Dan Galante

Before businesses can sell anything, they need to determine if there is a market for their products and services.

Most businesses will not necessarily be creating new product categories. As a result, they will be entering into a marketplace that already exists. This is true if you are a re-seller or distributor of products and services. Once you decide that there is a market for your products and services; you need to study your competitors.

Smartsheet.com template

You can see who your competitors are by doing internet research, reading trade publications, and attending industry trade shows. On the internet, you can view your competitors’ websites. Once you have all of this information you need to determine the sales, and marketing channels that you will use to sell your product. Are you going to sell products via a website, direct mail, social media marketing, retail space, trade shows, or a direct sales force? There are many options available to you.

Knowing who could use your product is also something important to consider. If you do not have any existing customers you will need to be the Sales rep for your business to get yourself set up in the marketplace.

To be able to make an effective Sales Presentation to a customer, you will need to compile your Marketing research in competitive analysis and intelligence chart.

You will need to perform a SWOT analysis by assessing your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, threats compared to your competitors on the products you offer, the price, quality, the service, reliability, stability, expertise, company reputation, location, and appearance of your business along with how important it is to the customer.

This is a must-do even if you do not hire sales reps. But if you, do it should be part of their training. This competitive analysis should be done regularly.

This is how you can apply Marketing research to drive your product sales.

Product Marketing 

What is the role of Product Marketing?

I covered the Product Marketing Community workshop to find out.

Workshop Topics included how to:

1. Build and execute go-to-market plans
2. Develop actionable buyer insights
3. Create effective Messaging and Content for buyers
4. Enable Sales and Product Teams

Businesses should identify their ideal customer.

What are the challenges of Product Marketing?

Just as Marketing has a plan or brief, Product Marketing does.

SmartSheet.com Product Marketing Template

Here are nine things to address in a Product Marketing Brief.

1. What does your company do? Does your product offering align with your business goals?
2. What are the features of your product? Do others understand what you are building and why?
3. Does this Product address gaps in the Market? Include an overview of a Competitive, win-loss, and, SWOT analysis.
4. Who is your ideal customer or target market? Include an overview of findings of demographic, psychographic, and buyer persona research. Does your product solve customer pain points?
5. How will you measure product success?
6. What are can go wrong? Can failure be anticipated and corrected?
7. What is the roadmap and schedule of the product? Who’s responsible and in charge?
8. Who needs to be included in the project and who needs to approve deliverables?
9. How will goals be tracked? How often will they be monitored? What insights are you trying to glean from the data?

Creating a Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a guide to understanding the needs, challenges, and pain points of customers.

Questions to ask

What are these customers’ habits?

What concerns, needs and challenges do they have?

What actions are customers taking to address their needs and challenges?

Why do customers need to take these actions?

This question may be applied to multiple action steps described in Hooked by Nir Eyal as the 5 Whys.

What makes them want to buy?

Where do they look for information?

What type of content and medium do they use to access the information?

What days and times are the most likely to look for information and consume content?

It is important to note that businesses with multiple products and more than one target market will need to create buyer personas for each ideal customer.

Where to obtain information on the Ideal Customer

1. Interview current customers and prospects.

2. Send out targeted surveys via email, direct mail, and Social Networks. Offer incentives such as gift cards and discounts to encourage people to provide the information needed.

3. Read biography and history books about your ideal customer.

4. Study the news.

5. Study existing research conducted by Market Research firms.

Building buyer personas will result in:

1. Creating and implementing better and more targeted product messaging and communication

2. Getting the product in front of customers who truly will benefit from its use

How have you used Market Research, and Product Marketing to increase Sales?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Additional places to find my content and blog

WordPress: http://dangalante.me/

Tumblr: http://www.askdangalante.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/DanGalante

Medium https://medium.com/@DanGalante

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/trendsettingsm

Anchor https://anchor.fm/dangalante

About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill-sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference. I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today a blog covering industry events and trends.

