits, while conventional marketing encompasses broader brand awareness and overall market presence.

• Target audience: Product marketing targets a niche audience interested in specific products, whereas conventional marketing addresses a wider demographic.

• Methods: Product marketing often uses detailed, product-specific campaigns, while conventional marketing employs general advertising and brand-building techniques.

• Metrics: Success in product marketing is measured by product sales and customer feedback, while conventional marketing looks at overall brand recognition and market share.

Understanding product marketing goals helps marketers develop strategies that resonate with their target audience and deliver measurable results. 

Here are some key objectives of product marketing:

• Build brand awareness: Establish a strong brand presence to ensure customers recognize and remember your product.

• Generate leads: Attracting potential customers and guiding them through the sales funnel.

• Increase sales: Driving revenue by converting leads into paying customers.

• Enhance customer loyalty: Fostering long-term relationships with customers to encourage repeat business and referrals.

Our tips below will walk you through the essential steps to develop and implement an effective strategy that drives results.

Understand your target audience

To effectively promote anything, thoroughly understanding your target audience, aka target market, is vital. A product's target audience is the type of customers most likely to be interested in buying it.

Customers in the same target market tend to share the same interests, demographics, values, or other common traits. Examples of a target market include pet owners, sports fans, millennials, parents, and customers interested in sustainability.

Get to know your target customer by creating a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your target customer that can help influence your product marketing strategy and selling points.

Understand your product

Firstly, identify your product's core features and functionalities. Highlight how these features solve specific problems or meet the particular needs of your target audience. Understanding these aspects will help you articulate your product’s value clearly and compellingly.

Next, consider the benefits your product offers. How does it improve your customers' lives or work? Benefits are often more persuasive than features because they speak directly to the customer’s experience and satisfaction.

Evaluate your product’s unique selling points (USPs). What makes it different or better than other options on the market? Your USPs will be central to your marketing messages and campaigns, helping to position your product effectively in the market.

Research competitors

Understanding what your competitors are doing well, where they are falling short, and how they position their products can provide valuable insights to inform your own strategy.

Here are key steps to effectively research competitors:

1. Analyze your competitors' marketing tactics: Study their advertising, social media presence, content marketing, and promotions to understand their approach.

2. Evaluate their strengths and weaknesses: Identify what your competitors do well and where they have gaps. Look for areas where your product can stand out.

3. Monitor customer feedback: Read reviews and customer feedback on competitors' products to learn what customers like and dislike.

4. Track their pricing strategies: Understanding how competitors price their products can help you competitively position your pricing.

Build a memorable brand identity

Building a recognizable brand identity will make marketing products much easier in the long run. After all, it's hard to turn a regular product into a successful product if no one can remember the name of the company that sells it!

As every good product marketer knows, it's important to have a catchy, memorable business name relevant to your target audience. Select a few brand colors and work them into your logo, site design, and content in your marketing campaigns.

Solidifying your brand voice and personality will create a memorable identity that loyal customers can connect to. Free design software Canva can be a great tool for designing logos, product promotion materials, social media ads, and more.

Choose your marketing channels

Start by analyzing your target audience. Understand where they spend their time online and offline. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter are excellent for engaging different demographics, while email marketing remains a powerful tool for personalized communication.

Content marketing through blogs, videos, and podcasts can establish your brand as an authority in your industry, attracting and retaining customers. Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures your content reaches a broader audience by improving your website's visibility on search engines.

Paid advertising, including Google Ads and social media ads, can provide immediate results and targeted reach. Influencer marketing leverages the trust and following of industry influencers to promote your product authentically.

By carefully selecting and integrating these channels, you can create a cohesive and impactful product marketing strategy.

Develop lifecycle marketing strategies

Developing lifecycle marketing strategies is crucial for creating a successful product marketing strategy. Lifecycle marketing involves targeting customers with tailored messages and offers at different stages of their journey, ensuring continuous engagement and retention. 

Here's how to develop effective lifecycle marketing strategies:

1. Customer segmentation: Divide your customer base into segments based on behavior, preferences, and purchase history. This allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to each group’s needs.

2. Personalized communication: Create personalized messages for each stage of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to consideration, purchase, and post-purchase. Use data-driven insights to address customer needs and preferences.

3. Engagement tactics: Implement various engagement tactics such as email marketing, social media campaigns, and loyalty programs to maintain a strong relationship with customers throughout their journey.

4. Retention strategies: Focus on retaining customers by offering excellent customer service, regular updates, and exclusive offers. Happy, loyal customers are likely to repeat purchases and refer your product to others.

