数据去重
Regular campaign
A regular campaign means an HTML campaign with images, links, and complete text formatting, which also contains the plain-text version.
Regular campaigns are the most common type among all campaigns.
It is not obligatory to supplement an HTML campaign with a plain text version of it; however, it is good practice in terms of email deliverability. There are several explanations for this:
Spamfilters prefer to see the alternative plain-text version of the HTML email to let it through to people’s inboxes. This function of spam filters can be easily explained by the fact that spammers usually do not take the time to create plain-text versions. If you take the time to do it, you will be rewarded with more successful automated campaigns.
Some email clients or applications do not support the HTML format. This can result in the non-deliverability of your emails to such subscribers. Having a plain-text backup version will ensure that the subscriberswill see your email. There will be no images or rich formatting, but the main point of it – the information and URLs – are going to be preserved.
If you do not include the plain-text alternative, for the abovementioned reasons your subscribers are likely to see this:
Quality Score
Quality Score is a measure used by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to access your ad quality in terms of matching the user's search intent. This is a score of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest value. 3 components influence the Quality Score and cost per click.
In this article, you'll get to know why a Quality Score is important and the way it predetermines your CPC. We'll uncover 3 components of a Quality Score and share some tips to improve this measure.
Why is Quality Score important?
First and foremost, Quality Score is not a KPI but a diagnostic tool, as Google states. It helps you understand how users interact with the same keywords as yours. Your score identifies the relevancy of your ad compared to your competitors. The highest the score, the more useful is your ad or landing page to your target audience. Quality Score is assigned based on the ads analysis of other advertisers using the same keyword during the last 90 days.
Although Google Quality Score is not considered in the ad auction, it provides advertisers with several benefits. Firstly, this measure allows you to save your advertising budget. The higher your Quality Score, the less your will have to pay for your ad placement. Let's see how it works.
Google earns money on advertising, consequently, the search engine is paid only when users click the ads. To make them click through, ads should be relevant to their needs. If the advertising space was clogged in with irrelevant ads, users wouldn't click the links, and Google wouldn't make a profit. In the long run, this can lead to frustration and distrust of the search engine. This is why Google is interested in providing people with the best user experience.
Secondly, since the high Quality Score helps you save money, your cost per conversion lowers as well. As a result, you earn more money providing users with the relevant offers. Besides, along the way, you'll spend less on acquiring new customers.
Thirdly, the higher your Quality Score, the higher position your ad will occupy on the search engine results page (SERP). As a result, your CTR will boost as well. Before Google AdWords adopted the Quality Score, CTR was the main factor of ad relevancy.
Now that you're familiar with the benefits of high Quality Score, it's time to uncover its main components.
3 Components of Quality Score
There are 3 main components that influence your Quality Score. Сheck them out below.
Expected CTR. This measure shows the likelihood that users will click your ad when shown.
Ad relevance. This measure shows how well your ad matches the user's search intent.
Landing page experience. This measure shows the relevancy of your landing page to users who clicked through your ad.
Besides these primary factors, there's a list of others that somehow affect your Quality Score. They include the following ones:
user location;
geographic performance of your ads;
devices used;
time of day;
ad extensions.
In addition, Google takes into account any data aggregated from different crawlers to get a full picture of your ad quality. This information will never go outside of Google.
Now you might be interested in how to get to know your Quality Score. Stay tuned!
How to find your Quality Score?
To check your Quality Score, follow the instructions below.
Go to your Google Ads account.
Navigate to “Keywords”, select “Search Keywords”, and click the icon of Columns to customize them. To get the report, tick any components that you're interested in, for example, “Quality Score”, “Landing page exp”, “Ex CTR”, “Ad relevance”.
You will get this kind of report. Each component has its status: “Below average”, “Average”, “Above average”. If some statuses are average or below average, your ad needs improvements. You can get the hint by hovering over the status field.
You can also check historical values by choosing the corresponding metrics: Quality Score(hist.), Landing page exp. (hist.), Exp. CTR (hist.), Ad relevance (hist.). You will see your past reports for the necessary data ranges.
Segment by day to see daily changes. For this purpose, navigate to “Segment”, select “Time”, and click “Day”.
Now that you know what influences your ad quality score, it’s time to learn some tips to improve the measure.
How to improve your Google Quality Score?
Since ad CTR, relevance, and landing page experience contribute the most to your Quality Score, you should focus on improving these components. Follow the best practices below.
Develop a granular structure of ad groups. To make users click your ad, it should match their intent. The more ad groups you create, the better their keywords will match the ads within one group. For example, if you sell clothing, avoid combining keywords with a different intent in one group. Users may want to order delivery, check your contact information, look for particular items, or visit a physical store. For each case, you should create a different ad group with different keywords.
Write a relevant ad copy. Your task is to make your ad provide users with the solution they need. For this purpose, you can include your best keyword in the headline, URL, and ad text. This will signal both users and search engine robots that your offer is relevant to users’ needs. At the same time, make sure that your ad looks natural.
Optimize your landing page. Firstly, choose the landing page most relevant to your ad and avoid directing users to your homepage. Make sure that this page provides the exact solution. For example, if your ad targets people who want to pick up the product, don’t provide a link to a page where they can order delivery. Secondly, make the user experience your top priority. Check if the landing page loads fast and whether it’s easy to interact with it from both a laptop and mobile.
Make use of negative keywords. Each business knows about the keywords that look relevant but can confuse the users while searching. To save your advertising budget and target more precisely, create a list of negative keywords. It has no direct impact on your Quality Score but helps avoid lowering your CTR.
Include ad extensions. They not only grab attention because occupy much space in the SERP but provide users with more useful information about your business. Ad extensions include callouts, sitelinks, call extensions, message extensions, structured snippets, rating, etc. They help blow up your CTR and provide users with a lot of data about your brand through an ad.
Congrats, now you know why a Quality Score is important and have some tips to increase this measure. Track your past quality scores regularly to improve the performance of your ads!
Promotional email
A promotional email is a commercial broadcast that usually offers incentives to drive sales and revenue for a business. The maingoal of this form of email marketing is to convince customers to make a purchase. AfterregisteringwithLIKE.TG, you can send promotional emails for free.
Promotional emails should contain concise calls to action that prompt customers to buy a product. These emails can also be used to convince customers to download, subscribe, or register for a service. When executed correctly, this type of marketing can help a business increase not only revenue but also boost its customer retention and engagement. Therefore, the content and designof a promotional email should focus on persuading the recipient to take action within a specified time.
How to Write Successful Promotional Emails
Personalize the email subject
Keep it concise but powerful
Focus on a singular message
Make the email mobile-friendly
Thoroughly proofread it
With an expected 5.6 billion email users by 2019, email marketing has become one of the most effective ways for businesses to reach customers. However, sending out emails for a product or service does not guarantee that you will make a sale; you can’t even be sure that they will reach your subscribers' inbox. You can use LIKE.TGto quickly create professional promotional emails without the need to know HTML.
Personalize the email subject
People are more likely to open emails with personalized subjects. Rather than sending out mass duplicated emails, marketers should include customers’ data, such as their name and last order details. Aside from the subject, the content should also fit the profile and preferences of the target audience. Plus, the promotional email should stick to the subject line, remember to stay on topic.
Keep it concise but powerful
Once a recipient clicks on the email, there is a tiny window of time to grab their attention. Rather than using ‘technical’ words that will likely tire the reader, one should use easy-to-understand language. Also, long paragraphs can be overwhelming. Short, relevant, and strong ones work best. At the same time, the email should be catchy and engaging.
Focus on a singular message
Having more than one message in your promotional email makes it less effective. Cluttered emails are harder to read, and the subscribers are likely to miss the primary goal of it. Instead, a marketer’s goal should be to ensure that the content and call to actions emphasize the primary objective of the promotional campaign. Use words or phrases that prompt action. Active calls to action can increase click-throughs and lead to sales.
Make the email mobile-friendly
A large percentage of the target audience will view the promotional email on their mobile devices. Therefore, it is necessary to make the email mobile-friendly and easy to go through. Including subheadings, images, and lists will enable the subscribers to quickly grasp the central message of your email and navigate to sections easily. All the email templates created with LIKE.TG are mobile-friendly and responsive.
Thoroughly proofread it
Proofreading, even though obvious, is mostly ignored. However, typos and poorly written content can hurt your brand by diminishing your credibility. It is essential to go through your emails and remove any mistakes that may be present.
Send a promotional email for free!
Design a beautiful email campaign in less than an hour— for free and without having to code. Personalize, segment, and schedule it to get the best results with LIKE.TG.
Register and send a promotional campaign!
What to Put in Your Promotional Emails
A sender's name
An attractive subject line
Main message
Calls to action
Marketers must be careful to avoid them ending up in spam. For those who need help with writing emails, LIKE.TG has a great email editor where users can drag and drop to create and edit templates. Users can also choose from more than 130 templates of marketing emails. You don't need to know HTML.
A sender's name. To avoid recipients moving your promotional email to their spam folders, you must make it clear who sent the email.For this purpose, use your business name alone or add your name.
An attractive subject line.The subject line affects the open rate ofyour promotional email. It should, therefore, be captivating and about 6-10 words in length. A/B test different variants of your subject line to discover the best one.
Main message. Highlight the promotion or offer you are selling to subscribers. It can be text accompanied by images. This section can be subdivided to make it more optimized.
Calls to action. Sell the message using action-oriented words. However, marketers should be wary of using words that make the message too pushy.
Now that you know the structure of an effective promotional email, we'll walk you through creating a campaign with LIKE.TG. Stay tuned!
How to Send Promotional Emails for Free
LIKE.TG convenient email editor makes creating a campaign an easy task since you don't need to code or have any technical skills. It won't take you more than an hour to design a unique email. Alternatively, you can use a pre-designed email template from our library to save time. Follow 3 steps below.
Step 1. Add your mailing list to LIKE.TG
If you still don't have an account, register with LIKE.TG.
There are several options for adding your mailing list to the service:
you can upload a file with subscribers' email addresses;
you can copy and paste their email addresses;
you can import contacts from third-party services.
if you don't have a mailing list yet, create a subscription form for free to collect subscribers' email addresses. LIKE.TG provides a simple and functional form builder.
Check your contacts' email addresses with the LIKE.TG Email Verifier.It helps you keep your mailing list clean and improve the sender's reputation.
Step 2. Create an email campaign
You can either choose a pre-designed email template or create a unique one with our drag and drop email editor. It allows you to add text, images, videos, and buttons to your email. Design each element to fit your brand style.
Step 3. Check and preview your email campaign
You can add an email preheader to increase your open rates and provide users with more information. Check out the anti-spam recommendations to improve email delivery, choose the sending time, or schedule sending. You can resend an email to subscribers who haven't opened it. All you need is to create a new subject line. Enable collecting the necessary statistics. Preview your campaign.
In this article, you'll find a step-by-step guide to sending an email campaign with LIKE.TG.
Now your promotional email campaign is ready for sending. Monitor stats to optimize your email marketing strategy on the go.
The Most Effective Time to Send Promotional Emails
Knowing the best time and dateto send promotional emails can boost a brand’s marketing campaign. Tuesdays followed by Thursdays are the best days for sending your marketing emails. For the most click-throughs and conversion, send your emails in the morning — preferably at around 10 a.m. Research shows that afternoons are also great because many people are less active at work and are looking for distractions. Use a beautiful email template for your promotional campaign to draw the attention of your audience during these hours of the day.
How many times to send promotional emails
Too many promotional messages become a bother and lead to users unsubscribing from a service. The number of emails you send depends on the competition in the industry and type of product or service that you are promoting. A/B testing can help a marketer decide on the appropriate number of marketing emails to send. Most marketers, however, agree that 1 to 6 messages a month is ideal.
Sending Promotional Emails to a Gmail Primary Inbox
To get your message on the subscriber’s primary inbox in Gmail, it shouldn’t look explicitly promotional. One can avoid words that directly prompt the reader to buy. The best way is to use subtle marketing words. Other things that can help include:
Greeting the recipient by name
Placing no more than a single link in the message
Avoiding pictures and heavy HTML
Authenticating the domain
Find out how to avoid the Promotions Tab in Gmail.
Promotional Email Best Practices
Send emails from a familiar email address
Create an email marketing plan
Let users set preferences
Send segmented campaigns
Take into account your lead's stage in the sales funnel
Tell them about the benefits, not features
Add a clear CTA
Automate email sending
Now that you know how to write and send promotional emails, get inspired by our effective tips. They will help you send more relevant and targeted campaigns as well as increase sales.
Send emails from a familiar email address. Your subscribers should clearly understand who the sender is when they see your email in their inbox. Do not send emails from a "No-reply" email address because messages from such senders look robotic. As a result, you won't manage to build trusting relationships with your audience. Instead, you can send emails from your brand's name or add the name of the person responsible for marketing communications.
Create an email marketing plan. With such a plan, you'll be able to communicate with your audience on a regular basis without being annoying. Plan sending promotional emails for the next month, taking into account personal milestone emails such as anniversary and birthday emails, holiday emails, and triggered emails. The latter includes follow-ups, for example, when you send a reminder after your client viewed some items on your site or added them to their shopping cart without buying.
Let users set preferences. People receive dozens of promotional emails every day. To win this sharp competition for their attention and makesure subscribers are eagerly waiting for your campaigns, let them choose the desired email sending frequency along with the campaign content. Provide these options in the subscription form and add a link to the Preferences Management Center to each email footer. This way, your clients will decide how often they want to hear from you and which offers to receive.
Send segmented campaigns. This marketing tool will help you approach each customer individually with minimal effort. Divide your subscriber base into segments depending on clients' needs and interests. Then, send them campaigns according to this information. You can get this data via a subscription form. Just ask which products they're most interested in, and then segment your subscribers.
Take into account your lead's stage in the sales funnel. Do not send the same promotional email to your entire mailing list. Your leads and loyal customers have different needs. Leads may need more educational and motivational content while loyal clients expect to have a reward from your brand. Nurture and educate your leads especially if you sell services. They should clearly understand what they are paying for. You may offer them a free plan or a 7-day free trial to evaluate the benefits of your service. At the same time, you can run a 3-day promotional campaign to sell premium plans with a discount for your most loyal customers.
Tell them about the benefits, not features. You have very little time to make your subscribers interested in your email, so take your email copy seriously. People are not interested in brands and their achievements - people look for solutions to their problems. So, use your email to explain how a customer will benefit from buying your product or service.
Add a clear CTA. This button should tell subscribers what they're supposed to do next. Keep it concise, straight-forward, and easy to tap on any device. Email CTAs should be eye-catching, so make it contrast with the email's background and use enough whitespace around it to draw subscribers' attention.
Automate email sending. Sending each promotional campaign manually takes a ton of time that you can spend on more important tasks, especially if you can delegate sending emails to an email service. With a platform like LIKE.TG, you can set automated email sending in advance. For example, if a subscriber opened your promotional email but didn't buy, send them the next email with a discount in 2 days. If your subscriber is still hesitating, send them a time-limited offer with a special discount. With our Automation 360, you can set email flows in advance.
Final Thoughts
Leveraging promotional emails as part of a business marketing strategy can help bring exposure to your brand, build customer engagement and confidence, as well as boost revenue. For a more effective campaign, use LIKE.TG to create promotional emails that give you more than a 60% open rate and to monitor your subscribers’ responses to the emails you send.
Send a promotional email
Promotional marketing
Promotional marketing is a set of activities to share knowledge about a particular brand, product, or service with as many people as possible with the aim of increasing brand awareness and sales. With LIKE.TG, you can promote your brand via email campaigns, SMS, web push notifications, chatbots, landing pages, and online courses.
What is the difference between promotion and marketing?
To make the difference clear, let’s define both terms.
Marketing — is the process of bringing your product to the audience. It involves analyzing consumers’ needs and competitors’ products. This process implies creating, testing, pricing, and distributing a product.
Promotion belongs to the 4Ps of marketing. It’s all about strategies and techniques that help communicate a product to the audience. The goal of promotions is to present your product, increase demand, and differentiate it. So, promotion is the basic element of marketing.
The Objectives of Promotional Marketing
Promotion of new products or services
Development of brand image
Informing customers
Showing superiority over competitors
Turning potential buyers into real customers
It’s vital to determine your promotional marketing objectives so that you canachieve your goals. There are various objectives to bring into focus:
Promotion of new products or services. It is possible to introduce new products and services to the market against existing ones — a chance to find a place in the niche.
Development of brand image. Brand image is whenpeople associate a brand with a particular product. For instance, when you think about toothpaste, Blend-a-med and Colgate come to your mind, when you think about tires, it’s Pirelli and Bridgestone when you think about soccer — it’s Manchester United and Real Madrid. This promotion objective tends to create or restore the brand image and makes products more recognizable amongst others in the market.
Informing customers. Marketing promotion is vital for telling people about changes in products or brand’s policies. It also helps to describe the features and details of the products.
Showing superiority over competitors. Everybody uses promotion marketing these days, so to be competitive, each brand needs to apply a long-term promotional strategy.
Turning potential buyers into real customers. If promotion marketing styles like personal selling, advertising, and others are used appropriately, they stimulate demand for the product.
Types of Promotional Marketing
Personal selling
Advertising
Direct marketing
Sales promotions
Public relations
Personal selling. This one-to-one communication with potential customers is the most expensive type of promotion, but also the most effective when done correctly.
Advertising.Ads play a crucial role in making brands recognizable. Good advertising with an accurate, targeted message will reach both existing and potential customers.
Direct marketing. Performed through social media, email, and SMS marketing, unlike advertising, direct marketing intends to build relationships with people who have had your brand or product on their radars before.
Sales promotions.Promos stimulate purchasing and sales by giving discounts, cashback, free shipping, gifts, and more.
Public relations. This promotion style is a chance to build a positive and attractive brand image. With PR promotions, marketers analyze the way people respond to their brand, find out the positive and negative associations with their company, and work on the reconstructing of the brand's image.
Send a promotional campaign for free!
Design a beautiful email campaign in less than an hour— for free and without having to code. Personalize, segment, and schedule it to get the best results with LIKE.TG.
Send a promotional campaign!
Promotional Marketing Strategies
Without a detailed plan of promoting your product, you risk losing money. To find the best way to put your offer in front of the right audience, consider several effective strategies.
Email marketing. Every dollar spent on email marketing brings $44 in revenue. With this channel, you can invite subscribers to your events, share news and updates, promote your products and services. Increase both customer retention and loyalty by sending transactional emails, boost sales with abandoned cart emails and post-purchase emails, improve your relationships with triggered emails. LIKE.TG allows marketers to send 15,000 emails each month for free.
Social media marketing. You can’t ignore such powerful channels as Facebook and Instagram. Users search for reviews from the brand’s customers, look for high-quality photos of products, and contact the brand’s representatives to find out more information. Encourage your clients to leave feedback about your product, launch targeted advertising campaigns, and create chatbots. They will help you automate answering FAQ and collect orders. With LIKE.TG, you can create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger at no cost.
Content marketing. It should be a part of your online marketing strategy. People adore high-quality content which helps them make a choice, answer their questions, offers expert tips. Do not miss this chance to nurture leads with valuable content. Start your brand blog if you still haven’t done this. Find out popular search terms and users’ pain points and do your best to cover them in your articles. Provide how-to guides, interviews with top specialists in your industry, and outstanding case studies.
Influencer marketing. People don’t look for brands — they look for emotions they can provide. For this reason, they trust other people more than the brand itself. You should look for thought leaders — influencers — whose opinion DOES matter for your clients. Using Instagram tags, you can find bloggers who enjoy using your product, or if you’re a start-up, offer an influencer to try your product and if they like it, let them be your brand ambassador.
