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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.
Primary demand
Primary demand is the demand for a particular product category or type rather than for a certain brand. It focuses on the benefits of a product without highlighting the advantages of using goods from one specific company.
Primary Demand vs Selective Demand
To communicate advertising messages, companies use two different approaches: primary and selective demand. If a certain brand tailors a message that depicts their company as the most suitable for their target audience, it’s using selective demand. On the contrary, if a brand focuses on the general product category rather than its brand identity, it’s a primary demand. Let’s discuss each of them in more detail.
Primary demand
This occurs when an advertising message aims at drawing more attention to the product, its type, or category without concentrating on getting a competitive advantage and promoting it. The message contains the benefits of buying general products without mentioning the superiority of one over its competitors.
As companies spend a lot on ads to sell their brands, targeting this type of demand occurs less often and only in specific situations. For example, when a company wants to introduce an innovative product to the market. In this situation, a marketer’s task is to present this product to the audience while focusing entirely on the product itself. The marketer should depict the product’s benefits and the way it works. Another example is a collaboration of industry members that aims at arousing the audience's interest in a particular product category.
Let’s take the “Pork. The Other White Meat” campaign, created in 1987, for example. This simple campaign aimed to encourage the consumption of pork as an alternative to turkey or chicken.
Selective demand
This demand occurs when advertisers try to persuade people to choose their brand from the hundreds of others in their niche. They create a message that highlights the specific features and benefits of their product. These features distinguish the brand’s products from competitors.
You can look at the message to identify whether it is a selective demand. Some companies use:
benefit positioning (to showcase the unique features of their products);
competitive positioning (to highlight the advantages of their products compared to other brands);
user positioning (to show the match between the benefits of their products and customer’s needs).
Now that you know the features of primary and selective demand, let’s take a look at the channels you can use to boost your primary demand.
How to increase primary demand
Send email campaigns
Create TV commercials
Consider social media
You can consider several marketing channels to increase your primary demand. Here are three things you can do.
Send email campaigns
The 3.9 billion users make email marketing the channel with the highest engagement. You can increase primary demand by sending several emails to your leads to help your potential clients identify their problems, show how these problems affect their lives, and finally, offer a solution.
To make your emails more personal, you can use LIKE.TG’s personalization and segmentation features. You can segment your mailing list to only send emails to contacts with the right criteria.
Here you can see an example of a personalized email created with LIKE.TG. You can choose a ready-to-use email template as a starting point and design it to your liking.
Create TV commercials
If you aim to reach a vast audience and build trust, you can consider creating TV commercials. Although many people might see TV ads as old-fashioned, they still show good results in terms of their overall reach.
Let’s take the 1992 "Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner" commercial, for example. Its purpose was to encourage the consumption of beef by describing its benefits for a healthy diet.
Consider social media
According to Forbes, there are 4.9 billion people worldwide who have accounts on social media platforms. So it’s worth considering using social media to increase primary demand. You can promote your products using posts, videos, stories, IGTV, paid ads, and influencer marketing.
Here you can see an example of the “Got Milk” campaign on Instagram. The creators posted a video informing subscribers about National Milk Day.
This type of advertising is essential when you want to make your product more popular among consumers. You can achieve this goal by using various marketing channels to help you promote your product and increase the number of leads and customers you bring in.
Product bundling
Product bundling is a marketing strategy that enables companies to group complementary products into a single unit and set a lower price than if they were sold individually. It allows brands to increase sales volume and average order value as well as save money on promotion.
This technique is popular among eCommerce businesses, fast food restaurants, the hotel industry, etc. With this strategy, McDonald’s sells its Happy Meals; beauty stores create packages including shampoos, conditioners, and hair masks; hotels offer rooms with breakfast included. Such product bundles are useful for both customers and brands. Let’s discover the way they benefit.
Why do companies bundle products?
Nowadays, almost every brand offers its clients a package, a combo, or a mix based on their needs and preferences. Customers buy these sets because they help them save money and try new products at low risk since brands usually combine top-selling products with low-selling items. This technique can increase your company’s average order value, sales, and revenue, save money on promoting and distributing individual products, and enhance customer experience. Let’s discover these benefits in more detail.
Advantages of Product Bundling
Average order value increase
Sales volume increase
Inventory waste decrease
Saving money on promotion and distribution
Personalized customer experience
Let’s discover the benefits a business can reap after creating a well-thought-out product bundling strategy.
Average order value increase. Say, you own a beauty store, and your average order value is $15. Your top-selling product is facial cleansing foam. If you aim to increase your order value, consider offering your customer to buy a skincare set consisting of your best-selling foam, a slow-moving toner, and a cream for $35 only. Remember to choose products that complement each other and work effectively in combination.
Sales volume increase. Sales volume is the number of products sold during a particular period, for example, a quarter. This measure shows both your general business health and the performance of your marketing campaigns in particular. Calculating this metric will help you identify the most effective selling techniques and determine high-performing sales reps. Some of your products that don’t sell can lack promotion, so combining them in a bundle with the most-selling products would be a good idea. This method will help you significantlyincrease the sales volume and enable clients to explore your new products.
Inventory waste decrease. Each company has some dead stock in its warehouses. Such items stagnate on shelves, hindering new arrivals. You can make room by bundling these items with the most selling products that will work perfectly together. The only thing you need is to combine them wisely.
Saving money on promotion and distribution. Each product needs promotion, and promotion needs investments. If marketers advertised each product of their company, the revenue would not cover these costs since there are always some goods that do not sell well. Hence, if you have five best-selling products, try bundling them with your slowly-moving inventory and sell them at a reduced price. Besides, you’ll save money on packaging since you need only one box to send a set of products.
Personalized customer experience. You can increase customer retention and loyaltyby providing them with unique and personalized offers. Check out the profiles of your regular customers in your CRMto explore their favorite products. Then, create a relevant product mix based on their needs. For example, your client always buys a skin whitening cleansing foam, so we can assume they have acne marks. You can offer them chemical peels and a moisturizer to cope with this problem effectively. Remember that customers will appreciate your care and attention.
Now that you know why companies bundle products and the benefits they reap, it’s time to get familiar with the types of product bundling to choose one that works best for your business.
8Types of Product Bundling
Pure bundling
Mix and match bundling
Cross-sell bundling
New product bundling
Gift set bundling
BOGO bundling (Buy X Get Y)
Old inventory bundling
Occasional bundling
In this section, we’ll shed some light on eight types of product bundling so that you can discover the opportunities they bring.
Pure bundling. It implies a mix of products that can be bought only within a bundle, and no item is sold separately. This type of bundling is often used by monopolies that aim to limit their clients’ choices. For example, cable TV providers offer packages with channels that cannot be sold individually; bus tour providers offer their clients tours that include a transfer, hotel accommodation, a guided walking tour, and headphones.
Mix and match bundling. This bundling technique enables marketers to choose several products available for packaging so that clients can choose the necessary items and create a custom bundle. This makes them feel as if they have full control of the transaction. For these packages, companies often use perishables, for example, toiletries, six-packs of fresh juice or beer, and an option to choose a T-shirt when buying a pair of jeans at $X.
Cross-sell bundling. It means offering a product that complements the initial choice, and this complimentary product often can’t be used separately. For example, customers are always offered to buy a case or earphones together with a phone.
New product bundling. This type implies offering a recently launched item together with a high-selling product. This way, marketers give their new products a boost and promote them for free. The better product you choose as the main one, the higher the chances that your clients will buy this bundle.
Gift set bundling. As the name suggests, this type of bundling helps customers choose gifts for their friends. The logic behind this is that the more products in a set, the better the gift. This type of bundling is especially popular during holidays when people look for quality and functional products. For example, a hair straightener can be sold together with heat protection hair sprays and barrettes.
BOGO bundling (Buy X Get Y). “Buy one get one” is a killer bundling type widely used by eCommerce businesses. Companies use it to encourage customers to buy a full-priced product to get another one as a gift or with a big discount. The initial product is either expensive or a one-time use item, such as a fridge, a hairdryer, or an electric razor. This way, clients are informed that buying this item or spending the N-sum of money will let them choose a gift or receive a high discount.
Old inventory bundling. Dead stock prevents businesses from investing money into producing new products, which makes a company stagnate. With an old inventory bundling strategy, you can clear your inventory space, sell excess and old items, and increase your revenue. Consider promoting a slow-moving product with one of your bestsellers at a reduced price. This will make your offer look attractive to clients.
Occasional bundling. This type of product bundling works perfectly during holidays, special occasions, seasonal needs, etc. For example, flower stores can create a package dedicated to St. Valentine’s day and sell different sets of flowers with candies, chocolates, and greeting cards. Beauty stores can create special travel kits during the high season. They can contain miniature versions of cleansing facial foams, toners, and cream with SPF 50+. This bundling type allows companies to boost their revenue during holidays and special occasions.
Now that you’re familiar with the most popular bundling types, we’ll share several essential tips for you to remember and to make the most out of this strategy.
5Product Bundling Tips
Create data-driven bundles
Provide different packages
Inform your clients about savings
Create time-limited bundles
Promote your bundles across various channels
Follow the best practices belowto create product bundles that sell.
Create data-driven bundles.Make use of your customers’ personal data and their purchasing history to ensure that this strategy works effectively. This information will help you create personalized and unique bundles relevant to each client. Check this data in your CRM system. You’ll learn what your customers frequently buy, items they left in their shopping cart, and their needs and preferences. This way, you can create unique bundles that they actually need.
Provide different packages. Provide your customers with a choice because having options makes them feel more satisfied. There are more chances that your clients will find something to their liking if there are more options. Limited packages often scare customersawaysince they make them think that the only goal of this set is to sell slowly-moving products.
Inform your clients about savings. Customers feel satisfied if they manage to save some money. Since the core of product bundling is saving money, let clients know exactly how much money they will save if they buy this or that bundle. You can show this information in the checkout, product recommendation, on the product page, or notify them via an email campaign.
Create time-limited bundles. The sense of urgency drives impulse purchases. Create a special category on your site, dedicating it to the juiciest offers, for example, “Five top trending bundles of the week.” Don’t forget to give a high discount for such bargains.
Promote your bundles across various channels. This strategy won’t bring much revenue if your audience knows nothing about your offers. Find out the most effective channels for communication with your customers and inform them about valuable bundles. You can do this for free with the help of the LIKE.TG email service.
With all this information at hand, the only thing you need to start is to get inspired with some examples. We’ve collected several of them below.
Examples of Product Bundling
In this section, you’ll see how famous brands implement product bundling into their marketing strategy.
IHerb, afamous company selling dietary supplements and beauty and health products, uses bundling on each product page. The package depends on a customer’s previous purchases. The brand offers to save $3 if a user buys an item they have purchased before with the one they’re viewing at the moment.
Kylie Cosmetics has a separate category on their site to showcase all their bundles. What is good is that the brand emphasizes that customers can save money. A wide choice of packages available allows customers to find the one they actually need.
