NEW PRODUCT
MARKETING
Marketing is a road that a product travels from its idea conception and way beyond after it reaches consumers. But marketing a new product can become quite a bumpy ride, especially for less experienced travelers. If you’re at the very beginning of your product development journey or your product is already on the market, let’s make sure that both you and your product have smooth and successful experience all the way through.
IMPORTANCE OF NEW PRODUCT MARKETING
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does
– Steuart Henderson Britt
New product development is an internal process that inventors and their team share within a company. Naturally, after the product is developed comes a time to share it with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the product won’t have a future, no matter how well it solves customers’ problems and how innovative it is. Unless you have a target audience and they know about your product, it will stay in the shadows. Therefore, new product marketing is a first step to selling your product and conquering the market.
Marketing a new product
creates a win-win situation
Keeping your product to yourself will not do much good to anyone. If you’re still pondering why marketing is necessary for your product, then consider these benefits:
Inventors’
benefit
Every ideator and development company wants their product to rock the market, serve its purpose by getting to end-users, and make profit. Marketing a new product allows reaching a large consumer audience. Especially now, with such rapid development of eCommerce.
End-users’
benefit
Consumers do want their problems solved and needs met. They just don’t always know that the solution, in the form of a product, already exists. New product marketing brings awareness to the end-users about innovative resolution that your product provides to their problems.
COUNTRY’S
BENEFIT
Goods and services ensure the country’s economic development, while taxes and fees support state budget increase. The more real, innovative solutions can reach people, the more they invest and contribute into the development of the country. New product marketing serves as a structural support for that developmental process
Why market a product
over company
The choice of marketing a new product or a company will depend on what you want to build: a company that positions itself as a multiproduct firm or it only focuses on one product with the goal to just sell it.
If your company has one product, then you can advertise and market your brand first, focusing on marketing your product afterwards. But keep in mind that in case of adding a new product that is slightly different than your original one you’ll create a conflict. That is because consumers already have an image of you as product A, and they won’t see you as product B or C. Especially if it’s not an incremental improvement of your product, but something completely different.
Another important factor is that people want to see a solution to their problem in the product. Thus, when you promote such a product then people are less focused on who produced it and how it‘s being produced. The most important is that their problem is solved.
Why partner with agency for
marketing a new product
No matter whether you’re an independent product developer or already established company, you must focus on your strong points and promote them. If you have substantial experience in new product marketing and know its best current practices, then you may not need help. Still, you need a person who will carry out your product’s vision. It can be a copywriter who creates content for your social media platforms, writes press releases, interviews, etc.
But let’s assume that your core expertise lies in ideation or operations and you know nothing about how to market a new product. Taking time to learn current marketing strategies and methodologies will cost you more time and money than hiring a professional marketing team. Moreover, the effectiveness of your learning won’t be as high, due to lack of experience. Marketing experts have years of it. They know all necessary tricks of how to use and allocate budget, as well as how to reach your target audience in a most effective way.
LAUNCHING A NEW PRODUCT
Marketing before product launch
While your product is being developed you should start gathering an audience around it. You don’t have to talk about the product in particular. Talk about the problem it solves. For example, you have a deer hunting product or idea. The best thing to do is to approach people from the hunting community who are looking for new products and solutions to deer hunting. Start writing content that solves some of the hunting problems. By bringing educational and motivational material to your target audience, you will help people to get to know you. It will also build trust towards you or the company. By the time your product is developed, they will become your first ambassadors and users. It’s not a secret that people tend to be more open to the product and ready to engage with it when they know a person or a company behind it.
How to launch a new product
Product development → Go-to-market strategy → Online marketing campaign
Step 1
Product development
Before launching a product you need to develop one. And marketing can help you in the process of its development. If you make a decision to start a marketing campaign for building the audience before the product’s launch, then it will help you with: customer survey, learning end-users main pain points, validation of those pain points, and understanding of your audience through their likes and dislikes. You will learn what product’s features you should pay more attention to. That data will save you money and time by minimizing the amount of iterations to design, as well as developing the best optimal marketing and advertising campaign for your product.
Step 2
Go-to-market strategy
Go-to-market is a plan for delivering the best value proposition to your customers, while creating a competitive advantage at the same time. The foundation for a successful go-to-market strategy is a thorough research of the target audience. But if you began this process during the product development stage, then you’d already have enough valuable information to develop your first marketing campaign.
Step 2
Go-to-market strategy
Go-to-market is a plan for delivering the best value proposition to your customers, while creating a competitive advantage at the same time. The foundation for a successful go-to-market strategy is a thorough research of the target audience. But if you began this process during the product development stage, then you’d already have enough valuable information to develop your first marketing campaign.