Referral marketing. 92% of consumers tend to believe their friends’ recommendations rather than any advertising campaign. Word-of-mouth is the strongest promotion strategy. To encourage clients to share a word about your brand, offer a referral program. Reward them with a discount or bonuses each time a client buys using your referral link. This way, you will increase sales, customer loyalty, and brand recognition.
Choose the best strategy for your business or combine several ones for better outreach.
How do you write a promotional marketing plan?
Promotion is one of the four basic elements of marketing. The key to effective marketing promotion is a well-thought plan. Here you should outline the main objectives and techniques that will help you reach your goals, and the KPIs you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy. Let’s take a closer look at creating a promotional marketing plan.
Allocate budget. Analyze your current marketing budget and decide how much money you can spend on promotion. Make sure this sum is reasonable — don’t cut into product development, employee salaries, taxes, or other vital expenses. Remember that your ROI may not increase after the first promotional campaign so spend your budget wisely.
Establish your goals. You should cover both short-term objectives and long-term goals. The last one represents your global goals while short-term objectives are the steps that your team should take to reach it. To have a clear picture, consider breaking your annual goal into 6-month, quarterly, and monthly goals. This way, you can easily manage the entire process and take action on the go.
Identify your target audience. To better understand your potential clients, create your ideal customer profile. The goal is to find out where your audience is, which problems and needs they have, what your potential clients have in common, and analyze the ways to reach them. With this profile, you can segment your base and create highly targeted promotions.
Chooseyour strategies, techniques, and channels. Every marketing platform works best for a certain objective and offers its own effective techniques to reach them. If your goal is to increase traffic and sales, consider pay-per-click advertising and display ads. If you want to raise brand awareness and recognition, go for social media marketing and influencer marketing.
Delegate responsibilities. This will help you focus on each promotional campaign separately taking into account the peculiarities of every channel. Hire specialists in SEO, PPC, content marketing, targeting, etc. They will keep track of progress day by day and analyze the campaigns in detail.
Having this plan at hand, you can evaluate your business opportunities right now and build a step-by-step plan for successful marketing promotion.
How to do Promotional Marketing
Understand the needs of your target audience
Decide which marketing channels to use
Determine the objectives
Develop a proper promotion mix
Come up with your promotional message
Set your budget
Monitor the results
Understand the needs of your target audience. Think about the people that you want to receive your promotions. If your promotion efforts are to the point, it will be easier to get your point across to your audience.
Decide which marketing channels to use. Define the most suitable channels to accomplish your goals. For example, SMS marketing is right for promotional purposes on a local scale. For more international outreach, companies should use email campaigns, which are not only promotional but nurturing and trust-building. Besides, LIKE.TG offers free web push notifications to reach customers who did notinteract withyour emails and SMS.
Determine the objectives. Think about the results you want to achieve with promotional marketing. Set realistic targets; don’t try to satisfy the full list of your business's goals at once.
Develop a proper promotion mix.A promotion mix is a model for creating a promotional plan based on the 5p’s: people, price, place, product, and promotion. Before you attempt to conquer new markets,think about the most critical aspect of promotion marketing — the people, and come up with a suitable promotion mix.
Come up with your promotional message.Create a message that sounds familiar and understandable for your target audience. Be humorous and trendy when you talk to younger recipients. Be formal and reliable when communicating with professionals.
Set your budget. Set your expectations for your promotion marketing budget according to your resources and find out the cost for each channel you are going to use during the promotion.
Monitor the results. Use all available tools and data to understand if your promotion is a success.
It's high timeto choose a professional marketing service to bring your ideas to life without any limitations.
Get promoted!
Increase your outreach and generate more sales with our advanced tools. Craft personalized email campaigns, push notifications, and SMS.
Register and create a promotional campaign!
How to create a promotional marketing campaign for free?
LIKE.TG allows beginners to create professional email campaigns without much sweat. You don't need to code or have any technical skills to create a beautiful promotional campaign. Make use of pre-designed templatesor design a campaign with a drag and drop editorfor free. Follow the step-by-step guide below to design a promotional campaign with LIKE.TG.
Step 1. Register with LIKE.TG
If you don't have an account, register.
Step 2. Add your mailing list
Before creating an email campaign, you need to your the addresses of your subscribers. LIKE.TG allows you to add them manually, copy and paste, upload a file, or import them from another service.
For this purpose, click "Create mailing list" and choose the necessary option.
You can verify your email addresses to ensure that you send campaigns to valid addresses and keep your sender reputation high.
Navigate to the "Email verification" tab and click "New verification". Choose your mailing list and wait for the results.
If you don't have a mailing list, create a subscription form for free. You can also use pre-designed templates or create a unique form. Add as many fields as you need to collect different types of customer data.
Step 3. Design your email template
LIKE.TG drag and drop editor allows you to design a unique email template from scratch or edit a template to your liking in less than an hour. You can add text, pictures, videos, buttons, social media sharing buttons, etc. Edit the style of each element to increase your brand recognition.
Personalize your subject line and email body to provide each subscriber with a relevant offer. You can also implement segmentation for better performance. Follow this guide to personalize your emails.
Add an informative email preheader to increase your email open rate.
Enable collecting stats. Track email open rates, and clicks, and consider adding Google Analytics tags. You can also choose the language of your unsubscribe form and create an unsubscribe page.
Step 4. Preview and send
Check your email campaign before sending. LIKE.TG provides anti-spam tips to keep your reputation high. You can send an email immediately or schedule it for later.
Follow this step-by-step guide: «How to Send an Email Campaign ».
Promotional Marketing Ideas
Create a contest
Include giftswith your brand identity
Rewardscard
Free shipping
Upsell
Cross-sell
Send engaging newsletters
Show video testimonials
Demonstrate your product
Create a contest. People love to take part in different kinds of lotteries, where they have a chance to win somethingvaluable for free.
Include giftswith your brand identity. Many customers like when companies give them bags, pens, and other stuff. When people use those things in their day-to-day life, they are continually promoting your brand.
Rewardscard. Offer your subscribers a discount or a free item after they make a specific number of purchases.
Free shipping.This is an effective trigger to attract your audience’s attention.Givefree shipping for specific products or at a particular time of the year, for instance, on holidays.
Upsell. Offer upgrades and advanced products to people who show interest in your business.
Cross-sell. Propose additional products like headphones or phone cases if someone recentlypurchased a smartphone.
Send engaging newsletters. Use email marketing to help people remember you. Make newsletters exciting and relevant to your audience.
Show video testimonials. Ask your customers to leave feedback about your product or service on the socials in exchange for free coffee, for example.
Demonstrate your product. Show people how your product works, give your customers a chance to use it before buying.
Promotional Marketing Examples
Aldo promotes its products with free shipping and a contest with the opportunity to win up to $500.
Grammarly upsells their Premium Account in a series of emails, offering different discounts and plans.
Art.com promotes artwork by celebrating President's Day Weekend with 50% discounts on [almost] everything on their site.
Send a promotional campaign
Push notification
A push notification is a short in-app, or web-based pop-up message. Push notifications are used for various purposes: from sending system messages and in-app updates to promotions. The key idea of sending push notifications is to provide users with more value and keep them engaged.
Watch this video and learn how to succeed in sending useful push notifications.
Why are push notifications important?
Attract user attention
Increase user engagement
Support users
Accurately drive traffic
Increase conversion rate
Improve communication with users
Let’s consider several factors that make push notifications appealing for many brands around the globe, they:
Attract user attention. According to theBusiness of Apps, an average American smartphone user gets around 46 push notifications daily. Although the competition is high, push notifications are crucial in terms of attracting user attention.
Increase user engagement. The opt-in rate for push notifications on Android devices is 91%, and 44% for iOS devices, this makes push notifications an active channel in terms of outreach.
Improve communication with users. With the help of such messages, brands create micro communication touchpoints that help to build trusting relationships.
Support users. Push notifications assist people at every stage of their buyer journey.
Increase conversion rate. With these messages, you can retain existing users and re-engage inactive subscribers, which results in a more significant number of conversions.
Accurately drive traffic. Personalized, time-sensitive, and valuable push notifications serve as a proper channel for driving traffic to particular web pages or, in the case of in-app push notifications, to features in the app.
Types of Push Notifications
There are two types of push notifications: in-app and web messages. Let’s have a closer look at each one.
In-app push notification
This type of notification is also called a mobile notification. They are available for the users who downloaded a mobile application and previously opted in to receive updates. This technology helps direct users to specific features, share timely updates, and provide brief instructions regarding the mobile app. The leading platforms for receiving in-app push notifications are Android and iOS.
According to RubyGarage, in-app push notifications show three times better retention rates and an 88% higher level of engagement with the app. Besides, users who opted-in for receiving push notifications launch the application three times more often.
The limits for the length ofthese messages depend on the mobile operating system. For iOS, it also depends on the type of notification. The maximum length varies from 62 characters for “Banners” to 235 symbols for “Alerts.” For Android devices, the limit is around 84 characters depending on the screen size.
Below is an example of a push notification from an e-commerce application. This particular message incentivizes users to return to their abandoned shopping cart and complete a purchase.
Web push notification
Also referred to as browser push notifications, they appear on a user's desktop or mobile screen. Companies use web push notifications, mainly for marketing purposes. They send promotions and coupons, inform users about new goods in stock, or share educational articles.
With any push notification you want to use, you must get explicit consent to send them from users. Otherwise, any messages from you will be unsolicited, and your business reputation may be damaged. When a user browses a website, a permission request appears as a pop-up at the top of the page. Like in the example from Sephora below, it offers just two options: “Allow” or “Block.”
Once a user gives consent, the company can legally send push notifications.
Web push notifications are a great way to promote your products and services in advance of marketing holidays, like on the screenshot below.
The maximum length of a notification's message depends on the type of device that receives it. For smartphones, the limit is 20-30 characters, while for desktops, it’s up to 50 characters for the title text and 125 characters for the body text.
Big brands with a broad audience use this technology to a full extent, adding images, writing engaging copies, and using personalization to increase their user engagement and revenue.
Send web push notifications, too!
Create campaigns, run A/B tests, and send browser push notifications while LIKE.TG takes care of the technical side of things. Add one line of code to your website and skyrocket your revenue!
Register and send web push notifications!
How Push Notifications Work
Let’s find out how both types of notifications work since in-app and web push messages differ.
How in-app notifications work
Let’s get the iOS operating system as an example.
The App sends a permission request to your device. The device hands that request over to the Apple notification server, which sends back a device token. The device forwards the token to the app, which moves it to the backend. After that, the device token is transferred back to the notification server along with the notification itself. Finally, the notification reaches the device, and the user can see it.
Check the scheme below to visualize how in-app push notifications work on iOS devices.
How web push notifications work
Browser notifications work differently. Every browser, like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, has its push service, so the methods of delivering push notifications may vary.
It works this way: the app server sends the message to the push servicethat transfers it to the user agent — the browser. After that, the user agent sends a push event to the service worker — a script that a browser runs in the background to allow features that don’t need web pages to operate. Finally, it retrieves the message and displays the notification.
Check out the scheme below to get a better understanding of how web push notifications work.
Push Notifications with LIKE.TG
If you are interested in sending web push notifications, LIKE.TG is the right platform.
You need to take a few simple steps to get everything up and running. Here they are:
Add your website. Insert the URL of your site, and set up general settings: choose your website image, decide which action should trigger the request for subscription.
Add the generated code snippet to your site. Copy and paste generated code to your website template before the closing </head> tag.
Collect subscribers. Gather subscribers on your website and keep track of existing and new subscribers in the “Statistics” tab in your account.
Send a web push notification campaign. Choose a list of recipients, fill in the title and body text, and add a web push link.
Here are more detailed instructions on how to do it.
LIKE.TG allows you to segment the list of recipients, personalize both the title and body text, add a large image, preview the message, and schedule web push notifications sending.
Push notification marketing
Push notification marketing is an advertising strategy whereby marketers inform their target audience about services and products via browser notifications on an array of devices. LIKE.TG offers free web push service if your database has fewer than 10,000 subscribers.
Push notifications are a common advertising format that works for any service, product, and CPA offer. Marketers send both promotional and transactional messages. Transactional notifications notify clients of their order status. With promotional notifications, brands advertise their goods, increase brand awareness, and maximize sales. It’s a great chance to inform users about the latest news, communicate useful information concerning brand apps, new features, and more.
Why is push notification marketing important?
Better outreach
Security
Higher engagement
Useful insights
Cheap communication channel
Better outreach. The number of smartphone users is forecast to reach about 2.5 billion in 2019. Thus, when businesses use push notifications, they showcase their products and services to a more significant section of the smartphone-using market.
Security. Google API controls push notifications; thus guaranteeing user information is safe and preventing the selling of customer data.
Higher engagement. Push notifications enable brands to increase app engagement by 88 percent. Moreover, they allow businesses to drive visitors back to their website. Some of the ways brands can engage with subscribers include sending relevant information, reminders, and regular updates.
Useful insights. Push notifications provide valuable stats regarding open rate and CTR to improve your strategies.
Cheap communication channel. With push notifications, you can promote your brand at a more favorable price. However, push service is an entirely free feature with LIKE.TG if your database is fewer than 10,000 subscribers.
Types of Push Notifications
Mobile notifications
Browser notifications
Push notifications can be broadly classified into two different types. These are:
Mobile notifications
A mobile app sends these pop-up messages to users. Similar to browser push, mobile push notifications can be used to send news, offers, and sales alerts, events reminders, prompt users to perform a particular action, and so forth. A mobile user should install your app to receive mobile notifications.
Browser notifications
These are browser alerts that a visitor gives their permission to receive while visiting a website. Marketers send them to notify users about sales, news, events, and promos. This type of push alert allows brands to enjoy the benefits of push notifications without an app. LIKE.TG enables websites to quickly set up personalized browser notifications that stand out on multiple browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
Boost sales and user engagement!
You can easily create a push campaign for free to keep your customers engaged, notify about sales and new articles on a blog.
Register and create a push campaign!
How to use Push Notification Marketing with LIKE.TG
Sign up with LIKE.TG
Add your site
Add the script generated to your site
Send push marketing campaigns
Follow these steps to send browser notifications:
Step 1 — Sign up with LIKE.TG
Register with LIKE.TG if you don’t have an account by adding your name, email, phone, and a password.
Step 2 — Add your site
Select web push and then click on “Add new website” to begin creating a web push campaign.
Provide the domain address, website image, and choose a subscription request or add a custom one.
Step 3 — Add the script generated to your site
After adding the website, the LIKE.TG creates the code automatically. Copy and paste the code into your website.
Step 4 — Send push marketing campaigns
Click on “Create a push campaign” and add a title, text, recipient list, and web push link. Then start sending web push campaigns.
Web Push Monetization
You can use push notifications to provide more than information about your brand or updates. Businesses with a list of web push subscribers can monetize their sites as well.
Get additional income by monetizing your website
Websites can make an extra income by allowing advertisers to send web push ads to their subscribers. To do so:
Activate web push ads in your LIKE.TG account
Set sending frequency
Get money per click
Advertise with Pushpush
PushPush allows website owners to make money from advertisers by promoting their businesses to recipients. It is easy to set up, pays every week, and gives a comprehensive performance report.
Push Notification Marketing Examples
This is a way to inform the clients about discounts.
Popsugar uses push notification marketing to promote its training programs.
Below is a way to inform users about new articles on your website.
Push Notification Marketing Best Practices
Use web push notifications to send transactional alerts such as delivery notifications.
Make use of personalization and segmentation features offered by different browsers.
Use push alerts to remind customers about abandoned carts.
Add brand images and icons to attract attention instantly.
Create an account and launch a push notification marketing campaign with LIKE.TG!
Start push notification marketing
Public relations
Public relations (PR) is communication with the public through different channels to build a positive brand reputation. PR managers use social media, videos, and other materials to communicate a brand’s story, including an idea, product, or accomplishments, to reach the public, win its attention, and change its perception of a company.
In this article, we’ll uncover the importance, objectives, functions, and types of PR. Next, we’ll determine the distinctive features of public relations and marketing and review some strategies and tactics. Afterward, we’ll talk about PRKPIs, tools, and successful examples.
Why is PR important?
Let’s find out more about the benefits of PR that companies can reap. First of all, it’s worth mentioning that effective communication with the public through unpaid or earned media helps improve credibility. After all, people need to trust a brand to become loyal customers. Public relations allow companies to gain trust by communicating a company’s story, idea, or product. It helps restore the trust of a brand’s customers during a crisis.
Secondly, it improves brand visibility. Excellent blog posts, positive stories about a company, and product reviews will remain visible on search engines for a long time. That’s why companies’ teamsneed to do their best at building a good image that brings in leads and growth. Thirdly, PR builds connections with communities. It also helps establish relationships with influencers that can promote a brand. Besides, PR can enhance a company’s online presence and increase sales volume.
Now that you know about the importance of public relations, let’s proceed to its objectives.
Objectives of Public Relations
Companies hire experts in public relations to perform certaintasks and achieve the following objectives:
build brand awareness;
inform a brand’starget audience about its products;
increase demand;
maintain strong relationships with customers;
reinforce a brand;
awake interest;
establish a positive reputation of a brand.
The goals are clear now, so it’s time to walk you through the functions of PR.
Functions of Public Relations
PR aims to establish trust among customers and build credibility. Public relations managers help increase brand awareness and determine and communicate your brand’s message to the public. Moreover, effective PR develops positive promotion and helps maintain a company’s reputation during a crisis. Let’s now review the responsibilities of a PR representative in more detail:
prepares and presents news releases;
tells a company’s story and answers journalists’ questions;
measures a company’s news coverage;
becomes a spokesperson at various events;
creates content, reports, and speeches;
represents a business in front of stakeholders;
manages a company’s social media accounts;
develops and maintains a company’s favorable public image;
organizes press conferences;
searches for cooperation with other companies in the industry;
pitches stories to the media.
Now that you know the responsibilities of a company’s PR manager, let’s jump into the types of public relations.
Types of Public Relations
When it comes to business, everyone shares a certain opinion, including customers, business owners, stakeholders, government, and the public. There are many types of PR that help express different viewpoints, and they are as follows:
strategic communications (creation and development of certain strategies that PR managers follow to achieve a company’s goals);
community relations (direct engagement with a certain audience or community through different communication channels);
media relations (communication with media aimed at conveying a company’s main message to its audience);
public affairs (establishing and building relationships with politicians, governments, and other decision-makers);
online communications (choosing the best digital platforms to build online presence and relationships with influential blogs and opinion leaders to attain a brand’s objectives);
internal communications (developing certain programs to keep a company’s employees satisfied and loyal);
crisis communications (managing a company during a crisis and developing a clear crisis communications plan);
In the next section, we’ll figure out the main features of PR and marketing that set them apart.
Public Relations vs. Marketing
Since PR and marketing have several similar functions, it can be difficult to differentiate between these two terms. Let’sstart with their definitions and then move on to their key differences.
Public relations is the process that primarily focuses on shaping a positive reputation of a company by using different techniques. When building public relations, PR managers target all parties involved: stakeholders, customers, media, and the public.
Professionals implement messaging on different communication platforms to enhance brand awareness and build good relationships with companies and stakeholders. With the right messages, PR can change minds.
Positive results of PR campaignsinclude additional brand exposure and change in people’s perception of a company. The primary responsibilities of PR managers involve speech writing, managing releases, press pitches, and building and developing good relationships with media and opinion leaders.
Marketing is the process that encompasses advertising,email campaigns, client research, and sales strategies aimed at promoting products or services and increasing sales. It has three main purposes that include capturing attention, educating leads about a product or service, and converting them into customers. The main target audience of marketers isprospectiveor current customers.
Marketing has the power to sell. Professionals do everything possible to achieve the best results in selling. Namely, they create unique advertising campaigns, develop strategies to attract customers, and approaches to sell their goods. Companies’ owners measure the success of their marketing strategies by tracking and analyzing some positive changes in their sales and revenue.