3 Wise Men is an online store selling high-quality men’s clothes. The brand offers four different packages to every taste and budget.
After a user chooses the first bundle for $300, they see the collection of trousers, shirts, and knitwear to choose from. In addition, the brand shows how much money customers will save if they buy three pieces of clothes together.
Congrats, now you understand the benefits product bundling can bring to your business, know its types, and have some valuable tips and examples at hand. Make use of LIKE.TGpromotional tools to inform your audience about your best deals.
Pricing strategy
Pricing strategy is a methodology or tool used by business owners to fix prices for their products and services. Businesses consider several factors while choosing the right strategy. They include demand and supply, the economic situation in the country, marketing objectives, competitor pricing, manufacturing, and marketing costs, revenue targets, consumer income level, etc.
This article sheds some light on the importance of choosing the right pricing strategy and its types. You'll also get to know how to create a winning pricing strategy. Stay tuned!
Why is it important to have a pricing strategy?
The choice of a pricing strategy is vital for each business. It allows companies not only to forecast sales but build trustful relationships with their consumers. Product pricing is one of the main factors considered by clients when making a purchase decision, so setting a high price may scare potential customers away, while a low price can make them doubt the product quality.
Startups and new companies can use a pricing strategy to their advantage by setting lower prices than competitors. This helps them attract new customers considering the price the primary decision-making factor. At the same time, lots of consumers question the quality of the product if its price is much lower than on the market. So, product pricing delivers its value to the customers.
In addition, optimizing and changing your pricing strategy depending on the marketing trends, competitors' strategies, and clients' behavior can help you blow up sales. If you sell goods with inelastic demand such as food, life-saving drugs, fuel, cigarettes, etc, you can increase the price because its change doesn't influence the sales volume much.
So, now that you know why it's important to choose the right pricing strategy, let's consider its types for you to make the best decision.
12 Types of Pricing Strategies
We'll consider in detail 12 pricing strategies. Choose one that best suits your business.
Cost-plus pricing. It's the most popular and easy-to-implement pricing strategy since it requires no market research and customer behavior analysis. It is also called "a markup strategy." To implement it, you need to find out the cost of producing your good, including labor costs, material expenses, and budget spent on marketing and shipping. Then add the fixed percentage to this total cost, and this will be the price of your product. For example, if it costs you $30 to produce a pair of jeans, and you decide to make a $30 profit on each deal, their price will be $60 and your markup — is 100%. You don't need to analyze customer demand or the strategies of your competitors to use this strategy. It's often used for physical products being irrelevant for SaaS since their services usually provide a great value which is higher than their expenditures.
Competition-based pricing strategy. As the name suggests, this strategy puts the competitor's price at the center of attention. If you want to attract new potential customers considering the price the most important factor while looking for a product, analyze your competitors' prices, and set lower prices for your goods. If you sell items in high volume, you can negotiate with suppliers to have a discount which allows you to skyrocket sales and your income in a competitive market with similar products. Although if you're starting a business and don't have a big audience, low prices will mean low income for you. Hence, you won't be able to cut down the costs of production and will lose your opportunities.
Price skimming strategy. Companies with brand-new product use this strategy. It allows them to set high prices because there are no alternatives on the market. The only thing is that producers need to demonstrate the high value of their new technology to remove customers' stress from this purchase decision. Then, business owners gradually reduce prices to let more price-sensitive audience segments buy their products.
Dynamic pricing. This strategy allows business owners to adjust the product price to different variables such as demand, supply, and competitors' pricing. etc. This helps them blow up sales. Air conditioning systems usually cost much more in summer as well as Uber services during the rainstorm in rush hours. High demand lets businesses use this pricing strategy.
Value-based pricing. This strategy implies setting prices based on the value the product or service provides. SaaS and subscription-based services choose this strategy since the value they provide is much higher than the costs spent on production. To implement this strategy, brands need to analyze customers' needs and demands to product highly relevant products.
High-low pricing. With this strategy, brands set high prices initially and launch profitable promotional campaigns to blow up sales. High discounts are available during seasonal deals, markdowns, and clearance sales. This tactic enables product owners to increase their revenue, sell low-demand products, and boost their site traffic.
Penetration pricing strategy. Brands entering a competitive or oversaturated market use this strategy to stand out from their rivals. They fix extremely low prices compared with other similar produces. This strategy allows them to build a large customer base in no time. Companies hope that price-sensitive clients will switch brands and stay loyal. Although, this strategy is beneficial only if you sell goods in high volume, otherwise, you will lose money. Besides, you risk being drawn into a price war and enrich your audience with clients always expecting low prices.
Freemium strategy. SaaS and subscription-based services often use this pricing strategy. They provide their basic plan for free to attract new potential clients, let users evaluate the benefits of their product, collect customer feedback and improve their services. Free plans and time-limited trials enable brands to hook customers to its services and convert them into loyal clients.
Premium strategy. Companies targeting customers with high incomes implement this strategy. Brands set high prices to demonstrate that the product is unique, luxury, and high-quality. People pay much for obtaining this special status of having a prestigious product which makes them feel the same. Starbucks uses a premium pricing strategy.
Psychological pricing strategy. As the name suggests, marketers rely on consumer psychology. For this purpose, they need to carry out a thorough customer analysis to identify if they're inclined to make impulse purchases. Usually, people tend to consider prices with odd numbers (9) to be a good deal. That's why you often see a "$99,99" price instead of "$100" and that makes you feel that a brand does its best to help you save as much money as possible. Also, marketers place the cards with the most expensive products next to those they want to sell as soon as possible. These are the favorite tricks of marketers and the favorite promotional campaigns of consumers.
Bundle pricing. Marketers bundle products to blow up their profits with upselling and cross-selling techniques. They allow brands to sell several complementary items together in a bundle to convince clients that they save money this way.
Geographic pricing. With this pricing method, businesses set different prices based on the geographical location of a consumer. Marketers divide their customers by country, city, region, zip code, etc, and run targeted campaigns on social media. This allows them to maximize profits in the most promising locations.
Now that you know so many types of pricing strategies, it’s time to learn how to select the perfect one for your business.
How to choose a pricing strategy?
To select a perfect pricing strategy for your business, you need to know the real value of your good and carry out a thorough analysis of your target market. Let's consider each step in detail.
Identify the real value of your good. Before fixing the product price, you need to take into account all the expenses such as raw materials, production materials, labor costs, operating costs, general overhead, shipping and marketing costs, etc. Other factors including your product pricing may include seasonality, demand fluctuations, your target market specifics, etc. Be careful with setting low prices as you risk having losses. Although, high-volume orders will help you negotiate with your suppliers and agree on lower prices which will provide you with higher income.
Analyze your buyer personas. To stand out from your competitors, analyze customers' pain points and unmet needs. If your competitors provide similar goods, find their weaknesses and act on them. They may include product quality, customer service, return, and refund policy, after-sales service, etc. Provide consumers with a better product and fix higher prices accordingly. To better understand your ideal customers, you should not only create a profile with detailed information, but analyze their income level, buyer behavior, and customer lifetime value. This will provide more actionable insights and let you forecast sales.
Adjust your prices. Mind the previous factors and consider historical data to create a winning pricing strategy. Look through the strategies that worked and failed in the past for your business and analyze your mistakes. Keep track of both your most successful deals and the churn rate. If you want to set the prices higher than your competitors do, be ready to communicate your competitive advantage and demonstrate the value of your product. If you want to set the prices lower, ensure that you can operate cost-efficiently and sell in high volumes. If you want to set the same prices as your rivals do, find your differentiating factor so that your company can stand out.
Congrats, now you know why creating a successful pricing strategy isn’t an easy task. You have some types of strategies at hand and several tips that will simplify the process.
Product approach
A product approach implies focusing on an end-product. The concept first appeared in teaching and writing and was later adopted by marketers and managers. In marketing, a product approach means that a business concentrates on its output rather than on customers’ demand, needs, and values.
In the business environment, the term “product approach” has changed in meaning over time. This article explores the product approach in marketing and the company management. We’ll start with an overview of two primary management frameworks.
Product Approach vs. Process Approach
When setting up a business, companies employ one of two approaches: product or process. Both of them aim to boost a firm’s efficiency and improve results. However, they have different focal points.
The process approach sees a company as a set of interconnected processes. Thus, to achieve the desirable outcomes, you need to streamline inner business processes. This strategy implies a high degree of team-organization and fine-tuned corporate culture.It is crucial to put employees in charge of improving the firm's procedures by brainstorming, group discussion, and collaborative revision.
On the contrary, the product approach pivots around output. To release in-demand products, an organization often employs this provenbusiness model. On average, the product approach requires less teamwork and collaboration than the process perspective.
When it comes to marketing, the term “product approach”changes in meaning and confronts not a process but a marketing-oriented approach. Let’s get into detail and find out the best option.
Product Approach in Marketing
“Build it, and they will come” – this saying precisely describes the product approach in marketing. A better way to understand this concept is by contrasting it to a marketing-oriented outlook. Marketing-oriented businesses start with defining and exploring their target audience and creating the demand for their product or service.
The product approach goes the opposite way and crafts an output to meet the existing demand. Hence, businesses that use a product approach have to compete on pricing. This framework can drive desirable outcomes, but it has a weakness.
Companies that work inside the product approach are often blind to buyers' changes of heart and the upcoming shifts in the market. For instance, Kodak fell into a trap by using theproduct approach.
The company used to be a market leader for decades and produced the best-in-class cameras. However, Kodak failed to notice that customers started to favor digital cameras to analog ones. As a result, the company lost its market share and almost went bankrupt.
The product approach in marketing gets outdated. To keep up with trends, adopt a marketing-oriented approach and employ actual tactics. Sign up with LIKE.TGto reap the benefits of email, web push notification, SMS, and chatbot marketing.
Price sensitivity
Price sensitivity is a measure that shows how different prices for products or services influence consumers’ purchasing behaviors. Simply put, it indicates how product demand changes with an increase or decrease in a product price. It helps companies determine how product alterations will affect theirsales volume and uncover possible revenue by maximizing their price band.
Why is price sensitivity important?
As a business owner, you have to manage such things as choosing an industry for your brand, finding the best suppliers, selecting products, and deciding on your prices. Yet the most challenging thing is to find the balance in the price range so that your customers can afford to purchase from you, and at the same time, you could obtain the expected profit. You should be aware of price sensitivity to set the prices that suit you and your customers effectively.
If you already have great products or services, but they aren’t selling, it might be the problem of high price sensitivity. Customers simply can’t purchase from your brand because it is too expensive for them, albeit the price might seem fair to you.
High price sensitivity indicates that customers can easily reject buying a product since its cost is unreasonable. When you deal with such consumers, be attentive to their needs and try to add some value to your product to meet their wants and reduce price sensitivity. Low price sensitivity shows that clients are willing to pay the mentioned price and can even pay more for it.
