People spend an average of 401 minutes a day online. During those six-ish hours, they are bombarded with product after product, service after service. Whether they are checking their email or browsing Instagram, ads are popping up at regular intervals.
Given the overstimulation of the modern digital shopper, it pays to take some time to consider how you want to present your product(s). Throwing a website together or posting random images on social media does not cut it.
The context in which people see your product for the first time shapes how your brand is perceived. It can help you stand out and become quite memorable, or it can alienate some of your target audience members for good.
Here are six effective ways to first introduce your product to an online audience and ensure they are easier to convert in the future.
Associate Your Product with a Practical Solution
The main reason shoppers look for a product is because they want to solve a problem.
Don’t let the use of the term “solve a problem” confuse you. The problem might be that they don’t like their current bedroom curtains and would like to buy new ones. They might want a detergent that smells just as good as their current one but lasts longer.
Your best approach to this behavior pattern is to clearly associate your product with a practical solution for said problem. Note that this may not always be possible, though. But with a bit of creativity, you can clearly highlight to your potential customers exactly why they might want to give your product a try.
Let’s look at an example. Going has a great article on using Google flights that targets one specific pain point: how to use Google flights. They’ve chosen a very real problem their target audience is likely to have and taken the time to break down the process in a very detailed guide.
Source: Going.com
The article ticks all the important content marketing boxes:
- It features a ton of screenshots illustrating each step.
- It uses relevant headings that help a reader navigate the post.
- It’s highly skimmable.
- The language used is easy to understand, and the tips are highly actionable.
The brand has cleverly made its product a logical part of the solution. They never try to push a sale on you, though. They simply highlight how they can help you find cheap flights and how you can use Google Flights and their product together to find the ideal flight experience.
Deliver a Personalized Product Recommendation
72% of customers claim that they will respond to marketing messages that have been tailored to them better than general advertising campaigns.
If you are able to recommend products based on the specific needs and interests of your shoppers, they are thus much more likely to be interested and potentially convert.
The one thing to be mindful of is data privacy and the protection of personal information. 69% of customers appreciate personalization efforts, but only as long as they’re based on data they have knowingly shared with the brand. A web design company always ensures data privacy and safeguards personal information.
This might be a challenge when you are delivering a product recommendation for the first time. However, ATH has done a marvelous job of circumventing the issue. Their calculator recommends a protein powder to shoppers based on the quiz they have just taken. These personalized recommendations not only deliver the most relevant product but also make the shopper feel valued and understood.
Souce: athsport.co
Given the challenges of data collection, you may want to craft a similar page that asks shoppers to volunteer information. You can also ask them to subscribe to your newsletter or participate in various surveys to help you deliver the best possible recommendations.
As for the rest of your campaigns, you can tailor them to your most popular audience segment or recommend your most popular or trending products. This will ensure that even the people who come into contact with your brand for the absolutely first time feel like you are speaking directly to them.
Build Exceptional Credibility for Your Product
Credibility has been an incredibly important part of digital marketing for a while.
First, there was Google’s E-A-T, which demanded high authority from top-ranking pages. We now have to contend with E-E-A-T, which has placed additional importance on experience. In order to be seen by your target audience, you simply must be able to demonstrate your brand can be trusted.
Once the search engine deems you worthy, the credibility you’ve established will help your audience trust you too. Most online shoppers know just how common online scams are. Naturally, they’ll be hesitant to place an order with a brand they’ve never heard of – unless it’s clearly legitimate.
Credibility is extra important in certain industries. Health and finance is a good example (often called the Your Money Your Life industries by marketers, or YMYL). If you aren’t able to demonstrate it as soon as a customer first notices your product, chances are they will never be interested in converting.
Let’s look at a major finance brand, MarketBeat. Their website has zero trouble demonstrating credibility, and you trust it as soon as you start delving into their stock recommendations and latest news feed. But what happens if you find them somewhere else?