In a nutshell, PR focuses on establishing a company’s positive reputation, whereas marketing helps promote a particular product or service and increase sales volume. Next, we’ll talk about PR strategies and techniques.
Public Relations Strategies and Tactics
Enhance your social media presence
Share compelling stories and information about your company
Consider partnerships
Celebrate anniversaries creatively
To kickstart your PR campaign, you should know at least several strategies.We have prepared a feweffective PR tactics to help you do that, so let’s explore them right away.
Enhance your social media presence
Modern brands often use social media platforms to reach and communicate with their prospects and customers. To do it, you need to create accounts on the most popular social networking services like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram. These mediums will help you reach out to the public, announce special events, contests, and publish informative and interesting blog posts, videos, or photos. Besides, you should answer customers’ questions and provide them with support.
Star Wars gained the love and respect of movie fans for their tweet congratulating Marvel Studios on their success with “Avengers: Infinity War.”
Share compelling stories and information about your company
PR is about communicating the right messages and information to the right people. To establish a positive brand reputation, you should chooseyour language and tone of voice, creating messages that resonate with customers’ desires and needs. Pick some interesting and engaging topics, and write articles that communicate value and relevance. Besides, don’t forget to create a unique story about your company and its product for the media.
Let’s take the story of The Body Shop, for example. On its website, the brand mentions its social responsibility. The Body Shop pioneers social changeand cares about our environment, society, and animals. The company also redefines beauty and empowers women and girls.
Consider partnerships
One more great PR idea is a strategic partnershipsince it opens new opportunities and perspectives. You can conduct contests, create new campaigns, or cross-promote each other. By using your partner’s visibility, you can enhance your customer base and multiply the number of leads. If you need strong local community connections, this is the most suitable PR strategy for you.
For example, BBC Earth partnered with Airbnb to conduct a contest and reward winners with a trip to the Bahamas to spend three days on the vessel used in Blue Planet II.
Celebrate anniversaries creatively
If your company has existed for a long time, think about making this date memorable for your customers and employees. You can provide your customers with special offers or great discounts to encourage people to buy your products. As a result, you’ll improve your brand awareness and reputation and increase sales.
In 2015, eBay celebrated its anniversary with a birthday campaign, “Happy 20th, eBay!”. On its birthday, the famous company provided customers with 20 days of new deals. This way, clients had more reasons to visit the website. Besides, eBay released an updated app to inform shoppers about their latest deals.
Now we’ll move to the next section to explore PR KPIs.
Public Relations KPIs
To find out whether your public relations perform well, you need to track and analyze your KPIs. We’ll unpack some KPIs you should monitor to figure out the performance of your public relations campaigns.
Social media engagement.Monitor the number of comments and shares your content gets. It will show you how many people are interested in your company on social media.
Media outreach. With this indicator, you’ll know the number of your press releases, pitches, and their performance. Besides, you can find out whether you succeed in building strong relationships with journalists.
Sentiment. Look through the articles that mention your company or product. This way, you’ll understand whether your brand evokes negative or positive emotions and associations. This point is crucial since it influences and shapes your reputation within the market.
Event promotion.A successful PR strategy captures attention and drives more people to attend a company’s events, gathers media, and builds good relationships with influencers. Check out how many attendees your events have.
Domain authority. By placing links on reliable third-party sites, your company improves its domain authority. Consider monitoring these changes with special tools like Ahrefs or Moz.
Earned traffic. By tracking the traffic you managed to receive from your earned coverage and links, you can also understand if your business grows. Use special tools like SEMrush, Google Analytics, or SE Ranking to check your website traffic.
Now that you know the KPIs you need to monitor, let’s proceed to the most useful tools to empower your PR campaigns.
Public Relations Tools
Professionals use public relations tools to improve the reputation of their companies as well as internal communication. There are tools companies leverage to communicate with customers, stakeholders, and media. Let’sreview them so that you can establish great public relations campaigns for your business.
Press kit. This kit contains all necessary promotional materials about a company. It includes a brand story, marketing assets, media mentions, press releases, and article examples. Brands usuallyplace press kits on their websites so that journalists can learn about them and tell compelling stories citing the primary source.
Events. To draw people’s attention to a company’s new products or activities, brands arrange seminars, conferences, contests, etc. These events won’t leave the public indifferent and encourage people to participate.
Press releases. They allow brands toannounce new product releases, make official statements, and serve as original informants. Press releases guarantee immediate brand exposure and help increase sales. Besides, they drive traffic to your website and have the potential for social sharing.
Fact sheets. A fact sheet is an overview of essential information about your startupor an established company. Simply put, it’s a summary of your brand’s activities. The information in it should be concise and easy to understand. A fact sheet includes a company’s mission, vision, position within the market, an overview of its products, customer insights, and key metrics. Sales teams, investors, and PR managers can leverage it for internal and external purposes.
Employee relations program. Relationships inside each business are also crucially important. PR people are often engaged in developing employee communication programs and additional materials that support them to improve internal communication.
Publications.Brands often publish articles in magazines, share blog posts, and write stories, brochures, and annual reports to develop public relations. They help communicate the necessary information to companies’ target audiences and drive their interest.
Now that you know the tools you can use for your PR campaigns, let’s walk you through some successful examples of PR.
Successful Examples of Public Relations
There are many examples of excellent public relations campaigns. We’ve prepared the most successful ones from brands you probably know.
Lyft Netflix
The prank from Lyft and Netflix was one of the reasons for all the can’t-missexcitement before the premiere of Stranger Things 2. The Lyft driver took several customers to unfamiliar places and scared them with different strange things happening in the car. As a result, brands obtained even more buzz and hype around the famous TV series.
Old Spice
The company is famous for its interesting approach to its campaign development. Although people probably still remember a commercial with a sporty man on the horse, Old Spice prepared a new ad in 2018. To drive more interest to its latest product, the brand provided readers with red paper blazers that had a smell of Old Spice Captain product.
Simply put, to establish a positive brand reputation, you need to have a professional to deal with your press releases, publications, and other PR tools. The right approach and strategy will help you inform different people about your company and communicate a compelling story to a wide public.
Promotion mix
A promotion mix is a set of different marketing approaches marketers develop to optimize promotional efforts and reach a broader audience. The marketer’s task is to find the right marketing mix for a particular brand.
In this video, Alex, a LIKE.TG marketer, explains how to create an effective promotion mix strategy.
Developing a promotion mix requires skills and experience in marketing. Marketers should complete various studies and gather lots of data about a particular company to come up with an effective promotion mix.
For instance, it is necessary to identify your target audience, work out a budget that you can afford for a promotion, and decide the most efficient marketing channels for your audience.
A promotion mix is a more expanded approach towards one of five elements of the marketing mix — Promotion. Other factors are people, product, place, and price.
Why is using a promotion mix important?
Improves the effectiveness of promotional campaigns
Helps segment the audience
Improves communication with clients
Informs subscribers
Stands out from the crowd
Improves the effectiveness of promotional campaigns. Promotion is a crucial part of any business, so companies develop a promotion mix, putting all efforts to make promotions at the right place, at the right time, and to the right audience. It helps one get the most out of their marketing resources by optimizing their budget and saving time.
Helps segment the audience. To develop a compelling promotion mix, a company needs to identify its target audience. Potential subscribers may include various groups of people who have something in common, for example, age, gender, preferences, etc., and they allrequire an individual approach. A promotion mix is a key method for delivering a relevant promotion message via the mostsuitable channel for each segment.
Improves communication with clients. Companies develop a promotion mix trying to speak their consumers’ language. If prepared correctly, it helps build trust between the brand and its customers. This is a crucial factor in lead nurturing and customer retention. For example, automated email campaigns help achieve these goals by responding to people’s actions instantly.
Informs subscribers. Some promotions, on Instagram for example, aim to show the product from the best angle, and others, like SMS, emphasize the advantages of local services. When using a promotion mix, companies define the best ways to educate people about the products and services they provide.
Stands out from the crowd. People are bombarded with all sorts of advertising at every turn. Witha promotion mix, it is possible to stand out from the crowd without creating chaos in your customers’ heads. Successful companies make quality prevail over quantity, promoting their product or service at the right place and right time.
Components of a Promotion Mix
Advertising
Direct selling
Sales promotion
Public relations
Advertising.This is a non-personal promotion of products and services. Marketers use advertising as a vital tool for increasing brand awareness. Advertisers show promotions to masses of people using email, webpages, banner ads, television, radio, etc.
Direct selling.This is a one-to-one communication between a sales representative and a potential customer. Direct selling influences people to decide to buy certain products or services. It is one of the most effective ways of promoting your brand because the sales rep can tailor the promotion precisely to those who are most likely to make a purchase. On the other hand, this is the most expensive form of sales because companies need to pay for one person’s time.
Sales promotion.This is a set of short-term activities that are designed to encourage immediate purchase. Sales promotions are a campaign that uses time-sensitive offers — sales, discounts, coupons, etc., to engage existing consumers and bring in a larger audience. Many companies make this a core component of their marketing efforts, though sometimes it’s the most annoying type of communication for people.
Public relations. This type of promotional method determines the way people treat the brand. Companies using PR try to build a firm and attractive brand image by planting interesting news stories about their activities in the media. Public relations are not fully controlled by the company, though, as some reviews and webpages may negatively highlight the brand. If a company adequately solves these issues, people will reward them with positive word-of-mouth consideration.
How to Use LIKE.TG for Promotion
Email
SMS
Web push notifications
Messenger marketing
You can cover some of the promotion mix components with LIKE.TG. Let’s find out which marketing channels you can implement in your promotion mix.
Email
This marketing channel allows you to send promotional emails, newsletters, trigger emails, follow-ups, and more. Avoid monotonous promotions because users’ inboxes are often overwhelmed with sales emails. Send email campaigns that provide value to the customers, not only put your product in front.
SMS
Send time-sensitive offers to your audience to impulse quick sales. Try to implement an SMS campaign in your promotion mix because it has huge open rates.
Web push notifications
Follow up on the success of your email marketing or drive visitors back to your website with this technology. Send web push notifications to inform about new products, discounts, news, and updates.
Messenger marketing
This channel allows businesses to have conversations with people in messengers.LIKE.TG allows marketers to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger and Telegram app to automate answering clients' questions, collect orders, register them for events, and promote products. You can create three chatbots and send 10,000 messages to unlimited number of subscribers each month for free.
Promotion Mix best practices and Tips
Identify the target audience
Follow a five P’s rule
Provide people with useful information
Use appropriate marketing channels
Rely on the rightpromotion mix elements
Implement segmentation
Monitor marketing trends
Identify the target audience. Determine your target audience andtakeadvantage of the promotion mix tactics. Create your customer profile to find out how to provide people with the products they need.
Follow a five P’s rule. Five factors form promotional marketing success: what you sell (Product), how much you want for it (Price), how you offer it (Promotion), where you sell it (Place), and whom you sell it to (People). Work on these five P’s of marketing and give your customers what they need at the most convenient time.
Provide people with useful information. Demonstrate the products and services you sell. Explain what makes them so unique and why customers should choose yours and no one else’s products. Create reviews comparing your product with competitors’ products.
Use appropriate marketing channels. Find out which channel of communication is the most convenient for your audience. Try delivering the same message through different channels and examine which performs best with your customers.
Rely on the rightpromotion mix elements. Personal selling is usually useful for only small businesses due toits high cost and low outreach. Every business can afford to display advertising and email marketing, though. Develop a balanced system of communication with your audience that fits your business well.
Implement segmentation. This tool targets the audience by dividing it into smaller groups based on similarities.With LIKE.TG, segmentation workswith emails, SMS, and web push notifications.
Monitor marketing trends. As internet marketing evolves, new channels for communication with customers appear. Follow marketing trends to be able to reach your customers the way they like it.
Promotion Mix Example
Advertising
Personal selling
Sales promotion
Public relations
Direct marketing
Let’s take Nike’s promotion mix as an example and learn how they use each of the promotion mix components.
Advertising. In advertising campaigns, Nike aims to reach large target audiences. The brand invites celebrities who represent the image of an ideal consumer. Potential customers associate themselves with famous ones, and this motivates them to trust the brand and communicate with it.
Personal selling. Nike’s selling takes place in their stores. Trained store personnel assist consumers, provide details on the company’s products and stimulate visitors to buy their products. Besides, Nike’s employees help customers find the right Nike product and promote the company through the use of personalized services.
Sales promotion. Usually, Nike’s sales promotions include special discounts fora targeted audience. The brand motivates their customers with the savings theycan havewhen they buy discounted products. After that, they create a demand for purchasing more products using those bonuses, turning new customers into loyal clients.
Public relations. Nike developed a social responsibility strategy, in response to global ecological trends. Besides, Nike sponsors numerous sports events that build a better brand image in the eyes of their audience.
Direct marketing. Nike uses direct marketing to promote its products among sports organizations in universities, colleges, schools. Marketers call this lead nurturing.
QR code
A QR code is an abbreviation for quick response code. This is a registered trademark of the Japanese matrix barcode. A QR Code is a machine-readable barcode, which contains information about the item that bares this code. Such data can include Japanese Kanji and Kana characters, images, music, URLs, and emails. In Japan, this code is standard for cell phones.
The Japanese company Toyota initially developed this code in 1994 to mark the spare parts for their automobiles to be able to track the vehicles during the production process.
Due to its high readability, the QR code has quickly become popular outside the automobile industry and, in many cases, has replaced the UPC.
Nowadays, smartphones are used as scanning devices for the QR code. It appears to be a highly convenient and effortless way to access specific URLs or websites. The fact that there is no need to enter the URL manually brings better conversion, and therefore it is useful for marketing purposes. QR codes are often used in commercial tracking, transport ticketing, and storing personal information for some organizations.
QR Code
UPC
In email marketing, the QR code is widely applied within loyalty programs and couponing due to higher conversions. A QR code included in your email campaigngives easy access to a URL, webpage, or a discount coupon.If you're looking for the best QR code generator, check out this comparison review.
Prospective customer
A prospective customer, or prospect, is a person or organization interested in making a purchase, with financial resources required, and the power to make purchasing decisions.
In the video below, Anya shares tips on how to convert prospects into loyal customers. Check it out!
What is the difference between a prospective customer and a lead?
There are no comprehensive criteria to distinguish leads and prospects. Both leads and prospects have an interest in your company’s products; they may be more or less qualified. However, differences between leads and prospective customers boil down to three points:
Their place in the sales funnel. While leads are at the top, prospects have moved down to the middle.
Interaction with business. Leads only receive information, while prospects negotiate with a company by email, phone calls, or attending meetings.
Communication approach. Businesses interact with many leads at once, while with prospects they go for one-on-one communication.
How do you target a prospective customer?
Get to know your customers
Research your competitors’ audiences
Set qualifying criteria
Targeting prospective clients is nothing to sneeze at. At least 50% of prospects turn out to be a bad fit for companies. Put differently, businesses waste tons of resources that won’t yield happy customers. To save time and money, start with researching which prospects can become your best clients. Here are three techniques that will help you.
Get to know your customers
Your clientele’s experience with your product is key to generate prospects. Start with composing a list of your key customers and find what they have in common. Maybe they work in the same industry, have similar financial indicators or needs. Look for these features in your prospective customers.Another way is to ask your customer service and support teams about your clientele. Talking to clients every day, customer service specialists know who your customers are, how they use your product, and what makes them happy.
Finally, survey your best customers about your product. What do they like the most? What features are the most useful? What would they change about your product? These answers can shed some light on how you can effectively reach new prospects with the same needs.
Research your competitors’ audiences
People that love your competitors’ product could easily fall in love with yours too. Find out who they are — browse through competitors’ social media accounts, research their content, comments, and followers’ profiles.
Look at your competitors’ promotional content. What advantages does it highlight? Knowing what their customers like about the product gives you clues to things customers value that you can implement. Pay attention to social proof as well — it shows typical buyers, problems they face, and ways your competitors solve them.
Finally, pretend to be a potential customer too, test your competitors’ selling process, and learn from it. How do sales representatives communicate with prospects? What channels do they use? What questions do they ask and what features do they highlight?
Set qualifying criteria
Create a list of criteria to estimate if your prospects are effort-worthy. If you work in the B2B sector, hallmarks may be the company's budget, industry, the market they operate in, and more.
Include financial indicators, such as revenue or company growth. Businesses without financial problems probably have more interest in investing their money. Use company profiling resources — DB Hoovers, TechCrunch, VentureDeal, or CrunchBase — to track their growth.
If you work in the B2C sector, create a buyer persona. Ask yourself about your ideal customer’s occupation, marital status, geography, income, pain points, and interests. The answers can be both speculative and empirical.
These techniques will help you save time and effort by picking the most promising prospects. After applying them to your sales strategy you can convert prospects into happy clients in short order.
How can you convert prospects into clients?
Try uncommon communication channels
Build customer-centric communication
Show how your product works
Use social proof and storytelling
Automate your follow-ups
Add prospects to your CRM
After targeting your prospects, it’s time to convert them into customers. We’ve picked five hacks to get the most out of your prospective customers and turn them into happy clients.
Try uncommon communication channels
What comes to mind when thinking of ways to reach your prospects? Our wager: calls and emails. However, only 23.9% of sales emails are opened, and it takes 18 calls to connect with a buyer. To stop losing time on calls and emails, implement new communication channels into your strategy.
For instance, while your prospect is still researching your product, offer them to interact with a chatbot. It can provide them with instant feedback around the clock, answer frequently asked questions, book consultations, and more.
Bots often gently push prospects towards the sales funnel, as Jamie Oliver’s chatbot does. It shows recipes as responses to emojis, offers Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, and lets users share the bot on their Facebook page. It works well for both the book’s sales and promotion.
You can create an engaging chatbot for Facebook Messenger or Telegram for free in no time — register with LIKE.TG and squeeze every bit of value out of this marketing channel.
Build customer-centric communication
Hard selling is an excellent way to chase your prospects away. Instead of pushing your prospects to purchase, listen to their needs, and offer them help to accomplish their goals.
Another hack is to address your prospects’ pain points. Build your pitch around the problems your product helps eliminate. It’s a psychological trick that boils down to our brain’s predisposition to react more to potential losses than gains. Cook Smarts use this tactic in their email communication. The email highlights a problem their prospects face every day — being swamped with meal planning — and offers a solution. You can use this approach not only in email marketing but also on other channels.
Show how your product works
More than half of the prospects are eager to know how the product works. Show them the whole set of features and opportunities your product provides. For instance, you can create a text or video guide, make a presentation, or a one-on-one consultation.
The best option is offering a free trial. It helps prospects to figure out if your proposal fits their needs, and gives you an additional reason to reach them after the trial expires.
Blue Bottle Coffee knows a thing or two about the power of a free trial — trying coffee once is more persuasive than describing it for hours. Moreover, the company uses this occasion for cross-selling in the “You Might Also Like” section.
Use social proof and storytelling
95% of purchasing decisions occur in our subconscious mind, which makes emotional stories more powerful than facts. 88% of consumers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations. Combined, storytelling and social proof can change your selling game.
Autopilot uses this technique in the email with an engaging story. To read the full text, the recipient goes to the website and sees a precise case study ending with a call to try Autopilot for free.
Automate your follow-ups
Top salespeople spend more time on sales-related activities, while others get stuck in operations. To save time, automate your follow-up messages, as we did in the example below with LIKE.TG.
This flow helps handle prospects’ contacts, manage connections within strict deadlines, and automatically finish the communication after reaching the goal. To automate your interactions with prospective customers, start with LIKE.TG’s Automation 360 tool.
We created a flow starting after a prospect opens the email reminding them that their trial expires in three days. After opening this email, they will receive an offer to buy a premium subscription. If the recipient purchases the premium subscription, the flow stops; if not – it continues with a promotional email.
