Don’t let the complexities of a modern digital marketing strategy throw you sideways. When you break it all down, marketing involves just three key things:
- Have something of value to offer.
- Let people know what you have.
- Make it available to everyone who wants it.
A good product or service will sell itself many times over and gather grass-roots support wherever it goes. A new offering with high intrinsic value can make up for a truckload of marketing mistakes.
The first step in any marketing adventure is to assess how you feel about your product. Are you passionate about it? Do you believe it’s effective? Can it help others? Do you use it yourself?
You can successfully market a product that you wouldn’t use yourself or recommend to others. But the incongruence between your innermost beliefs and your enthusiastic marketing campaign will, on some level, limit and restrict your success regardless of how 5-star your marketing efforts are.
Therefore, don’t waste your valuable time, considerable talent and precious marketing dollars on products you wouldn’t buy yourself. Save your energy for products you’re so excited about that you can’t sleep at night.
1. What Do You Have to Offer?
Even the most stand-out product won’t sell if no one knows it exists. Marketing lets people know what you’ve got. Nevertheless, you can’t market a product without first identifying the problem it solves and the people who have that problem.
Identify Your Target Audience
Your target audience is that group of people most likely to want what you’ve got. They want it because it promises to solve a problem they want rid of.
Here are some general characteristics of good prospects:
- They know they have a problem.
- It’s a problem your product can solve.
- They have access to your product.
- They are motivated to purchase your product.
- They can afford your product.
- They are able to make purchases.
One savvy marketer recommends creating an ideal customer who has all the qualities you want. A bit of research can help you to pinpoint those qualities.
After you identify your ideal customer, you can actively direct your marketing efforts their way. You can also exclude people who probably don’t want what you’ve got.
Define the Problem Your Product Solves
If your product stops migraine headaches in their tracks, your ideal customer is anyone who gets migraines and fits the categories listed above. To best leverage your energy, confine your marketing efforts to high-probability prospects and exclude low-probability prospects altogether.
Your ideal prospects are the people who have the problem your product can solve. You have to know what your prospect’s problems are and the value your product can bring before you can engage ideal prospects or market to them.
Be a problem solver and a pain reliever. Spend your advertising dollars telling people with migraines how a problem that causes them pain (migraines) can by solved by relieving the pain caused by the problem.
The result will be higher conversion rates, lower price resistance and greater customer satisfaction. An ideal customer will see your product as the only reasonable choice.
2. Let People Know What You Have
You’ve identified your ideal customers, but how do you sell them on your product? Features and benefits are always nice, but in and of themselves, bells and whistles won’t sell products.
A person with a migraine wants one thing only: They want the pain to go away. If your product makes that happen, the rest is frosting on the cake.
Price is irrelevant when you’re in pain. If the pain is bad enough, you’ll willingly pay through the nose for relief. You won’t be shopping around for the best deal or checking for medication side effects online.
Every product on the market promises to relieve pain on some level. A product that claims to help people lose weight offers relief from the pain of being overweight. The best products relieve pain by solving the problems that cause it.
When your product effectively relieves pain, you’ve reached the crux of the matter. That’s when you’re speaking the customer’s language. Does a doctor need to sell a patient in pain on a painkiller medication?
This is a powerful way to market a product.
Product Effectiveness
Never underestimate the leverage you gain when your product has been shown to be effective. Unfortunately, there are marketers who employ false, misleading or inflated product effectiveness claims to cash in on the suffering of others while providing minimal benefits to their customers.
People in severe pain don’t typically research products before buying them. They simply believe the product efficacy claims and are frequently disappointed when the desired effect doesn’t pan out. The upshot is a target audience that’s highly skeptical about even sound effectiveness claims.
Studies have revealed that proof is the most important element in sales leverage. If you can clearly show that your product effectively solves a problem by removing pain, it can improve your conversions like nothing else.
Direct your energy to areas where you can show proof, and remember that some proof is always better than none.
What Constitutes Proof of Product Claims?
- Verified and documented customer satisfaction rates including product testimonials, market share, large numbers of clients and case studies with positive outcomes.
- Third-party endorsements including reviews, research studies and awards.
These endorsements are the strongest form of proof because they are the least likely to be fake. Your ideal clients have probably wasted a lot of time and money on products that don’t work. They won’t be persuaded by flashy marketing materials, vague promises or snappy advertising slogans.
3. Make Your Product Available to Everyone Who Wants It
A good product will almost sell itself, but only if your targeted customers know it exists and how to get it.
You may not have a multi-million dollar advertising budget, but you can still let ideal prospects know about your offering. Here are some marketing ploys that won’t break your bank:
Highlight the Science
Science-based proof of product effectiveness such as scholarly articles in professional journals can be used to support your claims and the efficacy of your product.
Authoritative sources carry a lot of weight compared to vague and potentially inflated claims. Published articles that support the problem-solving ability of your product generate scientific evidence that’s difficult to dispute.
Be Optimistic and Upbeat
After more than 30 years of research, psychologist Martin Seligman and his team concluded that optimistic salespeople across industries consistently outperform their pessimistic colleagues by between 20 to 40 percent.
A study performed by Tipping.org revealed that employees who said “good morning” to hotel guests or made a positive comment about the weather increased their tips by almost 30 percent.
Offer Freebies
Who can resist a free sample? If your product does what you say it will do, offer your prospects an opportunity to find out for themselves. According to a recent Shopify Retail Blog, freebies can increase sales by up to 2,000 percent.
There’s more. Free samples come under the Law of Reciprocity. When someone does something nice for you, you are more likely to do something nice for them. Gifting prospects with freebies makes them more likely to become customers going forward.
Even if your product does nothing whatsoever, you’re still giving your customers a chance to try it before they buy it. That, in turn, generates a feeling of goodwill about your business.
Blog About Your Product
With blogging, you can create precisely the content that potential buyers are looking for. When your target audience gets wind of your content, reads your blogs and learns about your product, a percentage of them will become your customers.
According to Hubspot, marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment as long as their prospects can access the blogs.
Make Your Content SEO Friendly
SEO is a tried and true way to attract quality traffic to your site. If you’re selling a migraine treatment, your primary keyword phrase might be “migraine pain relief.” Your blog title might be “Get immediate pain relief with new, all-natural migraine treatment.”
Good SEO can give your product vast exposure with minimal investment of time, money and energy.
Spread the Word on Social Media
Enhance your digital marketing efforts by leveraging social media. Join a Facebook group about migraine treatments or start a Facebook page about your product. Your advertising costs? Zero dollars and zero cents.
Arrange quick and convenient delivery options for interested customers who purchase your product online. Make your product as accessible as possible.
Keep your prices affordable. The lower the price, the less potential customers have to lose by trying your product. When you’re in the early stages of executing a marketing strategy, it’s better to build trust than to prioritize profits.
References/Hyperlinks:
https://www.business2community.com/blogging/how-to-create-blog-content-to-attract-your-ideal-target-audience-02397052
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/science-based-selling/
https://blog.tangiblewords.com/how-to-reach-your-target-audience-more-effectively-with-business-blogs
https://www.shopify.com/retail/the-science-of-product-samples-how-free-samples-can-hook-customers-on-your-products