Articles and insights have been featured, mentioned, and, referenced in:

Tractica in the News

The Future of AI

https://medium.com/@DanGalante/the-future-of-ai-insights-from-the-ai-summit-ab6267eca70b

Digital Marketing World Forum

https://www.digitalmarketing-conference.com/key-insights-from-digital-marketing-world-forum-north-america/

Voice Summit

Compilation: Our Favorite Post-VOICE Coverage So Far

https://www.voicesummit.ai/blog/compilation-our-favorite-post-voice-coverage

Engage Bay

7 Steps to Align your Marketing Automation Strategy

https://www.engagebay.com/blog/marketing-automation-strategy/

Relay 42

The Role of Technology in Customer-Centricity

https://relay42.com/resources/blog/the-role-of-technology-in-customer-centricity

Databox

How to Improve Marketing and Sales Alignment (Gave background)

https://databox.com/how-to-improve-sales-marketing-alignment

Onalytica

Named as a Top STEM Influencer for EdTech and Education Industry Insights.

http://www.onalytica.com/blog/posts/stem-top-influencers-brands-publications/

The Arizona Republic

http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/handle-top-10-sme-sales-objections-24845.html

Twitter Ads Blog

https://blog.twitter.com/2014/how-smartphone-users-engage-on-twitter-three-key-findings

Paper.li’s Wall Of Fame via Scoop.it

http://www.scoop.it/t/all-things-paper-li/?tag=Dan+Galante

I’ve been honored for my Social Profiles

•LinkedIn SSI Score in the Top 1%

•SlideShare for being in the top 5% of profiles viewed in 2014

•LinkedIn Profile was in the top 1% of profiles viewed out of 200 million members in 2012

I’m seeking a full-time role in:

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement Enablement, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing. Reach out to start a conversation on LinkedIn or email me at dan@dangalante.com

I asked my LinkedIn audience If the Sales and Marketing functions were merged and run by Sales, What would be your main focus? Why?

As you can see, 68% of those surveyed said that increased lead generation and demand generation was a top priority. What this means is that people see Marketing as a vehicle to increase Sales and Revenue.

Free Trials

Previously, I have discussed the marketing strategy of free trials, discounted trials, and loss leaders.

Free Samples

Another great marketing strategy for brands to get prospects and current customers to try a new product or retry an existing one is to offer a free sample. This can be done by handing out the product sample during online, field, and tradeshow marketing.

Field & Trade Show Marketing

Samples can be in the form of a physical product, a link to an online offering, offering a discount to make a purchase. Recently, I attended the 9th Avenue International Food Festival in New York. I received sample food products. One of the vendors offered a food sample and a coupon to make a purchase.

At Tradeshows, brands can offer physical and digital products in exchange for customer information. This is an excellent tactic for lead generation. Most times brands scan the badge of customers to collect this information.

Online Marketing

Brands can also reach customers online to get them to request a free sample. The sample can come in the form of a download or a physical offering depending on the product type.

Brands can also offer branded merchandise as a way to be remembered by prospects and customers.

How have you used free samples to attract new customers, renew, upsell, and cross-sell existing customers?

Share your thoughts and join the conversation.

Additional places to find my content and blog

WordPress: https://dangalante.me/

Tumblr: http://www.askdangalante.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/DanGalante

Medium https://medium.com/@DanGalante

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/trendsettingsm

Anchor https://anchor.fm/dangalante

About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference.

I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, and SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today; a blog that covers industry events and trends.

I’m seeking a full-time role in

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing,

Sales Enablement, Enablement, Sales, Account Management, Customer Success, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, and Recruitment Marketing.

Open on the title, industry, company, location, and level. Reach out on LinkedIn or at dan@dangalante.com to start a conversation.

Creating content that engages customers is key. Another key element to creating customer-centered presentations and digital content is knowledge of buyer learning styles.

In other words, how do buyers learn best?

There are three learning styles, Visual, Auditory, and kinesthetic. 65 percent of learners are Visual but this is not everyone.

Survey Results

I surveyed my LinkedIn Audience to ask which types of content helps them to learn best and what type of content they value most.

As you can see, people learn best from a mix of written, video, audio, and content formats.

Of the types of content, people want to read, many want to read industry insights, how-to, insights from conferences, and a mix of all of the above.

Based on my findings, I would recommend that content be:

1.Created and repurposed in multiple formats

2.Content is about industry insights, how-to, and insights from conferences

The overall content strategy should be based on how your customers learn and the types and format of content based on their wants and needs.

Bonus Content

In the presentation below, I provide ideas and strategies to:

1.Collect information on your buyer’s learning style

2.Create presentations and content that will engage buyers with content that is optimized to their learning style making it more engaging**

3.Create differentiated presentations and content for all learners when buyer learning styles are unknown

** How to Customize Presentations & content to Buyer learning Styles **

from

Dan Galante

How do you learn best and which content format helps you most? Comment and share.