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How to Promote a New Product or Service Online

Jan 13, 2021

What to do Before Marketing Your Products

If you’ve come up with a groundbreakingly innovative new product or service, you’re probably eager to see it unleashed on the world. Even if your product outstrips all competition in terms of quality, however, you are unlikely to experience business success without designing a robust marketing strategy. You always need to remember when you are selling something online, you sell it to people you can’t see in person.  

marketing KPI and target audience

Define your target audience

The key to planning a strategy that works is to build a plan of action around your target audience. Think about the types of demographics likely to benefit from using your product or services and the kinds of marketing materials and content they are most likely to respond to.

If you’re selling baby products, for example, you will need to think about which online services and platforms new parents are most likely to use, as well as the kind of content they will probably engage with.

Choose your key metrics

Of course, you will almost certainly need to make adjustments to your promotional efforts as your business develops and grows. A key element of professional marketing is deriving actionable data about the success of key strategies, looking at metrics such as social media engagement, demographic behaviour, traffic, click-throughs and more to determine the success of your campaigns.

Trial and error

As you learn and grow as a business owner, you may need to tweak your products or look towards new audiences to secure the kind of turnover needed to thrive. In short, promoting new products or services successfully involves trial and error and may take up a lot of time and effort. As the positive reviews start to roll in from your customers, however, you’ll start to realise that the toil was worth it!

How to market your business online

Marketing brands online requires a multi-pronged approach and innovative ideas. Firstly, you will need to embark on a long-term project focussed on search engine optimisation (SEO), as this will ensure your website slowly starts to climb the rankings of Google and stays there for a while. It will involve rigorous and extensive tasks such as building a high-functioning website and releasing a steady stream of rich content that search engines will love.

On top of this, you will need to come up with short-term advertising channels designed to get your brand out into the world and start building a base of loyal customers. This could include pay-per-click advertising campaigns, social media ads and social media posts, email blasts, and more.

 

Business marketing plan

Ultimately, coming up with a marketing strategy  and ideas on how to promote your business onlineinvolves rigorous planning that takes into account the multiplicity of digital marketing channels available to businesses both large and small. Some marketing avenues may reap quicker results than others, but they are also likely to be costly. This means you will need to budget carefully throughout your marketing journey, keeping constant track of which strategies work for you and which fail to drive the traffic you require.

If you’re wondering where to begin, we’ve put together a helpful guide to the most commonly effective steps on how to promote new products and services to customers.

How to introduce a new product or service to your customers

After identifying your target audience or, indeed, audiences, you need to think about how to reach them. What parts of the web do members of your target audience visit regularly? Are they avid email checkers, social media lovers, LinkedIn-browsing professionals, YouTube fans, or keen users of Google search? Perhaps they frequent many different parts of the web? Once you’ve done some research into where your target audience hangs out, you can start coming up with relevant promotion tactics. Here are seven of our favourites.

Seven ways to effectively promote your new product or service

1. Entice new customers with introductory offers

SEO

Consumers are more likely to spend their hard-earned cash on a new product if they believe they’re getting a bargain. This way, you are more likely to make big sales from your product launch if you advertise a special introductory offer. Of course, you will need to budget carefully to ensure you still make a profit on every sale, as well as advertising the promotion effectively through several promising channels. 

Consumers are more likely to spend their hard-earned cash on a new product if they believe they’re getting a bargain. This way, you are more likely to make big sales from your product launch if you advertise a special introductory offer. Of course, you will need to budget carefully to ensure you still make a profit on every sale, as well as advertising the promotion effectively through several promising channels. 

The offer could include, amongst other things:

– Discounted prices
– Special coupons with every purchase
– Bundle offers
– Gifts for referrals
– Loyalty program point offers

Just remember to set an expiration date for your offer so customers feel an urgent need to make the most of it.

2. Launch a contest or giveaway on social media

Social media contest

Social media competitions represent a great way to connect with potential customers and garner interest in your brand. After all, who doesn’t love winning free stuff? According to recent stats, Facebook competitions boost a brand’s customer base by an average of 34% per campaign.

 

Social media competitions represent a great way to connect with potential customers and garner interest in your brand. After all, who doesn’t love winning free stuff? According to recent stats, Facebook competitions boost a brand’s customer base by an average of 34% per campaign.

 

The rules of the competition should encourage users to like, share and promote your products. For example, you could ask people to like and comment on your brand’s social media account to be in with a chance of winning a bundle of goodies (which should, of course, include the product you are promoting). Remember to promote the competition across all possible digital marketing channels to boost visibility and maximise your following. This could include email newsletters, blog posts, social media platforms, and paid ads.

3. Up your email marketing game

email marketing

The power of email marketing is often overlooked, as it is thought that most promotional emails get deleted as soon as they arrive in inboxes. This is simply not the case, however. According to recent figures, 73% of millennials prefer to receive business communications as emails compared to other channels, while the average ROI of email marketing is an amazing 3,800%!

The power of email marketing is often overlooked, as it is thought that most promotional emails get deleted as soon as they arrive in inboxes. This is simply not the case, however. According to recent figures, 73% of millennials prefer to receive business communications as emails compared to other channels, while the average ROI of email marketing is an amazing 3,800%!

Organising email campaigns for your new product or service simply makes good business sense. You could include the promotion in a newsletter or send emails detailing the perks of the product and any special offers you are currently running.

4. Write a promotional blog post

Your business needs a landing page about your new product or service that potential customers can easily locate, particularly if you want to appeal to existing subscribers or loyal fans. Try to write helpful content including plenty of information about the benefits and features of your offering, making sure to include lots of relevant keywords to boost your chances of generating organic website traffic. Once you have written the blog, remember to promote it across social media channels  to attract more attention from your target audience.

5. Encourage customers to write reviews

Online reviews have the potential to supercharge business profits, as consumers tend to trust the experiences of other customers. Reviews grab their attention and ultimately encourages them to buy your products. If you’re running low on online reviews, why not encourage users to offer a quick comment about your product or services in exchange for a small gift? This could be anything from a free sample of one of your products to a free month of your subscription service.

6. Host an online event

Hosting an online product launch is a fabulous way to engage customers from a range of different localities at once. You could, for example, organise a Facebook Live event detailing the features of your product, ask an influencer to unveil the offering on their platform or run a live Q&A about your new offering. Social media influencers are a powerful source of new traffic to your website.Whatever you decide to do, the key to success is to allow for customer participation and to promote the event well in advance via Facebook ads and other channels.

7. Make the most of Facebook Ads

Social media ads are very lucrative as platforms like Facebook and Instagram use personalised data provided by users to target specific audience members. This way, you can ensure your offerings are promoted to relevant users based on their location, age, hobbies, gender, profession, and more!

As you can see, the key to getting a new product or service off the ground is to make the most of a variety of digital marketing channels. A robust, multi-pronged approach, combined with some little trial and error, will help generate the interest your brand content truly deserves.

Marketing Insights