5. Performance tracking: Continuously monitor and analyze the effectiveness of your lifecycle marketing strategies. Adjust your tactics based on performance data to ensure ongoing improvement and success.

Digital marketing has become a global industry that is projected to pull in nearly $740 billion in 2024 alone. As advertisers worldwide have discovered, developing an online marketing strategy has plenty of perks over traditional marketing campaigns like billboards, mailing, and TV advertisements.

Not only does it allow business owners to engage customers worldwide, but it's also substantially cheaper than many traditional advertising methods. Let's explore several powerful ways to engage customers with today's most popular product marketing tactics.

1. Perks, promotions, and discounts

Who doesn't love a good sale? Offering perks, promotions, and discounts is a time-honored marketing strategy that can entice current and prospective customers to check out your products.

Many marketers also offer new customers free shipping, discounts, or promos in exchange for providing their emails or signing up for text alerts. Ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy make creating targeted and sitewide sales and promos for your online store easy.

Here are some ideas for sales and promos that can help drive website traffic and boost sales:

• Offer free shipping

• Include a free gift with customers' orders

• Offer discounts like 20% off in exchange for email/SMS text sign-ups

2. SMS and email marketing

SMS and email marketing can both be solid strategies if approached correctly. Text message marketing, in particular, has its own unique set of pros and cons.

On the one hand, most texts have a 97% read rate within 15 minutes of delivery. The downside, of course, is the danger of annoying customers with personal texts.

That's why it's essential to familiarize yourself with best practices if you intend to use SMS as a marketing strategy. Keep it short and to the point, and include only your best offers or promos.

Email marketing tends to be much more versatile, though it's still important to familiarize yourself with effectively marketing a product via email. It's definitely worth checking out email marketing platforms like Constant Contact and MailChimp, which offer features like customizable templates, automation, and segmentation capabilities.

Segmentation allows you to break down your customer base into specific groups based on anything from demographics to the current stage of the customer journey. It can also help you set up abandoned carts and win-back email campaigns.

3. Social media marketing

According to research by HubSpot, 4.74 billion people worldwide now use social media platforms. These figures haven't escaped the attention of marketers, who are projected to spend $207.10 billion in social advertising in 2023.

While running paid ad campaigns on social media platforms can be an incredibly effective strategy for attracting new customers through targeted ads, organic social marketing efforts also have plenty of benefits. Ensuring your business maintains a strong social media presence by regularly sharing engaging content, encouraging user-generated content, and interacting with your customer base.

Several great tools can help you keep your social media marketing strategy on point. Buffer and SocialPilot are some of the most affordable, while SocialSprout and HootSuite may be worth exploring for businesses with a larger budget.

4. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy that involves partnering with influential personalities with large followings. The idea is to select an influencer who shares your target audience and convince them to promote or mention your products in their social media posts.

If you have a large audience, you might consider offering to cross-promote products with another influencer. If not, you might offer the influencer an incentive, such as free merchandise to a pre-agreed upon payment.

5. Content marketing and SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a content marketing strategy that increases a content's chances of ranking higher in search engine results. While there are now entire agencies specializing in search engine marketing, even a solid understanding of SEO basics can help increase your content's ranking on search engines.

One common tactic is market research to determine the keywords a customer will most likely type into a search engine when searching for your products. By working these keywords into your product titles and descriptions, you can increase the odds of your website ranking higher on search engine results pages.

But don't make the common beginner's mistake of assuming that search engine optimization begins and ends with cleverly placed keywords! Google considers several factors when generating ranking scores, such as:

• Expertise in your niche

• "People first" content that's readable and informative

• Quality of any images used

• Link building

• How fast your page loads

• Your site's overall structure, crawlability, and loading time

6. Paid marketing

Ever wish you knew how to market a product so well that your product page would appear at the top of a search results page? A paid marketing strategy is a shortcut to making your dream a reality.

You know how you will do a Google search; the first few results always say "sponsored" next to their links? Those are paid ads that the website set up to get their links in front of more potential customers using Google Ads.

In addition to search ads, you can also pay to run a marketing campaign that includes display ads, paid Facebook advertising, or even video ads. But are paid marketing campaigns effective?

Paid marketing campaigns can be a great way to reach your ideal customer faster if you take the time to create eye-catching and compelling ads. Creating a paid marketing campaign also comes with perks like the ability to leverage retargeting, which means reaching out to customers who have previously interacted with your site but haven't yet made a purchase.

