“The hardest part of making money with a new idea is getting that new idea in front of people. How to market a new product? Without eyeballs in front of your product or website you will not see sales. Without sales, well, you don’t have much of a business. So the first thing someone should do is figure out how to market their new product or idea.”
Read our guide below or market your product for free on Product Root. Simply feel out this form and get your product in front of thousands:
There are a number of expensive steps one can take to market a new product, but this article will focus on the cheap. This article is for the broke start-ups. It is for the ‘I have a great idea, and I need that extra help with out killing my pocketbook start-up’.
It will also focus on the online aspect of how to market a new product. This is for people who want to learn how to market a new product or website online, it is for those who want to know how to capture the ever-growing Internet population that other companies tend to ignore.
With that being said, here are a few pointers about how to market a new product, but not only that, but how to market a new product on a budget and how to do it successfully.
1. Create an Internet presence! If you will be marketing a new product online, then you need to have it online! (If you already have a website or are trying to learn how to promote just a website and not a product, skip this step) I am constantly amazed at new products with horrible websites, or big organizations with websites that haven’t been updated since 2000.
Today, the cost of building a website is negligent. You can have a site up and running with a decent logo, a few pages, some pictures and an easy to modify system for your staff in less than a few hours and not costing you more than $100. How? Easy. Utilize your resources and you’ll learn how to market a new product in no time.
For example. How to market a new product.
To build the site: Use WordPress . It’s a completely free content managemet system that anyone who knows how to set up a profile on Facebook can understand. Follow the link above to download it. I’m not going to go into the details of working with wordpress, because there are thousands of sites that arleady do that. Just Google it, you’ll find the help you need.
So you now have a site and a template. What about a logo or something to personalize it? Go to Elance.com or Freelancer.com. You can find decent (not amazing) graphic designers to do a logo for you for $50.
So now on your journey to market a new product, you have a new website and a logo. You have a brand! And it’s only cost you $50 and some time so far. Clean up your website a bit, add some relevant pages, a contact page and you are ready to go.
But wait…what about selling the product online!? Won’t that take a shopping cart system? How do you market a new product without a way to actually sell it?
For that solution, your best friend might just be a free shopping cart system called Ecwid. I have used a lot of shopping cart systems in my day and have to say Ecwid is hands-down the easiest, cleanest, best designed shopping cart platform out there. And it integrates so smoothly with WordPress. You’ll be amazed.
If you are trying to learn how to market a new product and how to do it on a budget, there are no comparisons to Ecwid. As you can tell, I highly recommend checking it out. You can have an e-store up and running in less than 20 minutes. You just simply cut and paste code. Anyone can do that!
At this point in the process of how to market a new product: You have a site, a cool logo, a shopping cart system and your product for sale. Now what? You need to learn how to market a new product!
2. Market the new product or site! A website is worthless without traffic. But how do people get in front of your billboard? How do they find your hidden product in a sea of websites?
How to Market a New Product: SEO
You need to make your idea accessible to the search engines. By this, I mean primarily the big G, Google.
There are a few ways you can market a new product or site through Google (for purposes of this article we will ignore the other search engines – Google does have close to a monopoly. Although the other players do still matter).
You can market a new product either organically or through paid-advertisements on Google. With some money you can be at the top of Google immediately. This is a simple way of how to market a new product, but it can get expensive and get expensive fast. For now we will ignore that way of how to market a new product.
Let’s focus on free or close to free ways to market your new product or website.
First and foremost, your on-site SEO needs to be perfect. This is something that everyone can handle. Essentially, when Google scans your page it looks for certain things that indicate what the page is about. If those things aren’t there, you are less likely to show up in the search engine results.
If that sounds complicated to figure out, it can be. I highly recommend a plug-in for WordPress called the Vibe SEO Pack. If you are incompetent when it comes to doing on-page SEO, Vibe SEO does all the work for you. It will tell you what to do to make each page and post SEO friendly.
If that still sounds like too much work, then a SEO software program might be your best bet. These guys will handle a lot of the work for you (which is 90% of the online battle). My recommendation would be SEOmoz.
Their software is the best in the industry. Hands down. The best thing to do is give it a try and see if it’s for you. They give you a free 30 day trial and I guarantee you after 30 days (if you don’t sign up for a membership) you will greatly miss it and your site statistics will show it! Give them a try. SEOmoz.
