There’s no shortage of product marketing tactics out there. But an eclectic mix of tactics for how to market a product—no matter how creative—doesn't necessarily make for a compelling marketing strategy. It’s better to use a strategic marketing approach to discover which tactics and channels best fit both your product and business model.
To accomplish that, you’ll need to speak to the needs of your target market. Ecommerce expert Drew Sanocki’s Three Multipliers Framework helps us understand that marketing for ecommerce businesses is really three-dimensional.
He poses that the three dimensions of building sustainable growth through product marketing include:
- Increasing the total number of customers.
- Increasing the total number of purchases per customer (purchase frequency).
- Increasing the average order value (AOV).
In order to scale the success of your product marketing efforts, it’s best to address all three of those elements. Keep reading to learn best practices that can help you grow your customer base, sales, and revenue.
10 top ways to market your product
- Introduce a loyalty program
- Create an email win-back campaign
- Send email or SMS sign-up coupon codes
- Release new products on a schedule
- Build a subscription model
- Use mean, median, and mode to your advantage
- Perfect cross-sell and upsell strategies
- Start with paid marketing
- Publish educational SEO content
- Convert more of your traffic
Your customer base is like a garden. If you tend to your customers, you can grow both the value they receive as well as the value that comes back from your marketing efforts. For example, a customer might get a lot of value from your flagship product, but unlock even more from buying your product again—or buying more from your full product line.
Loyal repeat customers compound in value, too. Once a customer makes a second purchase, you no longer have to pay the cost to acquire them, and they might recommend your shop to friends with similar taste. Your repeat buyers are one of the best ways to learn how to market a product online successfully.
Repeat purchases don't come for free, though. You'll still need to strategically invest in the right areas and really hone in on your target audience. And although you can argue that “everything” has the potential to influence retention, there are three main levers that brands should start with.
The 3 levers of buyer retention:
- Merchandise. Customers need merchandise that fits their needs. They also look for high-quality items that meet or exceed their expectations. If you find a bestselling product that customers love, consider putting it front and center on your website. Chances are, customers who purchase that product first will come back for more.
- Customer experience. Amazing customer service doesn’t mean breaking the bank, but it does mean providing unexpected extras. This could be as simple as being available when your customers need you or offering free returns on any order.
- Marketing. You’ll need the right marketing for the right customers at the right time. Tactics you might use are: affiliate programs, win-back email campaigns, lifecycle marketing, loyalty programs, or a schedule of limited edition drops that keeps customers coming back for more.
Right now, let's have a closer look at buyer retention marketing. To increase customer order frequency, you'll need a specialized marketing plan. There are several common and effective product marketing tactics you can use.
1. Introduce a loyalty program
Offering a loyalty program is a great way to reward exclusive benefits to subscribers. Studies show that access to brand loyalty programs influences shoppers’ decisions to keep doing business with a brand, even more so than other draws like personalized customer service.
Loyalty programs can be free to join or accessible via a one-time or recurring fee. For example, members of activewear retailer Altitude Sports pay a lifetime membership fee of $34.99. Members enjoy perks like 5% off almost any item, exclusive sales, and free returns on all orders.
Alternatively, free loyalty programs can use a points system, in which customers earn points per purchase, then cash in those points for rewards at different points tiers. Other rewards programs, like the one from clothing retailer Girlfriend Collective, offer both points and perks, such as order discounts.
Loyalty programs are effective because they give customers a reason to return to your online store. Whether it's to use the points they've accumulated for a free gift, to get free shipping, or to receive a percentage off their purchase price, loyalty programs keep customers coming back.
2. Create an email win-back campaign
Email is a lifeline to high-intent shoppers who've already visited your store and completed their purchase. This makes it the ideal channel to encourage repeat purchases. Email marketing is also an incredibly effective way to re-engage existing customers who may have not purchased in a while.
One of the most valuable email sequences you can create for your product marketing strategy is called a win-back campaign. This is a type of lifecycle marketing: marketing that seeks to engage a customer based on where they are in the customer journey. In the case of a win-back campaign, the customer is at the post-purchase stage, so the right message to send them is one that encourages a return trip.
Drew Sanocki calls this type of win-back campaign a one-two punch. Its goal is to convert first-time customers into repeat customers.
Here’s how a win-back campaign works:
Identify who the win-back email marketing campaign targets
It’s standard to set up a win-back email campaign to target first-time customers. Set the first email to send 30 days after a first-time customer’s purchase if they haven’t made a second purchase during that time. Each subsequent email will be sent to that list of your first-time customers. You’ll also need to set parameters to remove anyone who makes a purchase at any time throughout this email win-back sequence.