Once opened, a prospect gets the next campaign with social proof. If they don’t react, the flow sends them an SMS. Those, who opened the social proof email, receive an additional trial. Meanwhile, the flow sends the seller a reminder to call those, who didn't react.
If a recipient didn’t click the CTA button in the latter email, the flow will change the contact's variable to “inactive.” In the other case, a prospect gets a thank you email.
Add prospects to your CRM
With a CRM system, you can visualize your sales processes. It will help you record deals, monitor their progress, store information about clients to understand how well your strategy works. You can use the LIKE.TG CRM system for free. Accept orders, manage deals with the help of kanban-board, build your client list, communicate with customers via email or chatbot, and automate your pipeline in one place.
Look below to see how deals are displayed on a kanban-board. You can create new statuses, add information about clients and deals, and send them messages.
Working with prospective customers gets tough sometimes. However, you can ease the difficulty by targeting prospects properly, using the right communication strategies, automating everything you can, and applying various communication channels. Reinforce your prospecting with email campaigns, chatbots, web push notifications, and SMS — register with LIKE.TG to create them in a blink of an eye.
Create an email campaign
Pure competition
Pure competition is a market structure that involves different manufacturers providing customers with similar products. A large number of homogenous goods, many sellers that can easily enter the market, and customers who have full information about the companies and their products create a perfect environment for this market model.
Why is pure competition considered an unsustainable system?
There are four different market structures. First of all, let’s review pure competition and the reasons why it’s considered an unsustainable system:
the difference in price is often too minimal to have an influence;
it’s easy to enter and leave the market, hence the market is crowded with manufacturers;
it’s difficult for customers to distinguish goods of one manufacturer from another;
sellers can’t gain profit due to the low prices they offer.
Now that you know some basics, let’s proceed to pure competition’s five distinctive features.
Characteristics of Pure Competition
Many competing companies
The same products are offered
Same market share for all businesses
Buyers have full information
Companies can easily enter and leave the market
To fully understand this concept, let’s consider the following characteristics.
Many competing companies. A market with pure competition has many companies that compete with each other. A large number of competitors that sell the same products prevent price rising among businesses. So, producers offer their products at an average price to stay on the market. This process has a positive effect on customers as they don’t have to spend a lot if they decide to change the seller.
The same products are offered. One of the main characteristics of pure competition is that firms sell similar goods. As a result, it’s difficult for customers to distinguish between different brands. That’s why they can easily change the brand of the product they need without overpaying.
Same market share for all businesses. Since companies can’t compete on the market due to similar prices, they all have an equal market share. Thus, if one company decides to lower its prices, it will suffer losses. On the other hand, if a firm decides to increase prices, it will lose customers as there are a large number of other companies offering the same product at a lower price.
Buyers have full information. A consumer knows that one of the companies can sell the product for a lower price. Thus, businesses are not willing to raise prices ahead of their competitors. To gain more profit, some firms decide to produce goods of a lower quality to decrease the price of the product. However, consumers who own information won’t buy such products as they are aware that their quality is inferior to competitors’. As a result, customers will switch to another brand that has the advantage — high-quality goods.
Companies can easily enter and leave the market. Firms can enter the market without spending a lot of costs, time, and research. The same situation is when a seller wants to exit the market. It isn’t required to pay some significant costs.
Knowing the five characteristics above you can easily identify pure competition. However, there are still other market structures for you to consider. That’s why let’s proceed to the comparison of pure competition and monopoly.
Pure Competition and Monopoly
Pure competition and monopoly are two different market models that have something in common but are different by nature. Companies that find themselves in such market structures have identical cost and production functions and aim at maximizing their profit. Yet these two market models have some distinctive features.
In pure competition, there are many manufacturers who supply the same goods to the market. They can’t influence the market price as it’s defined by the total product supply and product demand. Due to a large number of sellers, it’s impossible to reach a general agreement among them so they work independently.
A monopoly occurs when there’s one manufacturer and many customers. Lack of economic competition and appropriate substitute products create a perfect environment for a monopoly. A single manufacturer has control over the price.
In a monopoly, the company that usually sells a distinctive product can set any selling price. Sellers set the price including the production costs and output so that they can receive a big profit. Also, companies-monopolists can restrict output to increase the selling price. Monopolists produce products for a higher price but lower quantity.
Now let’s review monopolistic competition and how it differs from pure competition.
Pure Competition vs Monopolistic Competition
In pure competition, there are many companies that manufacture standardized products since it’s very easy to enter such a market because it has no special barriers. In this market model, prices are defined by consumer demand and sellers don’t influence the market price.
The monopolistic competition combines some characteristics of a monopolistic market and perfect competition. There’s a large number of manufacturers and consumers where companies have only a certain degree of control over the market. Also, it provides businesses only with a few barriers to enter the market.
This market structure allows sellers to differentiate their products from other similar products to gain some profit. Manufacturers can do it in various ways using style, location, quality or specific brand name.
You can find the majority of consumer goods in this category. Suppliers do everything possible to distinguish their products by positioning them as high-quality products to justify higher prices or to increase market share. The monopolistic competition occurs only if there’s significant differentiation or if sellers can convince customers that their product is superior by using advertising or other promotion methods.
Let’s walk you through the examples to see how this market structure works.
Examples of Pure Competition
The majority of people assume that pure competition doesn’t exist in today’s world. This assumption is correct to some extent. Centuries ago when the main source of economic activity were commodities, pure competition may have existed. People could sell many homogenous products at their old fashioned markets. Yet now we live in a world where companies do their best to gain a competitive advantage. Although nowadays it’s really difficult to find some examples of pure competition, there are still a few of them.
Let’s take the agricultural industry, for example. Vegetables and fruits grown by farmers are all the same and can be called generic. Farmers buy land to grow different crops. Sellers can easily enter and leave the market if they want to.
Let’s take another market as an example — online shopping. As you know, the internet has many sellers and buyers. For instance, eBay. It has many distributors that sell the same products and customers ready to buy them. This enables consumers to collect necessary information about sellers that includes price, the features of the product, its quality and compare them to select the best one. It allows buyers to purchase the necessary product for a lower price.
So now you know the details of one of the main market structures — pure competition and can distinguish it when necessary. Besides, you know some features of market structures and can differentiate them.
Promotional SMS
A promotional SMS is a message sent by a brand to prospects and customers informing them about promotions, discounts, and offers. Marketers run promotional campaigns to increase customer engagement and rocket sales. LIKE.TG allows you to create branded subscription forms, automate SMS sending, and personalize the messages for better performance.
Companies can send promotional SMS only to prospects and customers with non-DND status and opt-in numbers. When done right, this kind of SMS can help a brand attract new customers and, thus, achieve more sales. That said, it is quite easy to reap these benefits by using a reliable service such as LIKE.TG to send promotional SMS.
What is the difference between transactional and promotional SMS
Transactional SMS are messages used for sending order and booking alerts and informational messages to registered customers. These messages are not for marketing purposes. They're sent to all the recipients regardless of their DND status 24/7 without any time restriction. Transactional SMS can be identified via a 6-character Sender ID a company chooses. This identifier should correspond with the company or product name.
Promotional SMS is used for sending marketing and sales messages. They are delivered only to opt-in and non-DND numbers. Promotional SMS should be sent between 9 am and 9 pm. Promotional messages have a random 6-character Sender ID determined by the network operator.
How to Write a Promotional SMS
Personalize the message and target
Be professional
Be professional
Be precise
Write brief messages
Include a call-to-action button
Marketers have to write enticing text to improve their promotional SMS. On that note, below are some tips for creating compelling messages for SMS customers.
Personalize the message and target
Personalizingyour message is a sure way to create a great promotional SMS. Businesses must craft messages while taking into account the demographics of their audience, for instance, age, gender, occupation, and so forth. Also, it is vital to compose messages that factor in various marketing metrics. That way, a company can send targeted messages that appeal to the recipients more.
Be professional
Refrain from using slang, abbreviations, and emoticons when communicating with clients via promotional SMS. Apart from that, here are some other tips for creating appealing messages while maintaining professionalism:
Do not be impersonal as if you are talking to a robot.
Use language that is consistent with the brand’s identity and style.
Only use an emoticon if it adds substantial value to the message.
Never use caps.
Refrain from using too many question marks or exclamations.
Use a single exclamation and question marks when necessary.
Be precise
Marketers should ensure that their promotional SMS conveys their desired message with ease. For instance, if a brand is advertising a sale, the SMS should say when the sale begins and when it ends. Moreover, marketers should make sure they specify what items are on sale. Merely stating “enjoy discounts” can be quite misleading. Instead, you could say, “enjoy 15% discounts on all baby shoes.” The bottom line here: the more specific the information, the better.
Write brief messages
When writing a promotional SMS, it is best to write short messages that get to the point right away. Marketers should ensure that they communicate their message in the 160 characters allowed for SMS. Achieving this can be quite tricky, so here are some tips to help:
Identify the main message you want to deliver. Is it a free meal, appointment reminder, or invitation?
Determine the relevant points you want to get across. If you want the customer to learn more about a service or product you offer, provide a link instead of trying to explain it in detail.
Include a call-to-action button
Writing an excellent message alone won’t do the trick. Infusing a CTA in the text enables the customer to take advantage of the opportunity that has been presented. Failure to include a compelling CTA canresult in low click-through rates and conversions. Make sure that your CTA button is eye-catching and clear.
Nowthat you know how to write a promotional SMS step by step let's get started!
Go global with promotional SMS!
Set up your SMS campaign in minutes with LIKE.TG. Inform customers about sales, increase brand awareness, and close more deals using our tools!
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How to Send a Promotional SMS Campaign
Register with LIKE.TG
Pick your pricing plan
Upload contacts
Create a promotional SMS campaign
Sending a promotional SMS campaign with LIKE.TG is a simple 4-step process.
Register with LIKE.TG. To register, provide the name, email address, phone number, and password on the registration form. After that, check the “Terms of Use” prompt and click “Sign up.”
Pick your pricing plan. Learn about the price of one SMS for the country you wish to send promotional SMS in. To get this information, click on the pricing plan when logged in to your LIKE.TG account. Then, click on “SMS plans” and then “Add funds.” Read this article for more details.
Upload contacts. Create and name your mailing list. After that, click “Add” and then proceed to upload your contacts. You can also import your mailing list or copy and paste the phone numbers. Note that you don’t have to provide email addresses for the numbers you input on your mailing list.
Create a promotional SMS campaign. To create a promotional SMS campaign, click on “Send SMS” while in your LIKE.TG account. After that, provide the sender’s name (stick to 11 digits or characters.) Then, compose your message, select the mailing list you wish to send the message to, and choose the time for sending the message. With all this accomplished, preview your message, and if it is okay, click “Send.” Follow this step-by-step guide.
Create and send promotional SMS with LIKE.TG!
Examples of Promotional SMS Messages
Here are some excellent examples of promotional messages sent by different businesses.
Below is the way a fitness club encourages new members.
Tommy Hilfiger is quite specific about its offers. They give a promo code and state the discount clearly.
Check out Starbucks SMS marketing. They offer a quiz with a unique gift.
Send promotional SMS
Project management
Project management is a process that involves leading your team members through different tasks and optimizing the resources to achieve all project goals within a given timeframe and budget. It should result in a complete project that meets your client’s objectives.
In this video, you’ll find the fundamentals you need to know to manage a project.
Why is project management important?
The majority of companies strive to manage all business processes properlyto prevent a slowdown in their growth in the event of project failure.Moreover, theirteams need to fully understand the priorities and objectives of a particular project through communication with stakeholders. This way, project management enables a company to set realistic goals, timeframes, and budgets.
This tactic allows you to align any project with the company’s strategy, enabling your business to succeed. It helps your teams create a plan which includes possible risks and the company’s goals. That’s why a team can be well-coordinated and act according to a plan that leads to achieving their primary goals.
A project manager also controls the quality of a project, ensuring that all parameters are met within a particular timeframe and budget. The role of project management is also crucial if a company wants to reduce project costs. This process helps optimize the allocation of resources, improve efficiency, and reduce risks.
The importance of project management can’t be underestimated since it allows companies to achieve their specific business objectives. Let’s move to the benefits to explore this topic more deeply.
Benefits of Project Management
Project management is considered an effective tool that helps startups and well-established companies to comply with the requirements and deliver projects consistently. Solving problems that arise during the development of a project quickly is the key advantage of this process. However, there are still more benefits to it, and they are as follows:
the result is delivered on time and within a given budget;
improved internal communication;
increased transparency;
clearer records of a project’s progress;
forecast of the risks;
high project performance;
identified strengths and weaknesses of a company;
reduced costs;
control over the quality;
clear focus and goals;
the defined direction of the process.
Now that you know the benefits, it’s time to jump to the techniques.
Project Management Techniques
Project management covers various industries and requires profound knowledge and skills. However, it’s not only expertise that business owners should pay attention to. Project managers should be ready to apply several techniques to make the process easy and smooth.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). When you look at a new project for the first time, it can seem quite difficult to manage. WBS helps divide your tasks into smaller pieces. It’s a visual deconstruction of a project aimed at achieving your goals. This helpful diagram enables project managers to define the activities necessary to bring their project to success. WBS is the first thing you need to do to create a project schedule.
Gantt Chart. This bar chart can be used for small and big projects. It enables you to view the tasks scheduled over time. With its help, you can view the dates when your project should begin and end in a single chart, see the tasks, who is working on a certain task, and how long it takes to finish each of them. Besides, it shows the work that needs to be completed on a certain day.
PERT. Itstands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Companies use this approach when they want their projects to be delivered on time. If you strive to have your project following the plan, it’s critical to develop a schedule. By using statistical methods, this technique helps manage probabilities. After that, it creates a map of activities and demonstrates how they depend on each other. This way, you can figure out the earliest and latest time for each activity.
Critical Path Method (CPM). With CPM, you need to construct a project model that involves all tasks, shows how much time it takes to finish each of those tasks, things that link them, and the endpoints. It involves running multiple tasks to reduce the project time. However, it can be done in case the tasks are independent. CPM enables you to prioritize them and reduce delays.
Kanban. The framework allows team members to monitor the state of every task at any time. The main focus here is the Kanban board that enables users to visualize their work and optimize it. The board has three different task statuses: To Do, In Progress, and Done. Below the statuses, you can see the tasks themselves. This technique empowers you to monitor the progress of work through its workflow, see the state of each task, identify blockers, and check what is already completed.
Now it’s time to jump to the methods.
Project Management Methodologies
When we use the word methodology, we mean a system used to handle a project. Let’s review the most popular models.
Waterfall. It’s a traditional approach in which tasks are completed linearly. It means that before beginning new tasks, your team should finish the previous ones. Companies that use this methodology map out everything at the beginning. Once this stage is completed, you can’t go back to change something. However, if you have a clear goal, know what you want, and create a consistent project, this method can only benefit you.
Agile. Dissatisfaction with the traditional approach created a new methodology. It allows companies to revise their project when it is still in the process rather than wait till the end to review it. Teams prefer Agile methodology since it’s quick, collaborative, and open to change in data. You can encounter such phases as testing, reassessment, and adaptation through the process of project creating.
Scrum. This is a perfect model for teams of up to 10 people. Companies using this framework split their work into short cycles called sprints, which last for 2-4 weeks. A sprint is a certain period during which team members have to complete specific tasks. With each sprint, teams develop new features for their product. Ascrum master leads small teams during the sprint. This framework is used to maintain complex products, speed their development, and improve communication between team members.
Lean. This approach is about efficiency and is aimed at providing maximum value and making minimum waste. According to this approach, a project manager should eliminate waste to develop efficient workflows. With Lean, you will do more with less. If you are open to constant improvements to add value for customers, this method is the right choice for you.
Let’s proceed to the main stages of the process we discuss.
5Project Management Steps to Success
Managing a project that will fulfill the goals you were striving for is not an easy task. That’s why you need to follow these steps and perform the tasks that correspond with them.
Initiation. At this stage, it’s necessary to develop a business case and determine the value your project can bring. Besides, it’s the right time to create a project charter, a document that defines what this project will deliver. You also need to conduct a meeting with the parties involved to lay out your goals, ways of communication, and schedule.
Planning. Once your project has been approved, bring the team togetherto create a plan that includes costs, risks, and resources. At this stage, you need to pay attention to your tasks since they will determine technical requirements. Remember to create an accurate project schedule, develop a communication plan, and set up deliverables. During this stage, the project’s scope is identified, and managers can create a work breakdown structure or a process diagram to visualize each section of your project.
Execution. This is the time when your team does the work necessary for your project to produce the deliverables. Another responsibility project managers take during project execution is maintaining collaboration between stakeholders.
Monitoring. Once your project enters this stage, the project manager has to control all the team members so that no one deviates from the original plan. By establishing Critical Success Factors (CSF) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI), managers can do it easily. Moreover, the efforts and costs also need to be under monitoring.
Project closure. Once the project is completed, the majority of teams hold reflection meetings to find out what led to their success or failure. By doing this, companies can define what needs to be improved. Finally, it’s also necessary to review the project and make a report.
Now that you know the steps, let’s review the effective management tools.
Top 5 Project Management Tools
actiTIME
monday.com
Trello
Wrike
ClickUp
Each project requires the right solution. We’ve prepared the five best tools that will simplify your work.
actiTIME
actiTIME is a service used by startups, organizations, small firms, and enterprises. It helps you create projects, set up managers with teams and projects they will be in charge of, assign tasks to your team members, and track time. With the data collected in this software, you can seamlessly analyze the performance of your team.
If you aim at obtaining more information about your staff performance, understanding the workload distribution acrossyour projects, finishing the project on time, and staying within your budget, actiTIME would be the best choice for you. Its main features are time-tracking (helps manage time), scope management (helps manage workloads based on your objectives), reports (helps evaluate the performance of your team, expenses, and income), and accounting (helps estimate expenditure and profits).
You can see the dashboard with tasks. With its help, you can get to know the status of the task, the time spent, and also the deadlines.
Free plan: 30-day trial.Paid plan: From $6 per month for one user.
monday.com
monday.com is a platform that helps bring teams together and manage their projects. It enables you to track the progress updates and budget approvals. This tool allows you to allocate resources efficiently, let your team think creatively, and avoid doing your work twice.
It empowers you to implement approaches that suit you best to customize workflows and plan your project in minutes. You’ll see the progress and results of a particular project on the dashboard at a glance.
With the dashboard, you can determine what tasks need to be completed and monitor assignees, statuses, and deadlines.
Free plan: 14-day trial.Paid plan: $8 per month for one user.
Follow this comprehensive guide to project management on the monday.com blog to learn how to manage a project from start to finish.
Trello
This is a flexible and user-friendlyonline tool. The service assists you in managing your projects with various boards, lists, and cards. Lists define different stages of your project, whereas cards represent the tasks you need to accomplish. The most prominent part of this tool is integration opportunities. You can connect your board with the apps your team relies on, like Dropbox, Gmail, Outlook, Jira, and many more.
Both individuals and teams can use this tool. With Trello, members of a team can work on a project without influencing the updates.
Below you can see that tasks in Trello have several statuses: To Do, Pending, and Done. You can also set the priority, the person responsible for a specific task, and due dates.
Free plan: Available forever.Paid plan: From $10 per month for one user, billed annually.
Wrike
This software helps you manage your projects seamlessly. With Wrike, project managers can visualize deadlines and monitor progress with special reporting tools. The drag and drop interface allows you to adjust in real-time to create the right workloads and improve ROI.
Customized statuses enable all participants of the process to stay updated about the progress. Besides, you have the opportunity to access Wrike’s pre-built templates. Not to disrupt your productivity when switching in and out the necessary tools, this software enables you to integrate all you need, including MS Teams and G Suite.
