This guest post by: Terry Welty, Chief Marketing Officer at International Decision Systems, a the leading provider of software and solutions for the asset finance market.
Launching a new product is not an easy task, particularly if you’re working within a limited budget, or in some cases, almost no budget at all.
While it’s tough to get yourself heard in the crowded field of marketing today, fortunately the online world has opened the door to some very effective, yet inexpensive marketing tactics that can create the reach and awareness critical to bringing a new product to market in affordable ways.
1. Make Your Own Publicity
Publicity is one of the least expensive marketing tactics available to any marketing professional today. To generate real publicity, however, simply tossing out a press release on some websites does very little. You absolutely have to find an angle that turns your product/feature/information into real news that has value to your target audience. The last thing a reporter wants is to be your free conduit for marketing information.
One way to do this is to make your message unique. Find out what your product does that no other product can do in the market. If you can identify a feature or function that your competition doesn’t have, and it also happens to solve a common customer pain, you’re golden. The cornerstone of your value proposition can then legitimately include terms such as “innovative,” “revolutionary,” “first to market” or “cutting-edge” which are bound to resonate in the media and earn you some big publicity points.
A second way is to find an angle that is topical to current events. If you remember, during the huge gulf oil spill a couple of companies and one celebrity found ways to get not only national media coverage, but also an audience in front of Congress for their water-cleaning technology.
Another way is to conduct a survey (using something like survey monkey is easy and free) about a current problem, publish the results of the survey in a pitch to media along with the angle that your product takes to solve that problem. The better known the problem is, the more likelihood that someone will find your pitch interesting.
You can also garner free publicity via the world of social media. By social media I don’t just mean establishing a presence on the must-have de facto sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but also on industry association websites that offer forums postings and other free ways to create targeted exposure to your audience.
These sites are always hungry for information content sources. Offer to write them a monthly blog or submit strategically-titled byline articles. Craft these blog submissions or articles such that you sell the business problems your product solves first, and then conclude with some thinly veiled suggestions on how technology could be developed to best meet those customer pains.
Miraculously, when you launch your product its value message will repeat those very same feature functions and business problem solutions. Presto, a successful media story is born. The clincher is that by creating a factual, well-rounded story rather than just another fluff piece, it’s more likely be picked up by other media outlets around the world which will help perpetuate its news cycle—all at no cost to you!
By the way, you’re highly unlikely to sell any story on email. Pick up the phone. Reporters are people too. Talk to them. Don’t just try to sell them. Find out what they want to write about. You’ll be amazed at the difference in the acceptance of your story idea.
2. Create Collateral Online and in Soft Copy Only
Before any big product launch, it’s usually helpful to have marketing collateral such as business cards, letterhead and brochures or fact sheets ready-to-go to support your product. Yet a big change in recent years is the shift from print/paper-based marketing material to electronic-only versions. Most companies are finding that the days of budgeting for high printing costs are over.
Some marginal printing needs remain, but they are now significantly reduced in size and scope. For example:
• For certain job functions and/or due to technological constraints, some companies continue to send out company communications such as invoices on printed company letterhead via snail mail.
• Certain circumstances, such as trade shows, indicate times when you should have print collateral on hand “just in case.” For instance, I still send along a few hundred copies of product fact sheets to most of our tradeshows for attendees who want a physical take-along. A trend here is putting your collateral on a CD and forgetting the printed pieces entirely.
• Similarly, some prospective customers still request “leave behinds” after sales meetings, although the majority are perfectly content to receive product literature via email attachment.
• Naturally, business cards are still exchanged at face-to-face meetings, but you can just as easily send them an electronic business card to insert into their online contact list.
For these and other nominal printing needs, utilize online printing sites that virtually give away their low-end offerings in the hopes that they’ll entice you to buy more expensive projects. You can get 500 professional-looking business cards for free, for example, simply by buying a $3 e-card from an online print vendor and taking them up on their ensuing “thank you” offer.
3. Email Everything
Since email is almost as cheap as a hamburger, extremely targeted, and so easy to use, there is no excuse for not incorporating email into any demand generation and overall market launch strategy. Email is simply your best friend when it comes to distributing your marketing collateral. Brochures, fact sheets, media alerts, case studies and informational white papers can all be distributed to different targeted audience lists quickly and easily for a fraction of the cost of traditional means. Your marketing calendar should always include monthly (or even weekly) emails to customers and prospects with varying target messages whether it is a new product launch, general company news, or industry trends.
Online you can find dozens of email sites that offer 30 days of free email, and all sorts of ancillary support activities, not the least of which are ways to build a targeted list of prospects affordably.
4. Hire Interns
In this economy, current students, and even recent grads crave real-world experience. They know that’s the ticket to a job. To supplement your marketing effort with useful and motivated arms and legs without breaking the staff salary budget, hiring interns is the way to go.
Interns often make up for their lack of experience by being energetic and eager to learn. If you are willing to put in some mentoring time and can figure out manageable tasks to delegate to them (while keeping a close eye on them) they can make a valuable contribution to any market launch plan. Even Bill Gates was an intern once upon a time!
5. Go After the Long Tail
If you don’t know what the terms “short tail” and “long tail” mean, it’s highly likely you are wasting money on your pay-per-click advertising.
Most people will gravitate to pay-per-click for the obvious advantages of directly hitting a target audience searching on pertinent terms. But it’s very easy to spend much more than you might think by trying to list your offering higher and higher on paid search engines like Google, trying to get click results using the same generic keyword searches that everyone else is using. Unless you own the market already, it will be an expensive, never ending uphill battle. Instead, you can get far more bang for your buck going after more targeted search results. There’s a name for this strategy: the “Short tail” versus “Long tail” approach.
Short tail and long tail keywords refer to what type of search people are using in an online search engine to find the stuff they’re looking for. Short tail keywords are short, general key word searches such as “taxes” that return a high volumes of search results (148 million results using Google). Long tail keywords are longer, multiple-string key word phrases that generate fewer search results because they are more detailed such as “small business payroll tax software” (291,000 results).
Why would you want to target lower traffic results? Two reasons.
First, you are helping more serious buyers find you more easily. Research has shown that if a user types in a specific search string, they typically know exactly what they are looking for and are more ready to make a purchase.
Second, the beauty of targeting these long tail keywords is that because the search results landscape is far less competitive the more specific it is, you will enjoy far higher rankings for far less money per click.
The trade-off is that you may find yourself managing hundreds of long tail bids and buys. This can take a lot of time, but in comparison to a large budget, it’s an overall winning proposition simply because your prospects are happy to get specifically what they’re looking for, your waste will be low and your click-through higher, and prospects will be more likely to repay you with higher conversion rates.
Essentially, if you want to help your new product make a splash in the market but are hand-cuffed by budget constraints, try the five tricks I’ve outlined above: play the free publicity game, keep your collateral soft, make sure email always rules, bring on the interns, and finally, stick to those long tails. If you can accomplish this, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how far word will spread and how much traction you can gain.
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