In this article, we will analyze the peculiarities of promoting an innovative product online. We will consider the most effective channels to use. In this article, you will find recommendations from the digital marketer Julia Goncharenko.
What We Understand By an Innovative Product
An innovative product is the result of innovative activity, taking the form of an innovation or innovations that, upon practical implementation, become subject to commercialization. Essentially, it holds significant development potential, yet its realization entails specific risks.
Under such circumstances, the marketing complex, its development, and realization require special attention.
When the marketing complex is developed concerning an innovative product, it should be understood that it can become one of the decisive factors in the competitive struggle for consumers. The process of forming a marketing mix itself entails the necessity for the following initiatives:
- Analyzing the market and determining the need for innovation (innovative product).
- Formulating the concept of the innovative product, encompassing its form, packaging, name, and more.
- Unlike traditional marketing, the marketing complex of an innovative product should primarily focus on the effective realization of the innovation itself.
Regarding the marketing complex of an innovative product, the innovative product itself plays a crucial role. However, creating an innovative product is not enough; it must also be presented appealingly and effectively communicate the benefits of its use to consumers.
Stages of Promoting an Innovative Product
An effective strategy for online promotion is always built on a comprehensive approach, considering the following crucial steps:
- Studying the target audience and its needs: Understanding the needs of your target audience is the initial step towards a successful strategy. It is essential not only to understand your customers but also to comprehend the reasons for some companies rejecting collaboration. Analyzing these refusals can help in enhancing your product or sales methods.
- Segmenting your customer base: If you already possess a customer base, divide it into different segments, taking into account variations in consumer habits, geography, and other parameters. This approach will enable the discovery of new businesses with similar characteristics and the development of customized strategies to engage with each group.
- Creating a map of your target audience and offerings: Construct a detailed map of your target audience, delineate their needs, and devise specific offers for each of them. Construct a sales funnel, monitoring the stages from no need to payment and long-term engagement.
- Highlighting product features: The most crucial aspect of introducing innovative products lies in highlighting their features. The features of an innovative product showcase its significance in the market.
- Conducting competitor analysis: Investigate the products and online behavior of competitors, identifying their strengths and weaknesses.
- Identifying online platforms for the target audience: Analyze the online platforms frequented by your target audience.
- Launching promotional campaigns and creating communities: Based on the analysis, select the appropriate promotional channels and initiate advertising campaigns or establish communities according to their specific characteristics.
- Constant monitoring and optimization: It is imperative to continuously monitor results and optimize campaigns based on analytics. This includes adding negative keywords, segmenting users, and modifying creatives and offers.
It is essential to remember that online promotion should be multi-channel. Relying solely on one platform and investing your entire advertising budget in it might not yield effective results.
Different digital channels can operate in parallel or in synergy, attracting customers from diverse resources and amplifying the inflow of customers.
Analyzing the Target Audience
Before commencing the process of promoting an innovative product, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the target audience. This involves studying the needs and preferences of potential consumers, as well as identifying the primary issues that the innovative product can resolve.
The research will aid in creating more precise marketing strategies and customizing the product to meet the demands of the target audience.
Channels for Online Promotion
SEO Optimization of the Site
Search engine optimization is a powerful tool that influences the position of your website in organic search engine results. To ensure your website appears in the top search results, you need to focus on the following key aspects:
- Quality unique content: Your content should provide informative and valuable information to users. If the information on your site lacks value or duplicates competitors' content, users may quickly leave the page, negatively impacting behavioral factors such as bounce rates and time on site.
- Optimal keyword selection: Carefully select keywords and phrases that best match the search queries of your target audience. Choosing the right keywords helps attract potential customers through search engines.
- Setting up meta tags and link structure: Effective SEO optimization involves working on meta tags, internal and external links, sitemaps, and other technical elements that help search engines understand and rank your content.
SEO optimization is a time-consuming process, but when done correctly, it can elevate your website in search results, surpassing your competitors. It is a cost-effective promotion method, as search engines do not charge for organic promotion, except for the payment of an SEO specialist's salary.
Separate search queries into commercial and informational categories. Commercial queries containing the words "buy" or "order" are linked to users' intentions to make a purchase.
Informational queries are those not directly related to a purchase, as users are seeking information or solutions to their problems.
For commercial queries:
- Site Structure: Design and establish a clear site structure, including landing pages that can attract traffic. Innovative products often attract low-frequency traffic, so websites with multiple pages optimized for specific services can be effective.
For informational queries:
- Blog: Initiate a blog and craft expert articles within your niche on behalf of a company specialist. Optimize these articles with keywords that will appeal to your target audience. Each article should include a call to action (CTA) that motivates users to take specific actions.
Adhering to these SEO optimization principles will aid your website in achieving high search engine rankings, ultimately resulting in the attraction of more targeted traffic and potential customers.
Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising is an effective internet marketing tool that allows the guaranteed placement of advertisements in search engine results, as well as on Google's partner sites. However, the successful use of contextual advertising for innovative products requires specific approaches and strategies:
- Low-frequency queries: An innovative product typically features a low frequency of targeted queries. Therefore, emphasizing low-frequency and related keyword phrases is an essential strategy for successful contextual advertising.
- Remarketing and retargeting: For an innovative product, where the decision cycle can be long, utilizing remarketing and retargeting tools is crucial. These methods enable you to bring back users to your website who have previously visited but did not convert.
