Okay, that happened. A small light flashed in your brain and you discovered a “bright idea”! You want to create and sell a new product. So where to start?
The first step is to understand exactly how you want your product to look. Perhaps your idea is to create a custom scheduler. Maybe it's a stain-resistant pillow or blanket. Maybe this is a high-tech golf club. Who will buy the product? What need does he solve? You need to think about how people will use your product.
Explore your competitors
Once you know how your product will look and who you think will want to purchase this type of product, it's time to do a study of your competitors. Are there any products directly competing with yours? What is indirect competition for products that are related?
What do you need to verify first?
When launching a new product, make sure you know who else sells products like you? What is the price of a competitor? How do they sell their product? Knowing what your competitor is doing will help you decide how to make your products special, as well as learn tips from them!
Find your target audience
Start by checking social channels. The social networks Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter are the best ways for brands to interact with their customers, which makes them a great place to start your audience research. Pay close attention to people. What types of clients comment and like your posts? Are they mostly women or men? What age demographics do they fit into? What are their problems with your competitors' products? What do they like? Do they complain about prices or think they are reasonable?
Hashtags can be very eloquent
Another trick is checking the hashtags that companies use in their Instagram or Twitter posts. Hashtags can be very eloquent. You can not only mine them and save them for your brand account later, but it will also give an idea of what type of people they are trying to attract. All this will help you paint a picture of who exactly is your target audience. After all, having a great product is not enough unless you know who will buy it.
Use stories to motivate consumers
Gathering all this information in the future will help you develop a story around your product. Today, consumers want to feel connected with a product, especially if this invention meets a specific need or fills a void in the market. It's time to put on your mental cap and be creative in telling your brand! Here you can use the information that you have collected about unique product metrics (UPIs) in your competitive research.
Whatever your product stands out for, this is exactly what you want to emphasize in your marketing. Regardless of whether your price is competitive or whether you use organic ingredients, you want to give consumers as many reasons as possible to choose your product.
Your UPIs - combined with a great history - can give you an edge over other competitors. Depending on what your product is, you may need to creatively explain how customers can use it. Video tutorials and high-quality photos will be extremely useful in this situation. No one is going to buy a product if they do not understand how to use it.
Social responsibility is becoming increasingly important in a consumer landscape that values return. Linking your product to a charity that makes sense for your brand can also increase interest.
Another aspect is promoting your personal story. Do you have an interesting story? Did something happen in your life that made you create this product? Whatever your story, you must weave it into every aspect of your marketing plan. From your site and social channels to your paid advertisements, this story should be used as your first brand theme.
Create a marketing plan
Now that you have your product, you’ve settled on your story and know your audience, it's time to develop a marketing plan to turn a big idea into something that really makes money. At this stage, you probably already spent a lot of money on creating a product, inventory, website design and much more, but as they say, you have to spend in order to earn money, right?
First, you need to brainstorm which marketing channels you want to use. This will depend on the information about your audience that you researched earlier in the process. You want to sell your product in those places where your audience is most accessible. This can mean social networks, email, paid advertising, etc. But before diving into paid advertising, let's look at some ways you can prepare your e-commerce store and your products for better organic visibility.
Search engine optimization is completely free. The only thing you need to spend on SEO is time. Hire a professional to help you optimize your site for search engines. Optimizing category pages and product pages with keywords and high-quality content is the easiest way to get organic traffic to your store. This can increase the visibility of your site in search results and ultimately capture potential customers who are already looking for something like this on Google.
Your presence on social networks indirectly affects your credibility.
Social media works hand in hand with SEO. Search engines such as Google take brand equity into account when ranking them on the search results page. Your presence on social networks indirectly affects your credibility. Having attractive content in your social profiles and a large number of followers can positively affect your SEO. But in addition, consumers highly value social media at the review stage.
Most customers go into social research on brands and products ... and ultimately buy. In fact, 76% of consumers said they bought the product after viewing the brand message on social networks. Developing a social media marketing strategy that includes organic management and some paid ads can cause a lot of noise around your brand.
Now let's move on to paid promotion. CPC ads can help you reach a large number of potential customers. But they are not always suitable for new products. If your product can be easily described by keywords, great! Ads are probably a great option for you. If your product needs a little more explanation, using on-screen and video advertising will allow you to better demonstrate the features of your new product. You can use the Google Display Network and YouTube ads to display images and videos to potential customers.
Launch your product
A lot of work is spent on bringing a new product to the market, but this does not mean that your work ends on the day of launch.Launch day is one of the most important aspects of the whole process, so it’s important to make sure that you understand everything correctly. Consider making a soft launch with some family members or friends and getting the feedback you need about your product before announcing it to the world. This can help reduce confusion.
Once you're finally ready to launch, let your product take center stage. One of the best ways to make a fuss about him is to turn your launch into an event, complete with giveaways or a contest so people can win free products. Use your social channels as billboards for the event and promote the launch with paid ads for your target audience. Use Instagram to collaborate with influencers in exchange for free products and let them show their product to their followers. These ideas will help increase awareness of your product and your brand so that you can set your business for long-term success!