Below you can see a shared custom dashboard with the tasks, their statuses, and due dates. The dashboard in Wrike also enables you to track the progress of every team member.
Free plan: 14-day trial for up to 5 users.Paid plan: From $9.80 per month for one user.
ClickUp
ClickUp platform allows you to assign tasks to anyone on your team and ensure that this person gets a notification. If you need your task to be done immediately, you can set the priority by placing a special flag. Moreover, this service enables you to track the progress of everyone on your team. At a glance, you’ll know about the tasks they are working on, which of them are already completed, and who still has a lot to do.
ClickUp’s features amaze users because of the way they simplify their work. To see the visual outline of your project and plan out your ideas, tasks, and projects, you can use Mind Maps. Besides, the tool enables you to create a to-do list and set priorities. It also provides you with task templates and goal-tracking features.
Below you can see the task’s urgency (the color of a priority flag defines the urgency), people responsible, and budget.
Free plan: Available forever.Paid plan: 5$ per month for one user.
Congrats, now you know the methodologies, tools, and techniques to deliver projects on time and according to the budget and goals. The knowledge you have obtained will help you assign tasks, manage time, budget, risks, and more.
Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising is the process that implies using a technology platform to buy and sell online advertising. It helps make decisions based on available data, save costs, optimize advertising campaigns, and improve targeting.
In this article, we’ll unveil how programmatic advertising works, analyze its benefits and types, and talk about how to get into programmatic advertising. Next, we’ll reviewfive great programmatic advertising platforms and several examples.
How does programmatic advertising work?
The most significant part ofall digital advertising space belongs to ad exchanges. They are conductedautomatically and involve both parties of the transaction, advertisers and publishers. Programmatic advertising improves this relationship and speeds up the process of buying and selling digital ad space. It applies algorithmic software that helps manage the selling and buying process and digital ad impression placement.
The process starts with a user clicking on a certain site. Afterward, there is an auction where the website owner can post an ad impression. The next step is bidding, and the advertiser who puts the highest bid getsthe impression. Finally, the ad appears on the website aiming at conversions. This type of ad integrates traffic data and effective online targeting approaches to serve impressions correctly. This brings both publishers and advertisers higher ROI and lets businesses prosper.
Now that you know how programmatic ads work, it is time to unveil the advantages your business can reap if you integrate them into your overall marketing strategy.
Benefits of Programmatic Advertising
Digital advertising occupies a significantpart of every business process since the center of communication with customers is actively moving to the Internet. To thrive in an increasingly competitive environment, companiestry to adapt their ways of reaching their target audiences. According to eMarketer, advertisers will programmatically buy around 88% of display ads in 2021.
Many marketers prefer this type of advertising for a reason. Programmatic advertising evolves each year and greatly simplifies the process of buying and selling advertising space online, so let’s reviewsome more pros it brings.
Other programmatic advertisingbenefits include:
affordable price;
wide reach (different exchanges and networks);
real-time data;
transparency;
targeting opportunities;
interested audience;
reports about advertising placement and performance;
ad inventory;
ads relevant to specific audience segments.
So now that you know the benefits of programmatic advertising, let’s move on to explore its different types. This step is necessary to figure out which of them can bring you closer to reaching your key business goals.
Types of Programmatic Advertising
There are four main types of programmatic advertising, and each of them involves a different sequencing. Let’s explore each of them in more detail to find out which one suits you the best.
Private marketplace. This type of programmatic advertising is available onlyvia an invitation. Publishers prepare their premium ad inventory for certain advertisers atprivate auctions. Private marketplace advertising is especially popular among websites and publications with a wide audience. The advertisers know the list of websites they can place an ad on. They can also estimate the ROI of these ads.
Real-time bidding. It’s one of the most popular typesof programmatic advertising, and it’s often used as a synonym for programmatic media buying. Anyone with the highest bid can getthe ad slot duringreal-time bidding sessions. Bidders can buy ad space at an open auction.At real-time auctions, advertisers get the slots they can afford. Although real-time bidding implies that the highest bidder gets the slot, it doesn’t require this advertiser to pay the bid amount.They needto pay only $0.01 more than the second-highest bidder. There is also a possibility that your ads can appear on the wrong sites.
Preferred deals. Before the marketplace opens and the auction starts, an advertiser who needs topost their ad should choose a place before it is put up for auction. Pricing and targeting negotiations between advertisers and publishers take place before the auction.
Programmatic guaranteed. This typeof programmatic advertisingis the closest one to traditional media buying. Itrequiresadvertisers and publishers to negotiate all the details about ad space one-on-one. With thistype of programmatic advertising, the parties skip the process of bidding and immediately proceed to negotiations. Theprimary advantage of thistactic is that advertisers can choose their ad inventory, frequency capping, and price.
Now that you know the features of each type, you are ready to decide which of them can help you reach your advertising goals. The next step is to find outhow to get into programmatic advertising. Let’s proceed to the next section to make it clear.
How to Get Into Programmatic Advertising
We’ve already explored the fundamentals of programmatic advertising, so it’s time to delve into the process deeper to figure out how you can make use of it.
Research your marketplace. If you are new to programmatic advertising, the first thing you should do is explore the market, as you can encounter new terms and processes. To make everything right, consider going over programmatic ad terminology to participate in auctions, manage your ads, and obtain more conversions.
Define your objectives. Before implementing programmatic advertising, you should have your goals set. You need to be sure that this advertisement will help you pursue your objectives. Brandsleverageprogrammatic ads to reach theirleadsand customers, enhance brand awareness, increase ad visibility, retain customers, and improve ROI.
Gathera team of experts. Although programmatic advertising uses technology to run the process of digital space buying, you still need a team of professionals to monitor andoptimize the process. To reach your goals with the help of your campaign, you need to be ready toboth leverage technology and work with people.
Create a blacklist and whitelist to reach the right audience. Since people can’t control the algorithms, programmatic advertising can sometimes lead to skewed ad placement, meaning that your adscan appear on the wrong websites. To prevent this, you should update your blacklistof websites you findirrelevant to your ads. You should also have a whitelist with approved websites— it will help you reach your target audience and avoid the wrong sites.
Now that you know how to get into programmatic advertising, let’s jump into the best programmatic advertising platformsthat willhelp you buy space for your digital ads.
5 Programmatic Advertising Platforms
Nowadays, you can find plenty ofprogrammatic advertisingplatforms over the Internet.However,as an adviser interested inscaling their business, you should choose only the best ones. We’ve prepared a list offive effective solutions that will help you buy space for your ads fast.
SmartyAds
SmartyAds is a DSPthat enables you to leverage an omnichannel package and run personalized ad campaigns. With SmartyAds’ narrow targeting and optimization, you have the opportunity to reach the necessary channels while using the minimum costs. As a result, you’ll have better ROI, conversions, customer engagement, and acquisition.
SmartyAds’ DSP opens a gateway to the ad formats you prefer, for example, banners, rich media, videos, or push ads. The platform also allows you to access advanced targeting, retargeting, conversion tracking, list management, and more.
MediaMath
MediaMath is a DSP that enables companies to reach their audiences and attain their SMART goals. The platform is supported by a Brain algorithm that helps predict your performance and the amount of money for bids. MediaMath assists you in campaign management. With this digital advertising platform, you can handle all aspects of your campaign that entail media, targeting creatives, and more.
It also offers media management. This means that the platform provides you with the necessary tools to shop, activate, and report media deals from different websites. Moreover, you can select the right targeting to reach your primary objectives. Segment your viewers to obtain a high-quality audience.
PubMatic
PubMatic provides you with a set of tools that help ensure that your ad campaigns are viewed by humans in a secure environment. The straightforward interface ensures a seamless user experience, smooth monetization for publishers, and ROI for advertisers.
Amobee
Amobee enables you to scale with special management tools. You can also deliver high-quality impressions. The platform ensures a brand-safe environment so that you can run your campaigns effectively and meet business goals across open exchange and private marketplace. Programmatic ads are accompanied by transparency and safety.
Choozle
Choozle allows you to bring all your advertising campaign efforts to life. The platform provides you with all the necessary tools to plan, execute, and optimize campaigns based on your requirements. The technology lets you see your campaigns’ performance reports at any stage oftheir implementation. Make use of its features that include data targeting, retargeting, connected TV, private marketplace, site, keyword, category targeting, and many more.
Now that you have the list of platforms to choose from for your company, let’s proceed to the next section to grab some inspiration from our examples.
Examples of Programmatic Advertising
To see how these ads work, you need to dive into several examples from famous brands. This section will inspire you to implement programmatic ads into your marketing strategy.
Kellogg’s
The famous food manufacturer started leveraging programmatic advertising in 2014. With these ads, the company strived to boost its offline sales. The brand’s results were impressive: 70-80% increase in viewability rates, better targeting, and maximized KPIs. DoubleClick, anadvertising company,helpedKellogg’s create targeted campaigns and attract a wider audience.
AirAsia
AirAsia’s initial aim was tobuild trust and boostitssales volume, and the company succeeded in achieving it with the help of a Facebook, display, and video ad campaign.Facebook served as a channel that helped change people’s perceptions of a brand and increase its ticket sales. AirAsia’s team created videocampaigns sincethey are trendy in Asia. The Facebook ad campaign helped the company overcomeits hardest times after one of its planes crashed and win back passengers’ trust and confidence. Moreover, there was a 17-point lift in ad recall.
Congrats, now you knowmore aboutprogrammatic advertising benefits, types, and platforms. Follow our guide to get intoprogrammatic advertising and grab some inspiration from our examples for your future campaigns.
Product-market fit
Product-market fit is a concept popular among startups. It shows whether a product managed to solve clients’ problems. After a brand reaches its product-market fit, it starts to grow.
In this article, we’ll explain why a product-market fit is essential, walk you through the process of achieving it, and talk about how to measure it.
Why is a product-market fit important?
Product-market fit is a product lifecycle stage at which you realize that your brainchild will bring you success. Every startup needs to make sure that its product will meet customers’ needs before the stakeholders invest in promotion. Otherwise, they risk spending money in vain.
Before launching a new product, every business looks for an audience segment that will be the first to try it. These people should have the same pain points to evaluate how well this or that product helps deal with them. When the product copes well with its challenges, the brand achieves its product-market fit, and the product is ready to see the world. Hence, a product-market fit boosts word-of-mouth and accelerates promotion.
Now it’s time to learn how to achieve a product-market fit.
How to Achieve a Product-Market Fit
Every startup needs to go through certain stages to find its product-market fit. Let’s walk you through this process.
Find your target audience. This is the most important step since the better you analyze your potential customers, the more chances you have to achieve your product-market fit. Choose a narrow audience segment with common needs, pain points, and preferences. Creating a customer profile can come in handy here. For this purpose, you need to know your customers’ demographics and have more details. The more detailed your profile is, the better. Your target audiencecan help you improve the quality of your product.
Identify customers’ unmet needs.Your offer most likely won’t be a brand-new product on the market, but you should create a unique value proposition. When you are a startup, you need to provide users with reasons why they should give your product a trywhen there are many options available. Interview your potential clients to uncover which of their needs are still not satisfied by competitors’ products. You can provide better product quality, offer 24/7 customer service, or introduce a flexible return and exchange policy.
Develop a minimum viable product (MVP). An MVPis a productwith basic features that are enough for clientsand their needs. Its goal is to attract users, get their feedback, and act on it. It allows startups to save money and helps prevent businesses from failing. With an MVP, you’ll be able to test your product, ensure that it solves customers’ problems, improve it, and set your priorities.
Test your MVP. Let your target audience test and try your minimum viable product. To receive customer feedback, make use of surveys. Create open-ended questions as they help obtain more valuable information about your product. Ask users what they liked about your product, what caused them trouble when using it, how they would improve it, etc. Analyze and interpret their answers to identify some common patterns. They will help you find a way to improve.
Launch your product. By this stage, you will have enough insights and experience. If you go through all the steps above, you will manage to achieve a product-market fit. Pay special attention to your choice of promotional channels. They influence your outreach significantly. Analyze the sources where you found your target audience and make the most out of them. Never stop collecting customer feedback since it is the buyers who know which product they need.
Now that you know how to achieve a product-market fit, you need to learn how to evaluate its performance.
How to Measure a Product-Market Fit
There is no formula to measure it because a product-market fit is not a metric. Nevertheless, there are some vital measurements you should pay attention to. Let’stake a closer look.
Net promoter score (NPS). This measurement allows companies to understand whether their clients would recommend their brand to friends and colleagues. To calculate it, you need to subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. Detractors are your unsatisfied clients, and Promoters are those who admire your brand.
LTV/CAC. These are core metrics for each marketer. You should know the ratio between your customer lifetime value and customer acquisition cost to ensure that acquiring a new client will pay off.
Retention rate. It shows the percentage of clients a company is able to retain within a certain time period. Since it’s easier to keep an existing client than acquire a new one, companies invest a lot in customer retention. If clients buy again and again from a particular brand, it means that it satisfies their needs successfully.
Congrats, now you know why a product-market fit is essential and how to achieve and measure it, so do your best to constantly improve your services.
Product manager
A product manager (PM) is a person responsible for the market research, development, creation, and launch of a new product.
In this article, we’ll talk about the role of product managers, their responsibilities and skills, the difference between a product manager, project manager, and product owner, PMs’ career path, and how to become a product manager.
What is the role of a product manager?
PMs are people who are fully responsible for a certain product. They generate ideas, study demand and current market situation, create a development strategy, recruit a team of specialists, and plan and monitor the implementation of assigned tasks.
Theprimary goal of a product manager is to control every stage of product development and interact with sales, marketing, technical support, manufacturing, and RDdepartments. It is a dynamic position that involves maintaining a continuous flow of ideas and resources to create a successful product.
Product managerresponsibilities usually vary, but the most common include market research, product development, and product control after its launch. We will provide the full list of PM responsibilities in one of the next sections.
Generally, a product manager is a specialist who works at the intersection of business, marketing, and programming. A PM is not only a manager but also a programmer, marketer, designer, etc. Such a person should have a lot of different skills in order to ensure a smooth workflow.
Top 5 Product Manager Skills
There are lots of hard and soft skills necessary to become a product manager, and we will review the most important ones in this section. Use our list to checkwhether you or otherpeople aresuitable for this position.
Ability to analyze the market
If you want to make a successful product, you need to be aware of marketing trends in the competitive environment. Good product managers:
know their competitors;
know the ways to improvea product and its sales funnel;
can add value to a product;
know how to promote a product;
can analyze the effectivenessof product improvements.
This profession requires both knowledge of business processes and creativity.
Strategic thinking
Strategic thinking is the ability to analyze critical factors that will influence the long-term success of a business. It is not about concentrating on detailsbut about thinking globally. Strategic thinking is used in creating a product development strategy.
The goal of any product is to create value for customers. Therefore, a manager analyzes the audience, market conditions, and competition, creates a “picture” of the idea, andmakes it come true. Moreover, a product manager identifies new trends and customer pain points throughregularmarket evaluation and changes the strategy accordingly.
Сommunicational skills
Product managers are team players. Since they constantly communicate with lots of specialists, they should have good communication skills. It is crucial for them to understand their team members’resources in order to distribute the responsibilities properly. They should be able to find an approach to everyone and understand their interests and needs.
The success of a product depends on every person in the team, so product managersneed to make sure that everyone does the best job possible. They should know how to set development goals, be able to work with contractors, and negotiate effectively.
Time-management skills
It is impossible to reacha specific goal without excellent timing and planning. Therefore, product managers should come up with ideas and plan their implementation in detail. They should be flexible in terms of planning to be able to meet deadlines.
Responsibility
Productdevelopment is a process that requires a responsible person in charge. Therefore, product managers should not be afraid of challenging tasks. Theyneed to have leadership skills and be able to makemajor decisions.
In the next section, we willtalk about product manager responsibilities.
Product Manager Responsibilities
Developing a successful product in a highly competitive environment is a complex process thatrequires a lot of effort. Here, we willtalk about what product managers are responsible for.
1. Market research
Product managers start their work long before the actual product development process begins. They should explore the market,monitorcustomers’ needs, analyze their competitors, estimate their product’s potential, and develop a strategykeeping theircompetitive advantagein mind. This step is crucialsince itdetermines the success ofa product.
2. Product development
This part ofthe process starts when a concept of a future product is approved. A product manager has todelegate clear tasks to everyone in the team and monitor their product development progress. It isvital to discusspotential problems and complaints with all the team members and improve the product during the development stage.
A product manager is responsible for communication betweenthe company’ssenior management and other employees. They should ensure the implementation of the idea in real life.
3. Product control
Product launchesdo not guarantee success. Product managers should create a product development plan and follow it. They are also responsible for long-term and short-term sales forecasts. PMs should revise and improve marketing and development strategies andconductvalue analysis according tocertain analytics and statistics.
The responsibilities ofa product manager, project manager, and product owner are often confused. However, these professions are completely different— let’s find out how.
Product Manager vs. Project Manager vs. Product Owner
Let’s take a look at the differences between product managers, project managers, and product owners in detail.
Product manager
Project manager
Product owner
Creates an idea, develops a strategy, and hiresa team
Monitors the timely implementation of an idea at each stage
Makes a final decision and financesa project
Generally, a product owner is the leader ofa company;aproduct managerdevelops an idea for a certain product and is the product owner’s subordinate; a project manager is a person who controls the work of other specialists in the team.
Nowthat you understand the difference between these professions, we will describe the product manager’s career path.
Product Manager Career Path
A PM often starts out as a specialist in another related sphere and eventually moves on to product management. Universities don’t teach this profession, so it is enough to take coursesand gain internal potential and skills.
There are severalkey product management vacancies you can find in different companies.
Associate product manager.This is an entry-level job since associate product managers report toa senior product manager. They work on product development and consult with other PMs to make serious decisions.
Product manager. A product manager is the nextstageofa PM’s career development. These people are responsible fordeveloping a strategy, roadmap, and product itself. This position requires flexibility and strong leadership.
Senior product manager.When there is a team of product managers in the company, some of themcan become senior product managers. These specialists manage higher-value products,lead associate product managers, and communicate with business leaders as representatives of their product management teams.
Director of product management. This is a role for product managementleaders. These specialists focus on making sure the team is running effectively, improving certain processes, and controlling other PMs. They may move away from the management of a certain product and focus on working with their team.
VP of product management.A VP of product management is an executive position. These people work on budgeting, strategy, and communicating with product owners. The role of a VP in product development is to promote products that will have the greatest business impact.
Chief product officer.This isthe highest position in product management.A chief product officer reports to the CEO and oversees all product activities in the organization. This position requires strategic thinkingsincethese specialistsare responsible for setting long-term goals in their companies.
So now that you know more about product managers’ career paths, let’s proceed to the ways of getting into this profession.
How to Become a Product Manager
The profession of a product manager is becoming more and more popular nowadays. If you are interested in becoming a PM and don’t know how to succeed — we will give you some tips in this section.
There are two ways to reach the goal:
start as an intern or associate PM;
switchto product management from a related sphere (development, marketing, etc.)
However, both of these ways require certain knowledge and skills. Follow our guide to have an advantage in the competition and become a highly qualified PM.
Take courses
There are no state educational programs on product management. Moreover, a university is not always a good choice. However, you can choose from a wide range of courses to get basic knowledge in the sphere. There are lots of them on Coursera, for instance.
Build analytical skills
You need to be able to collect and sort data and identify andanalyze patterns of customer behavior.
Understand UX
A product manager needs to understandcustomer behavior flawlessly in order to segment the audience and develop a strong product line. Consequently, a background in UXwould be an advantage.
UX design involves creating an easy-to-use product that can satisfy customers and provide them with pleasure and value during the interaction. It helps enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty to a certain brand.
Learn the basics of coding
Knowledge of code will let you communicate more effectively with developers and set you apart from other candidates. This skill is essential to be in high demand among different companies.
