10 Ideas to Market a Product Big (Without Always Paying Big)

in Market Positioning · Social Media

There’s literally tons and tons of ways for how to market a product, without breaking the bank, and without spending thousands on a marketing consultant.

1. Product Reviews

One of the very first things you want to do, is create credability for your product. This requires you to have expert opinions on your product out in the media. Can’t get an interview with TechCrunch or NY Times? Of course not. The media isn’t going to come knocking on your door just because you came up with a product. Start with the smaller publishing companies, they’re all around: bloggers. Bloggers become your best friend, they usually charge between $50-$125 for product reviews (we offer product review services as well). Just make sure you find a blogger that targets your potential customer, or else you won’t benefit from this.

2. Affiliate Marketing

It’s sad so many people don’t yet know what affiliate marketing is. Affiliate marketing is even for physical products, not just internet products. You sign up at a popular affiliate marketing site, like shareasale.com or yahoo’s product affiliate network, create some good banners for affiliates…and sit back while they help you market your product. They get a commission on their sale.

3. Blogging About Your Product

There’s a difference between blogging and article writing like I’m getting ready to talk about, so don’t confuse the two. Blogging is personal, it’s usually one person. Your market creates a relationship with you. You can also guest post on other blogs (free publicity).

Try reading How to Market by Blogging

Note: With both, blogging and article writing, the key is compelling content. A good article that you’ll actually achieve an ROI from will take a professional writer 8 hours, but it comes packed with viral and seo optimization. One of those articles only need to be written once a week, but will stay in the search engines for years bringing you free traffic and marketing. BE PICKY, or else you will waste your money. Try New Buzz Marketing for quality, yet affordable, content marketing services.

4. Article Writing

As Seth Godin says: “the only marketing left is content”.

Article writing is very different, but can be used in combination with blogging. Article writing is usually how to’s and pillar articles (a longer version of blogging, that isn’t personable). It’s generally optimized for SEO. Anytime you pick out an SEO strategy for when you market a product, this will most often be the first recommendation. You actually don’t need an SEO specialist, you do it yourself with a WordPress blog and a good SEO tool like Sribe SEO:

5. Press Releases

Press releases are another good way to get started marketing a product. It announces to the community that something new has arrived, and will most often (hopefully) draw the attention of bigger players. Check out PR Web.

6. Social Media

What do you do with all this great content you’ve produced? You hire someone like Missy Tincher to spread it through the world social media for you. There are way way too many outlets for you to promote through social media to not be using it. And like most Entrepreneurs, we still don’t get social media. If you are once of those people, delegate it.

7. Partnerships

It’s cool to leverage your resources/skills with other companies. That doesn’t mean you have to leave your current business for theirs, or become their employee. 1+1+1=111 not 3 . Partnerships increase your bottom line when they can offset your weaknesses, this is free. Marketing firms may often partner with technology firms.

8. Sponsoring Others

Sponsoring others doesn’t have to be $5,000 at the next big event in town. You can actually sponsor blog posts and articles now (like you can here).

9. Consultants

I know I said in the beginning you don’t have to hire a professional marketing consultant to market a product, and that’s still true. But what is much better, is to get them to review your marketing strategy; instead of doing it. They can literally tell you within 1 hour if your product will succeed in the market.

10. YouTube Videos

There’s this wine guy on YouTube that has built a multi million dollar business marketing a product with his webcam. It’s all about the wine (he actually makes & sells wine)…but his videos are homemade, right from his webcam. He tries different wines, talks about them (it’s actually pretty funny), gets a little tipsy…and has made himself known now as “the wine guy”, the expert of wines. This is his only marketing channel, & generates all the traffic to his wine store.

We could probably think of thousands more ideas for how to market a product big (without paying big)…but we’ll keep adding more over time for you.