The measure helps derive the price of products and services and understand customer behavior. It empowers your company to assess how fluctuations in prices affect the demand for your products. Eventually, by keeping this measure in mind, you have an opportunity to optimize your offerings to retain customers and attract more prospects.
Now that you know the reasons why it’s important to understand price sensitivity, let’s walk you through the factors that influence this measure.
Factors Affecting Price Sensitivity
Product type
Reference price
Switching costs
Product uniqueness
Ease of comparison
Brand’s fairness
This measure is defined by the industry you’re in and the products you offer. There are several ways to change this degree. Yet, first of all, you need to find out what factors affect price sensitivity.
Product type. Some goods, especially products that people need for their everyday life like milk, bread, meat, fruits, or toothpaste, are more sensitive than other products. You can be sure that these will always be in demand despite any economic situation. Nevertheless, during difficult times, people try to purchase these essentials at the best price, resulting in increased sensitivity. On the contrary, some goods are less vital, and their demand is influenced by quality, style, or brand (for example, expensive cars or luxury clothing).
Reference price. As you know, customers usually compare products and evaluate all the alternatives to choose the best product with high quality and a reasonable price. When purchasing goods, buyers always pay attention to the sum of money they are willing to pay for the quality of these products and the benefits they can bring. If the cost of your goods differs greatly from the approximate price your clients have in mind, they won’t consider these products. As a result, their price sensitivity will be high.
Switching costs. In most cases, to change a provider, the client has to pay an onboarding fee again. However, it’s not the main problem. Frequently, people think about the risks associated with this switching. For example, if a customer considers the possibility of changing a trusted brand that has served faithfully for years on a company that has recently appeared on the market. After all, a customer is more likely to stick to an established brand to avoid possible complications the new brand might bring.
Product uniqueness. If you’re lucky enough to get a unique product that your competitors don’t have, you can increase the price for this product, and customers will tolerate it. For example, healthcare provision or medicine that only your company has. Moreover, when the association of these products with your brand is very strong, people won’t compare your goods with the alternatives. For example, it’s difficult to substitute a pair of Adidas sneakers with a generic one. However, replacing a loaf of bread from supermarket A with bread from supermarket B is easy.
Ease of comparison. If your product is easy to compare with other products since it doesn’t have any special benefits, price sensitivity will be high. Remember, it’s critical to differentiate your goods and make customers choose your brand over your competitors’. By doing this, you can establish a strong brand that is difficult to compare, and consumers will select you because of the quality, price, or unique product features.
Brand’s fairness. Studies show that the fairness of your brand affects price sensitivity. Consumers often see the unfairness that usually arises from price discrimination practices. For sure, higher prices are essential for profit maximization, yet they can negatively affect your customers, and, as a result, your sales can drop. Consider presenting quality products that have fair prices instead.
These are just a few factors for you to consider. The next step is to learn how to calculate this measure for your business.
How to Calculate Price Sensitivity
If you want to evaluate the change in demand for your product when its price increases or decreases, you should calculate price sensitivity. With this formula, you can easily estimate the difference in demand due to the changes in your product price.
Below you can find a formula to calculate price sensitivity.
Where:
Change in Quantity is a change in the quantity of a product bought by a customer.
Change in Price is an increase or decrease in this product’s price compared to its previous cost.
Now it’s time to proceed to the tips that will help you reduce price sensitivity.
How to Reduce Price Sensitivity
Create a strong brand
Show the quality and value of your products
Let customers explore the benefits of your goods
If you think that you can quickly reduce your clients’price sensitivity by lowering the price of your goods, prepare to be disappointed.However, there are several things that can help improve the situation, and we’ll show you how.
Create a strong brand. In today’s highly competitive environment, customers can find tons of alternatives to the goods they need. That’s why it’s essential to build a strong brand. Since a significant number of options makes decision-making more complex, consumers often seek to find one brand they trust and becomeloyal customers. This can happen due to various reasons: lower price, better quality, some personal or professional reasons, or benefits. Your main task here is to develop a brand people would admire.
Show the quality and value of your products. Nowadays, many customers still pay attention to your price, trying to find and buy products that have lower prices. The quality of chosen goods often doesn’t justify the cost. It usually happens due to the lack of customers’ awareness about the quality of products. Provide your consumers with this information and explain to them why your goods are better.
Let customers explore the benefits of your products. There is no point in turning the market into a battlefield between you and your competitors to show your products’ or services’ features. Customers don’t care about some special features if they don’t carry any benefit or value. Show your consumers the actual solution or benefit your product or service can bring.
Remember about these three points when creating your brand and presenting products and services to your target audience. This will help you increase brand engagement and improve sales.
To conclude, if you want customers to choose your goods, you should remember to always bring outthe uniqueness of your products, reference price, quality, and benefits they can bring. This will enable you to reduce price sensitivity and let your business function properly.
Proactive selling
Proactive selling is a sales technique that involves a salesperson identifying prospective customers’ problems, questions, and needs before they ask first and trying to sell a solution. It helps companies take care of the sales process.
In this article, we’ll compare proactive and reactive selling and review 7 proactive sales strategies.
Proactive vs Reactive Selling
Businesses can approach prospects in different ways. Some of them prefer a proactive approach, while others choose reactive selling. To understand which one is right for you, let's look at each in detail. Afterward, you’ll be able to make well-informed decisions and establish connections with potential customers.
Proactive selling is an approach that empowers salespeople to control the sales process and inform prospects about a product before they have any questions or problems. The technique focuses on winning as many sales as possible by uncovering the benefits of a product. Sales representatives talk with leads about a product as a solution to potential customers’ problems. Currently, prospects might not even know about these pain points.
Reactive selling is an approach that allows brand reps to react to prospects’ inquiries, answer questions, and solve existing problems. Customer support agents focus on helping people to sort something out rather than initiating a sale. Company representatives respond to potential customers’ questions without having a plan to reach a specific goal or outcome.
The reactive approach relies heavily on the decisions of potential clients. Agents assist leads when they have problems and questions and wait for them to make affirmative decisions. They help all prospects without focusing on specific segments, sometimes leading to inefficient use of time and resources.
If you choose a proactive selling strategy, we advise you to use the following strategies. These effective techniques will help you have full control over the sales process.
7 Proactive Sales Strategies
In this section, we’ll reveal the most effective proactive sales strategies that will help you gain more customers and boost sales. If you want to improve the work of your salespeople, let’s dive in.
Develop a plan before sales conversations. Conduct research to have proper communication with clients. You should know your prospects and understand their needs to have a beneficial conversation. You need to plan your steps and strategize a path to the sale. Consider factors that can influence the sale and help you win customers.
Start conversations with prospects. Initiate conversations with people who might need your product. Speak up on your product’s benefits and how it can help solve problems. However, there’s no need to spam consumers with content that can’t help them overcome specific challenges. Speak persuasively and to the point. If you have a conversation with someone who faces some difficulties and your solution is a perfect fit — convey its main perks.
Add value to establish trust. Do everything possible to gain trust. You can do it by adding value. Prospects will trust you if you succeed in providing relevant and useful content and ensuring leads that you are an expert in this field. If you manage to show your expertise, they will perceive you as a credible source of information and a person who knows how to act. Your positive image among consumers will influence purchasing decisions of potential customers.
Use CRM to choose a relevant approach. Reviewing sales information empowers you to make data-driven decisions. Materials from your CRM allow your team to develop effective sales approaches. CRM guides sellers on how to act and what to say to encourage consumers to choose your company. You can use reports on web pages users have already explored within your website to resonate with their pain points. After checking the pages potential customers have already visited, you can start relevant communication. You can use theLIKE.TG CRMfor free for 5 users in your account. You can store data about consumers and deals in one place and use it during the sales process.
Ask questions to understand problems. You should be able not only to start a conversation with prospective clients but also lead it towards a closed deal. You need to ask open-ended questions to identify customers' pain points. This way, consumers can provide you with full-length answers, opinions, and concerns. The data gives you an insight into consumers’ needs. As a result, you can find out whether a lead is a good fit.
Foresee objections and prevent them. Being proactive means being able to influence decisions and get the necessary outcome. If you feel that customers can share their objections, be ready to anticipate them. Share relevant information, benefits, and case studies to ensure that your product is a perfect solution for their problems. You should be able to adapt to the situation and find the right words for people who face challenges. For instance, if your potential customer isn’t sure whether your software can integrate with specific platforms, you should provide detailed information about the available integrations and how they connect to your service.
Ask for customer feedback. Positive and constructive assessment can do wonders for your sales team. Proactive salespeople ask prospects and customers for comments to find out what was done right and wrong. After asking for customer evaluation, your team can figure out what aspects influence customer decisions and why they purchase or don’t purchase your product. Once you gain these valuable insights from potential customers, you can adjust your strategy and make some improvements. As a result, more people will be willing to buy your product.
Congrats, now you know what proactive selling is and why it’s essential. Hope that our strategies will help you reach your main business goals.
Product backlog
A product backlog is a prioritized list of alterations (new features, improvements of old features, bug and defect fixes, etc.) to a product a development team should work on to achieve specific objectives and bring value to customers. It helps companies increase efficiency, align departments’ expectations, and encourages flexibility.
In this article, we’ll unveil why product backlog is important, compare product backlog and sprint backlog, and figure out what product backlog contains. We’ll also cover how to create it and provide 6 tips to manage your product backlog effectively.
Why is a product backlog important?
Teams of professionals work on different tasks to develop new software or improve an existing one. Having a product backlog allows companies to properly distribute tasks and prioritize those tasks that need to be completed immediately. As a result, they improve efficiency. Development teams are more productive since they instantly identify tasks that require immediate action and their attention. Besides, they can plan their time and determine how much time they need to complete a task and start a new one.
Product backlogs make the development process more flexible. Once the status of a specific task changes, the item’s priority changes as well. This way, every task is visible and gets enough attention.
Lists of prioritized tasks encourage discussions among departments. Team members gather to review complex issues before their development process starts. It’s important to properly allocate resources and decide who will better cope with specific tasks based on their skills and experience. With a backlog, the company’s departments have a clear understanding and the overall status of the project. As a result, businesses reach their goals faster.
Now that you know why a product backlog is important, it’s time to make the difference between a product backlog and a sprint backlog clear since people often misinterpret these two concepts.
Product Backlog vs Sprint Backlog
People often confuse the concept of a product and sprint backlog. We’ll make the difference clear so that you can know the main features.
A product backlog is a list of prioritized tasks for the development team to work out. They include new features, design changes, bug fixes, UX issues, feature improvements, defect fixes, etc. With product backlog, the development team determines which of the alterations to the product they will carry out immediately. Departments compare the features to make sure that they are prioritized based on their strategic importance.
