Product Marketing Begins With Your Growth Objectives
- Do you want to reach more people with your idea? Is your product not getting enough attention?
- Does your website do enough to get your business found online? Are you interacting daily on social media with your followers? Do these platforms generate calls? Can you tell which is more effective at generating these leads?
- Are you looking to expand your product line? Or would you rather focus your marketing efforts on getting your current project out there and seen? Answering these questions is a critical step in building out your marketing plan.
- Who benefits from your invention? Who gets the most out of it? These are the people you want to reach with your marketing efforts. Do your website and social media profiles do this, or do you have yet to find that sweet spot?
Product Marketing Fundamentals
- Adwords: Most products focus their ideas within highly competitive markets. If you Google how you would like to be found and see your competitor’s ads then you’ll need to be there too.
- A Website That Converts: Your website needs to load in 2 seconds or less, look great on mobile and make it very obvious what you do and why you’re different from other products.
- Local SEO: Your business needs to be on the map. This is accomplished by creating keyword rich listings in hundreds of online directories. It is one of the most cost effective and fastest ways to be found and should definitely be part of your strategy.
- A Newsletter & Blog: Find a way to regularly connect with your clients, prospects and fellow products by sharing a monthly newsletter with your blog excerpt, upcoming events, pictures of you and those you work within the community, and tips. Remaining top of mind will help with professional referrals and put you first when prospects think of calling.
Next Level Product Marketing
- Are you networking? Do you take full advantage of the handfuls of business cards you collect or do they sit on your desk? A CRM system is a perfect tool to automate nurturing those leads. Send customized emails that look like you fired them off from your account personally. Ask for referrals and testimonials, automate aspects of your new client onboarding. Did an initial consultation not close? Send an automated check in.
- Social Media Visibility: Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Do you have positive reviews? Are you active daily on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Instagram & Twitter?
- Social Media Engagement: Visibility is the first step but you want to network online the same way you network at events. Join product and community online groups, comment on posts, share and make connections. Out in the community? Share pictures! Can you talk about your projects? Share what you think about new products?
- On Page SEO: This involves optimizing the load speed of your business’s website (like a car, it will slow down over time without a tune-up), making changes to the code to be more search engine friendly and optimizing your content for target product keywords. A proper product SEO strategy will help your Adwords campaign to perform better and cost you less per click.
- Online Reviews: People really do care what others think. The more 5-star reviews your products have on Facebook and Google, the more likely clients and investors will be to contact you. Even if they find out about you elsewhere you can be certain they are checking you out online.
- Videos and Photos: Your visual media needs to make you stand out, so this is your chance to show who you are! On your website show professional photos of you working on projects. Shoot 1-2 minute videos for your website and social media of you providing product tips, sharing a story of someone who benefitted from your products or of a client saying nice things about you. Visitors to your website or social media should get a feel for what it would be like to work with you.
