Let’s talk about how to promote your product on a budget.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how to promote a service, this applies to you as well.
I’m going to bet that you’ve searched around for articles online and that your head is swimming with ideas.
Too many choices and not enough budget.
What are the options to promote a new product?
The options to promote a new product (or an existing product) lie in choosing the right marketing strategy.
There are three marketing strategies to choose from:
- Paid advertising
- Content marketing
- Direct marketing
And then there are a few ideas for promoting your product using each of those strategies.
It’s all about staying focused. It’s tempting to try a bunch of ideas, but, you’ll get better results when you choose your target audience and the marketing strategy you want to use to reach them.
Who will want to buy what you’re selling:
- Who needs it desperately
- Values you highly
- Wants it immediately
How will you reach your ideal customer:
- Pay for ads to drive traffic to your site or store
- Create content to educate, inform and guide potential customers toward a sale.
- Sell directly to potential customers.
With these two questions answered, you’re ready to put your time and money where you are most likely to get the best results.
What No One Tells You About How to Promote Your Product
Marketing and promoting your product are NOT the same thing.
Marketing is a process that includes:
- Collecting data and research to help you differentiate yourself from other alternatives.
- Identifying your ideal customer.
- Developing an offer for that customer (this is the product or service)
- Choosing a strategy to market the product. Your strategy choices are paid advertising, content marketing or direct sales.
- Implementing your promotional tactics — actually promoting your product or service.
Promoting your product falls into the last two steps of the process. In those last two steps, you choose a strategy and implement that strategy.
The simple act of choosing a primary marketing strategy is the part of the process that will save you the most time, money and frustration. It will focus your efforts on just those promotional elements that will get you the results you want.
I’ve developed a quick and easy quiz that will help you choose your marketing strategy.
With the choices of a marketing strategy in hand, you’re ready to learn about the different ways to promote your product and choose the one that’s best for you.
For each marketing strategy, you’ll find a list of tactics and a round-up of the best guides, articles or free downloads.
Paid Advertising Ideas to Promote Your Product
If you hate the idea of selling and don’t have the time or resources to create content, paid advertising is for you.
Don’t ignore this strategy just because you don’t want to spend money! Even when you are DIY marketing your business — you are spending money.
Think of the total cost of your time and effort. I’ve seen people ignore this strategy and then throw thousands of dollars a month away on coaching and courses that they never completed.
What counts as paid advertising? Well, I look at it this way. If you are paying for any kind of traffic or attention — that’s paid advertising.
You are basically paying a fee to shortcut the organic word-of-mouth system. Instead of investing your time and effort researching SEO, writing content, engaging on social media and/or paying a salesperson — you are taking all of that money and putting into advertising.
When you look at it that way, it just might be your highest ROI strategy. You free up your time and energy to service new clients and let your advertising do your sales and marketing work for you.
Here are some examples of paid advertising strategies.
- Pay per click
- Social media ads
- Influencer marketing
- Retargeting (Facebook, Google, Adroll or Retargeter)
- Affiliate programs
- Contests
What type of content should you create to promote products?
The key to using content to promote your products is to create content for every stage of the buying cycle.
I really like this graphic from Lyfe Marketing that shows each stage of the buying cycle and what type of content to create.
source: Lyfe Marketing
- Newsletters
- Blog articles
- Videos (Demo’s, how-to’s)
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- Research reports
- Resource Guides
- Infographics/Images
- How-To Videos
- Social Media Posts
- Testimonials
- Website
- eBook
How to Promote Your Product With Direct Marketing
If you’re getting the bulk of your business from face-to-face selling or referrals, this is direct marketing. It’s by far the most popular way main street businesses get new customers.
- Run a referral system
- Marketing Materials – Flyers, Catalogs,
- Direct mail
- Speaking
- Events
- Facebook groups
- Workshops and seminars
- Cross-promotion
Conclusion
If you’re looking to promote your product or service on a budget, your best bet is to focus all your efforts on a single marketing strategy.
Hopefully, these ideas will help you get the most for your money.
Hey Ivana,
What an enlightening post! This is stacked with incredibly valuable information.
I am looking ahead to employing the extraordinary resources you have shared. For some of my clients, it would be best to focus all their efforts on a single marketing strategy. Thank you!
I am presently working for a start-up called Efortles, which aspires to empower small business owners. Currently, we offer CPA services for free, which is just the initiation of our objective to eliminate all obstacles confronting small businesses.
I will certainly share this information with all my friends, customers, and associates. Looking ahead to your next post.