The Most Important Fundamentals for Marketing a Product

If you have a product you want to sell, you will likely need to devise a strategy to market and advertise it. Otherwise, people may not know that your product exists, or they may not understand why it is so favorable to purchase. However, if you’re relatively new to the world of marketing, you may not know where to begin with a product marketing strategy. This guide will cover some of the most important fundamentals for marketing a product.

Key Fundamentals for Marketing a Product

Brand

The product is going to get the spotlight in most of your advertising efforts, but before you can market it successfully, you need to understand the brand behind it. Depending on what you’re trying to sell, you may need to consider your company’s brand overall, as well as the brand of your individual product.

In both cases, the brand is going to give people a sense of how your organization operates, what your values are, and what type of experience they might get from purchasing your product.

If you have a strong brand in place, it is going to become much easier to market your product. You can draw inspiration from the foundational elements of your brand, and use your brand to make your messaging even more effective.

Price

If someone can’t afford what you are offering, they are not going to buy it. And similarly, even if they can afford it, if the price is too high, they are going to balk at it and find an alternative.

For example, if a rental property is too expensive, people are simply going to look for another one, typically without even touring or seriously considering the rental property. Setting an appropriate price can be challenging, but it is indispensable if you want your marketing strategy to be effective.

Obviously, your company is going to need to make a profit if it is going to survive, but you also can’t afford to turn customers away. Research as much as possible to learn what an appropriate price might be for your product. Consider your competition, your target audience, the economic landscape, and your geographic targets as well.

Audience

You need to know who your target audience is and how they think if you want your marketing strategy to work. Otherwise, your messaging won’t be relevant, and you may not be able to make a persuasive impact. You can start by researching your most important target demographics so you can better understand their values, their perspectives, and the qualities that make them unique. From there, you can devise customer personas and use them to inspire and shape your marketing messaging.

As you develop your product marketing strategy, you will also want to use surveys, focus groups, and other research tools to better understand how your most important segments are responding to your messaging. Be willing to make adjustments so you can better appeal to them.

Core Features and Benefits

Product marketing also requires you to highlight the core features and benefits of your product. What is it about your product that makes it worth purchasing? How is it going to impact the life of the person purchasing it? What problems is it going to solve? Why is it worth the money? You will need to highlight these as concisely and clearly as possible, so the average person can get a feel for the relative value of the product before buying it.

Competitive Differentiation

Chances are, your product has some competition. And if you want your product to stand out, you will need to find a way to differentiate it. Research your competitors in this space and figure out what makes your product unique from theirs. Why is yours better? Is it the price, the appearance, the functionality, or some specific feature that your competitors can’t replicate? Make sure this unique advantage is prominent in all your marketing and advertising messaging.

Placement

you will also need to consider where you place your product. In other words, where will people be able to buy it? Depending on the nature of your product, you may need to consider physical retail stores, online marketplaces, and other outlets in addition to your own website. Each distribution channel is going to come with advantages and disadvantages, so do your research carefully.

Promotion

Finally, you will need to consider the promotional channels you integrate into your marketing strategy. These days, there are a lot of them.

These are some of the most popular examples:

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is still one of the strongest strategies for making your product visible, and it is more accessible than ever, thanks to pay per click (PPC) advertising. It is somewhat more expensive upfront than other strategies, but it can practically guarantee traffic to your website and often carries a respectable ROI.

Cross-Promotional Efforts

You can also work with other brands or personalities for cross-promotional campaigns. Combining the visibility and showcasing the best of both brands can be mutually beneficial.

SEO

SEO is all about increasing your visibility in search engines, where many people discover products and do research as a primary channel. It takes time to see results, but it is relatively inexpensive and has a practically unlimited ROI in the long term. Do not just think about internet browsers as search engines. Social media like TikTok is quickly becoming a top search engine for consumers.

Content Marketing

Content marketing goes hand in hand with SEO, because they often utilize the same types of assets for similar end goals. Again, it can be inexpensive and potentially very powerful, but it takes time to build momentum and an inventory of content.

Social Media

Organic social media posting and community building can also be highly beneficial, but you will need a clear and focused strategy to make it work. It is very attractive due to its low barriers to entry, but you will have a lot of competition to contend with.

As you can see, each promotional channel has something unique to offer.

It is impossible to make a comprehensive guide to product marketing in a relatively short article like this. However, these fundamentals should get you started with the basics and set you on the right path for effectively marketing your most important products.