7. Loyalty programs

Some studies suggest that attracting new customers can cost anywhere from 5x - 7x more than retaining current customers. That's one of the many reasons that customer retention is so important.

While many product marketers make the mistake of focusing solely on lead generation, never underestimate the power of repeat buyers! Creating a loyalty program can be a great product marketing strategy for boosting sales among existing customers.

From restaurants that offer you every tenth sandwich or burrito for free to grocery cards that offer discounts on every purchase, many businesses now use loyalty programs as part of their marketing efforts. Depending on which marketing tactics you want to use, you might consider creating a loyalty program with software like LoyaltyZoo or Kangaroo.

Here are some more tips on how to use a loyalty program as an effective part of your product marketing strategy:

• Do your customer research to ensure you offer rewards that align with your target audience's values and interests.

• Offer a variety of different rewards to choose from

• Make it super easy to join.

• Reward several actions (email sign-ups, referrals, purchases, etc.)

8. Customer reviews

When it comes to marketing a product, there's no substitute for "earned advertising." Unlike paid product marketing or your own organic product marketing efforts, earned advertising consists of online reviews, shares, mentions, and reposts.

Earned media is generated by your customers, whether on a social media platform, Yelp, or even your website. Some marketers argue that earned media is quite possibly the most powerful product marketing strategy simply because there's no way to fake it.

No matter how many social media ads you run or how convincing your blog post may be, there's no better way to drive sales than positive customer testimonials. Here are some tips that can lead to earned advertisements, repeat purchases, and happy customers.

• Offer customers outstanding service.

• Create a brand image based on trust, and make sure you back it up.

• Don't be shy about inviting customers to review their products after they are delivered.

• Encourage customers to leave a review in exchange for a discount or promo.

• Respond to every review, whether good or bad. Attempt to offer a solution whenever a review mentions a problem or complaint.

• Display some of the best reviews on your website. 

9. Cross-selling and upselling

Cross-selling involves recommending related or complementary products to customers and encouraging them to purchase additional items. This method not only increases the average order value but also enhances customer satisfaction by offering solutions that complement their initial purchase.

Upselling, on the other hand, focuses on persuading customers to buy a more expensive version of a product or add features that increase the overall value. You can demonstrate how it better meets the customer's needs by highlighting the benefits of a premium product or additional features.

To effectively implement cross-selling and upselling:

• Understand customer needs: Analyze customer behavior and purchase history to identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.

• Train your sales team: Equip your team with the knowledge and skills to recommend relevant products and upgrades.

• Leverage technology: Use CRM systems and AI-driven tools to personalize recommendations and automate the process.

• Focus on value: Ensure the additional products or upgrades genuinely benefit the customer, building trust and loyalty.

10. Giveaways and contests

You can create excitement and buzz around your brand by offering customers a chance to win your product or other valuable prizes. Here’s how to effectively use giveaways and contests in your marketing strategy:

1. Define clear goals: Determine what you want to achieve, such as increasing brand awareness, growing your email list, or boosting social media engagement.

2. Choose the right platform: Select platforms where your target audience is most active, like Instagram, Facebook, or your website.

3. Create compelling prizes: Offer desirable and relevant prizes to your audience, ensuring they align with your brand.

4. Set clear rules: Ensure your contest rules are easy to understand and comply with legal requirements.

5. Promote aggressively: Use all available channels, including social media, email marketing, and influencers, to spread the word.

6. Engage participants: Keep the excitement alive by engaging with participants throughout the contest period and announcing winners promptly.

11. Offering a subscription service

Offering a subscription service can create a steady revenue stream and nurture long-term customer relationships. Subscriptions provide customers with ongoing value, encouraging loyalty and repeat purchases.

To successfully implement a subscription model, identify products or services that lend themselves to recurring use. Then, develop tiered subscription plans that cater to different customer needs and budgets, providing options ranging from basic to premium offerings.

Next, focus on customer engagement. Offer exclusive content, early access to new products, or special discounts to subscribers. This enhances the perceived value of the subscription and keeps customers interested.

Marketing your subscription service requires clear communication of its benefits. Use email campaigns, social media, and your website to highlight the convenience, cost savings, and exclusive perks subscribers receive. 

Encourage satisfied subscribers to share their experiences, leveraging word-of-mouth marketing to attract new customers.

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When a customer orders, one of our 130+ local producers will print your product and ship it straight to your customer. We offer product marketers and creators everywhere a reliable, sustainable approach to ecommerce.

With Gelato, you can launch a successful store without the need to keep up with inventory, shipment, or even order fulfillment. You develop the product marketing strategy, and we'll handle the rest.