- Negative keywords: Working meticulously with negative keywords in contextual advertising is vital. Negative keywords allow you to filter out untargeted traffic and reduce the cost of clicks.
- Diverse creatives: Developing a variety of creatives and segmenting them for different groups of the target audience plays a pivotal role in the success of contextual advertising. Each customer group should be offered what is most relevant to them.
- Campaign segmentation: Segment your campaigns into multiple types to optimize conversions. For instance, create separate campaigns for branded queries, competitor queries, and keyword phrases derived from the SEO semantic core.
Contextual advertising for an innovative product necessitates a customized approach and constant monitoring of results. Adhering to these recommendations will help maximize the effectiveness of contextual advertising and attract the target audience.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the key promotional tools. To effectively create brand and product awareness, it is crucial to focus on high-quality themed content, which encompasses publications in online industry publications and articles in the corporate blog.
Content should not be overlooked; it should be actively promoted as well. Develop a strategy by determining which stage of the sales funnel your potential customer is at and what content is most relevant to them through retargeting.
Run advertising campaigns covering each stage of the sales funnel on all available platforms, including social media and advertising networks. Advertisements should utilize both articles from your blog and content from media outlets that have mentioned your company.
This will help your audience realize that various sources are discussing and writing about you, affirming your expert status.
Industry-Specific Thematic Platforms
There are numerous opportunities to engage on platforms where your target audience is present, facilitating the promotion of your innovative product:
- Blog posting: Creating and maintaining a corporate blog on a suitable platform enables you to regularly share information about your company, products, and the industry as a whole. This aids in building expert status and capturing the attention of potential customers.
- Publishing articles about your company and brand: Regularly posting articles that describe your company, products, and brand helps foster a long-term connection with your audience and cultivates a positive perception.
- Discussing products and services: Actively participating in discussions about products and services related to your industry helps in identifying the needs and interests of your target audience. You can provide useful information and recommendations, thereby building trust.
- Communication with partners and customers: Marketplaces offer an excellent opportunity to interact with current and potential partners and customers. This enables you to stay in touch, address issues, and offer additional services.
Social Media
Social media provides an excellent opportunity to connect with your target audience, reinforce your brand, and create a positive media environment around your offerings.
However, when engaging with your target audience on social media, it's important to keep a few key points in mind:
- Research audience characteristics: Before launching a social media group or page, thoroughly research the characteristics of your target audience on each platform. Determine if there are individuals who would genuinely be interested in your offerings.
- Hypothesis testing: Avoid going all-in on attracting potential customers at once. Experiment with different strategies and content to determine what works best for your audience. The willingness to adapt and change is crucial.
- Use retargeting: It is advisable to utilize retargeting tools initially. This will assist you in effectively reaching out to those who have already shown interest in your company or products.
- Targeted advertising: It is optimal to utilize targeted advertising on social networks such as myTarget and VKontakte, as well as placing ads on industry and thematic sites where your target audience congregates.
- YouTube video promotion: Creating your video blog on YouTube can be an effective method. Based on your semantic core and search queries, develop video content that showcases your expertise and problem-solving capabilities that may interest your potential customers.
By considering these tips, you can successfully engage with your target audience on social media and enhance the effectiveness of your online strategy.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a potent tool for lead generation and business development. To optimize the conversion rate of your email newsletter, there are several essential aspects to consider:
- Audience segmentation: Segment your target audience based on their interests, needs, and behaviors. This will enable you to tailor your newsletter to each group of recipients, making the messages more relevant and engaging.
- Educational content: Provide customers with valuable information that helps them better understand your product or service. Utilize articles from the company blog or expert content published in electronic media. Educational content builds trust and increases the chances of conversion.
- Utilize freebies: Instead of intrusive calls to purchase, offer your customers freebies or exclusive offers. These could include discounts, expert advice, access to unique content, and other perks.
- Design and mobile adaptation: Create an email newsletter with a light, appealing, and user-friendly design. Ensure that emails are easily readable on both computers and mobile devices. Mobile adaptation is especially critical, as many recipients view emails on smartphones.
- Integration into your marketing strategy: Incorporate email marketing into your overall marketing strategy so that it collaborates with other tools. For instance, you can send transactional emails with additional offers to those who left your website without converting. Use a Customer Journey Map to identify weaknesses and guide users to the next steps.
With these tips in mind, your email marketing will become a more effective tool for lead generation and the promotion of your innovative product.
In Conclusion
It is important to emphasize that relying solely on one promotional channel may not be sufficient. A variety of channels enables you to reach a broader audience and effectively communicate your offerings to customers at different stages of the sales funnel.
Testing and optimizing your offerings are integral parts of a successful promotion strategy.
Constantly monitoring results and analyzing feedback from customers allows you to enhance the product and adapt marketing activities to achieve the best results. In this context, altering and improving your offerings can be a key factor in attracting and retaining customers.
To enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, it is recommended that you:
- Hypothesis testing: Conduct A/B tests to determine which changes in campaigns and creatives yield better results. Experiment with different options and analyze their impact on key metrics.
- Shutting down ineffective channels: If certain marketing channels or tools are not yielding the desired results or are too expensive, consider shutting them down or reducing your budget for them.
- Analyzing consumer behavior: Understanding how consumers interact with your channels and products allows you to tailor your strategy to meet their needs and preferences.
An overall analysis of these metrics and actions will help you optimize your marketing strategy, improve the effectiveness of your campaigns, and achieve the desired results.