No matter how great your product idea is, how amazing your service is, you will never reach your full potential without great marketing.
Product marketing specifically is how you need to communicate to your audience why they need your business.
If you’re an entrepreneur it is important you invest early into a marketer who can grow and define your brand’s image.
A good product marketing manager can jettison a startup product by tapping into marketing trends, like purpose-driven marketing. This can make your brand stand out among thousands, build a loyal customer base, and increase ROI.
Don’t think that you can do it all yourself, even if you have marketing experience. Your job is to run the company, making sure everything fits together.
There are plenty of reasons why you should hire a marketing manager. Just take a look at these five, for example.
1. Time is Money
Don’t forget one of the most important tenants of running a small business. It’s one thing to be frugal, it’s another to be so risk-adverse that you never invest money to grow your customer base. When you hire a marketing agency to handle customer acquisition, you get results.
A product market manager may seem like an expensive employee that you cannot afford. The truth is, you can’t afford to go without one.
Eventually, your marketing budget is going to stagnate or decline, if you don’t invest early. Businesses plateau and the first thing that gets cut is the marketing and advertising.
2. Staying Ahead
If you’re a business that has seen success and wants to launch a new product, then whatever worked last time may not work again. This is because the marketing world is constantly evolving and shifting. For example, SEO algorithms are constantly changing.
You could very well sabotage your own success if you don’t have a product marketing agency there to guide you. Digital marketing strategies often need updating, if you’re not seeing results, then it’s time for an upgrade.
3. Multi-faceted Approach
Another problem with trying to do all marketing yourself is not being able to handle every outlet at the same time.
Sure, easy stuff like using Buffer for social media spam can get the job done, but you won’t be able to provide fresh product marketing. A lot of social signal promos get lost in the noise, people scroll past standard text and image headers.
A marketing agency knows the value of video, listicles, memes, infographics, and special personalized content.
It’s a good move to keep all of this marketing under one roof that you can monitor and keep track of, as well. Hiring individual freelance marketers on the cheap is just going to underwhelm and under-deliver.
4. Building a Core
Trust and authenticity are so important when it comes to product marketing. People can’t be “sold” the same way they used to decades ago. All that aggressive campaigning will do is bring short-term gains with no loyal base.
If trust is an important part of your brand’s image, then you will need to earn it. A marketer who understands buying behaviors and how they apply to your product is invaluable. You need their first impression of your product to be natural, yet impactful.
It can be a difficult dance of “wow” and coming off as too over-the-top.
5. Proper Exposure
Last, but not least, we need to define how and where you want your product to appear. Obviously, more exposure is good, but your product has to have good timing and presentation. Obviously, the ultimate goal is to have so much word-of-mouth advertising that you don’t need to fork out cash for big ads or plugs.
These days, being able to connect with an influencer on social media can bring that level of exposure. Once you’ve successfully reeled in enough people, you can build your email lists, social media followers, and positive reviews. That’s what an experienced marketing agency can do for you.
Obstacles of Product Marketing
We’ve talked a lot about what good marketing strategy looks like, now it’s time to highlight what contributes to failure. These challenges are hard to overcome for any sized business, let alone a one-man show.
These are real problems that you will have to overcome; are you being honest with your shortcomings?
Overhead Costs and Reinvestment
A lot of small entrepreneurs skate around the operational costs, but this is something that can slowly kill a business. Keeping an inventory of your product needs to be realistic and predictive. Well, it’s hard to forecast your future success when you don’t have a clear marketing strategy.
Don’t leave things up to chance or buy too much inventory to avoid a bruised ego. Having to sit on inventory without any funds to invest in a new marketing strategy is the worst feeling in the world.
Being Well-Connected
It’s hard to sell a great product when you’re stuck with limited distribution channels. Getting your product in front of the customer is so important. You will spend much less on advertising if you are able to get your product into more places.
This is especially true for digital products. You have to find unique and interesting ways to get people to sample or try your product for free.
Don’t Let the Opportunity Pass By
Finding a trustworthy marketing agency who can handle all your needs and expectations is tough. You need to find people who can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Numbers don’t lie and testimonials give insight into real life experiences.
Communication is so important when it comes to effective and efficient digital marketing. We offer the most complete and transparent marketing experience. Our marketing services are client-tailored and made to compliment any strengths or weaknesses in your marketing strategy.
