6 Simple Strategies to Market Your Product or Service

Editor

Once you’ve made a great product, found the right price point, and decided on whether to sell it from a website or a physical store, the last and most important thing for you to do is to promote it.

Regardless of whether you’re selling your product online or offline, a successful marketing campaign could use both digital and analog marketing practices.

As an example, let’s assume that you’ve written a business book that details the strategies you’ve used to build a 7-figure business and you want to self-publish it. What are some ways that you could effectively promote it? Let’s also assume that you have both a digital version that can be downloaded or a hardback version that can be drop shipped to buyers.

Here are 6 ways that you could launch your marketing campaign:

  1. You might sponsor a radio contest and the prize could be fashionable clothing with your brand on them. Since you would be buying wholesale hoodies & sweatshirts, it would be a cost-effective promotion, and since people would be wearing your promotional clothing, your product would get a lot of exposure.
  2. You might start a YouTube channel. While you could, of course, simply use it to create a commercial, a subtler approach to video-marketingmight be more effective. For instance, you could create content where you share some of your business ideas or you could interview other business people. At the end of the video or in the text below the video, you could mention where people can buy your book.
  3. You might create a website that shares your story, a sales page, and a payment gateway to buy your book, either downloading it directly or, if they prefer a paper version, have it drop shippedto their address. To sweeten the deal, you could add some bonuses. These could be business books contributed by other authors, who would benefit from the opportunity to build their brand. The bonus could also be a video tutorial that you’ve created where you explain your key ideas.
  4. You might start a blog. While the blog will, of course, have links where people can buy your book, its main purpose is to provide valuable content. If your blog posts are highly informative, this will increase the appeal of your book. Since you are offering so much valuable content for free, readers will assume that your paid content must be even better. When sharing your ideas, it’s probably not a good strategy to simply repurpose the content in your book. It might be better to offer great content that is not part of your book. After all, if you’re sharing what’s in your book, you’ve taken away all incentive for people to buy the book itself. Besides stirring up interest in what you have to say, your blog is an excellent way for you to build up an email subscriber list. You could, for example, send subscribers the first chapter of the book.
  5. Social media marketing will help you promote the book without being too blatant about it. All you would have to do is to create a fan page and send out a few posts each week and be available to answer questions. It’s usually a good idea to restrict yourself to only a few social media outlets, as this will make engaging with people who admire your work much more manageable. You will be more consistent when it comes to adding posts and interacting with people.
  6. Sharing your ideas on other people’s platforms can be a way to drive more readers to your blog. A link to your blog will invite people to read more of your content. Online, you can share your ideas via guest blogging. Offline, you could share your ideas by writing in business magazines.

Although we’ve used the example of a business book written by an authority figure to make these marketing techniques seem less abstract, in actuality, you could use these ideas to sell almost any digital or physical products. Many of them will also be useful if you are selling a service, for instance, a B2B service like website development.