Marketing New Products and Services

The success and failure of a newly introduced product certainly depends on how well it is marketed and promoted among end-users. Why would customers invest in your products or services if they are not aware of their features, USPs and benefits? It is the responsibility of the marketing professionals to not only make their organization’s products or services popular among target audience but also ensure they are accepted well by them.

Let us go through certain tips for marketing new products and services:

Know your product well. Unless and until you understand what additional features or benefits your product is offering, you will never be able to promote it effectively.

Search on google and make a list of competitors dealing in products or services similar to your organization. For example, if your organization sells mobiles and laptops try to find out companies which are also in the same business.

Go through your competitor’s website and understand their offerings and what all new strategies or unique marketing techniques they are undertaking to promote their products or services. Do not blindly copy your competitors but it is always good to keep yourselves abreast with latest updates in your respective industry.

You can also go through competitor’s brochures, leaflets to have a clear understanding of their efforts. Visit their office as an end-user and analyze what different things they are doing. Trust me; such an exercise will help you understand what actually sells in the market and how your marketing strategies should be different from competitors which immediately grab the attention of target audience.

Keep yourself in the shoes of customers. Write down what all you would expect in a new product and what all promotional activities would excite you as an end-user. Understand what all things in an advertisement would arouse your interest in a particular product and prompt you to try the same at least once? Try to incorporate the same in your marketing strategies as well.

Understand your target audience. Focus and right approach are extremely important. Why spend unnecessary time in convincing those clients who do not need your product? Even the best of marketing strategies would be useless if you try selling comics to a professional. Why would he even bother to listen to you when he does not have the time to read story books? Concentrate on those who you feel are in need of your organization’s products or services and most likely also think of purchasing the same.

Offer something which others have not even thought of till now. Every product has some USPs (Unique value proposition) and it is the responsibility of the marketers to highlight the same among end-users.

Choose the right channel to market your product. A new product or service can be promoted either with the help of advertisements, banners, hoardings, pamphlets, organizing free trials of the product and so on. When beauty salons launch a new service, they always try to give one free session to their customers for them to understand what special and extra they are offering.

Advertisements need to be catchy so that viewers do not lose interest midway. It is essential the brand message is communicated clearly. Emails, phone calls can also help in marketing new products or services.

You can also appoint dealers or third parties who can extensively go out, meet new customers, explain them as to how your product is different and better than competitors. Type of marketing channel entire depends on the size of your organization, nature of product or service and eventually budgets assigned for promotions.

Bigger players also organize press releases, launch parties or probably ask a celebrity to endorse their product or service. If Brad Pitt is shown using a particular product in advertisement, the same would certainly have more acceptance as compared to other products in the market.

Customer feedback is extremely crucial. Know what customers think about your product. It is imperative marketing professionals have their own database of potential clients whom they meet not only to promote new products but also for a cup of coffee occasionally. Trust me, such initiatives help strengthen relationship with end-users who eventually do not go anywhere else but your organization.