To sum it up, it’s crucial for a product manager to be well-versed and open-minded. The tips above will help you prepare for hiring a PM or getting a product manager position.
Product marketing
Product marketing is the process that includes developing a product positioning, launching the product, and driving the demand after the launch. It is aimed to connect product management and marketing communications to attract customers to the product.
In the article, we will explain the role of product marketing, compare product marketing and traditional marketing, describe the ways to develop a product marketing strategy, give 8 the most important product marketing metrics and examples of successful product marketing.
What is the role of product marketing?
According to Investopedia, the failure rate of startups was around 90% in 2019. This rate has been almost the same for the last 20 years, and such statistics are disappointing. However, there are some ways to minimize risks, and a good product marketing strategy is one of them.
Product marketing is the process of developing and promoting a product. It serves as a link between product management and traditional marketing. The final goal of product marketing is to make the target audience buy your product again and again. Product marketers responsibilities are the following:
conducting market research;
analyzing the competitors;
developing product positioning;
creating product roadmap;
developing visual language and tone of voice;
managing product launches;
attracting new customers;
increasing customer lifetime value;
All the stages require a deep understanding of the product features and the chosen market. Product marketing is aimed to drive customer engagement throughout the product life cycle and convert clients into loyal buyers.
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between product and traditional marketing, and we will cover their main differences in the next section.
Product Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
The division between product marketing and traditional is blurry. However, some points that can help you differentiate these two marketing types.
Traditional marketing focuses on marketing communications, project management, and content creation. At the same time, product marketing includes lots of data analysis and research. One more difference is that product marketing works on the bottom of the sales funnel. Product marketers develop product messages, while traditional marketers focus on the top of the funnel and get these messages out to the world.
Although traditional and product marketing are separate, they work together to promote the company's products. Look at the table below. Here we provide the main tasks of product and traditional marketers on each stage of the product development and its life cycle.
Product marketers
Traditional marketers
Building a strategy
Identify the perfect market and target audience;develop unique proposition;build a go-to-market strategy;make a product roadmap.
Develop brand personality;bring the strategy to life.
Content creation
Identify the messages the target audience need to hear;control that traditional marketers convey these messages accurately.
Develop a tone of voice and visual language;create the messages and put them into context.
Advertising
Analyze the customers’ behavior and define the ways to persuade them;focus on increasing customer lifetime value, not on attracting leads.
Focus on attracting new customers and producing short-term revenue.
Note that traditional and product marketers can work together on these tasks and the differences are conditional. However, the essence is simple: traditional marketing is more practical, while product marketing is more analytical. Product marketing strategy is its inalienable part.
Continue reading to discover how to create a successful product marketing strategy for your business.
Product Marketing Strategy
One of the main responsibilities of product marketers is to develop product marketing strategies. However, you do not have to be a product marketer to launch the product successfully. Below we provide the main things you should do at all product launch stages.
Market research
Conducting research is the first step in product development. Market research consists of two parts: analysis of the target audience and the competitors.
To analyze the target audience, answer these questions:
What people might need your product?
What are their needs and pains?
What features should your product have to solve their problems?
To analyze the competitors, you should find answers to these questions:
What are your direct and indirect competitors?
What are their products’ advantages and disadvantages?
What are their prices?
How do they promote their products?
Also, you should discover all the market features, such as economic or political regulations, prospects for future development, possible weaknesses, etc.
Product research
When you have carried out all the analysis and got the information about the market's peculiarities, it is time to think about the product idea. There are a few strategic points: the variety of the product line, pricing, positioning, and the distribution channel. Having decided on them, you should develop and test the minimum viable product on a limited number of potential customers.
To finalize the product concept, writing a product story will be a good idea. It should describe the target audience, product value, its personality, unique features, visual language, tone of voice needed for marketing campaigns, etc.
Planning and product launch
To launch the product successfully, product marketers write down a go-to-market strategy and work with traditional marketers to create the messages and put them into context. Before the launch, you should:
agree on a budget and pricing;
highlight the main metrics;
decide on the minimum set of features needed;
choose the region to start from;
choose the main marketing channels to attract potential customers;
prepare marketing materials;
improve the sales funnel in collaboration with other departments;
test various types of content within groups of the target audience before the launch.
When everything is ready, product marketers launch the product according to the marketing strategy.
Community engagement and sales
The responsibilities of product marketers do not finish after the launch. They should work actively with an attracted audience to boost sales and increase customer lifetime value. Product marketers communicate with sales staff to ensure consistent product personality. They question existing customers and improve the product constantly.
Now you are ready to develop a product marketing strategy for your company. Read about the most important marketing metrics in the next section.
8 Most Important Product Marketing Metrics
Product marketers track lots of metrics to control the success of marketing campaigns. Below we provide the most important ones influencing every company’s marketing promotion.
Revenue is the amount of income generated by all business operations. To calculate it, you should multiply the average sales price by the number of products sold.
Adoption rate is the percentage of customers using the product regularly. To calculate it, divide the number of new active users by the number of sign-ups and multiply by 100%.
Retention rate is the percentage of customers who continue to use the product over some time. The ideal retention rate is 100%, but this percentage is almost impossible. To keep the retention rate high, you should constantly improve the product’s features.
Churn rate is the opposite of the retention rate, and t is the percentage of customers who stopped using your product. When the retention rate goes up, the churn rate goes down and vice versa. The goal of every company is to decrease the churn rate.
Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total profit a customer delivers to the company during their lifetime. Product marketers improve products and service quality to increase LTV. This metric is closely connected with retention. It also helps decide how much to invest in customer acquisition.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the money needed to attract a single customer. The goal of the marketing department is to reduce CAC. You should do cost optimization LTV/CAC regularly. You can aim for a value of 3:1 or even more than 3:1.
Average deal size is the average revenue of the company from one purchase. This metric helps understand the capacity of different sales channels and choose the best ones. A few ways to increase the average deal size include cross-selling, upselling, using a well-developed product line, etc.
Close rate is the percentage of leads that turn into customers. The high close rate means the efficiency of marketing and proficiency of the sales team.
It is vital to notice the problem immediately and make necessary changes in the strategy as quickly as possible. Check these metrics regularly to ensure that the marketing campaign is going well.
Examples of Product Marketing
There are lots of inspiring product marketing examples in different spheres that help business owners boost their companies. This section provides six of them to suggest some fresh ideas for your product promotion.
Unsplash
Unsplash is a website for sharing photos. It is well-known throughout the world due to its well-defined launch strategy. The Unsplash team decided to make a book when they had only 30,000 photos uploaded to promote their website. They launched a campaign to raise $75,000 and created a video masterclass on positioning to attract more attention to the idea. The fundraising was successful, and Unsplash published a book. This website has 158,881 photographers and a collection of over 1.2 million photos.
ASOS
The main problem with such stores is that people can’t try their products before buying them. However, ASOS made the decision. They use visual marketing and provide videos to show the products from all angles. One more advantage of their product marketing strategy is social proof: people can upload photos of the ordered clothes with the hashtag #asseenonme. The result is a market capitalization of more than $6.5 billion, and ASOS continues to develop.
Man Crates
Man Crates sells gifts for the men, such as snacks, drinks, and sports items. They add unique packaging and free personalization to every crate. Besides the fact that the product is made for men, their target audience is women searching for present ideas. Man Crates are positioned as amazing gifts. They promote their product using video marketing and highlight their excellent customer service that is extremely important for the female audience.
Congrats, now you know the difference between product and traditional marketing, the steps to develop a product marketing strategy, and the most important product marketing metrics. Use this information to promote your company and launch new products successfully.
Progressive profiling
Progressive profiling is a marketing technique thatallows you to gradually collect the necessary data about leadsinstead ofgathering it all at once. It helps personalize user experience, improve conversion rates, and optimizebuyer journey.
In this article, we'll uncover the benefits of progressive profiling, explain the way it works, and provide some effective tips to qualify your leads better and boost sales with this technique.
4 Benefits of Progressive Profiling
A web form, the main instrument forpersonal data collection, often causes irritation and resentment among leads, which is not surprising. They're asked to fill in a lot ofdetails about their birth date, gender, occupation, industry, and so on while they are just in the awareness stage. They are confused and don't realize why they should share their personal information with a brand. This is when progressive profiling comes into play.
Progressive profiling is a smart approach to collecting data about leads. It allows marketers to getall the crucialinformation in small bits, which brings tangible benefits.
Empowering the process of qualifying leads.Brands should knowto whom they're selling to be able to actually close some deals. By collecting data about leads, marketers can identify the ones who are ready to buy and those who need nurturing. Hence, they manage to be at the right time and in the right place with their offer.
Speeding up the buyer's journey.Customer journey depicts all the stages your leads go through, from getting to know your brand to purchasing. You will be able to provide an individual approach that all customers appreciateif you know moreabout their needs, wants, andpain points.
Improving customer experience. When exploring your brand's benefits, leads can face difficulties that may prevent them from realizing how to make the best of your product. Knowing these issues, you can provide them with educational content right when they need it, resulting in a better customer experience.
Boosting sales. People choose brands that care about their customer experience and provide personalized offers. Progressive profiling allows you to reach warm and hot leads whenever they're ready to interact with your brand and craft targeted messages for each audience segment.
Now that you know the opportunities of progressive profiling, it's time todiscusshow it works.
How does progressive profiling work?
Unlike traditional forms that ask every site visitor to fill in lots of fields, this marketing technique implies creating dynamic forms based on certain conditions. Each leadsees a form with different fields based on their previous interactions with a company. This way, users share their personal data step by step when they move down the sales funnel.
Before progressive profiling, marketersused to createmany different forms based on a user'ssales funnel stage, intentions, and preferred content. Now there's no need for this time-consuming task.
For example, if a user visitsyour site for the first time, they're allowed to download a basic checklist in exchange for their name and email address. When this user revisitsyour site, they see a dynamic form that shows different fields due to cookie tracking. This time, leads are offered to get a more valuable piece of content in exchange fortheir other personalinfo.
If a user is already familiar with your brand, you can offer them to see a high-quality webinarso that they can check outyour services' benefits. In return, you can ask for more data, like their industry or occupation. The nexttime this user visits your site, they turn into a hot lead thatis highly interested in your product. Offer them a how-to guide or demo video on using your services. This may be a final push they need to make a purchase. Offer them to share their phone number or any other necessary data you can use to convert this lead into a client.
So, this is the way progressive profiling works. To create dynamic forms based on conditions, you need to use aplatform like HubSpot, WPForms, or JotForm.
In the last section, wewillshare some effective tips for you to make the most out of this marketing technique.
Progressive Profiling Best Practices
There's no unique formula that will allow you to create a successful form that will convert 100% of site visitors into clients. Still, there are some issues you should take into account when considering progressive profiling.
Ask onlyimportant questions. Make sure that you do need all the data you want to receive. Users are careful about sharing personal information, so if they have no idea why you need it, they'll stop providing it. Before adding any additional fields to your form, think about how you will use this data in the future, and ensure it makes sense.
Think carefully about the logicbehind your questions. Start with more general and basic questions. Once youdetermine your leads' buyer journey and sales funnel stage, make the necessary changes. Make sure you provide enough value in exchange for their personal data. For example,offering a basic checklist for a lead's phone numbermight not be a fair exchange, which can make your strategy fail. People should receive as much as they give.
Implement progressive profiling techniques into your email strategy. Welcoming new users with an onboarding email series is a great chance to let them fill in your form. Inform subscribers about the benefits they will get if they share their personal data with your company, and provide a link to their personal account where they can answer some questions.
Keep all the data in a CRM system. Make sure that you keep a record of all the data, for example,usinga CRM system. LIKE.TG's CRMallows you to create a card for each lead, keep all the information about every customer in one place, see the history of interactions, and contact each lead via several channels when needed. This way, you can access all your valuable data at any time.
Congrats, now you know about the benefits of progressive profiling, the way it works, and how to use it effectively.
Product positioning
Product positioning is the process of determining new products’positionin the minds of consumers. It includes analyzing the market and competitors’ positions, defining the position of a new product among the existing ones, and communicating a particular brand’s product image.
Companies can implement product positioning by using communication channels, pricing, or quality of the products to stand out and be recognizable. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of product positioning and its benefits, talk about several strategies, explore the steps you need to take to position your product, and see several examples.
Why is product positioning important?
Each brand has to know its customers to provide a product that resonates with their needs. A well-thought-out strategy can determine the position of this product within the market and identify its benefits for consumers.
The process involves creating a particular image of a brand and its products in consumers’mindsand identifying the key benefits to show how a particular product differs from competitors’ alternatives. Afterward, the difference is communicated to a brand’starget audience through the most effective communication channels. The messages brands convey to their customers should evoke interest.
Marketers need to determine the best ways to present specific products and reach their target audience based on customers’ needs, competitive alternatives, the most effective communication channels, and tailored messages. Implementing product positioning strategies enables companies to create messages that address their customers’ needs and wants and entice them to purchase.
There are even more pros this type of marketing can bring, so check out our list to know all of them.
Benefits of product positioning
We’ve prepared the top benefits of product positioning that show why it’s one of the most effective marketing tactics. It helps in:
identifying key benefits of a product and matching them with customers’ needs;
finding acompetitive advantage even when the market changes;
meeting customers’ expectations;
reinforcing your brand’s name and its products;
winning customer loyalty;
creating an effective promotional strategy;
attracting different customers;
improving competitive strength;
launching new products;
presenting new features of existing products.
Now that you know the advantages, we’ll move to the next section to review product positioning strategies.
5Product Positioning Strategies
Characteristics-based positioning
Pricing-based positioning
Use or application-based positioning
Quality or prestige-based positioning
Competitor-based positioning
While a lot of time is devoted to product development, only a few companies think about how consumers will perceive the product when it’s already in the market. Product positioning is about understanding the products you decide to introduce to the masses. That’s why it’s critical to pay attention to what your customers think. Let’s explore the key strategies that will help you define the position of your product.
Characteristics-based positioning. Brands give certain characteristics to their products that aim at creating associations. It’s done to make consumers choose based on brand image and product characteristics. Let’s take the automobile industry, for example. A person who worries about safety will probably choose Volvo because of the brand’s positioning. At the same time, another customer who pays attention to reliability would prefer Toyota.
Pricing-based positioning. This strategy involves associating your company with competitive pricing. Brands often position themselves as those that offer products or services at the lowest price. Let’s take supermarkets, for example. They can afford to provide customers with products for lower prices because of the lower costs they pay for shipping and distribution, huge turnover, and a large procurement of goods. As a result, many consumers already know the supermarkets with attractive prices and choose them without considering other options.
Use or application-based positioning. Companies can also position themselves by associating with a certain use or application. People who adhere to a healthy lifestyle create a great demand for products that help increase performance in the gym. Hence, many businesses offer nutritional supplements. These brands sell supplements that are high in calories, vitamins, and minerals.
Quality or prestige-based positioning. The brands we are talking about now don’t concentrate on their price point; they focus on their prestige or high quality instead. Sometimes, it’s the reputation that makes a brand attract customers. Let’s take Rolex, for example. This famous watch brand is associated with achievement and excellence in sport and is popular among powerful and wealthy people.
Competitor-based positioning. The strategy involves using competitors’ alternatives to differentiate products and highlight their advantages. It helps brands distinguish their products and show their uniqueness.
The difference is clear now, so it’s time to jump to the steps required for successful product positioning.
10Steps to Position Your Product
Define your target audience
Identify the key benefits of your product
Establish brand credibility
Offer a unique value proposition
Consider audience segmentation
Craft your messaging
Do a competitive analysis
Demonstrate your expertise
Focus on your competitive advantage
Maintain your brand’s position
The way your customers perceive your brand is crucial since they define your sales volume, the success of your business, and the profits your company will earn. Therefore, you should be ready to present your products honestly and effectively. To do this, you need to consider the following steps.
Define your target audience. Knowing your customers' needs, wants, demographics, and interests allows you to give them the product they strive for. This way, you can reach your target audience and motivate them to buy your products. For this purpose, you need to be well-prepared and operate the necessary information.
Identify the key benefits of your product.Benefits are a top priority for any customer who wants to solve a particular problem. As a business owner, you need to know all the peculiarities of your products or services, including their features and advantages. You need to identify your key perks and communicate them to the masses so that they can consider your product when reviewing several options.
Establish brand credibility.You need to create a brand that people can rely on to build trusting relationships and encourage your customers to make repeat purchases. Consumers are more inclined to make repeat purchases from companies with a good reputation and high credibility. Remember not to make promises you can’t keep and claims that can’t be verified. Prioritize honesty and transparency since they will help you build a healthy product positioning strategy.
Offer a unique value proposition. Communicate the value your product can bring to your target audience. You need to be aware of the fact that consumers won’t choose a product if they can’t benefit from it. Explore your product, find its benefits, and search for the most appropriate communication channels to convey them to your leadsand customers effectively.
Consider audience segmentation. If you want to obtain the best results, you need to segment your audience since your product can’t satisfy all your customers’ needs. You can divide them into groups based on their interests, traits, and needs to create customized messages. As a result, you’ll be able to appeal to their individual wants and needs and provide them with your product as a solution.
Craft your messaging. Once you segment your customers, it’s necessary to select the right communication channels for each group. Some of them might prefer social media platforms, but others might use traditional channels like TV and radio. Give some thought to writing a positioning statement (a description of a product, its target audience, and how this product can solve a problem that arises). It will help you prepare personalized and effective messages that speak to the needs and preferences of each group.
Do a competitive analysis. Once your message is ready, you need to evaluate your competitors’ businesses and the products or services they offer. Competitor research gives you a clear understanding of your rivals, their offers, and what makes your product different in a positive way. Afterward, you’ll be aware of the distinctive features and benefits your product has, your core values, innovations, and various improvements your company provides consumers with.
Demonstrate your expertise. Explain to your customers why they should choose you over your competitors. You should also prove that your product is better and that it has several benefits useful for consumers. There are several ways to show the quality of your product or its benefits: testing, trials, demonstrations, etc.
Focus on your competitive advantage. These are the factors that enable your company to manufacture better or cheaper products and outperform your competitors. You need to speak about the actual benefit your product provides. Customers should truly need this product and obtain its visible value. It also includes staying up-to-date and adapting to new trends and innovations.
Maintain your brand’s position. Once you reach this step, you need to maintain your brand’s position so that customers continue buying your products. If you aim to operate this successfully, you should never compromise on quality and increase or reduce prices drastically since it can make customers suspicious.
Now that you know the steps, let’s move to the examples.
Examples of Product Positioning
We’ve prepared several examples of famous brands that work in different industries and implement product positioning. Let’s dive in to grab some inspiration.
Beautycounter — clean beauty
The brand famous for its skincare and cosmetic products promotes clean beauty. The company strives to create products that are safe for our environment. Beautycounter stands for sustainability and uses ingredients that can’t harm the environment.
Nike — high quality
Nike, a famous brand that designs, develops, and manufactures running shoes and sportswear, positions itself as a company that provides athletes with high-quality, fashionable athletic sneakers and apparel.
Thrive Market — healthy living
This retail company offers customers healthy food from the best organic brands. They provide their clients with products at wholesale prices.
To sum it up, with a well-thought-out strategy, your company will be able to build an image you strive for and pave the way to reaching your audience. Plus, it will empower your company to be market-oriented, resonate with your customers’ needs, and easily adapt to the changes within the market.
Product life cycle
A product life cycle is a product lifespan that starts when a brand introduces a product to the market and endswith the product’s decline.This cycle consists of 6 stages and helps marketers make strategic decisionsregarding price reduction, reaching out to customers in a different market, advertising campaign growth, or redesigning products’ packaging.
In this article, we’lltalk about the importance ofa product life cycle and discover itssix stages. We will also review some outstanding examples of product life cycles and talk about where they can be implemented.
