When it comes to marketing your product, it often becomes difficult to select the correct option or a combination of options. What works for you might depend on the industry, the product and even the audience. We could be finding ways to market a whole new business and sometimes look for marketing a new product of an existing business. In either of the case, there are certain points that serve as a guideline and tell us where to start from.
Know your WHY
As Simon Sinek says, it is important to understand the WHY behind decisions even before we know the what and the how. Why we choose to sell a product, why we choose to market a particular product must be amply clear to us before we devise a marketing plan. Answering the why often helps to answer the what and the how. We could be marketing a particular product because we want to highlight that as a show stopper or because we want to give the message that we are expanding our kitty. Whatever may be the reason, we must brainstorm to set the objectives clear in our mind.
Know your product
Merely knowing the basic details of a product isn’t enough to market it. When we sit to devise a marketing strategy, we must know the ins and outs of the product, it’s functioning, usps, a compelling pitch, why would somebody get attracted to it and so on. We must be in a position to view the product from various perspectives. Sometimes it is also good to
criticise our product and find negatives in it, that gives us a good perspective to market it well.
Know your audience
Knowing the product is important and so is knowing your audience. When we know the demographics, the section, the category we are targeting, we tweak our product marketing pitch accordingly. We know we need to use certain specific language and medium when we target young, college going crowd and what to use when targeting office going professionals. The demography plays an important part.
Know your marketing medium
They say no marketing medium is wrong. It is important to understand your product and audience in order to determine the marketing medium. It is the digital age but outdoor has its own importance too. People still prefer to use newspaper marketing to create mass awareness. The current age demands a mix of outdoor, print and social media for the right marketing. The same can be mixed in various proportions and in the form of lined up campaigns to ensure maximum reach.
Know your marketing spend
No plans must be made in the air. We need to have a practical marketing budget in hand before we start making any elaborate plans. At the end, even a beautiful marketing plan can go to the dogs for lack of budget. The budget must also be bifurcated into campaigns, media, phases and so on so that we have the exact idea of the spending stage-wise.
We might choose the most trendy and fancy medium to market our product but nothing will go successful if we haven’t worked on our basics.