There are four key emails a win-back sequence should include:
Email #1: Suggest a product
The first email notifies customers of another product that, based on their original purchase, they might like. The item could be part of your core collection, or perhaps you want to drive excitement about a limited edition item. This first email doesn’t include any coupon codes; instead, it seeks to entice or remind the customer about your other product offerings.
Email #2: Offer a small promo code
Sent 30 days after the first email, the second email offers a small promotion, like 10% off or free shipping on their next order.
Email #3: Offer a higher promo code
Sent 30 days after the previous email, the third email offers another promotion that’s 15% higher than the last. So, that could be something like 25% off or 15% off and free shipping.
Email #4: Send a survey
This email should be set to send a full 120 days after the customer made their first purchase. It could include another offer, but since this one won’t send for several months, it’s a better time to ask your customers if they’re still interested in your shop. If they are no longer interested, you could include a survey in the email that asks what would lead them to change their mind.
Surveys like these help you better understand your customers’ experiences, which help you make sure you’re asking the right questions about how to continue improving your brand.
Remember to unsubscribe inactive users
By the end of your email sequence, you should automatically unsubscribe anyone who's been an inactive buyer or who hasn't opened an email from you in the last 60 days. If you choose to send a final survey email like the one above, you could also offer to unsubscribe people who select one of the more negative survey options.
You don't have to use email for this win-back campaign if you don't find it to be the best option for your business. Instead, you can use other options like website pop-ups, paid media, a direct-mail postcard—whatever you think will resonate most with your customers.
3. Send email or SMS sign-up coupon codes
Another effective retention tactic is to offer a discount in exchange for email and/or text message sign-ups. It's a useful way to engage both current and prospective customers.
Not sure how to get started with SMS marketing? Try the Shopify plugin Postscript.
To get people’s attention about your mailing lists, consider using a pop-up that activates as soon as someone visits your website.
Get them interested by offering some sort of exclusive promotion they’ll only receive by subscribing to email, SMS, or both. This promotional offer could be something like free shipping or 10% off their first order. Once someone opts into your mailing lists, they'll be more inclined to make a purchase with the promotion you just gave them.
📚 Resource: How SMS Marketing Cuts Through the Noise, Plus 4 Examples to Try
4. Release new products on a schedule
If you're looking for ideas on how to market a new product, consider scheduling product launches on the same day every week or month. If your customers know the date of a new drop, chances are they'll visit your website to check what it is or at least be more likely to open the announcement email.
For example, when Mejuri, a fine jewelry shop, was first getting started, it dropped new products every week.
For curious customers and new shoppers alike, it drummed up excitement. Each new “Monday Drop” was featured on the homepage of the website and in a timely announcement email.
5. Build a subscription model
Though it may not sound like it, offering product subscriptions is a marketing decision. Giving your customers a way to subscribe positions your products as everyday essentials. Building a subscription business model may take more work than other marketing tactics, but it is an extremely effective way to ensure recurring customers and revenue.
If your product requires refills, you can create a subscription model that automatically renews on a standard schedule. That way, customers won't even have to visit your store or even remember that they're running low before you’ve already sent them a refill. For example, Fresh Patch sells hydroponically grown grass patches to pet owners. The company sees 80% of its total revenue from subscriptions.
Alternatively, if your company isn't one that can provide refills, you could offer customers a subscription to a bundle of monthly products. Package Free sells environmentally friendly home and body care products. The brand allow shoppers to create their own subscription bundles from a large selection of products.
6. Use mean, median, and mode to your advantage
Raising your average order value will bring in more revenue, and it's simpler than you might think. In order to build an effective strategy around average order value (AOV), you'll need to understand the mean, median, and mode of your orders, as well as how to cross-sell and upsell.
First off, let’s define the terms you likely haven’t seen since fourth grade math class.
- Mean: the average order value (traditional AOV)
- Median: the middle number of all order values
- Mode: the order value that most frequently occurs
Let’s take a look at the mean, median, and mode of orders on our demo store, Kinda Hot Sauce.
As you can see from that chart, the mean order value (or average order value) is $24. However, the mode order value or most commonly occurring order) is only $15. Although the mode may be lower than the mean, your mode number shows a much more accurate representation of your orders. That’s because the mean is easily skewed by low or high purchase totals. When you think about raising the AOV, it's more telling to look at the mode—that's the number you want to increase.
It’s common for businesses to offer free shipping that's just above their most commonly occurring order value to bump up AOV. For example, since $15 is the most commonly occurring order value at Kinda Hot Sauce, the shop might offer free shipping for orders over $25.