How to Market a New Product: Leverage the Big Guys
The number one way I’ve found to market a new site or product is to get it listed by the big boys. What’s that mean? Google likes websites that already have an online presence, websites that have been around from a while and continue to update their pages and already rank high for search terms.
You could pay to be listed in Yahoo’s directory, but it’s a couple hundred dollars to do so. If you have the cash, we recommend it, but if you don’t there are other options on how to market your new product.
For example: Our site, Product Root. Product Root is an amazing site for getting yourself not only exposure, but search engine presence.
Think about this: If you are trying to market a new product or site and there is an already established site that takes your product or website, does a write up of it, do you think Google will find that review quickly? Of course it will!
Google is going to find the review and immediately make it available for searchers. Product Root does just that. We take a new product and write a review for it. This review isn’t the important part, but the fact that the site is so search engine friendly is important.
When people start searching for your product or site, they will go to Google and search. Since your site or idea is so new, it probably won’t show on the search results. Even if it does, how awesome would it be to see it reviewed on a third-party site! That’s instant credibility for your product. This is an essential part of how to market a new product. Get it exposure (especially 3rd party exposure and reviews)!
There are a ton of big sites that you can possibly get listed on. If you’ve already used our site, try KillerStartups. They review like 15+ sites a day and get quite a bit of traffic. I am not going to go through a list of all the sites you can use, but search around and you will start seeing some.
How to Market a New Product: Press Releases
A press release is a super quick way to get word out about your product or website. If you have a new product or site, it is probably unique in some way or another, use that to your advantage.
Publishing a press release can provide valuable inbound links and increase your chance of being found by search engines. But, it can also be a complete waste of time. Three press release sites we found to be quality sites are prlog.org, pr.com, and pressrelease365.com.
If you don’t have experience crafting a press release, pay to have it done. You can use a site like Guru.com to find quality writers at a bargain. Remember to check reviews and to get someone who actually does press releases and not just some English major out of work!
How to Market a New Product: Creative Ideas
My favorite site for marketing my products beyond the mundane is Fiverr.com. This site is really interesting and might I say, quite often a great deal. How it works: Users offer things they will do for $5 and buyers interested in their service simply purchase the gig.
Some of things I’ve done with Fiverr.com: Had a promotional brochure designed, had a promotional video made, had a review written up and posted on a high traffic website, and plenty more.
I simply use Fiverr as a means to jump-start my creative energies. It has given me plenty of ideas and has helped bring a tremendous amount of traffic to my website.
Youtube Videos
Google loves Youtube videos and they usually rank fast if they are done right!
Another way to booster the ranking for videos is using the site I mentioned above, Fiverr.com. Search Fiverr with the term Youtube and see what kind of things you can do to bring your video up in the rankings.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has become the absolute best, best, best way to promote a new product on the web. If you don’t know what affiliate marketing it, you need to learn fast! It’s essential when learning How to Market a New Product.
Affiliate marketing is essentially taking your product and hiring a group of highly motivated, independent salesmen to scour the web promoting your product. What do you give them in exchange for their work? A commission on the converted sale.
How much better could it get? If you have a good product and you are able to give some of the cut away to the people who get you the sales, this is the easiest, most effective way to market a new product.
But, setting this system up is not something you can do alone. I mean, you can try, but nobody will take you seriously. It’s hard to track these sorts of things. Your best bet is to try out HasOffers.com.
Like other products they offer a free 30 day trial before membership. These guys offer real-time statistics, fully customized offers, banners, and more. This is the way to go if you are serious about giving affiliate marketing a try and serious about learning how to market a new product.
Using a service like HasOffers.com can be the make or break of your business. It’s worth a shot and should be given a few months effort. Once your product catches on, you’ll be amazed at how much income is out there through affiliate marketing. It’s a sure way for learning how to market a new product
Or the free option for marketing a new product using affiliate marketing:
Ecwid, the shopping cart platform I mentioned a while back, has an easy way of setting up a ‘basic affiliate program’. The details of setting it up can be found here. While this option will and does work, for me, it’s a little more risky than using a paid service.
When it comes to paying people and dealing with money I want to be sure that things are done right and using a company like HasOffers has its benefits in that it feels and seems to be more secure and consistent than having to track it all on your own.