When Product Marketing Goes Wrong by Brian Newmark

Product marketing is an online marketing method where a certain product is promoted and marketed to get more sales.

There are several ways by which a product can be marketed online.

It is a quick way to start selling the product and earning instant income.

If the product is sold on subscription then it can even bring monthly income.

Product marketing surely seems like a great idea. There is almost nothing bad about it, apart from the fact that it can of course go wrong.

In this article, let us discuss what happens when product marketing goes wrong and how to make sure that it does not go wrong.

1) Check the Product:

Having a faulty, error and bug filled product is a quick way to fail product marketing. So, before we start our marketing, the primary objective is to fix the product and make it better.

If the product is not good, and one tries to market it heavily, then quicker it will fail.

2) Make sales and landing pages:

When it comes to making landing pages for a product, it is copywriting that is needed. A product copy should be catchy, up to the point and should show benefits and not features.

There is no alternative to a good copy; the sales page is the ultimate decider for the success of product marketing.

3) Catch leads:

Not every visitor converts into a sale. But even if you fail to sell your product to someone, you might have succeeded in catching some part of his attention. However, if that visitor goes away, it is still a total loss.

Get a subscription box on the sales page. Catch his email id so that you can follow up and make that sale some other day.

4) Get a support contact:

Most people never call, but having a phone number on a sales page helps a lot. It shows that you are genuine and can be contacted if something goes wrong. Make sure to give prompt replies if a buyer contacts you via phone or email or on your social channels.

5) Technical side of the sale:

A quick way to make your entire product marketing efforts to go wrong is to have a dead website.

A successful marketing campaign brings plenty of traffic. This traffic takes a toll on the resources available in the servers to support a website. If your site goes down, all of your marketing efforts will be a waste.

Similarly, a faulty shopping cart or some other error in the payment processing can also stop the sales process. Your buyers will try to buy but your site will not allow them to do so. This is a prime example of how product marketing can go wrong.

6) Social Media:

Social media is great. Nearly everyone is on the social media, which includes buyers of your product.

It is important to get your product in front of your buyers and social media is one of the best means to do so. But social media can also backfire.

One needs to apply caution while using social media. There are several instances where social media had been more of a hindrance than any help. One wrong tweet, one wrong share and everyone starts to fire back on you.

7) Competition analysis:

So, you have a great product. You have done everything correct while marketing your product and yet, there isn’t a single sale.

The fault might not be in your product or marketing but it is in your competitor analysis. There might exist a similar product in the market which is better than your own, which already includes every feature or benefit that your product provides and perhaps more than your product provides.

A superior marketing campaign can outperform a superior competing product and thus your inferior product might still win.

8) Negative testimonials.

Negative testimonials are pretty bad for any product. Any product marketing will fail if reputation management is not done for that product.

If the first search about that product brings in negative feedback, who would want to buy it?

Having negative comments is a quick way to make sure that your product marketing will go wrong.

The best way to get rid of negative comments is to add more positive comments on top of it. Even buying paid ads to get more real estate on the top of the search results and get some positive things added can help.

Product marketing is a delicate art and it can absolutely go wrong if proper care is not taken. When product marketing goes wrong it leaves lasting damage and some of that damage is even irreversible.

The damage to a brands name is a serious one and cannot be ignored. When product marketing goes wrong, it bring with itself a list of damages that even time cannot fix.