Why is a product life cycle important?
Our world and the products we encounter every day change fast. In 1963, the famous company Philips introduced a tape cassette. The big production of blank and prerecorded cassettes started in the 1960sbut reached the peak of its popularity only in the 1980s. It was the most convenient way for people to listen to music. However, everything changed when CDs appeared on the market in 2005.What this demonstrates is that any product can easily become obsolete. To prevent this from happening fast, you need to trackyour product cycle and implement new strategies.
A product life cycle is a period during whicha product is on the market and experiences ups and downs.This cycle has six main stages, all of whichare crucial for management and marketing teams.Evaluatingyour product life cycle is vital since it predictsyour product’s future and helps in decision-making. After analyzing the currentproduct life cyclestage, marketers can figure out their next strategic steps and decide whether a product needs more advertising, a lower price, or a new package design.
Every stage of a product life cycle is a guidelineforyour next marketing steps.Breaking product sales cycles into stages allows marketers to develop more elaborate product developmentapproaches, overcome competitors, and win more customers. This way, marketers can control sales, demand, and product availability, and businesses can decide whether they need to drive sales by running new marketing campaigns or ads on social media. Besides,product sales cyclestages indicate whether there’s a necessity to change products’ pricing.
Now that you know the reasons to keep an eye on your product life cycle, let’s look atits stages. Keeping them in mind will enable you to control the status of your product in the market.
6 Stages of a Product Life Cycle
We can break downany product life cycle into six main stages. We’ll look through each of them thoroughly to figure out what to do to improve your product’s profitability, efficiency, and success.
Development. Before introducinga new product toyour target audience,analyzeyour ideal customer, market, competition, and otherweighty factors. During this stage, you can’t make any profit and should only invest inyour product to recoupyour expenses and gain huge revenue after the launch. However, before it happens, you need to do some researchand test your product’s effectiveness, create prototypes, and develop strategies for product launch.
Introduction.This is the stage whereyou launch your product and present it to your potential customers. Marketers work on establishing product awareness, winning prospects’attention, and creating ads and marketing campaigns todrive sales.Don’t expect high revenues during this stage since sales and demand are low. However, once peoplediscover your product and get to appreciate its benefits and quality, the product will jump into the growth stage.
Growth. This stage is all about customers’ product awareness and interest. During this time, product demand starts to grow,driving brands’ profits.Companies can conquer other markets to attain more customers and ROI in the growth stage. Still, the competition becomes more aggressive since more businesses want to join the market.
Maturity. During this period, sales tend to fall. At the same time, the competition does not decrease since other companies offer better products at lower prices. The main benefit of this stage is that you are already aware of the mistakes you madeduringprevious phases and can eliminate them,allocating resources efficiently,enhancing product features, setting lower prices, and making your products more accessible to customers.
Saturation. At this stage, companies don’t observe big ups or downs in their sales volumes. At the same time, competitorsbecome more active on the market,so you need to keep afloat and avoid entering the decline stage.You needyour product to become customers’ favorite.
Decline. Ifa company doesn’t succeed inbecominga preferred brand on the market, it enters the decline phase. Sales volume reduces, and profits experience a decrease. Besides a decline in sales, brands also suffer from increased competition andnewfangled product alternatives.
Now that you know more about product life cycle stages, let’s discover how your brand can benefit from analyzing your product life cycle.
Howcanyoumake use of product life cycle analysis?
Being aware of your product life cycle stage means a lot for your business, as it allows you to tweak your strategies as you go. If you keep track ofyour product life cycle, you can achieve the following goals.
Gain authority in the marketplace. If you decide to introduce your completely new product to the market, you need to build awareness. Although it’s not an easy task, try to do it with advertising and introduce your product as an excellent substitute for its predecessor. This way, you’ll be able to make your brand grow little by little. However, if you have an already established product, you can leverageits long-standing reputation toshow customers that they can trust your company.
Develop an effective marketing strategy.Sometimes it can bechallenging to decide which strategy to implement next.Luckily, knowing the stage of your product life cycle makes it easier. Since the content you choose for the introduction stage can’t be the same asfor your saturation stage, analyzing your current product life cycle can help you determine thetype of content you should provide your customers with.
Take actions to prevent a product from reachingits decline.Even though it can be dauntingto stay competitive and keep up with the times, brands can still slow down the decline process and prevent their products from becoming obsolete too quickly.For instance, discussing new strategies before entering the saturation or decline stage is an excellent idea.
Set the prices.Your productpricingshould depend on the current stage of your product life cycle.Product prices are usually low during the introduction stageand high duringthe maturity stage, thoughcustomers’ product awareness and demand are also driving factors at play here.If people know you have a good product, they will buy it for any price you set. Still, if you have just entered the market, there’s a point in lowering the prices so that customers can afford to buy your new product, encouragingword-of-mouth promotion.
Now that you know how to use product life cycle analysis to your benefit, let’s review some product life cycle examples from a fewdecades ago— from development to decline.
Examples of Product Life Cycles
We willlook throughthe life cyclesof products that are no longer on the market. With their help, you’ll get to know thepeculiarities of each stage and find out how products reach their decline.
Cable TV
Do you remember how disheartening it felt to have to switcha ton of channels before you find a movie or TV series you could watch? Well, now those times arefor sure in the past. The reason why cable TV is no longer popular is that it has entered the decline stage. Streaming services like Netflix, HBO, and Hulu have become major competitors to cable TV, eventually turning it obsolete. Let’s discuss each stage of cable TV’s life cycle.
The development stage of cable TV started in the first half of the 20th century. In 1950, it moved to theintroductionstage— this wasthe moment when the commercial television system was presented to the public. After decades, cable TV gained growth and popularity in the 1980s, when more than 15 million families had cable TV. In the 1990s, cable TV enteredits maturity stage.
The start of the 21st century is the period when cable TV reached the peak of its popularity. The market became crowded with new emerging competitors, and they offered more attractive and modern products like HDTV— this was thesaturation stage. Cable TV reached its decline when Netflix hooked the audience with its up-to-date features and latest movies in 2015.
Portable cassette player
A cassette player is another wonderful example of a product that isn’t in use right now. People usedportableplayers to listen to recorded songs. The development of the product happened when different companies were working on the most appropriate form of a playerin the 1950s. The first convenient portable cassette player was introduced to customers in 1979. Once it was launched, the product sold well and experienced growth,hitting its peak in the 1980s.
Although cassette players sold well in their saturation stage, new rivals started winning customers’ attention. The product was no longer in demand when CDs were invented, and people no longer wanted to listen to musicusing cassettes in 1979. The portable cassette player declined, and CDs surpassed it in the 1990s.
To keep abreast of your productchanges, you need to trackyour product life cycle and its stages. Hope this article helped you figure out how to present your product to customers and effectively lead it through all its life cycle stages.
Product roadmap
A product roadmap is a document that includes a company’s product vision, plan, metrics, strategy, and requirements. It’s a reference pointthat helps differentteams understand how to contribute to product success and how it will evolve in the future.
In this article, we’ll find out why businesses need a product roadmap, review its types and examples, and unveil how to create a product roadmap.
Why do you need a product roadmap?
Companies develop product roadmaps to reach out to stakeholders and explain the importance of their products. They highlight the most important aspects of their product development: clear objectives, teams involved, features, releases, etc. This document helps companies manage their teamwork, stay relevant in a competitive environment, and comply with customers’ requirements. The roadmap aligns with a company’s main business strategy and can have some alterations based on certain changes in customer behavior, demand, or improvements in competitors’ products.
The document can be created for different purposes and serve various departments: development team, sales representatives, or executives. With its help, team members and partners can have a strategic vision of their product. Product roadmapі can also motivate teams to achieve their company’sbusiness goals faster. It encompasses updates on work statuses and product improvement and provides a clear picture of a company’s product development progress.
Now that you know the advantages of product roadmaps, we’ll proceed to the next section to explore their main types.
Types of Product Roadmaps
Product roadmaps can be divided into two main groups:
Internal roadmap. It’s created for internal use, and sales and development departments use them to explore product details, features, brand goals, and customer benefits. It provides a company’s teams with information about the stages of product development so that they have a clear understanding of their progress. This information can be shared only with certain company departments.
External roadmap. A business develops an external roadmap to communicate the benefits of its product to consumers. Marketers also share this type of roadmap with partners, the press, and analysts. An external roadmap doesn’t include some specific data about a product but highlights all the benefits it can bring to consumers.
We can also differentiate the following types of roadmaps:
Features roadmap. It tells when to deliver some new features to atarget audience. Features roadmap informs about the details of new product features and dates they will be available for customers.
Strategy roadmap. It encompasses the initiatives a company should invest in to attain specific goals. This roadmap is necessary for presenting your efforts to executives. Moreover, a strategy roadmap is essential for internal teams since it helps understand how releases influence a company’s overall business strategy.
Releases roadmap. It entails a series of actions a company’s teams should perform before their product release dates. The roadmap includes tasks, assignees, and their responsibilities. With its help, sales, marketing, and support teams can sync their efforts and work towards the common good.
Now that you know the types of roadmaps, let’s unveil how to createthem for your business.
How to Create a Product Roadmap
We’ve prepared the four main steps you need to consider when developing a great product roadmap.
Decide on your product strategy. It implies creating a detailed plan in which companies define what they want to achieve with their product and decide on somepossible ways todo it. It also encompasses a description of a company’sbuyer persona and the benefits it can bring to consumers. Apart from that, you should include the differentiators of your product that help it stand out among competitors. This information is essential for stakeholders who want to know the goals a product can attain and decide whether they should invest.
Gather information about your product. To do it, you need to gather information from different sources. Firstly, it’s advisable to communicate with sales and customer support teams to receive first-hand information about your customers. These departments usually have a lot of information about clients and their feedback. Adding new features or implementing great ideas for new releases might help improve your product. Secondly, interact with your community. People who have used your product for a long time definitely know its advantages and disadvantages. Thirdly, use your product knowledge. When you know about your product’skey features, strengths, and weaknesses, you can easily think of whatcomponents are the most valuable for your customers. After that,invest some time in eliminating your products’possible and existing drawbacks.
Set a timeframe. Hard deadlines make teams give promises they can’t keep. Remember, the main aim of your product roadmap is to guide, not to limit. That’s why it’s more efficient to give team members enough space and time to execute the necessary tasks.
Prepare your roadmap for stakeholders.A product often needs financial help from stakeholders to succeed. You can encourage your partners to support your company during product development by creating and customizing a roadmap that highlights the points stakeholders might be interested in. Don’t forget to mention specific product features, your potential to generate sales,your product’s ability to stand out among competitors, release dates, benefits, etc.
Let’s take a look at several examples of product roadmaps.
Examples of Roadmaps
There are different product roadmaps you can use for your company’s purposes. Now we’ll look at various roadmaps to see the difference between them and help youdecide which one is best for you.
Stakeholders and executives use release plans to see the schedule of their upcoming releases. It’s a detailed roadmap that encompasses tasks and timeframes for different teams. It provides departments with a clear understanding of their upcoming releases, new features, and the latest versions of a product.
You can also consider creating roadmap infographics to depict all the product development processes. Use ready-made templates to design a roadmap to your liking. You can see one of the greatest examples of roadmap infographicsbelow.
A Kanban roadmap helps a company’s development teams divide the tasks into several groups: backlog, planned, in progress, and completed. The main advantage of Kanban is that teams can follow their plans without references to exact dates. You can show that you are working on a specific task and motivate the rest of your team by telling them about your progress.
You can see an example of a Kanban roadmap below.
Congrats, now you know the reasons to create a product roadmap, its types, and several examples. Make use of our guide to develop a roadmap for your product.
Product placement
Product placement is a form of native advertising in which brands place their goods or services into different types of content that target a large audience. It can directly demonstrate a product, its logo, or mention the product in the context.
In the article, we explain why product placement is an effective marketing tool, its advantages, and disadvantages, types, and provide some examples.
Why is product placement an effective marketing tool?
According to BrandonGaille, 60% of people feel more positive about brands they recognize in films. This impressive statistic shows the effectiveness of product placement rather clearly. Read more about its peculiarities in this section.
Advertisements are taking up more and more informational space and becoming less effective because users can filter them. However, advertisers know how to promote products to persuade people to buy them. The main reason why product placement is so effective is that brands demonstrate their products in the environment. Goods and services are woven into the content organically and do not interrupt the film or video. Consequently, people are not annoyed by such placements and are more loyal.
One more positive feature is that the mood of the film can embody the brand’s personality. The viewers transfer their positive attitude from the content to the advertised products. Consumers want to look like characters and use the same brands' products, which is why protagonists often wear advertised products.
Moreover, product placement is a long-term marketing investment. Content, such as movies, videos, and serials, can go through many stages, and people watch it repeatedly, increasing their brand loyalty.
Now you know the features that make product placement effective. Let's go further and describe its positive and negative sides.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Product Placement
Besides the fact that product placement is one of the best forms of native advertising, it has pros and cons. Check them out below.
Advantages of product placement
It demonstrates how a brand’s products can be used in real-life, showing the consumption situation.
It can become viral and circulate in the information space for a long time. If the film or video is successful, they will be shown on TV and discussed on the Internet for years, and lots of people will see the product placement.
It affects the subconscious. People might not notice that they watch an ad. However, they associate the product they see in the film with the characters that use it. If they like the heroes, they become more loyal to the promoted brand.
It is well remembered. Branded products are integrated into the whole picture, and even if people do not notice an ad, they remember the moment of the film, and the product stands out brightly.
It does not irritate the viewers and does not cause banner blindness. Product placements are much more engaging and interesting for potential customers.
Disadvantages of product placement
It is rather expensive. If you want to advertise in a popular TV serial or movie from a famous director, product placement can cost a huge amount of money.
It is difficult to monitor the efficiency of such an ad. Product placement is mostly used to increase brand awareness and brand loyalty. You will not be able to analyze the success of such an advertisement at once because many other factors can influence sales.
It does not have a direct call to action. Product placement is the form of native advertising, and it should look natural. You can not ask people to buy your product.
It is often associated with certain actors. If one hero uses certain products, people will associate the starring actor with the brand. Consequently, the negative reputation of this actor can influence the brand’s image.
Product placement can help your product boost in the market if you keep in mind both its advantages and disadvantages. Read the next section to discover the most popular types of product placement.
Types of Product Placement
This form of advertising has lots of types and forms that can be used effectively in different spheres. Below we provide the most popular ones and highlight their peculiarities. Choose the most suitable type for your business.
Generic placement advertises a concept, message, or product category. It does not promote a certain brand, and there are no logos visible.
Brand placement advertises not the product itself but the whole brand. You can always see the logos and actors describing the brand’s personality and its peculiarities.
Image placement promotes a specific product by placing it directly on the screen. It is also called visual placement because a product is the part of the set and seen clearly, but actors do not use it.
Game placement is one of the most memorable types but one of the most difficult to integrate naturally. The plot of the film or video is often built around the product, and characters use it necessarily.
Verbal placement is when the product is not displayed on the screen but mentioned in the actors’ speech. This mention should fit the context and sound natural to remain the form of native advertising.
Music can also be the type of product placement. Nowadays, lots of singers want to promote their tracks on the screen. Movies and series feature the songs as background music, supporting this activity by a licensing agreement.
Location placement is a type of advertising when the product is a location. It is used to attract new visitors and make the place more popular among tourists.
As you can see, all the types have common and distinctive features. In the next section, we provide some inspiring examples of product placement. Check them to use product placement for your company more effectively.
Examples of Product Placement
There are lots of amazing examples of using product placement in different movies. For instance, Tom Cruise drank Red Stripe beer in “The Firm,” which increased sales of the product by 55%. The promotion of Ray-Ban Wayfarer glasses in "Risky Business” raised the company's income 40 times for the first two years. Below we provide some more examples of successful product placement.
Toblerone
Chocolate brand Toblerone placed its promotion on the cult serial “Friends.” There are a few series in which characters arrive from the airport and bring this chocolate bar with them. It is a great example of game placement, and the goal was to show the viewers a certain demeanor. There is also a famous moment when Joey looks at the Toblerone bar and states that it is a good brand. This was done to increase people's loyalty towards the brand.
Nike
Nike is one of the most famous brands in the world, and there are many examples of its product placements. Nike sponsored the series “Friends,” and because of it, male characters often wore their sneakers in the first few seasons. It was a great way to promote new collections.
The film "Like Mike" tells a story about a boy who wants to become a famous basketball player. He gets Nike Blazer sneakers and decides that they belong to Michael Jordan. It inspires the boy not to give up and follow his dream. He wears the sneakers and realizes that they are magical and allow him to jump very high.
Adidas
When Adidas decided to increase sales for boxers, they promoted their products in the film "Southpaw." It is about professional boxer Billy Hope who wants to get his life back on track. We constantly see Adidas products in the movie, such as shorts, suits, sneakers, and headphones. Generally, viewers can see the Adidas logo for 23% of the screen time.
Under Armor
There are lots of Under Armor clothes in Marvel’s films. Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, and Mercury wear them in different scenes. The heroes use them in everyday life not to associate Under Armor only with sports products. This product placement increased the brand’s sales significantly and caused a lot of discussions.
Congrats, now you know why product placement is an effective marketing tool, its advantages, disadvantages and the main types. Start using this form of advertising to promote your products.
Product launch email
A product launch email is an email sent to subscribers to inform them about an upcoming product release. Brands use these emails to build hype for a new product launch, features, or an event.
Why are product launch emails important?
After weeks and months of sleepless nights spent on releasing a new product, you have no room for error when launching it. A well-thought campaign topped off with the competitive advantages of your product and sent twice before the launch day will help you successfully build anticipation for your release.
To make your customers really look forward to trying your new product, you need to show how your new offering will help solve their problems. Remember, people are great skeptics, so they won't give you a chance unless you offer them something valuable.
With a product launch email, your goal is not only to build anticipation but increase brand awareness and win back passive clients. Perhaps, some of them have been waiting for a long time for your new innovation.
Now let's find out how to create and send an effective product launch email.
When should I send a product launch email?
The teaser email — two weeks before your product launch
The announcement email — 3 days to a week before the release
The product launch email
Send a series of three product launch emails. This will help you move your customers through the sales cycle.
The teaser email — two weeks before your product launch
Let’s suppose you’ve been working on an awesome product and now your team is on the last lap of finishing the project. It’s time to tease your existing audience with the great news. Don’t miss a chance to create buzz around your brand. All you need is to do is send an email campaign.
Let your audience know that you are working on something huge and they can evaluate the benefits of your product very soon. Provide a short description of your product along with an approximate release date — you never know what could go wrong so avoid broken promises by using a more general timeline like “coming in July 2020.” Try to resist the temptation of going into too much detail about the product, as the goal of this email is to create curiosity.
In the email below, Disney and ALDO sent this teaser email to announce their upcoming Lunar New Year Collection. With this cute email, they’ve managed to build anticipation and let their email subscribers get the new items 24 hours before the general public.
The announcement email — 3 days to a week before the release
This email is the official announcement of your product launch. Now that users are intrigued, it’s time to unveil the mystery.
Reveal the benefits of your product. Tell subscribers about its main features and explain your product will solve their problems. Your goal is to explain the value of your product. Start by sharing an image of your product and include its name. Then, provide important product details that are relevant to your audience. To stir up interest, let your clients place a pre-order or provide an early bird discount. This will help you segment your mailing list accordingly and provide loyal clients with special treatment.
Check out this email from Everlane. They introduced their new winter puffers, described their quality, and specified the launch date, and told subscribers where to buy them. They provide a waitlist option so all of their customers will have a chance to get the new gear.
The product launch email
Finally! Send this email on the day of the product launch. Tell subscribers who this product is useful for, go over its features, and demonstrate the way it works. You can add a short guide and provide a link to step-by-step instructions.
