Marketing Your Product

I had an interesting conversation with a client a while back.

He's a great guy with a great product that no one else is providing. Yet he's having trouble selling. Needless to say he's confused and frustrated. He's thinking, "I have no competition I should be sitting back and taking orders."

What's missing?
Trust and comfort. People will not buy what they don't understand. Sure, those people who like to be on the cutting edge will try something before it's gained mainstream popularity but that's a very small population and not an appropriate target for all products.

I used the analogy of buying sneakers. I know I need sneakers (first marketing plus) so I go to the store and can compare Reebok and Nike and Avia. I can see what the benefits of each sneaker are (second marketing plus). And because they are all household names there is a trust factor (third and possibly the most important marketing plus) that makes me comfortable handing over my hard-earned moola.

So how do you achieve these factors?

Needs Assessment
Generally speaking, if you have a product or service it's been invented to address a need someone, somewhere has identified. Who needs this product/service? Where are they? How can you reach them?

Benefits
Your customers don't care what's in it for you, they want to know what's in it for them.

Using the sneaker analogy again, what are the benefits of each sneaker that will allow me to select one over the others? One might have great cushioning so my knees aren't taking such a beating when I run. Another might have super traction so I'm not slipping all over the place. After I've compared the benefits to me I can see which will best suit my needs.

Trust
Now that I know which sneakers offer me the most benefit, do I trust that I will realize those benefits? If I don't believe that the promises made will be kept, I will simply put the product back and move on.

If you make a promise - keep it. Don't guarantee something you can't or won't come through with.
Be accessible. This is particularly important for online businesses. Customers want to know where to go if something does not meet their expectations. Providing a phone number demonstrates to your customer that they are dealing with a real person.
Offer proof. How did you come to the conclusions you did? Provide the results of testing. Give information on how the product was developed. I'm not talking about trade secrets here. But you can certainly talk about where the concept came from and the general steps along the way to final production.
Use testimonials carefully. Most people are dubious of testimonials. My favorite "testimonials" are those from differing ads that show pictures of the same people but use different names and cities. But testimonials can be effective if used correctly. Start by making sure they are real. Ask your customers for feedback and ask them to be specific. What did they like about a particular feature or function of your product/service? And interestingly, if there is some negative feedback in there as well, readers tend to give it more credibility. They see it as you are not editing the comments.

Building trust will not happen overnight, but it's one of the most important marketing initiatives you can take.