They have taken the time to consistently publish insightful and useful videos on their YouTube channel, where they appeal to all the various segments of their audience: pro investors and those who are yet to enter the world of finance. If this is where you first come across them, you will instantly see they are a group of professionals whose recommendations can be trusted.
Source: Youtube.com
Make Your Product Easy to Access
Another point to consider when introducing your audience to your product is how long you want to make them wait.
Some brands will purposefully try to bury their audience in as much information about their product as possible. They will create elaborate landing pages and sales funnels that smother their leads by trying to convince them to convert before they even get to the product.
While there is something to be said for benefits-based marketing, you should never make your audience jump through hoops to see what the product is and what it can do. The sooner they find out, the better. You will have all the time in the world to show them all the various ways it can be used and how it can help them solve a problem.
UnscrambleX does a great job with presenting their product early on. Check out their anagram solver page. The first thing you see is the product. This is the case on every page of their website. You don’t have to scroll or click through numerous pages. You are shown the product everywhere, even on the blog.
Source: Unscramblex.com
They have made the conscious choice to place the quality of their product front and center and let every visitor take it for a spin. It’s so important to them that it occupies their entire header.
Converting is made super easy from that point onwards. The visitor already knows what the product is and how it works, so if it ticks the right boxes, taking steps further down the sales funnel will be a walk in the park. If it doesn’t, they were never a qualified lead in the first place.
Feature Your Product on Reputable Platforms
A large portion of your customers will come to you from third-party websites. They will have read a news feature that mentions you or seen someone recommend you on social media. Or, for example, they will randomly browse a blog or a forum and see your brand there.
While you can’t influence the majority of these mentions, you can take the time to ensure that your product is featured on reputable platforms.
This can mean anything from being a guest on a podcast, to inviting a local news crew to do a report, to working with major affiliate websites in your industry.
The latter is a particularly effective way to ensure you are seen by a particularly interested part of your target audience and jump right into the evaluation stage of the sales funnel, and you can technically skip the brand awareness stage entirely.
Let’s look at it through an example. Medical Alert Buyer’s Guide is a website that reviews medical alert systems. Their comparison page for medical alert devices is likely to pop up on the radar of anyone who is looking to install one of them in their or their parents’ home.
Source: Medicalalertbuyersguide.org
The lead doesn’t necessarily have to know any of the medical alert brands listed. However, they are highly likely to visit the websites of the ones that spark their interest in order to learn more and see which one they like best.
Working with these types of reputable, niche-specific affiliate websites is a great way to tap into highly interested audiences who are ready to convert.
Shroud It in a Veil of Mystery
When it comes to introducing your product on social media, you can take advantage of all the opportunities this type of communication offers and build up suspense.
You know those “coming soon” signs you sometimes see in brick-and-mortar stores? Or how websites put up the same notice before launch? Applying the same practice on social media can be very beneficial.
First of all, you will generate hype and interest in the product before anyone sees it. This can help you reach a wider audience and ensure there is a critical mass of leads there for the launch.
You are also able to control the narrative more, as you can offer several touchpoints and several various points of introduction that can get shoppers interested.
Natasha Denona does this with every new product launch. There’s always a series of photos and videos on the brand’s Instagram stories that don’t show the product but brilliantly foreshadow the color palette or the finish. You often can’t even guess what type of product it is, but you are guaranteed to keep following to find out.
Some of the same content is then also published on the feed. When the product launches, the campaign is similar to the one used pre-launch, but the items are fully revealed. Natasha then takes to her own and the brand’s profile to demo the product and do live swatches. She even follows it up with numerous tutorials.
Source: Instagram.com
Wrapping Up
First impressions are incredibly important in digital marketing. If a customer forms the wrong impression about your brand or your products, you will have a hard time convincing them to give you a chance.
Luckily, introducing your product doesn’t have to be all that difficult or complicated, and with the help of our six tips, you should be ready to form a sustainable, effective presentation plan.