A sprint backlog is a list of tasks a team should complete during a short time specified for this project (sprint). These tasks are usually separated from a product backlog. It helps figure out the tasks the team will and will not complete during a specific sprint.
Now that you know the difference, let’s explore the components of a product backlog.
What does a product backlog contain?
Product backlog encompasses tasks that contribute to the development of a product. They include new features, user stories, defects, UX design issues, infrastructure changes, bug fixes, changes to existing features, improvements, and other product initiatives. These prioritized tasks have the highest priority since they are crucial for completing the development stage and, hence, a successful product.
Now that you know what a product backlog contains, it’s time to uncover how to create it.
How to create a product backlog?
To develop a successful product backlog, you need to stick to the plan. Whatever product you create, follow these steps to offer a solution end users would love.
Collect great ideas. Once you have requests from customers to improve your product, you need to consider them. Use brainstorming to find some other ways to meet customers’ needs and expectations.
Clarify the problem. To find the right solution, you should know customers’ needs. Review their feedback and recommendations before making any changes to a product. Once you have this essential information, make sure to include it in the product backlog so that your team members move in the same direction. Having a clear picture will allow you to meet customers’ requirements.
Categorize tasks based on their priority. When the problem is clear, you can finally prioritize tasks and build a list based on the urgency of their completion. List tasks with the highest priority at the top and less important at the bottom. If some tasks have little impact on improving a product and the achievement of business goals, there’s no need to mention them in the product backlog.
Revise your product backlog. As your development or product team completes tasks based on their priority, you need to update your list and reflect these changes. This way, the company’s departments will be able to focus on the right tasks and clearly understand the current situation and progress with the tasks.
Now that you know how to create a product backlog, we’ll proceed to the next section to unveil our six tips to help you manage your product backlog properly.
6 Tips for Effective Product Backlog Management
In this section, you’ll find some great recommendations to improve your product backlog. It’ll have positive a impact on your product.
Choose a product strategy. To have a clear vision of your product, determine the product strategy. It encompasses target audience, positioning, competitive analysis, and market opportunities. The vision of the product will define the product backlog and its priorities. Besides, a product strategy should cover the product’s benefits and differentiation among competitors.
Encourage collaboration of teams. To manage your product backlog effectively, align the work of your teams. Conduct regular meetings for teams involved in the process so that they can cooperate. This way, you can encourage brainstorming, discussion, and collaboration.
Make it manageable. Often product backlogs can contain dozens and even hundreds of tasks, so the best way to make it clear is to keep it organized. You need to revise your product backlog and its deadlines periodically, identify and remove unimportant tasks that don’t influence your product quality, prioritize tasks, and add only urgent tasks you will complete soon.
Schedule grooming meetings. These meetings help you keep your product backlog updated and healthy. As a result, you create a product that brings value to end users. Product backlog requires your attention regularly. By conducting meetings, you have the chance to optimize your backlog and remove unnecessary tasks. You’ll re-prioritize tasks, delete user stories, add features, review criteria, etc.
Work on a timeline. Create a timeline to visualize the strategy and all the steps your teams should take. Use helpful tools to make your timeline accurate. Since the timeline changes regularly, you need to revise and adjust it. The frequency of alterations depends on your release cycles.
Use ready solutions to visualize your backlog. Today business owners prefer software over paper-based backlog because of the ease of storing and editing the information. Choose one of the professional solutions to visualize the priority of tasks and manage your product backlog. Hygger, monday.com, and Microsoft Planner are among the most preferred tools for creating product backlog.
Since product backlog means a lot for the team productivity and product value, make sure to keep it in order. Use our tips and guide to create a backlog if you don’t have one yet.
Popup
A pop-up is a small window that appears while browsing a website. Marketers mainly use pop-ups for advertising and generating leads.With LIKE.TG,you can create smart pop-ups that are displayed according to certain scenarios.They will help youincrease the engagement of your site visitors and lead conversion.
In this video, Anna, a LIKE.TG marketer, explains how to use smart pop-ups for your website to draw conversions.
Pop-ups are controversial — the inventor of this technology has even publicly apologized for his creation.
If you use a window that pops up out of nowhere, it will surely interrupt the user experience, and potentially irritate your audience. Nevertheless, if a pop-up is to the point, it may be a functional addition to your website, able to assist users and move them down the sales funnel.
So, let’s discuss how crucial pop-ups may be for your business strategy.
Why are Pop-Ups Important?
Generate subscribers
Promote specific content
Reduce the bounce rate
Pop-ups are a multifunctional tool that can help you convert traffic on your website into marketing leads. Here’s a shortlist of a pop-up’s main functions:
Generate subscribers. Say your website has lots of visitors, and you have no idea how to involve them in communication with your brand. A pop-up subscription form where users can leave their email address does the trick. It allows you to grow your mailing list, build relationships with the audience via email, and speed up the buyer’s journey.
Promote specific content. Though the primary purpose of pop-ups is to generate leads, you can promote your e-book, guide, or case study relevant to the page the visitor is on. It will show your expertise in the field and help your audience solve their problems. For instance, you can share your harvest predictions for the next year on an agricultural blog.
Reduce the bounce rate. This metric shows you how fast a user leaves your site. To reduce the bounce rate, many marketers use a pop-up, asking to share an email address, a phone number, or other information to enable further communication. Such a pop-up usually appears when a user is about to close the tab or leave the website.
Let’s now have a look at some examples and visualize some functions of a pop-up.
Pop-up Examples
SmartBug. This pop-up looks natural because it has the same colors as the page it covers. It aims to move users to the next stage of the buyer’s journey — the nurturing stage. However, this pop-up is far from perfect since it doesn’t ask directly for an email address, but requires more clicks instead. Anything that makes signing up harder for the user will increase the chances of a bounce.
Wishpond. This pop-up is definitely designed to move the audience down the sales funnel. That’s why it offers to “Get Started” with the service just after the brief introduction to the content. This pop-up is here because the company wants to point out how they are going to help users from the start. This increases their chances of conversions.
Medium. This pop-up appears immediately after the page is loaded. The tone of the message is polite, and it looks like they are offering more value for signing up, although their rush is questionable.
Now that you have seen some examples, it’s time to move on and have some practice now!
How to Create a Pop-upwith LIKE.TG?
Register with LIKE.TG
Create a project
Create a pop-up
Follow this simple guide to create a smart pop-up that will improve conversions, increase engagement, and reduce unsubscribes.
Step 1. Register with LIKE.TG
LIKE.TG is a marketing platform that provides a variety of tools and channels for building successful customer relationships. You can create a smart pop-up in less than half an hour to keep a visitor on the site and collect contacts of potential customers. To do this, register.
Step 2: Create a project
Before adding a pop-up, you need to create a project for which you want to set up a pop-up. A project is a workspace with specific settings. You can connect a site created in LIKE.TG or add a project script to your site for your project. You can create a separate project for each domain, which will allow you to track statistics for each site separately, or add several domains to the project to work with multilingual sites, for example.
So, to create a project, go to the "Pop-ups" and click "Create a project".
To install a pop-up on a site created in LIKE.TG, select the site created in the site builder, mini-landings, or when creating courses.
Click "Connect site" and the project code will be automatically added to the site settings.
To add a pop-up to a third-party site, enter a link to it.
Click "Get Code".
Step 3: Create a pop-up
You can create a pop-up that will be displayed according to a specific scenario. The trigger can be user behavior, a specific action, or information tracked duringvisitingthe site. To create a personalized offer, you can activate a pop-up using one of the 20+ conditions or combine them with each other.
Click "Add pop-up" to create a widget.
All created pop-ups will be displayed in the "Display scenarios" tab. Select the desired pop-up to enable, disable or edit it.
Go to the created project in the "Display scenarios" tab and click "Create pop-up".
You can choose a pop-up template from the list of popular, festive,orbased on your widget type or purpose.
Next, customize the appearance of the pop-up.
After selecting a template, go to the "Content" tab to edit its appearance and change the target action. Upload an image and select its position. Add a link to the video if needed.
Next, select the background color and position of the pop-up on the page.
On the right, you see how the pop-up will look like on your site.
Write a message. You can add links and use emojis.
Set up the target action expected from the user, for example, newsletter subscription, or phone number request.
After setting the conditions, click "Save and publish".
For more information on how to create a smart pop-up, read this guide.
Now you know how to keep visitors on your site and collect potential buyer contacts with LIKE.TG. You can also collect all leads in CRM from LIKE.TG. Read our recommendations for creating a pop-up that converts.
Pop-up Best Practices
Only use pop-ups when necessary
Enrich user experience, don’t interrupt it
Make your pop-up visually lightweight
Time pop-ups right
Put the right incentive
We've collected a list of general pieces of advice, so here they are:
Only use pop-ups when necessary. Pop-ups do work. Though it’s not easy to make them work, it’s not easy to overcome the conventional concept that pop-ups are annoying. Use this method only for a good purpose. Say you have a page with tons of traffic, but people mostly bounce without reading your content to the end. In this case, a pop-up form is a solution that may bring your communication to the next level.
Enrich user experience, don’t interrupt it. Easier said than done, but still, there are plenty of ways to make pop-ups do the job without harming the user experience. Even if they read the page to the end, users are likely to leave once they find what they’ve been looking for. So, why not show a pop-up that enables communication via email? After all, it is a win-win for you and future customers.
Make your pop-up visually lightweight. It is essential to make the pop-up less abrupt. Remember the SmartBug example, when a pop-up looked almost equal to the content? To echo that style, choose the same background color as on the covered page, use small bits of text, and make the CTA button the same color as the links in the article.
Optimize your pop-ups for mobile devices. Proper mobile pop-ups are super important for converting mobile traffic. Responsive pop-ups designed for a desktop version of your website may not provide optimal mobile UX. In that case, it's necessary to create a mobile-first version that is optimized for mobile UX and progressively adapts itself to the desktop version of the website.
Time pop-ups right. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, except “test, test, and test.” If you decide a pop-up is worth adding, try different time frames for a pop-up to appear. Rely on real data, not on pure assumptions.
Put the right incentive. Use pop-ups that add value to the original content. For instance, when a user reads an article about materials for home improvement, it is really helpful to offer a video guide on how to start home improvement.
Congratulations, we hope you’ve learned something new today that will help you become a better marketer.
Predictive validity
Predictive validity is the correlation between a test that enables people to predict future academic or work success and its results. It helps define the quality and functions the test should perform. Companies widely use it to forecast the performance of their job applicants.
In this article, we’ll review the importance of predictive validity, make the difference between predictive and construct validity clear, and grab some inspiration from several examples.
Why is predictive validity important?
Companies search for the best specialists to obtain the best results and survive in a highly competitive environment. The hiring process requires costs that constantly increase with time if a firm can’t find suitable employees within a given timeframe. That’s why predictive validity is essential for businesses.