Customers are often interested in what is going on behind the scenes. To satisfy their curiosity, send your email on behalf of your product manager, provide their contact information for those who have questions or want to share feedback, and add some backstage photos for your loyal clients.
Don’t forget to include a powerful CTA. Let subscribers learn even more about your product by clicking the button from your email.
In the product launch email below, Shinola introduced their new watch and explained what makes it unique. They covered the features of the new product and added a CTA that helps users buy the product with a link to their website in the email.
How to Write a Product Launch Email
Write an eye-catching subject line
Keep your email copy straight-forward
Provide appealing images
Stick to your brand’s design
Add a clear CTA
In this section, we will provide both writing and design tips to create an effective email campaign to launch your new product.
Write an eye-catching subject line
Your email subject line should win the competition for user attention in the inbox. Make sure it’s relevant and unambiguous. Don’t make it long — all you need is to let subscribers know that you’ve come up with something new. To convey excitement and joy, use emoji that will add even more anticipation. Support your subject line idea with an informative preheader. Tell users that they can try your new product or learn more about it right from the email.
We’ve collected some simple and cute examples of email subject lines. All the brands appeal to readers’ emotions, tell them about their product launch from the very beginning, and use the preheader text to cover the benefits.
Keep your email copy straight-forward
Forget about a long-winded and too wordy introduction, promoting other offers and partners. Your product launch should be the sole focus of your email. To make sure that your email copy is concise but informative, answer the following questions.
What product have you launched?
Why is it important?
Who is the target audience of this product?
What are the benefits of using it?
How does it work?
How can I buy it?
If there are answers to all these questions, users won’t have any trouble with your service. Don’t forget to add your contact information.
TunnelBear below managed to create a friendly atmosphere to introduce their new password manager product. It explains why users need it and allows them to use it for free while in Beta.
Provide appealing images
Images help readers get a clear picture of your product. If you launch a new feature for your service — add a GIF image to show the way it works. If you launch a new line of shoes, you can even highlight the entire collection with a GIF. Let users choose the desired item by clicking on it and redirect them to the corresponding product card. Beauty brands often use this method to share makeup tips with their audience.
Check out the cute email below that Calvin Klein sent to introduce their new line of bras. Can’t take your eyes off it, right? The brand gave subscribers a behind-the-scenes look at them shooting models for a new collection.
Stick to your brand design
We’ve already mentioned that product launch emails help brands increase awareness and recognition. It’s only possible with the right design; use your brand color, logo, and font. It should be easy for readers to recognize your brand at first glance.
You don’t need to create an email template from scratch every time you run a campaign. With the LIKE.TG drag and drop editor, you can create a unique template from scratch or choose a pre-designed one to use for free.
Look at the email below. If you have ever opened emails from Chanel, you definitely remember their design. Their emails are always minimalistic, black and white, including a brand logo at the top, and they “breathe” due to the healthy amount of white space. Nothing distracts the reader’s attention from their new glasses. This is an excellent move.
Add a clear CTA
Only use one CTA so that you don’t distract readers and their attention is focused on getting your new product. Make sure the CTA is visible and easy to tap on a mobile device. Make it contrast with the email’s background, add white space, and provide a purchase link or a link to some useful resources.
Look at the email below. Allbirds managed to demonstrate their new line of socks and added a prominent CTA button which clearly tells recipients what to do next.
How to Send a Product Launch Email with LIKE.TG
Upload a mailing list
Create an email template
Schedule email sending
LIKE.TG offers a flexible and intuitive drag and drop editor. You need no HTML knowledge or other technical skills to create beautiful and functional emails in minutes. To get started, register with the service.
Step 1. Upload a mailing list
You can copy and paste your contacts, upload them from the file, import lists from a CRM, or add them manually, as shown below.
If you have no mailing list yet, create a subscription form with LIKE.TG to collect contact information from your clients. Follow this step-by-step guide.
Below you can see a subscription form created with our service. You can customize every element of the form and add as many fields as you need.
Step 2. Create an email template
You can use our drag and drop editor, choose from our pre-designed templates, or save any template you like from your Gmail inbox as a customizable template in your LIKE.TG account.
With our editor, it doesn’t take a lot of time or skill to create an email template. Drag the necessary elements to your working field and design them to your liking. Add a background image, text, pictures, video, buttons, social media icons. You can change the email’s font, color, width, and the alignment of any element.
Check out a product launch email created with LIKE.TG.
Step 3. Schedule email sending
In the last stage of creating an email campaign, you can schedule its sending. This way, you won’t forget to send your campaign when necessary — just choose the date and it will be sent automatically.
Here you are! Now you can send your campaign.
Examples of product launch emails
Check out this short and sweet product launch email sent by Codecademy. The brand uncovers the main features of its new product and explains what a user should do to use it. A brief copy, simple design, and white space make this email great.
Tiffany sent the email below to announce their new line of jewelry. Its simple but impeccable design makes this campaign outstanding. Nothing distracts readers’ attention from their new collection. Every image is clickable so there’s even no need to look for a CTA.
Athleta sent this email to introduce their limited edition lace capsule. The brand uses a GIF and pictures to demonstrate the beauty of their new line from every angle.
Draw inspiration from these magnificent emails and send a product launch campaign for free with LIKE.TG!
Product knowledge
Product knowledge is a vital skill each customer support agent and sales manager should have. It means that an employee is highly knowledgeable about a product’s features and can clearly explain its benefits to a customer.
In this article, we’ll consider the importance of this skill, review its benefits and types, and provide some tips to increase your team’s product knowledge.
Why is it important to have product knowledge?
Try to recall any situation when you contacted a company’s sales department or customer support team. You’ve definitely wanted these people to help you with a problem or buy something. Would you buy their product if they failed to present its benefits to you? Most probably not.
If an employee doesn’t understand how their company’sproducthelps solve this or that problem, they won’t be able to consult clients appropriately. Hence, they’ll fail to persuade them to buy. Product knowledge helps turn your staff into enthusiastic experts who know how and whom to sell your product.
Let’s take a closer look at the advantages your company can reap if your employees have high product knowledge.
Product Knowledge Benefits
Despite the fact that some benefits are intangible, they have a massive impact on yourbrand reputation in the long run.
Provides your employees with confidence. Each customer care agent or sales rep is afraid of not finding an answer to a customer’s question. Therefore, learning your product from A to Z makes them excellent experts, which provides them with enough enthusiasm and confidence to successfully deal with clients.
Helps your employees handle objections better. It doesn’t matter what is the subject of your customers’ complaints — whether it’s your price or product quality. If your team is aware of the situation on the market and your competitor’s products, they will manage to explain why your product is the best choice.
Allows your employees to analyze the competition. As it follows from the previous paragraph, understanding your competitors is very important since it enables you to realize how your product outperforms your opponents’ alternatives— whether in terms of pricing, quality, target audience, or core value. As a result, your staff will be competent enough to explain these issues to your clients.
Enhances your employees’ communication skills. Knowing all the peculiarities of your product, your staff can adapt to every situation without following your sales script since this knowledge allows them to combine several techniques and choose the best one for this or that client.
Boosts sales. Having a complete understanding of your product lets your staff effectively communicate with customers and present the benefits of your products the way your clients need them. Hence, this approach turns into a customer-oriented one and helps increase sales.
Improves customer retention. If your clients get the necessary help and receive the answers once they need them, they won’t change the provider since it’s a stressful task. Furthermore, each business knows that it is simpler to retain clients than to acquire new ones.
Now that you know the benefits of having high product knowledge, it’s time to consider its types.
Product Knowledge Types
There are several types of product knowledge each employee should have. Check them out below.
Customer. This type of knowledge allows your sales reps to analyze the needs and wants of your clients to offer them the best solution.
Competition. With the information about your competitors’ products, your staff can explain why your goods beat their solutions in terms of price, quality, or value.
Industry. This type of knowledge means that an employee should be aware of the industry’s latest trends and be able to speak the same language as other professionals.
Brand. Employees should understand the positioning of your brand, its mission, and its vision. This knowledge will help them move towards achieving your global goal.
Customer experience. Having data about user experience makes it possible to adapt to different segments of your target audience, take into account their previous experience of using your product, and improve your customer support.
Complementary products. These goods support the main product, often bringing little to nothing value alone, for example, a case for a mobile device, petrol for cars, or bullets for guns. If your staff is knowledgeable about yourcomplementary products, they can provide the best user experience.
Use. We’ll also include configuration, customization, and specifications in this category since all these terms are focused on the effective use of a product. Your staff should know how to install your product and be aware of different product uses.
Troubleshooting. The name speaks for itself. Your customer support agents need to know how to explain to users how to fix their problems both online and offline.
Policies and procedures. This type of knowledge requires employees to be fully aware of exchange, warranty, and refund policies.
These are the main types of product knowledge since everything depends on your type of business. In the next section, we’ll share the tips that will help you improve your team’s product knowledge.
How to Improve Product Knowledge
We’ll provide some recommendations that will help both effectively educate your new hires and increase sales.
Let your new employees solve particular problems. Certainly, you can use the opposite approach — teach your newcomers how to solve as many issues as possible. The only problem is that they won’t think but passively absorb information, which is worse since people remember experiences better. Give them some problem-solving tasks and ask how they could cope with them from the customer’s point of view. This will develop both logical and creative thinking and let them test your product on their own.
Let them find the necessary answers by themselves. Ask your new hires to look through your entire site, including your resources and knowledge base, to find the necessary information. It will take more time, but they will remember this forever since they have to experience this on their own. Besides, this way, you’ll get some valuable insights on how to structure all your information logically.
Assess the knowledge of your staff regularly. This will help you keep them on their toes and refresh their knowledge from time to time. Give them a test where they need to answer some common questions from your customers. Consider avoiding multiple-choice tests and adding your rarely asked questions. If you find some gaps in their knowledge, run your regular training.
Allow them to find gaps in your knowledge base. Let your staff read your previous chats and call transcripts to look for questions that have no answers in your knowledge base. After that, ask them to provide some answers for your copywriting team to produce an article.
Stimulate them to sell more. To achieve this goal, your staff should know the different uses of the same product and its target audience. You can create a “Product of the week” contest to reward a sales rep who will sell the most items.
Congrats, now you realize why it’s essential to enhance your product knowledgeand have some effective tips at hand.
Product launch
Product launch is the release stage of a product to the market, accompanied by intensive communication with the target audience, a marketing campaign with a certain tactical sequence, and various communication channels.
In the article, we describe the purpose and advantages of product launch, ideas, and examples of a successful launch. In addition, we give a 4-step product launch checklist.
What is the purpose of a product launch?
The product launch aims to attract attention to the new product before it appears on the market and generate demand at the start of sales. You should interest consumers during the product launch and convince them to purchase your product through communication with the target audience.
Product launch tasks:
inform consumers about the new product;
draw attention to the product and generate demand;
increase brand awareness and brand loyalty;
accept pre-orders for early birds.
Now you know the tasks and the advantages of a product launch. Continue reading to discover its benefits.
Advantages of Product Launch
Here we provide 6 reasons on how a product launch can influence your business.
It draws attention to the product and increases brand awareness. Product launch is a great way to attract attention to the new product using proper marketing techniques. You can tell people about its features, make them consider your product and convince them to buy it. Moreover, product launch is a great source of publicity for the company. It leads to more sales for both the new product and other of your company's products.
Product launch boosts sales and increases revenue. The first few months are the time when a product has the highest demand. It is a great time to increase revenue and attract as many customers as possible. With a marketing campaign, people become aware of the product features faster, and they can buy it right after its launch on the market. So, when you release the product successfully, you can cover the development cost and get higher profits.
It gives an image of required resources and motivates your employees. A product launch helps you discover the estimated demand for the product and training for the staff required. It also motivates your staff to work more productively. A product launch brings fresh ideas, shows the employees that your company is developing, and encourages them to grow with it too.
It can influence a company's reputation. A product launch helps create a positive image of the company and get a reputation for industry-changing brands. For example, if you launch a cutting-edge product that solves customers’ pains that сompetitors have not been able to solve, your company can become a leader in the industry. It can help your future products sell much better because the target audience will already be loyal to your brand.
A product launch can provide more business opportunities. If you launch the product successfully, it can generate new partnerships, attract business offers and investments from bigger players on the market.
It increases market share and opens new revenue streams. A launch of a new product provides a marketing campaign that can help you attract more customers, increasing your market share. Moreover, you can explore new revenue streams, which means that there will be more routes of money, such as Internet orders, retail sales, over-the-counter sales, etc.
Now you understand why product launch is so important. In the next section, we provide a 4-step checklist on how to organize your launch successfully.
4-Step Product Launch Checklist
There are four stages in the standard product launch scheme: preparation, pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. You need to make people interested in your product and encourage customers to wait for the start of sales.
1. Preparation
This step includes analysis of your target audience and competitors, idea generation, and determination of product benefits.
Analysis of your target audience. When you think about producing and developing a certain product, firstly, you should analyze your target audience. Conduct market research to discover their interests, habits, needs, demographics, etc. Collect as much information as possible and then think about the features of the product potential customers need. Use different resources and statistics to make your research more accurate.
Analysis of your competitors. If you have already analyzed your target audience and highlighted the product's main features, the next step is to analyze your competitors. Discover the availability of similar products on the market, their prices, advantages, and disadvantages. Then take a look at your competitors’ marketing strategy and find the reviews from their customers. This research will help you improve your product idea, find customers’ pains that сompetitors have not been able to solve and make necessary changes to avoid possible weaknesses of your product.
Idea generation and creating an offer. Now you know the main trends in the market, so it is time to generate a final idea and think about a unique offer. Focus on its strengths: design, long service life, usability, quality, favorable price, etc. Cover as many needs of your target audience as possible into your offer and convey them accurately.
2. Pre-launch
After thorough preparation, you should test your product on a limited number of potential customers. Ask them for feedback and collect the reviews to improve your product. Start a marketing campaign to spread information and generate interest around the launch. Try to pitch celebrities to attract more attention. You can also use a waitlist to estimate the approximate demand and make people feel that they play a vital role in the product’s destiny.
3. Launch
This step is extremely important because your product should meet the users’ expectations and give them an excellent customer experience. Use different platforms and channels, such as email and SMS campaigns, to make an image that your product is everywhere and everyone needs it. Advertise it on social media, press, web resources, in mass media, attract bloggers and other famous people. Remember that you should concentrate on your target audience and the channels they often use.
4. Post-launch
When you have already launched your product, you should work actively with an attracted audience. Think about methods to improve customer lifetime value and make the product better based on consumer needs.
Remember that the launch cycle is repeating. After the post-launch, it is important to analyze the results and improve your product, create new ones and develop your company in the changing market.
Continue reading to discover some ideas to launch your products successfully.
5 Product Launch Ideas
If you are still unsure how to organize your product launch, we can help you. In this section, we’ll share 5 ideas on attracting more attention to the campaign.
1. Use all the opportunities of social media
According to Backlinko, more than 4 billion people use social media in the world. So, it might be a good idea to promote your product there. Below are some tips on how to launch a successful marketing campaign on social media platforms.
Develop an online marketing strategy and combine different types of content for advertising.
Create eye-catching photos and videos of the product.
Post teasers to create excitement among the audience.
Use countdowns before the launch.
Hold a contest on social media and give your product to the winners.
Create your hashtag and use it with your posts on social media.
Share backstages and details of the product development to build trust with potential customers.
Encourage people to create UGC content with your product.
Use chatbots to answer frequently asked questions as fast as possible.
Follow these tips to empower your marketing campaign on social media. Continue reading to discover how to advertise your product on other resources.
2. Make use of influencer marketing
It might be a good idea to use influencer marketing to promote your product and the launch event. Choose influencers in your niche whose values you share and collaborate with them. You can ask influencers to review your product or invite them to the launch event to attract more attention.
Look at the screenshot below. There is a post from Lady Gaga’s Instagram account where she advertises the new tutti gel-powder ALL OVER ROUGE created by HAUS LABORATORIES. It is a great example of influencer marketing and marketing on social media.
3. Use a waiting list and accept pre-orders
You can create a waiting list and give people an opportunity to register to get early access to the product. Accept pre-orders and give users a certain discount to create more excitement around the launch. You can also ask them to share information about the product on social media to get a bonus.
Below is an example of Black Friday Pre-Sale from Revolve that advertises discounts up to 80%. Customers can buy certain clothes much cheaper during a certain limited period of time.
4. Provide a free trial
If you work in digital, you can offer a free trial to your customers. It gives people an opportunity to try your product, like it, and make them want to continue using your product. You can provide a free trial only for those who registered on the waiting list. It will give users the feeling of exclusivity and make more people interested in the product.
5. Organize a product launch event
It is an excellent opportunity to attract more attention to your product and make the target audience more loyal. You can choose a theme of the event related to the product or the industry you work in. When demonstrating the product, remember that it is crucial to focus on people’s needs. Highlight the product features that can help customers solve their problems and attract attention to ones that can be useful in everyday life. Offer users a chance to try your product.
The more people talk about your product and event on social media, the more audience you can cover. Depending on the product’s peculiarities, it might be a good idea to organize an afterparty to encourage people to create posts and stories during your event and post them on social media.
Now you have some ideas about how to organize your product launch. Read the next section to find some inspiring examples.
5 Inspiring Product Launch Examples
Below we provide the top 5 examples of amazing product launches. Get inspired to create a memorable product launch.
1. Starbucks VIA Instant Coffee
Starbucks spent about 20 years developing VIA. Its peculiarity is that VIA is a high-quality coffee option and is “not instant coffee, but coffee in an instant.” This slogan helped to differentiate their coffee from other ones.
Moreover, before the launch, they treated people right on the streets and asked for feedback. It helped them improve the product and attract attention to the new development. The result was great: Starbucks launched VIA in a range of grocery stores, including Target and Safeway.
2. KFC Double Down
KFC decided to improve sales and change the usual sandwich with chicken. They replaced the bun in their sandwich with two boneless white meat chicken filets and called it “Double Down.”
There was great hype around this new development because the sandwich can cause harm to the heart. However, KFC created a huge social media advertising campaign and managed to sell about 10 million sandwiches in the first 6 weeks.
3. Robinhood
Robinhood is a stock-trading service, which lets people trade easily without any commission. Before the launch, they created a campaign and provided users early invitation-only access to their service. After registration, users were added to the waiting list and had to wait until they got to the top of this list. There was also an opportunity to gain priority access by inviting friends to Robinhood. The more people users invited — the sooner access they got. As a result, Robinhood had more than 500,000 signups before the launch.
4. Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka launched a new limited edition “Unique” vodka in Argentina and organized a party for their young customers. Visitors had to charm a fictional doorman “Sven” via WhatsApp to get to the guest list. Its number was written on all banners and advertising materials. During the party, “Sven” chatted with more than 600 contacts and received more than 1000 photos and videos.
5. WePay
WePay decided to get one over PayPal and attract more customers to their service. There was a great scandal around freezing member accounts in PayPal, so WePay used this opportunity.
During the annual developer conference in PayPal, the representative of WePay dropped a huge block of ice with frozen money and said, “PayPal freezes your accounts.” As a result, this incident was on the front pages of many popular tech sites. WePay increased traffic by 225% and signups by 300%.
If you are looking for a platform to automate your marketing campaign and raise the effectiveness of future product launches, LIKE.TG will be a good choice. There are chatbots for social media, services to launch email and SMS campaigns, and a landing page builder to lead traffic to your page.
Look at the product launch email created with LIKE.TG. You can design all the elements according to your needs. There is an opportunity to add a background image, pictures, video, text, buttons, social media icons, and links. You can customize your email by changing the font, color, width, and alignment of the elements.
Congrats, now you know all the necessary information about the product launch. Create successful marketing campaigns and raise your income with LIKE.TG products.
