How to market your product: 5 essential steps

You’ve created a new product. You know it’s the answer to your audience’s problems. And you know it’s going to sell. 

But as of now, your potential customers still don’t know your product exists. And while you can rely on word-of-mouth for a few sales, you know that your product deserves wider adoption and acclaim. This is where marketing comes in. 

Until recently, marketing your product might have been the last thing on your mind. If that’s the case, you’re not alone. As Joan Schneider and Julie Hall wrote in Harvard Business Review, many companies are “so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them.”

Even if marketing your new product means building a new audience entirely from scratch, never fear. Developing a solid product launch strategy and marketing plan will help you figure out what needs doing—and get the word out. 

Here are five important steps when it comes to marketing a brand new product:

1. Learn about and define your audience

2. Set goals to measure success

3. Build buzz about your product

4. Host (virtual or live) events

5. Leverage customer testimonials

1. Learn about and define your audience

First things first: decide who you’re selling to. Who is your target audience and potential customer? Is it Sophie from London, a 26-year-old who works at a small ad agency? Or 43-year-old Mark from California who teaches high school students? Is it both?

If your product is consumer-facing, you might focus on demographics (like age, gender, income, location, or interests)—this will help you create targeted content and ads. If your product is B2B, you might define audience firmographics (like company size, job title, or industry).

Market research

Another early step in learning the nuances and characteristics of your target audience: Conduct market research. This can be a complex, expensive process, or a lighter-weight, simpler effort. 

If you can afford it, conduct a focus group. This may a group of half a dozen to a dozen people in your target demographics or firmographics who can give you feedback on your new product. 

If you can’t conduct a focus group or don’t have time, there are still plenty of ways to research what people in your target groups are saying. Comb through public platforms like Redddit and Quora, read through social media groups in your industry or target areas (Facebook and LInkedIn groups can be a gold mine, for different reasons) and take notes on your target customers’ thoughts and preferences. Understanding your potential customers’ tendencies and perspectives will help you craft more resonant content.

Study your existing customers (if you have them)

One way to figure out = your potential new customers is to study the customers you already have. 

Let’s say you’re launching an automated cocktail mixer inside a company that sells other kitchen gadgets. Your best bet for identifying new customers is to gather existing data from sales and customer service teams. 

Ask your team and yourself:

• Who are your most profitable, most loyal, or most active customers?

• What characteristics do these customers share?

• Why are they using your product or service? What are their biggest challenges?

• What might they be interested in next?

Create buyer personas

Next, develop user personas (Airtable has a persona tracking template for this)  to help understand the people you’re trying to reach. From their demographics to their pain points and desires, make your audience personas as detailed as possible. Use the data from market research and study your existing customers to fill in the gaps. 

Develop a positioning document

And finally, create a positioning statement that clearly answers specific questions about your product and customers in order to align internal teams and stakeholders.

• What does the product do? What problems does it solve?

• Who are your competitors? How is your product different than theirs?

• How can you back up your claims with data, testimonials, or other proof points? 

You can use Airtable to automate your system for tracking your competitors. 

 2. Set goals to measure success

It’s important that stakeholders and internal teams set tangible and realistic KPIs (key performance indicators) to help measure the success of your marketing. The acronym SMART comes in handy when hammering out those goals.

SMART stands for:

Specific: Your goals should be specific for both the revenue you’re looking to generate and any other measures, like email newsletter signups, traffic to a website, clicks, likes, or engagement. For example, “increase lead form inquiries by 20%” or “grow a high-quality email list.”

Measurable: Define the KPIs you’ll use to measure the success of your goals. If your goal is “increase lead form inquiries,” your KPI should state the exact number of leads you want to gather by a certain date. 

Achievable: Aim high when making goals, but also make sure your goals are achievable given your resources and time constraints. 

Realistic: In some ways similar to achievability, this test makes sure that your marketing goals tie back to your business vision and goals as a whole. Is it realistic for a company like yours to shoot for such a goal? 

Time-bound: All your product marketing goals must have a deadline. For example, “generate 1,000 qualified leads” is a good start, but “generate 1,000 qualified leads by the end of Q1” is far clearer. 

While you’re setting these goals, don’t forget to check them against your product roadmap to make sure big-picture goals are aligned, and all team members are held accountable for their assigned tasks.

3. Build buzz about your product

Creating some preliminary excitement in the days and weeks before you launch your product will help you garner more attention and leads in the end. Even big brands like Apple and Microsoft, who can generate buzz just by blinking, dedicate major resources to building pre-launch excitement.

Here are a few ideas to attract attention: 

• Run paid social media ads aimed at your target audience.

• Build a simple landing page with a countdown to the launch, plus an email sign-up for updates and/or an introductory offer.

• Reach out to influencers, bloggers and reporters to discuss your product or service before its release. 

• Make it clear that you’re accepting preorders for your product, to further build excitement.

• Try invitation-only access to your product or service, to create a sense of exclusivity and urgency around your offering.

4. Host (virtual or live) events

Nearly three quarters of event attendees say they have a more positive opinion of a company, brand, or product after an event. 

Physical and virtual events are great for building loyalty for your product or service.  And marketers are quickly catching on to that. In fact, some 85% of leaders believe in-person events are essential to their company’s success. 

If it’s safe to host in-person events in your area, and your audience feels comfortable socializing, go for it. Outdoor events are a great option—even in cold weather, you can make sure of heat lamps and encourage attendees to dress warmly. 

If you or your audience feels better about virtual events, rest assured they can be similarly powerful for marketing purposes. While 97% of event marketers believe we will see more hybrid events in 2021, 93% of event marketers plan to invest in virtual events moving forward.

In fact, virtual events have plenty of perks, especially for smaller and newer companies. 

In the virtual world, there are very few limits on your attendee numbers, your costs will be dramatically lowered, and your attendees can join from anywhere in the world. If you can garner enough virtual event registrants, research shows that over half of them will turn into attendees. 

Just remember: a virtual event is not just a chance to sell yourself, but is also an opportunity to learn about and engage with your target audience.

5. Leverage customer testimonials

People love reviews. A whopping 92% of customers read online reviews before buying, and 72% say positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business. Leveraging customer testimonials can easily turn your product launch into a raving success. But how do you get reviews if you haven’t launched your product yet?

A few ideas:

• Launch your product in beta and collect reviews and testimonials from your beta users.

• Give early access to industry influencers in exchange for their feedback and public reviews

• Build credibility for your company, if not the product itself, with customer reviews for your previous products

These testimonials can also be used in promotional ads, social media marketing content, video content, or other ways. You can also offer an incentive, like free access to your new product, to existing customers who send you testimonials. 

Keep your marketing campaigns coordinated

Whether you’re marketing a brand new product, or refreshing an ongoing campaign, successful product marketing involves a lot of moving pieces. Check out these templates to keep your next campaign on track:

• Airtable’s robust and easy-to-use product launch templates can help you track feature development, launch goals, and marketing plans. 

• The Airtable content calendar template can help you plan and organize all social media content surrounding your product launch, and track the results too. 

Planning an event for your new product launch? Our event planning templates are an excellent place to start.