The main challenge of any selection method is to choose the best candidates and increase the utility and predictability of this process. Since the competition is too high, firms should be ready to select candidates who are prepared to demonstrate excellent performance and complete all the assigned tasks. This way, a business can obtain acompetitive advantage. If a company makes a bad decision, it can lead to a reduction of its development strategies' effectiveness and invalidity.
Predictive validity enables companies to measure the utility and reliability of their selection process. With its help, a firm can test a particular selection procedure and the performance of those who were selected.
Now that you know about the importance of predictive validity, let’s make the difference between predictive validity and construct validity clear.
Predictive Validity vs. Construct Validity
It’s time to compare predictive validity and construct validity and find the differences between these two approaches.
Predictive validity is an approach especially useful in selecting the most suitable candidates for companies. It helps assess the utility and reliability of a candidate selection procedure and serves as a validity criterion type to choose the best workers. It’s a crucial aspect as it enables companies to identify and forecast an individual’s future performance in a specific environment, in this case, in a company.
Construct validity evaluates how well a particular measurement matches the construct you are eager to measure. Before identifying the concept, your team needs to prepare several questions with the help of which they will be able to understand whether it’s appropriate to select specific approaches.
To obtain carefully developed measures, a company needs to have relevant knowledge. For example, a company’s team can make a questionnaire to identify and analyze a problem, so they should prepare several questions that will help determine whether this questionnaire enables their firm to receive relevant information.
Now when the difference and characteristics of each method are clear, let’s proceed to the examples.
Examples of Predictive Validity
Companies widely use this method to make employment tests to define whether a person is suitable for a certain position or not. For this purpose, a firm administers a specific test for incumbent employees and obtains their performance before conducting it. For instance, a company can use a supervisor’s rating of every worker’s job performance. Moreover, there can be restrictions on test and performance scores.
Let’s say that the test will show a big difference in performance results between incumbent employees and applicants. The employees of this particular company are a more homogeneous and higher performing group because of the knowledge and skills they already have after working in this firm.
To conclude, with the help of a test, people can predict the performance of an applicant and the benefits this person can bring to a business or educational institution. That’s why it’s widely used to measure academic or work success.
Price competition
Price competition is a strategy that implies reducing prices to compete with rivals. The technique is popular among the sellers of the same products since they have similar features, yet the price points can differ.
In this article, we’ll review the advantages, disadvantages, and types of price competition. We’ll also compare price and non-price competition.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Price Competition
Price competition carries advantages and disadvantages for those who want to incorporate it. In this section, we’ll review them all, so you know what to expect once you use these methods. Let’s start with the benefits.
A price drop is highly beneficial for consumers. They can search for the necessary product, and if the price is too high, they can buy from competitors. For example, consumers who want to buy tomatoes can consider different sellers. The product is the same everywhere, so they pay attention to the price. If one store offers a pound of tomatoes for $4 while the other for $3, customers will choose based on the cost.
Companies also benefit when they implement the technique. Lower prices often attract more consumers. As a result, brands succeed to sell more goods and get more revenue. Although the profit margin reduces, selling a lot rather than having zero sales is better. The strategy is especially useful for new businesses that have just entered the market. Competitive prices allow them to shape their customer base and survive in an increasingly competitive market.
The approach also has drawbacks. Products with a low cost obviously have low quality. That’s why customers might face problems with them. Entrepreneurs also experience the cons for their businesses. Since they reduce the price of the products, the profit margins decrease. As a result, they receive lower revenues.
Now that you know the pros and cons, let’s jump into the next section to unveil the difference between price and non-price competition. It will help you identify the most suitable strategy for your product and business.
Price vs Non-Price Competition
Sometimes people confuse the terms yet the difference is obvious. We’ll review the peculiarities of each strategy so that you can consider it for your business.
Price competition is a strategy that implies companies offering products with the same features and reducing prices to win consumers. Since their products don’t have any differentiators like high quality, unique selling proposition, good location, or exceptional after-sales service, they compete by providing lower prices.
Non-price competition is a strategy that involves brands relying on non-price differentiators like high quality, amazing features, excellent customer service, and other perks. Businesses don’t reduce prices on their products to stay competitive. Moreover, their prices are often higher than competitors’ because they have higher expenses to produce an amazing product in terms of quality, features, and service.
Simply put, in price competition, products are complete substitutes, so companies stay competitive only if the price is lower, while in non-price competition, brands stand out because of quality, unique selling proposition, competitive advantage, great customer service, etc.
Now that the difference is clear, it’s time to review the types. After reading this section, you’ll be able to choose the methods that fit your company.
Types of Price Competition
We can differentiate 4 types of price competition. Let’s unveil each of them so that you can make a choice.
Penetration pricing. It’s offering a product or service at a low price so that consumers instantly notice it. The strategy is a great fit for brands that just entered the market. They can provide consumers with lower prices to attract competitors’ consumers and build a customer base. For instance, if you just opened a florist store, pay attention to your competitors’ prices and make your prices lower.
Freebies. Free products often capture customers’ attention. Consider using this technique. To stand out among competitors and attract more consumers, offer a free product, discount, or free delivery. It’ll allow you to win more sales. Customers will also be satisfied with their purchases.
Premium pricing. Premium products differ from others by being superior to competitors’ offerings. People concerned with quality, branding, and luxury will purposely choose high-priced products. Brands with expensive items differentiate themselves from others by being premium. Rolex is the ultimate luxury watch brand. The company offers a great variety of expensive products, and only rich people can afford to buy them. Having a Rolex watch indicates the status of the owner.
Loss leader. A company sells its product for a price lower than the production cost to attract consumers and sell complementary products. The approach will come in handy for business owners entering the market or those who want to increase their market share. Examples of popular sales include Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas sales, etc. Brands create ads to inform consumers about upcoming sales and discounts that sometimes reach 70%. They provide people with attractive prices to sell old inventory.
Congrats, now you know what price competition is and why it’s essential. Hope that you’ll succeed in implementing different types of this strategy.
Predictive marketing
Predictive marketing is a marketing approach that involves a company using audience behavior, historical consumer research, purchasing history, website analytics, and other crucial data to anticipate the results of specific marketing campaigns. It enables marketers to make well-thought-out, smart, and effective marketing decisions.
In this article, we’ll uncover the benefits of predictive marketing and discover how it works. We’ll also review some examples.
Benefits of Predictive Marketing
The majority of businesses analyze huge amounts of information about their clients. They explore audience behavior, purchasing history, website analytics, and social media impressions to know their customers and understand them better. It helps make the right marketing decisions, meet customers’ requirements, and offer relevant products.
By discovering customer data, brands can find connections between behavior and needs which results in more effective marketing strategies. After finding out these points, marketers can segment consumers into groups based on their shopping habits, preferences, pain points, geography, age, occupation, etc. Secondly, companies can anticipate trends earlier than their rivals. After analyzing customer data, marketers can accurately predict industry trends.
Predictive marketing ensures effective quality lead generation. Exploring behavior, historical lead research, purchasing history, and site analytics of prospects enables businesses to identify prospects ready to become customers. Brands instantly recognize the most promising prospective consumers, who are the most likely to convert into customers.
The predictive approach allows businesses to anticipate the outcomes of their upcoming marketing campaigns. A clear understanding of the audience helps launch campaigns that receive a positive response from consumers. Brands make wise business decisions regarding their further marketing steps.
Analyzing customer data empowers businesses to understand customers’ needs and personalize their customer experience. Marketers send messages, offers, and products tailored to the wants and problems of their consumers. As a result, customer engagement improves.Now that you know the advantages, it’s time to unveil how predictive marketing works.
How does predictive marketing work?
In this section, we’ll review how predictive marketing works in detail so that you know where to start. You’ll be able to start incorporating it into your marketing strategy.
First of all, companies collect customer data. They can do it in three ways: by asking consumers for the information they need, tracking customer activity, and appending other sources of customer data. Combining all three will give you the most accurate answers to your questions. Brands’ websites use cookies to gather information about customer activity: sites visited, pages opened, search and browser history, on-site behavior, scrolling speed, clicks, and mouse hovering. This information provides companies with insights into their future marketing approaches, campaigns, and messages.
Companies collect information about consumers’ past purchases. This data enables businesses to provide personalized recommendations based on their past shopping experience. Moreover, websites track every user's click to identify items they look for and suppliers they purchase from. Personalized offers and messages allow companies to increase engagement and boost sales. Customer satisfaction with a brand improves as well.
Now that you know how predictive marketing works, let’s proceed to the next section to uncover the examples. They will inspire you to implement this marketing technique into your business and improve sales.
Examples of Predictive Analytics in Marketing
To implement predictive marketing, you should see how it works in real life. We’ll review several examples so that you can grab some inspiration for your business.
Lead scoring
With predictive marketing, you continue nurturing your lead after receiving contact information. You collect and create a list of prospects and customers to reach them with your offer. However, communicating your message to everyone on your list can be a waste of time and resources. This is because there might be people who aren’t interested in purchasing with you. Predictive lead scoring enables you to sort out your prospects and identify only qualified ones. These prospective customers are serious about buying your product but need time to explore its features and benefits.
You can use predictive lead scoring tools like HubSpot, Freshsales, and ActiveCampaign to analyze information about potential customers and figure out the level of their willingness to buy. As a result, you’ll be able to prioritize prospects and focus on those who can bring you revenue. You avoid spending time and resources on unqualified leads.
Product suggestion
Product suggestion is the most popular form of predictive marketing. People search for specific products and then see suggestions for these items from various brands. You can see these ads everywhere: in your social media feed, in your email inbox, in banners on a website, etc.
Special algorithms help eCommerce companies collect information about website visitors’ interests from their purchasing or search history. This data enables companies to identify the items they are most likely to buy next and use them in ads or promotions.
For example, Boost Your English uses targeted sponsored ads on social media feeds. The company reaches people interested in improving English language knowledge and skills. The person who sees the feed has visited websites related to learning English. If this user is still searching for language learning, the company’s audiobooks will be helpful.
Social media suggestions
Many brands use special social media tools to make the right advertising posts at the right time. They help figure out the best time for a post on the best marketing channel. Moreover, they enable marketers to identify the most eye-grabbing color palette to make prospects pay attention. Social media platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter offer predictive tools which you can use to your advantage. These platforms use predictive ad targeting and algorithms to determine customers’ interests and needs.
Congrats, now you know what predictive marketing is and how it works. Our examples will help you incorporate this technique into your business.
Price elasticity of demand
Price elasticity of demand is an economic measurement that shows how product demand correlates with the changes in some factors, in this case, price. Demand is considered elastic if the demand for a product changes significantly in response to the change in price. Goods with elastic demand include soft drinks, clothing, luxury items, cars, etc.
In this article, you'll get to know why economists and marketers monitor the price elasticity of demand, uncover the factors affecting it, and learn how to calculate the measurement, so stay tuned.
Why is the price elasticity of demand important?