7. Perfect cross-sell and upsell strategies
Offering free shipping may not work for your business. Rest assured, there are other online product marketing tactics you can employ, like cross-selling and upselling, that will help bump up the value of orders overall.
- Cross-selling is when you invite customers to purchase a complementary item. Cross-selling suggestions are most effective when a customer is looking at their cart (similar to the aisle of impulse buys a shopper might walk through at a brick-and-mortar store. (SellUp is a great Shopify app for cross-selling).
- Upselling is when you encourage customers to purchase a similar product that’s higher end. Upselling is more effective on the product page before the customer has committed to buying one particular item.
Cross-selling and upselling are based on the idea that, when you have a compelling product, 10% to 20% of your customers are willing to spend a lot more than the average customer. Your goal is to understand what they want, so you can offer those products and those upgrades. From there, you can use tools to automate upsell and cross-sell suggestions, or you can advertise products through another method, like email, phone, or live chat.
Traditional customer acquisition includes methods like:
- Paid social media ads
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Press releases
- Influencer marketing
- Conversion rate optimization
- Email sign-up promo codes
Whichever method you choose, you'll want to gear your marketing toward the segment of your target audience who tends to spend more.
8. Start with paid marketing
Paid social media marketing and influencer marketing both fall into the bucket of effective marketing channels. They can help you validate your product and scale them in a cost-effective way.
Have you ever seen someone with a big social media following post about a product they like and then offer a unique discount code for their followers? That's influencer marketing, and it's become extremely effective.
Here's how it works: brands reach out to influencers they think will like their products. They offer something in return for the influencer to talk about the product on their social media platforms. This could be a sum of money, but many brands instead offer the influencer a number of their products for free.
📚 Resource: Instagram Influencer Marketing: A Complete 2024 Guide
The compensated influencer will talk about the product on their social media platforms an agreed upon number of times. You can ask the influencer to post about your product twice on Instagram, for example, or you might agree to one Instagram post and one Instagram Story feature—it's up to you and what you think will resonate best with your target audience. If your target market loves a certain influencer in your niche, paying for an influencer to promote your product can be a massive marketing win.
Here, Glossier uses influencer marketing to spread the word about its lip gloss on Instagram through a partnership.
You can also go the traditional route and pay a social media platform, like TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest, to show your ads to prospective customers. You can set up social ads yourself or work with an agency that can help you design ads, write the copy for them, and place them on the channels they think will work best for you.
9. Publish educational SEO content
This means playing the long game with channels like content marketing and search enginge marketing (SEO). Content marketing is the practice of using organic (not paid) tools like blog posts, videos, social media, podcasts, or emails to educate a target market, typically on a niche collection of topics.
Your goal with content marketing is to optimize your content to rank on the first page in a Google search to increase your brand's visibility and your website traffic. Creating content is one of those marketing tactics where the benefits compound over time. Whereas traffic gained through paid acquisition dries up when you stop paying for it, organic traffic from content marketing can yield striking growth if done well.
For example, Four Sigmatic, a company that specializes in crash-free coffee, has invested a lot of time into customer education. Because of that, the brand earns a lot of organic traffic.
10. Convert more of your traffic
You may already have a solid stream of traffic coming to your shop, so rather than focusing on getting more traffic, you need to focus on converting the traffic you currently have. This is called conversion rate optimization (CRO).
CRO is easy to automate, less expensive than buying traffic, and improves the return on investment (ROI) of your paid traffic placement.
Think of it this way: You're using a funnel to refill your hand soap container, but the funnel has several holes in the side, which is causing a lot of the soap to ooze out. Your customer funnel is probably suffering from the same problem. Rather than buying more soap, you can fix your funnel and conserve your resources from the get-go.
Start plugging those leaky holes in your checkout flow with Shop Pay.
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How to market a product FAQ
How do you market a new product?
Ensure there is market demand for your product, start with paid marketing, introduce organic marketing such as SEO and content marketing through blog posts, videos, social media, podcasts, or emails, and convert more of the traffic on your website.
How do you attract customers to buy your product?
- Introduce a loyalty program
- Create an email win-back campaign
- Send email or SMS sign-up coupon codes
- Release new products on a schedule
- Build a subscription model
- Use mean, median, and mode to your advantage
- Perfect cross-sell and upsell strategies
- Start with paid marketing
- Publish educational SEO content
- Convert more of your traffic
How do you market a product effectively?
Focus on these three key results:
- Increase the total number of purchases per customer
- Increase the average order value (AOV)
- Increase the total number of customers