Step 3
Online marketing campaign
In order to creating the first online marketing campaign you need to: know your target audience, decide what social platform or online resource you will use for marketing, create visual and copy content, allocate budget for the first advertisement, get results from the first advertisement, analyze those results, implement changes in advertisement, and only then focus your main budget on distributing your product information.
Advertisement vs Marketing
Advertisement Marketing is a road that your product travels on and advertisement is a vehicle
for it. Marketing is a foundation for how you want your product to be seen and
advertisement is a mechanism by which it’s made seen.
HOW TO MARKET A NEW PRODUCT
The choice of marketing campaign always depends on your product, industry, and a target audience. But the general framework includes:
- Determining your marketing strategy.
- Researching your target audience.
- Testing online marketing campaigns to learn audience’s likes and dislikes.
- Making changes in the marketing campaign according to data collected from the target audience.
- Launching the ultimate online marketing campaign.
Further steps
Having received your audience’s feedback and the practical understanding of your customers, you can start approaching distributors. Your further steps will depend on your main commercialization or go-to-market strategy, i.e. how you’re going to push up sales of your product.
Product ambassadors
Also, it is essential to gather brand or product ambassadors around you. Ambassadors are the people who have been with you since the very beginning, who watched your product develop, and now ready to share benefits of it with their followers. Creating a loyal audience around you is essential for new product marketing. For example, you can send them first samples of your product so they can use it and give you online feedback.
It is important to note that the launch of a new product should be done online, because it is more effective, much cheaper, and faster. Of course, marketing a new product can take some time. But mostly it will depend on whether your product is unique and nothing like it exists on the market, or there are similar solutions.
Marketing a new product
after its launch
Consistency is a key to successful marketing. It requires your attention and effort every single day. Thus, your product and company must be always around, creating a constant buzz. It’s necessary not only for satisfying social media and google search algorithms, but also for your end-users. You want them to know and remember you. Engaging your target audience on a regular basis through visual and written content, sharing stories, videos, creating online questionnaires, etc., will help you know each other better. It will also assist in further attraction of potential customers and spreading of information about your product via the channels of your existing audience.
New product marketing with
no team and not enough
resources
THE TEAM
If you know how to market a new product a little and have some experience, you still need a professional team to ensure your product success. But you can try and do most of the work yourself, which might take longer. Start with target audience research and use your social media channels to show your product. Learn what marketing strategy your competitors have, so you can apply it to your product. And after the most expensive work is done, you can approach professional distributors.
However, to avoid turning your product’s journey into a long road, better look for the right team. Even, if it’s just one person but an expert in marketing. It will save you time, for sure. When you start working on marketing or advertising, your team must know everything about your product. It’s also vital that you feel comfortable with each other and work in collaboration.
RESOURCES
Budget marketing is very important and you should include it from the beginning of your product development. New product marketing costs will vary from case to case. Some campaigns can cost thousands, others – hundreds of thousands. But generally, to launch or pre-launch a marketing campaign takes roughly 30% of the entire budget. If you don’t have a budget, then there is no point to start at all. You won’t go for a road trip without having money for gas, right? This is just the same when it comes to marketing a new product.
MARKETING PLAN
FOR NEW PRODUCT
What is a marketing plan?
Marketing plan is a road map of your main steps that illustrates the strategic and tactical vision of bringing your product to market. Without a marketing plan you might take a wrong turn on your way to successfully launching and promoting your product.
Before making a marketing plan for new product you, first, need to understand your target audience. Then determine the main selling points of your product and who your main competitors are. With that data you are ready to start writing a marketing plan. You can do it on your own or partner with a new product marketing agency that will help you develop the best course of actions. How detailed your plan will be depends on the product complexity.
What to write in your
marketing plan?
- Description of your product and its main value proposition.
- Your target audience – age groups, demography, geography, their hobbies, how they come to understanding that they need you product.
- Your competitors – what they do to promote their products.
- Your marketing sets – what marketing channels you are going to use to reach you audience.
- Your budget.
- Your key performance indicators or KPIs.
What materials will
be necessary?
It is very much customized when it comes to materials. But the minimal set should include:
- Your brand’s logo
- Landing page
- Social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
- and a pitch deck (visual and written presentation of your product).
DOs and DON’Ts of new
product marketing
DOs
Do marketing, do it right, do it with a right partner, do it consistently.
DON’Ts
Start your journey without budget, do the process inconsistently (shows how irresponsible your brand is), do nothing.
WHAT LA NPDT
CAN OFFER
LA NPDT provides you turn-key or à la carte services to ensure that your product achieves its maximum market potential. Our team of professional experts can help you with new product marketing research, go-to-market strategy development, consumer surveys, product evaluation, creation of visuals, copy materials and landing page, email marketing, and much more. A good marketing campaign can be your product’s navigation system on its way to success. With proper market analysis, social media communication, branding, and a marketing plan, your product can reach your audience with ease in no time.