Price elasticity of demand is of high priority for economists and marketers since this concept lets them forecast the success of their business. They are set on developing a product with inelastic demand so that consumers buy it regardless of whether the price changes.
Monopolistis and owners of products with almost no substitutes on the market consider the elasticity of demand when setting a price for their products. In the case of inelastic demand, they can fix high prices, while elastic demand makes them set lower prices to stand out from the competition.
If you want to start an international trade business, you need to analyze the elasticity of demand for the necessary products in the country you intend to export to. If the demand for products with inelastic demand in your country turns out to be elastic in the importing country, you'll have to set lower prices, which may bring you losses. Besides, the taxation system may require you to pay higher taxes for goods with inelastic demand.
Farmers, paradoxically, suffer from heavy crops. Rich harvest causes high competition among farmers which results in inelastic demand for some products. So, a big supply doesn't let farmers increase their income.
Now that you know how the elasticity of demand works and why it is so important, let's consider the factors influencing it.
Factors Affecting Price Elasticity of Demand
We'll uncover the 5 most important factors impacting the elasticity of demand.
Nature of the product. Conventionally we can classify all items into those which are necessary for our living, comfort goods, and luxury goods. Necessities include gas, electricity, higher education, and life-saving drugs, for example, insulin. These products and services are difficult to refuse and can't be replaced by any substitutes, so their elasticity of demand is very low, or they are inelastic. People can live for some time without comfort goods, such as refrigerators, which makes their elasticity higher. Finally, the elasticity of luxury goods, such as cars and jewelry, is high.
Availability of substitutes. The more substitutes a premium product has, the more price sensitive it becomes, as consumers look for a cheaper product. As a result, the demand for a premium product will decrease and the owner will have to lower prices.
Income level. It's vital to study not only the market and economic situation in the county but the income level of your consumers as well. People with higher incomes aren't as sensitive to price changes as people with low incomes. So, the elasticity of demand for those who earn more will be very low, whereas low-income groups will experience high elasticity of demand.
Part of the income spent on a product. The price elasticity of demand is generally low if consumers spend a small portion of their income on this product. For example, such goods as salt, soap, and matchboxes don't make a significant share of total consumers' expenditures, so the change in price for these products won't increase the elasticity of demand. On the other hand, more expensive goods, such as laptops, will have a higher elasticity of demand, since the cost of these goods is more tangible in the income of customers.
Time period. People don't like to change their buying habits and switch brands, that's why in short term the demand tends to be inelastic, however, in long term, clients will look for substitutes if the price continues to increase. This does not work with seasonal price fluctuations that consumers have long been accustomed to.
Now it’s time to find out how to calculate the price elasticity of demand for your business.
How to calculate the price elasticity of demand
The price elasticity allows us to find out how the price change affects the demand for a certain product. This measurement is shown as a percentage change in the volume of demand for some goods.
To calculate this measurement, follow the formula below.
The demand for the product is considered to be elastic if the price elasticity is higher than one. For, example if the price of your product increases by 2%, and sales decrease by 2.5%, the price elasticity of demand is 2.5%/2% = 1.25%.
If the product price elasticity of demand lowers, the less responsive the volume of demand is to the price change. If the demand is not sensitive to the price change, the demand is perfectly inelastic. As a result, a company can fix higher prices and get more income since people do not respond to the price change.
Congrats, now you know why price elasticity of demand is important and how to measure it, so you can forecast sales and make informed decisions.
POP marketing
POP (Point of Purchase) marketing is a strategy that entails clever placement of consumer products and aims at their promotion. It helps generate sales with the help of physical retail locations.
In this article, we’ll review the importance of POP marketing.
Why is POP marketing important?
Since the modern competitive environment requires companies to provide their target audience with a unique and personalized experience, many companies turn to floor graphics, shelf-talkers, and end caps in retail stores. They help present products to their audience and show their key benefits. Hence, the main advantage of point-of-purchase displays is consumers’ instant attention.
Different startupsuse POP marketing to gain a position in the market because this strategy helps interest store visitors and inform them about certain products. Various displays enable brands to stand out, deliver essential information, and locate products in the right way to build brand awareness.
Besides attention-grabbing features, displays help build a strong brand image. By using this technique, startups can obtain a customer base, increase brand awareness, and educate leadsabout their products. At the same time, well-established companies can reach new prospects, retain customers, and obtain customer loyalty. Well-placed displays entice consumers to make purchases and leave a long-term impression on them. Lastly, such displays encourage impulse buying, which increases sales volume.
To sum it up, POP displays bring several benefits to a business: they help catch a customer’s eye, strategically locate your products, and target impulse buyers. All these help create brand awareness, increase brand engagement, and boost sales, which results in higher profits.
Podcast marketing
Podcast marketing is a strategy that implies promoting and selling your product or service through audio content. It helps reach new audiences, tell the brand’s story, build authority, and encourage word-of-mouth marketing.
In this article, we’ll unveil the 13 reasons to use a podcast, review 5 effective strategies, and 3 marketing services. We’ll also find out ways to promote a podcast.
13 Reasons to Use a Podcast as a Marketing Tool
Over time, people change channels and ways of learning new information. They prefer the most convenient ways. As a result, companies should be ready to adapt. Today, podcasting is increasingly popular. According to statistics, 57% of Americans have listened to a podcast. In the last 3 years, the number of listeners increased by 29.5%. Companies’ teams create podcasts for educational purposes, become guests on reputable podcasts, or create ads and run them on podcasts.
Many people now choose podcasts instead of other marketing channels. They can receive valuable, informative, educational materials from experts and industry leaders. Here are some reasons to consider using a podcast for your brand:
a niche targeted audience;
high ROI;
huge product sales;
a wide base of listeners;
new geographics;
many referrals;
better page rankings;
lower competition;
brand awareness;
value for the audience;
community of interested people;
position of an expert;
organic traffic to social media and a site.
The reasons are clear, so let’s review 5 effective podcast marketing strategies.
5 Effective Podcast Marketing Strategies
Creating a podcast is only the first step. To attain success, you need to promote it using the appropriate strategies. We’ve prepared the most effective to engage the audience.
Develop a podcast landing page. Create a separate podcast landing page for the convenience of listeners. It should ensure that users focus on listening to the episodes of your podcast. Besides, the page should contain a clear headline that communicates the usefulness of your product. Describe your podcast and the benefits people will receive after listening to it. Provide a summary and highlight the podcast's key points to improve your pages' rankings, accessibility, and internal linking. Use automated podcast notes generator tools to create a summary without breaking a sweat. Also, make sure that the page includes working links to all published episodes. The process of creating a landing page with LIKE.TG is very simple and will take you around 15 to 20 minutes. You’ll easily design an amazing landing page for your podcast with the help of our drag and drop builder.
Record multiple episodes. If you are just starting your podcast, it’s essential to provide listeners with more than one episode. A relevant and engaging podcast will always encourage people to listen to several episodes one by one. To avoid frustration among your listeners and negative comments, get ready with 3 to 5 episodes of your podcast.
Work on an influencer marketing strategy. You can always ask opinion leaders for help. They are professionals in their field who managed to obtain the trust and love of people. Influencers have a high level of expertise in a certain field and can recommend credible companies. You need to find experts related to your podcast topics. Check whether they agree to promote your podcast release.
Make use of podcatchers. Podcatchers are apps that play different podcasts, which results in better awareness of your company and podcast. You can find many apps that introduce new podcasts to the audience. Your podcast can be the next. iOS, Castro, Podcast Addict, and the Podcast Republic are on the list of the most popular ones. So if you need some extra exposure and promotion, leverage these apps.
Think of paid ads. To drive traffic to your podcast website, you need paid ads. You can place them on social media or in paid search results. People searching for similar information will encounter the ad and discover your podcast. Paid ads bring real results in terms of traffic and the base of listeners.
The strategies are clear, let’s discover some ways to promote your podcast.
How to promote a podcast?
To get a wide audience, you need to inform people about your podcast. Start with the most simple yet effective ways of promotion. If you have no idea where to start, we’ll show. Check our list of proven methods that will help you.
Consider email marketing. Create a list of customers who might be interested in the information in your podcasts. Then, send email campaigns. Ensure to include the date of the first episode in your email newsletter. Those who find it useful will save the date. With LIKE.TG, you can create outstanding email campaigns informing about your podcast and schedule their send-out. This way, your email newsletter will bedelivered on time and to the right people.
Leverage social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are perfect for reaching new audiences. There are many options to draw listeners’ attention. You can publish a post on your social media account informing users about your podcast, create a video or story with its release date. If you have enough resources for promotion, you can consider paid ads. These effective tools will help you reach your target groups fast and bring more people to your podcast channel.
Conduct a giveaway. Giveaways help enhance your audience fast. By giving something useful for free, you earn an opportunity to get free promoters. You should interest new listeners with something really helpful and related to your company and podcast. For example, you can give users early access to some podcasts or a private consultation with an expert. Ask people to share news about your podcast with their subscribers on social media instead.
Now that you know the key ways to promote your newly created podcast, it’s time to discover the 3 podcast marketing services.
3 Podcast Marketing Services
A podcast is a powerful tool in the hands of experts. If you don’t have any experience, you can ask professionals for help. You can create everything you need with outstanding podcast marketing services. We’ll profile the 3 most popular companies-experts in podcasts.
Lower Street
Lower Street is a podcast production company that manages more than your audio. The team of professionals helps you build your podcast and add sound design and music. The company also takes care of the promo pieces, valuable show notes, and guide content. This podcast production company has a variety of services for you: podcast editing, private podcasting, podcast launch service, and more. You can request a free consultation if you need some accurate information about making podcasts with Lower Street. Podcast launch service costs $9,000. This price covers artwork design, show concept, trailer episode, host training, music, sonic identity, etc.
PodBean
PodBean is an excellent choice for people who seek to run, promote and monetarize their podcasts. The platform provides you with the necessary tools and intuitive navigation to publish your podcast and manage it. Also, you’ll have a schedule to post your podcasts on time. PodBean offers unlimited downloads, episodes, and recording time. The service provides users with a free plan with 5 hours storage space, 100GB monthly bandwidth, free themes, and a podcast site. The prices for the paid plans start at $14 per month and offer more options, such as unlimited storage space and bandwidth, pro themes, and advanced custom designs.
Pacific Content
Pacific Content helps customers connect with broad audiences through podcasts. This company has already created compelling audio stories for different brands. Pacific Content’s team consists of podcast production, marketing, distribution, and sound design professionals. They are passionate about creating branded podcasts and a strategy for their promotion. With your assistance, the company can record any type of podcast you need, either educational or entertaining. This brand offers the following services: podcast development, production, and distribution, audience development, and podcast brand strategy. You can contact Pacific Content to inquire about the approximate price.
So, podcast marketing is worth considering if you strive to provide listeners with valuable and educational information. With a podcast, you’ll be able to build a strong base of listeners and introduce your product.
