Do you remember the day you first came up with the idea for your new product? Maybe it was a Sunday and you were cooking dinner. Or it was a Friday morning and you were eager to start the weekend. Then you had a eureka moment. Whenever it was, that seed of an idea has now blossomed into a fully formed product, complete with production lines and packaging. Now all you need are buyers.
And that’s where marketing comes into play.
Gone are the days of television adverts in between Saturday morning cartoons or Sunday night made-for-TV movies. Promoting products today means getting your product in front of interested consumers across all means of outlets. In addition to traditional means, like in-store sampling or advertising, new marketing channels are providing more opportunities to engage with buyers. E-commerce, social media, influencers—these are all marketing tools that didn’t exist a decade ago, but can now play a critical role in the successful marketing of a product.
The reasons are numerous, if not obvious. Marketing creates and strengthens brand awareness, it establishes relationships and creates trust with your consumer, and it can promote communication with your buyer. These are all good things, and essential to successful products, but with the myriad marketing channels available today, it’s hard to know which one (or multiple ones) is best for your product.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn—anytime you put out something about your product on one of these (or other) social media channels, you’ve just done a bit of social media marketing. There are definite benefits to social media (SMM), such as fast feedback (comments on Facebook posts, for example), and cost-effectiveness (you can pay to have your product promoted in feeds or buy ads on these sites often for much less than you would in other channels). The key to social media marketing is knowing your audience and making sure that your marketing efforts are on target.
Digital Advertising
Have you ever placed—or thought about placing—an ad on a website? At its simplest, that’s digital advertising. It can get more complicated, of course—think search engine optimization so people can find your products, pay-per-click advertising where you only pay for the ad when people actually click on it, or tailoring your ads for mobile access or display. Consumers spend a large number of their lives online these days, which means that digital advertising can be an essential channel for raising brand awareness. What’s more, digital advertising easily lends itself to tracking measurable results that brands can use to tweak ad campaigns to be more successful.
Experiential Marketing
In CPG, the five senses will always reign supreme. Consumers want to taste, touch, see, smell, and yes, sometimes hear, a new product before they put it in their cart, which is why experiential marketing remains the top marketing tool. Street teams, in-store sampling, and special events all fall under the umbrella of experiential marketing and give brands a chance to really connect with their consumers, and consumers the chance to experience the product firsthand. Experiential marketing has a sense of immediacy to it that is a boon for brands—immediate feedback from the consumer, immediate relationship with the consumer. Without one, brands can easily waste money and resources on experiential resources that could be detrimental to their success.
Influencer Marketing
Probably the newest of the marketing tools in brands’ arsenals today, influencer marketing is like taking word-of-mouth promotion and multiplying it by 1,000. Influencers are key leaders in specific areas (think travel, music, and yes, CPG products!), typically with large followings on social media channels.
They blog, vlog, tweet, post, and in general, promote a product, and it goes out to all their followers, who then send it out to their friends, and then to their friends, and on and on. As more and more people are looking to their friends for recommendations on products, influencers are gaining ground. And in turn, more and more brands are engaging with influencers today, as social media dominates consumers’ lives, and holds a lot of, well, influence, over their purchases, their friends’ purchases, and on and on.
Promotions
Telling people about your product in any one of the marketing forms we’ve discussed is a form of promotion, but promotions can also mean specific, short-term specials for buyers. Think of two-for-one deals you might see at the grocery store, rebates, or on-product discounts. Promotions often give consumers an instant deal or discount on your product, which can drive trial.
Media Activation & Public Relations
When you launch your brand, you’re launching it into public consumption. And once in the public eye, your brand will need management. Public relations can help with reputation management, and do the legwork of alerting media outlets and other channels to new products, achievements, campaigns, and more.
Conclusion
Marketing your brand and products is an essential step toward success. Using a mix of the tools we’ve talked about here and more strategies, marketing will draw in the buyers you’re seeking.
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