The end goal of marketing is consistent sales. This also means generating more income. Every business out there needs steady revenue to survive. A business that succeeds is a business that markets its product online to get consistent sales.
Marketing is an important factor in business growth. Even big companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, Amazon still invest a lot of money in marketing. Marketing is the way of obeying the rule, “if you don’t show up consistently, people will not see you”
Marketing is a game of following what works, you don’t do it your way, you do it the way it should be done. Hence, the need to learn how you can market your product online.
Marketing can be effective or not. When you understand your business, understand the market situation and then streamline all your marketing efforts to suit your business, that is when your marketing efforts would lead to consistent sales.
Before we explore the different ways you can market your product online, you need to understand the key things you have to do before you even start marketing.
These key things span across the following:
- Create a plan: This is the first thing you should do as a business person. This is where you set your marketing goals and KPIs(Key Performance Indicators). Having a plan would serve as a guide in every step you take and also a means to measure your efforts.
A plan should provide the following;
- What are your revenue goals?
- How much of it do you want to achieve with marketing?
- Do you have existing customers that are interested in your product already?
- What are your challenges in getting customers to purchase your product?
- What steps will you take to overcome those challenges?
- Understand your audience: Understanding Your audience will require you to spend a lot of time doing market research. Your research will teach you a lot about your audience and what makes them tick, your competitors and why they are making progress, and the way to position your products.
Once you understand your audience, it would be easier to know how to market to them and make consistent sales.
Effective market research answers the following questions:
- Who is your ideal customer? I.e what they do, where they live, their age range, what their life is like, etc.
- How do they consume information online? What kind of information do they want to hear?
- How do I market to them?
- Know your product: After you have understood your audience, you need to ascertain if your product can solve a particular need they have.
People only buy your product when it solves their problems.
You know your product when you can answer the questions:
- What problem does your product solve for your audience? This is because your product has to meet a need before it can be accepted
- What is the need?
- Does the product work?
- How is it better than your competitors?
- What advantages does it offer to your consumers?
- Plan to start with one niche: As a growing brand, you don’t want to confuse your audience. It is easier to build your audience in a particular niche. You can then branch out to other niches later.
If you would succeed in your business, don’t be pressured to sell a lot of things at the same time.
These key things would set the motion for marketing your products and making consistent sales.
Ways to market your product online to get consistent sales
You can do all or some of the following to market your product.
Again, you cannot choose a suitable way if you don’t understand your business and its market.
Go on, know your business and start marketing your products using any of these ways:
- Special offers and freebies: This can be in form of discount codes, buy one, get one free, free delivery, free products, gift vouchers, gift cards, etc. You can offer these special offers as incentives to entice people to your product.
You can know if this effect when you make more sales in the shortest time.
- Build an online community: There are a group of people that likes what you do and are willing to interact with your brand on a deeper level.
You can bring these people together to share their experiences with your brand and connect with other customers.
This sense of connection would draw other people in to be interested in your product.
- Post customer-generated content: Posting customer-generated content is a way to show that people have used your products and they like it enough to talk about it.
This will add credibility and social proof to your brand.
Don’t keep quiet about any post about your product, reshare them on your pages. This is one of the best marketing strategies that require the least effort.
- How to do videos on YouTube: You can start a YouTube channel and post videos of how to use your products.
For one, this will show that you care about your customers, and then it will assure customers of security with your product.
It removes the stress of responding to reoccurring questions your customers would ask about your products and it can also be a way to market your products.
- Position as an industry expert/ thought leader: You can do this through your blog, your social media posts, speaking in events, etc.
The aim here is to show people how well you understand your product and how it will solve their problems.
People tend to respect you more. This could lead to absolute trust in your product. You know what that will do to your sales.
- Post reviews: Bright Local did a Local Customer Review Survey in 2018 and they found out that:
84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Adding to that, 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business
Finally, 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
Social proof has worked over and over again for brands and you shouldn’t joke with it.
Encourage customers to give you reviews about your product and when they do, do not hesitate to show others what your product can do.
- Create an affiliate program: Affiliate programs are a way to reward people for bringing customers to you. People are willing to market your brand for you if they’re sure to be rewarded.
You can create this program and use it to entice others to your product.
- Reward your customers: Nurturing your existing customers is also a marketing activity. Don’t be so caught up with getting new customers that you fail to acknowledge your existing customers.
Reward them from time to time. Give them discounts, give them a shout-out, offer them free products. Just let them know you appreciate them and watch them become your brand evangelists.
- Targeted ads/Promotions: Also invest in paid ads and promotions. This is more about reaching people who have not heard of your product before.
You can run ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even on search engines. Also, optimize your brand for searching on Google my business.
- Guest blogging: You can write for popular blogs that your audience reads. The aim is to provide value for the blog’s readers and promote your product in return.
For this to be effective, you should be sure the audience you’re writing for, needs your product.
- Social media posts: This is a key part of content marketing. You can make different posts on your social media handles that resonate with your audience. You can even do paid promotions from time to time.
There are a lot of social media content ideas you can choose from.
- Retargeting ads: This is aimed at marketing to people that already have an interest in your brand. This can be people who have visited your site once or your social media page.
You can target these ads to convince them about your products.
These have been the most effective targeted ads.
- Contests and giveaways: Make people participate in a social media contest related to your brand. This will boost engagement with those who are already followers. They can help you increase subscribers by requiring those who don’t follow or like your page to do so to participate.
Be clear about your objectives and exactly how you want your audience to participate for the best outcome. Define easy, simple rules before you launch your contest.
- Partner with influencers: Influencer marketing is a thing. Reach out to people who have the kind of following that has your audience and make a deal with them.
Most people use a product because someone they like and follow talked about that product.
- Organize events: You can organize an online event and promote your brand in the process.
- Digital Marketing: This is the core of marketing your products. Everything you do to market your product online is one digital marketing activity or the other. Blogging, social media, paid ads, promotions, are all forms of digital marketing.
Your digital marketing activities should be handled expertly if you want to get results. You can have people in your team who handle digital marketing or you contact professionals like Socialander digital agency to do it for you.
Bonus Tips to marketing your product online effectively and generate consistent sales
- Create an emotional appeal: People make most of their decisions based on their emotions. All your marketing efforts should be geared towards eliciting positive emotions.
Let them see themselves using your products, highlight how their lives would be when they are free from their problems, and see them gravitate towards your brand.
- Connect with your customers: Don’t leave them hanging, connect with them. Ask them questions, make them participate im your brand, give them the chance to express themselves. This is a basic key to building a community of followers.
- Personalize their experience: Always reflect the humanity of your brand. Sound like a person in your marketing message, personalize their buying experience, let them meet the people behind your brand, call them by names, humans like to do business with their fellow humans.
Over to you
The real secret to marketing your products online to make sales is consistency. Promote, promote and promote. Don’t forget it’s a game of knowing what works. Keep measuring, keep updating, keep moving.
Don’t forget that the simplest way to market your product is by providing excellent services. Word of mouth marketing is by far the longest-lasting way to make sales.
Once you keep on getting referrals upon referrals for your products and services, investing in the other marketing efforts would be secondary.
Do you need advice on how to go about marketing your products online?