Popup builder
A popup builder is a plugin that enables a company to add popups to its website. It empowers businesses to design promotional and informative popups and place them on sites to improve conversions and increase sales.
In this video, George, a product manager at LIKE.TG, explains how to create free smart pop-ups without coding skills.
In this article, we’ll unveil why you need a popup builder and review the three best platforms for you to consider.
Why do you need a popup builder?
Today, online advertising evolves and brings advantages to business owners. Popups help you get new subscribers, encourage customers to complete the checkout process, provide visitors with coupons, and update them on your limited-time offers. This way, you can boost sales and increase revenue. However, building popups isn’t an easy task. You need to have coding skills and knowledge to add popup windows to your eCommerce website.
If you don’t have the necessary skills, looking for a no-coding popup builder is a great decision. Since builders don’t require coding skills, you can create popups with a drag-and-drop editor. Consider designing your popup from scratch by dragging and dropping the necessary elements into the editor’s field. If you don’t want to waste time building a new popup, choose one of the ready-to-go templates. Select the most suitable for your industry and edit it based on your needs and your brand’s style. You can tailor your popup to look attractive to your leads and encourage them to act.
Creating popups with a builder empowers you to automate communication with site visitors. Popups enable you to catch users’ attention, improve conversion rates, customize your message, and show your brand from the best perspective. Popup builders help you to craft different scenarios for various interactions with prospects. Display conditions allow you to adjust your messages based on visitors’ activity on your website.
Now that you know why to use a popup builder, it’s time to proceed to the next section to review the 3 best ones. With their help, you’ll build popups within minutes.
3 Best Popup Builders
In this section, we’ll review the three best services for designing popups without any coding skills. These platforms are best in terms of usability, pricing, and features. Let’s dive in to choose the best one for your business goals.
LIKE.TG
LIKE.TG is a multi-channel marketing platform that empowers startups and large enterprises to build communication with customers and automate sales. Its smart popup builder allows you to collect site visitors’ data and turn them into customers. LIKE.TG’s library has 30 free templates that suit various events and activities. You can choose an appropriate template and set it up in around 10 minutes.
LIKE.TG’s popup builder enables you to automate communication with prospects by developing different scenarios. The builder also takes into account prospects’ behavior. Display conditions allow you to craft your communication with potential clients based on their actions on your website. Personalize your message based on the actions users perform on your website. For instance, you can identify users’ browsers or the time they visit your website. Afterward, you can make well-informed decisions on the content of your personalized messages. LIKE.TG offers you 22 scenarios that you can combine. This way, you’ll be able to gather all your efforts and focus on collecting prospects.
With the help of the editor, you can create an attractive and catchy message. Add a message based on the purpose of your pop-up. It can help you collect customer information, update on new arrivals, and inform about sales.
If you want to design popups with LIKE.TG, you need to register first.
Once you log in, you need to click “Pop-ups” and proceed to “Create project.” The service will provide you with two options: design pop-ups for your site created with LIKE.TG and an external site.
Choose a popup template that best suits your business purpose. You can change the appearance of your popup based on your needs and requirements.
Personalize your popup by adding a targeted message.
After you write the main message of your popup, select the target action.
Afterward, set up a scenario for your popup. To do it, proceed to the “Targeting” tab and choose the display conditions you need. Visitors will see the widget when they perform an action you set up. Select one of the conditions listed to determine when users will see your popup message. The screenshot below shows the popup will appear once a prospect scrolls more than 50% of your website.
If you need to combine several operations, click “Add condition.” This way, you can target qualified leads with popups. For instance, you can reach people interested in your product and likely to purchase it.
Finally, choose a name for your popup. Click “Edit” right near your automatically generated popup name.
As you can see, the process is simple and fast, so you can do it without the developer’s help. The interface is user-friendly, and you’ll get used to it within seconds.
LIKE.TG has two plans: “Free” and “Standard.” The free plan covers 10,000 unique visitors per month, 3 projects, 10 active pop-ups per project, and 1 domain per project. The paid plan has more features and includes the following features: unlimited projects and popups, 10 domains per project, webhooks, Google Analytics, and lead location data. You need to pay $8 monthly for 10,000 unique visitors.
Popupsmart
Popupsmart’s no-code popup builder empowers you to collect data for your email list, interact with users, and boost sales. The platform allows you to choose different scenarios and events your company wants to showcase to users. If you have problems with converting users into customers, the service will help you do it faster with popups. With Poupsmart, you can develop recommendations, special offers, and cart abandonment pop-ups within five minutes and increase conversions. You can add any message to your popup to win more deals, redirect users to converting web pages, and provide potential customers with coupons.
This marketing solution takes care of your conversions and helps reduce customer acquisition costs. The platform’s popups have exit-intent triggers that react to the users’ cursors and prevent them from leaving your website. Scroll triggers enable you to share the popup only when visitors explore the necessary percentage of a web page. Moreover, Popupsmart provides you with real-time analytics, in-activity sensors, geo-located targeting, and many more.
To create a popup, you need to select your business goal and choose a template. Once you finish with the template, proceed to the next step by clicking “Next to Customize.” At this step, you’ll be able to edit your template based on your needs.
Tailor the message of your popup based on the requirements. Consider modifying the general appearance of your popup widget. Change headline, font, image, etc.
After customizing the popup, you need to select the time to display the teaser and on-screen position. Click “Next to Target” to proceed.
You can use artificial intelligence or manual segmentation to set up when your popup will be visible to visitors. Consider scheduling the time, targeting the right audience segments, choosing the location, determining visitor behavior, etc.
For instance, you can set the minimum time a user should spend to see your popup. Click “Next to Publish” to set up your ready popup.
Verify your company website, add Google Analytics, set up respondent email notifications, and popup button creator, if needed.
The service has a free plan and three paid plans. A free plan allows you to develop one popup. Pro and Expert plans enable you to create unlimited popups for your business and use all features to design them.
Wisepops
Wisepops allows you to turn your site visitors into clients. The platform’s contextual pop-ups help you interact with users at the right moment and provide them with personalized messages. Since notifications are non-intrusive, they won’t make visitors leave your site. On the contrary, they will be able to learn more about your brand and explore topics that interest them.
With Wisepops’ no code builder, you don’t need any skills or knowledge in coding. You can design a professional popup by applying a ready-to-use template, dragging and dropping the necessary elements, and crafting the message based on your client’s behavior. Targeting features enable you to split your prospects into segments and reach them at the perfect time. Once you finish creating your popup and placing it on your website, you can use one-click A/B testing. This feature helps you see the effectiveness of your campaign and make improvements on the go.
Before creating a popup in Wisepops, you need to select your key goal first.
Once you decide on a goal, you should choose the way to attain this goal.
Afterward, you can start the process of development by choosing the template. During the design stage, you can drag and drop the necessary blocks, change the time of the display, select the most suitable style, set triggers, and schedule your campaign.
The platform allows you to try the service for free and purchase a paid plan. A paid plan costs $99 and covers 60+ ready-to-go templates, unlimited campaigns and users, advanced Shopify integration, gamification and exit intent popups, personalization, and more.
Congrats, now you know what a popup builder is and why it’s essential. Consider using one of the listed platforms to attract more customers while spending minimum resources on lead generation.
Potential market
A potential market is a market you haven’t reached that covers people interested in the product, but not yet buyers. If a brand expands its products, it can attract and attain new demographics that aren’t customers now.
In this article, we’ll unveil why a potential market is essential and uncover how you identify it.
Why is a potential market important?
A potential market is crucial when a company expands its product line or customer base. A brand can continue reaching its current customers and target new demographic groups to increase sales and profits.
The accurately identified potential market enables you to
outline the future of your business growth and new demographic groups;
choose strategies for your company to expand and reach more people;
demonstrate the potential of your brand to partners and encourage them to invest;
increase customer base;
boost sales;
increase profits;
develop a plan that will cover the changes in the economy and market to adapt fast.
When identifying a potential market, an entrepreneur can estimate the investments a business needs. A brand can figure out the size of a potential market and decide whether it’s worth allocating a budget to it. For instance, if a segment of interested consumers is small, it’s better not to put much effort into it because it won't bring the desired result. However, if the market is large, business owners consider investing and developing a strategy.
You can develop a new product, improve an existing one, or modify it to meet the needs of a bigger target audience. Consider calculating potential profits to make sure that they will cover your expenses and have a high ROI.
Now that you know why a potential market is essential, let’s explore the ways to identify your potential market.
How do you identify a potential market?
Entering a new market is an essential step for every constantly expanding business. If you have a business and you plan to grow it in the future, you need to outline your potential market. This way, you’ll be ready with a product, strategy, promotion, and marketing to meet the needs and desires of a demographic group different from yours. In this section, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide on what to do when you want to identify your potential market.
Pay attention to every demographic group you offer your products to. To find your potential market, you need to explore every audience segment you sell products to and those who aren’t your customers. Identify each group and find out what they have in common. Your task is to discover their needs, requirements, desires, preferences, and life situations in which your product can become a solution.
Answer specific questions related to the potential market. There are several crucial questions you should ask yourself before you can identify your potential market. Together with your team, think of the products your existing customers might need in the future, what items they need now, and what demographic groups can also be interested in your product. Moreover, you need to identify the characteristics your potential and current customers share. Afterward, consider the things the new customers have in common.
Find ways to target new markets. Once you answer the questions, you’ll find a way to reach your new target market. You’ll be ready with your unique selling proposition, marketing strategy, and promotion techniques to help you win new consumers. For example, if you sell baby products, you can sell them not only to parents but also to grandparents and children's facilities. Besides, consider producing children's products for different age groups.
Develop a marketing strategy. After identifying your potential market, prepare new strategies to establish connections with potential clients. Having several target markets means coming up with marketing approaches that will help you build trusting relationships and drive interest. Your offer and message should be personalized and crafted to the needs of your audience segment. This way, you’ll be able to attain your business goals. LIKE.TG enables you to craft and send your message through the most popular communication channels. With its help, you can design personalized email campaigns, web push notifications, and chatbots. Moreover, you can create a landing page to reach a wide audience of potential clients.
Create buyer personas. Develop a customer profile for your potential market. You should show your care to potential and current clients. An accurate buyer persona will cover the main points such as demographic information, preferred communication channels, ways they shop (in-store or online), pain points, struggles, concerns, the things that matter for them, and appropriate language for communication. Later, you’ll use this information to create relevant messages, outline a budget, and select the most suitable marketing channels.
Congrats, now you know what a potential market is and why it’s essential. Hope that our guide will come in handy when you decide to identify your potential market.
Podcast advertising
Podcast advertising is a live-read 15 to 60 seconds audio ad a customer can hear in pauses of podcasts. It helps earn people’s trust, reach wide audiences, increase ROI, and promote products.
In this article, we’ll unveil the benefits and examples of podcast advertising. We’ll also figure out how it works and how to measure the performance.
