We’ve covered a myriad of topics during this blog series, and as we draw a little closer towards the end of this journey, it’s time to look at marketing your product and how to launch that finished article for your customers to find and buy!
Whilst getting the product specification, functionality and aesthetics right for your market is critical for success, if you don’t market your product in the right place, to the right people, at the right time, you may find yourself (and your idea) getting tangled in the tumbleweed!
You should have identified your target market early on in the design process. This will have helped you to understand how your product should look, feel and function, to ensure that it will appeal to your audience in a commercial sense. Now the product is nearly ready, we need to revisit that audience to understand how best to reach out to them.
The 7 P’s of Marketing
If you’re not familiar with how to take a product to market, the best place to start is to take a look at the 7 P’s of Marketing. This will give you a good clear overview of the different considerations you will need to be aware of when getting your product market-ready. But what do the 7 P’s of Marketing stand for? Here’s a brief overview:
- Product – what your product actually is
- Price – the price point at which you will sell your product, for commercial success
- Place – where your product will be sold
- Promotion – how you communicate with your audience about your product
- People – understanding who will be buying your product and who is involved in the full customer journey
- Process – the full process your buyers are likely to experience and how it works
- Physical Evidence – assets which demonstrate what you stand for
To learn more about the 7 P’s and how to apply them to your product, take a look at this article from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Understanding Your Customer
Marketing your product is all about making sure you are showcasing your product where your audience are hanging out. We are lucky to be living in a time where reaching out to your customer may seem quite straight forward – social media is surely the way forward – isn’t it? But who are you trying to speak to, and which social channels appeal to those people? How do your potential customers like to shop? Do they prefer to shop in a store or online? Do they visit websites to make purchases, or browse Instagram for months on end until it’s the right time in the buying cycle for them? There is no one-size fits all, so you will need to bring together the elements of the marketing mix that fit the buying habits and profile of your customer.
Know Your Competition
Critically, you will also need to understand who your competitors are and what they are doing. Are they doing it well, or could they do better? Do you need to be promoting your product in the same space, or do you need to take a different approach? These are all considerations you will need to research in order to glean a full understanding of the marketing channels that will likely best fit your product and keep you ahead of the competition.
The Right Approach for You
Reaching out to a marketing consultancy could be helpful, especially if this topic is new to you. With so many routes to market available, a marketing team with experience in working with a product like yours, could save you a lot of time and money. Remember, it’s unlikely you will require a singular approach – you will in most cases need to select a number of activities or channels to ensure your product is seen everywhere your customer hangs out. For example, if you are taking to market a fitness watch, it could be recommended that you consider the following marketing channels and activities:
- User-centric website with an ecommerce function to sell watch direct to customer
- PPC (Google Ads) campaign to ensure website is reaching the right audience
- Amazon Marketplace presence in order to distribute watch indirectly
- Social media channels, including Instagram and Facebook
- Social media adverts to reach beyond immediate social audience
- Fitness blogger/influencer partnership to showcase product to a wider audience
- Affiliate with a bigger brand such as a health club to offer promotions
We’ve simply provided a taster to get you thinking. But every product is different, so your audience will require an approach which best communicates your specific USP’s.
In summary, if you can put yourself in the mind of the customer and truly understand what drives their buying decisions, how, when and where they buy their products, and at what price, you’ll be on the path to commercial success.
If you’ve joined us toward the end of this series, feel free to click back and take a look at previous articles. We’ve covered every aspect of your product design journey, from sourcing a product design consultancy, to budgeting, briefing and more. We’ll be wrapping up this series next time, with how to prevent obsolesce and retain your edge in the market.
If you enjoyed this blog, we’d love you to share it in your network. As always, our team of product design engineers are on hand for any advice on getting your product design journey underway. We invite you to drop us a line here or give us a call on 01962 454474.