Benefits of Podcast Advertising
People listen to podcasts on road trips, during exercises, or when they get ready for work. It’s a convenient, informative, useful, and exciting way to spend free time. The most popular shows in the US demonstrate excellent results since they have high numbers of views, reviews, and comments. Millions of people listen to podcasts, so why not use this channel for promotional purposes. According to statistics, 67% of podcast listeners perceive ads positively. Many people also say that they trust ads on podcasts more than other types of advertising. If listeners trust the podcast and ads on it, it means that they can explore brands and consider purchasing some useful products.
Podcast advertising is a new yet effective method to briefly tell listeners about your product’s value, discounts, promos, personal experiences, etc. If you do everything right, you’ll gain trust, enhance your target audience, reach new target groups, and promote products. Besides, this type of advertising provides you with warm leads. They are more likely to buy from your brand. You get better conversion rates and improve ROI. With the help of ads, people have the chance to listen to their favorite channels for free. You’ve probably listened to music and podcasts for free on Spotify. So, people positively perceive various ads.
You can make use of different podcasting platforms to advertise your product. iHeartRadio, Spotify, and PRX have millions of listeners and many advertising capabilities for your company. They will help you gain trust, enhance your customer base, and increase revenues.
Now that you know the pros, it’s time to jump into the process itself. In the next section, we’ll review how podcast advertising works.
How does podcast advertising work?
With programmatic audio, businesses can establish a special connection with the audience. An ad on a podcast is usually short audio the placement of which is similar to a video. Listeners can encounter ads on podcasts at the beginning, middle, and end of an episode. People perceive ads on podcasts better than those on other channels. This means that your company can achieve the necessary goals. According to statistics, 54% of people are more likely to buy from a company they heard about on a podcast.
Podcasting hosts insert ads that are 15-60 seconds in length in the podcasts episodes. The price of the ad spot depends on the reach, audio length, impressions, and downloads.
You are aware of the process now, so it’s time to figure out how to advertise on podcasts.
How to advertise on podcasts?
There are several rules you should follow to place ads on podcasts. We’ve prepared you a list of to-dos to ensure that the process goes smoothly. So let’s explore them.
Consider demographics. Unlike TV shows, podcasts don’t drive the attention of different audiences. However, you’ll get an excellent opportunity to target educated people seeking new information on podcasts. With podcast ads, you have a great chance to focus on the most active audience — millennials. They are in the perfect age, income, and education group. These people can show interest in your product and afford to buy it.
Be aware of the pricing. To avoid misunderstandings and overpricing when paying for a podcast ad slot, you should understand the basic pricing. Although you might think that some platforms can charge you much more than you expect, it’s not like that. The majority of podcast hosts use the same pricing principles. These networks apply the same formula to estimate the approximate cost of an ad slot. Some websites even offer a calculator for you to estimate the price of an ad slot.
Choose a podcast that meets your expectations. If you want your ad to be successful and attract people who might be your potential customers, you should be wise in your choice. Select a podcast that aligns with your product. There are many podcasts and opportunities to connect with niche audiences. Your task is to place your ad in the right episode to be more natural and related to the topic.
Choose several podcasts to advertise your ad. There’s no need to invest your money in one expensive podcast. It’s better to select the most suitable and popular podcasts to place ads on. Remember, although major podcasts have millions of listeners, they won’t recollect your brand if they hear your ad once. You’ll need to play your ad several times, and finally, you’ll have a huge total cost. If the ad doesn’t work, you’ll lose big money and the possibility to reach people and boost ROI. Several ads on smaller podcasts will bring you prospects and conversions.
Identify the most suitable type of ad for your product. Podcast ads can be different. You can purchase a native ad and play it in the beginning, middle, or end of the episode or ask producers to create sponsored content. The podcast host can even read the ad at the most appropriate moment during the episode. It depends on your budget, preferences, and end goals.
Now you know how to advertise on podcasts, so it’s time to unveil how to assess the performance.
How to measure the performance of podcast advertising?
An impression is a major metric you can measure the performance of your ad. In the case of podcasts, it depends on the number of downloads — the more downloads of the episode with your ad, the better the performance. For instance, if the podcast’s episode was downloaded 230,000, it signifies that your ad got 230,000 impressions. Then, you can assess whether the results meet your initial expectations or not.
You can also measure the performance with promo codes. You can share different promo codes in different episodes and see whether people come to purchase and use the code to get a discount or a gift. This way, you’ll capture which podcasts and episodes are the most effective. In addition to promo codes, you can use “How did you know about our brand?” questions. If customers come from podcasts, they’ll let you know.
It’s time to figure out the price of a podcast ad slot.
How much does podcast advertising cost?
The price of the podcast ad spot depends on the platform you’ll use, the ad length, and the ad type. Podcast advertising has its pricing structure you should be aware of to calculate the approximate cost of your ad per day, month, year, etc. Different platforms can apply either cost per mille or cost per acquisition rate to sell ad spots on their websites. The first one relies on the cost you’ll pay for 1,000 impressions or downloads. The second one is the price you’ll pay to obtain one new client.
According to Advertise Cast, a 30-second ad cost per mille will cost you $18 while a 60-second ad cost per mille — $25. The market of podcast hosting services is vast, and you’ll find a place for your ad in accordance with your budget and needs. In general, a basic platform will charge you $100-$500 for an ad spot. However, popular podcasting hosts with a huge listeners base may cost you more than $2,000. Your task is to conduct research and identify podcasts that meet your business goals and fee expectations.
Now you know the approximate price of an ad spot, so let’s grab some inspiration from examples.
Examples of Podcast Advertising
You can hear dozens of ads while listening to a podcast driving to work or back home. They are unique and designed to reach and resonate with their audience. It’s time for you to find out how to do it with podcast ads.
The Adam Dr. Drew Show and EightSleep
For the podcast, the most important thing is to smoothly lead to the ad. The Adam Dr. Drew Show did it well with the EightSleep promotion. First, the host started with the importance of mental health and then concluded that it’s affected by different factors. Dr. Drew mentions good sleep and all the necessary components. Here comes EightSleep, a company that sells smart mattresses. This is a perfect solution for people who care about their sleep and mental health.
Gimlet Media and Toyota RAV4
The famous manufacturer of cars prefers to use native ads on Gimlet podcasts. The ad is only 30-seconds in length yet informative. The narrator describes all the advantages of buying such a car. The car’s unique features make the driver safe and comfortable. The ad doesn’t include any specifications and podcast’s name so it can be used for several podcasts and platforms.
Podcast advertising is a new and effective way to gain the audience’s trust and increase conversions. As more and more people join podcasts, you’ll be among those who successfully implemented the strategy and see visible results.
Persuasive advertising
Persuasive advertising is a type of advertising that appeals to customers’ needs and wants and aims at selling a product or service. It implies using different methods to communicate the benefits of a product and convince people to buy it.
In this article, we’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of persuasive advertising and make the difference between persuasive and informative advertising clear. Next, we’ll uncover some techniques an example of this strategy.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Persuasive Advertising
Persuasive advertising, like any other type of advertising, has bothbenefits and drawbacks. Let’s now consider all of them to understand how it works and realize thepros a company can obtain. First and foremost, this strategy sticks to a customer-centric approach, meaning that a company focuses on making customers satisfied and tries to meet their individual needs.
Secondly, the strategy is always based on arguments supporting a product’s value and persuading customers that it can solve their problems. It helps convince consumers to purchase a certain product based on its quality, value, features, or benefits. As a result, businesses succeed in establishing credibility and trustin their products.
Persuasive advertising influences buyers through emotions, needs, and desires. Customers choose specific brands because of the way they feel about their products. The right approach and the reasons for people to purchase a particular product create a connection between a customer and a brand and establish a strong relationship between them, which results in brand loyalty.
However, this type of advertising also has several disadvantages:
the impersonal character of advertising;
dissatisfied consumers;
sometimes a deceptive picture of products;
customer churn.
Now when you are acquainted with the pros and cons of persuasive advertising, let’s talk about persuasive and informative ads since sometimes it’s difficult todifferentiatebetween the two.
Persuasive Advertising vs. Informative Advertising
Although both types help companies communicate the strength of their products and services, they are used in different situations and represent different strategies. Let’s review both in more detail to see the difference.
Persuasive advertising is a type of advertising that implies convincing customers and making them believe that a product or service is worth buying. With these types of ads, marketers appeal to emotions. Since facts and figures aren’t always enough to persuadea specifictarget audience, many brands try to establish emotional connections, which helps encourage consumers to purchase.
Informative advertising is a type of advertising that encompasses companies using facts and figures to communicate the benefits of products to their target audience. Brands share truthful information about their products or services to highlight their value, benefits, and features with a minimal appeal to customers’ emotions. After obtaining accurate information about a certain good, a customer decides whether to buy it or not. Check out our article to explore informative advertising in more detail.
Simply put, the main difference is that persuasive advertising relies on emotions, whereas informative advertisingis based on truthful facts and statistics.
Nowthat the differencebetween the two strategies is clear, let’s jump to persuasive advertising techniques.
4Persuasive Advertising Techniques
You can use different techniques to implement the strategyfor your business. Here aresome of the most effective persuasive advertising tactics:
Emotional appeal. When using this technique, brands try to evoke a particular type of emotions in customers. It can be happiness, satisfaction, surprise, joy, interest, or sadness. This way, companies can make consumers not use rational thinking but rather rely on their emotions at the very moment. As a result, clientsmake impulse purchases and bring companies more revenue.
The carrot and the stick. Brands try to provide customers withcontrasting sensations. An ad that uses the carrot principle includes the product’s values and benefitsto cheer up consumers. It makes them feel hopeful that a certain product can bring a solution to their problem. However, some ads focus on the stick principle. In this case, brands highlight negative aspects and dangers that can emerge ifcustomers don’t buy a certain product.
Scarcity principle. The principle focuses on people’s wants to have something unique and original. The technique is used to approach customers who pay attention to rare products or experiences. It works because people can feel more powerful when owning something extraordinary others don’t possess. Brands that implement the strategy in their ads include phrases like “limited availability” or “exclusive offer” to increase customer demand and evoke the fear of missing out.
Celebrity association. By attracting opinion leaders to their products’ advertising, companies create associations with them and increase customer engagement. Celebrities can add value to your product and make it more desirable among consumers.
Now let’s take a closer look at the example of persuasive advertising.
Example of Persuasive Advertising
The famous ketchup producer decided to establish an emotional connection with customers by including the English singer Ed Sheeran in its ad.The commercial is simple, funny, and light, and it helps connect with the target audience and evoke positive emotions that customers will associate with the brand. The singer, who became the ad’s main character, can also attract his fans to the well-established brand.
To conclude, persuasive ads allow companies to effectively promote their products and encourage people to buy.Try implementing some of the persuasive advertising tactics to establish a solid and long-lasting relationship with your audience!
