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If you want to sell more products and make more money, you have to know how to promote your products effectively. With more and more people spending most of their time online(on their phone or laptop), it is essential to master the game of online marketing to reach your target customers.
There are basically two main ways of promoting your products online:
- Free
- Paid
Everyone, me included, loves free marketing because it doesn’t eat into your profits.
For paid promotion, you have to make sure that there is a positive return on your marketing spend.
So, which one should you choose?
And how do you actually implement the promotion strategy in your own business?
FREE Ways To Promote Your Products Online
Create & Post Viral Videos On Facebook and YouTube
Currently, Facebook has about 2.5 billion monthly users while YouTube has about 2 billion monthly users, these are two marketing channels you don’t want to ignore.
With videos being the most shared content online, it’s natural to leverage this to get more eyeballs on your product.
But, can viral videos actually bring sales for your products?
Yes, definitely.
One of my friends sells private label phone cases that he sourced from China.
One of his products is an anti-gravity phone case.
He was actually one of the very first few people who started to sell this product online.
To promote his product, he decided to create a video to show the different use cases because it was not very obvious to the potential customers how this can benefit them.
Here are just a few of its use cases:
- You can watch cooking tutorials by sticking the phone on the wall in front of you while cooking
- You can take a selfie without holding the phone any more
- You can video call someone without holding the phone
- You can watch makeup tutorials while doing your makeup
So, he asked his friends to help and act out the different use cases in a short video to show this product can make life so easy for people.
The next thing was the video went viral on Facebook after his friends shared it and his friends’ friends shared it.
Everyone loved it, and many of them bought the product by using the product link he put next to the video.
This method is not new.
In fact, many brands have been doing it and some have gotten really great results from it.
One such example is the Dollar Shave Club.
So far, this video has had more than 26 million views.
Did Dollar Shave Club sell any of its products using the viral video marketing strategy?
It received 12,000 new orders within 48 hours of posting this video.
So, how do you make viral videos that actually lead to product sales?
Here are some useful tips:
- Use humor in your video because funny videos get shared more often
- Show how your product is a solution to your customers’ problems
- Present product benefits and features
- Include Call-to-Action in the video
Useful Resources:
YouTube Masterclass – Your Complete Guide to YouTube
Create Viral Pins On Pinterest
If your products rely on a lot of visual contents to promote and sell, then Pinterest is one of the best platforms for you.
Pinterest has about 322 million monthly users and the majority of them women, so products that are catered to women will work best with Pinterest.
So, does viral images you upload to Pinterest lead to any sales of your products?
The answer is yes.
One of the success stories is this company called “Grace & Lace” which started out making and selling women’s boot socks.
They started out with an Etsy shop and used Pinterest to promote their products online.
Below is a picture of one of their products.
This image went viral and got re-pinned thousands of times on Pinterest.
By just creating and uploading viral pins to Pinterest, they generated more than 6-figures in sales for just one single product -leg warmers.
A side note: they went on to Shark Tank and got a deal with Barbara. Now, they are a women’s apparel company doing millions of dollars in sales.
So, if you are selling women’s fashion products such as clothes, shoes and accessories, Pinterest would be a great place to reach your target audience for free by creating highly shareable pins.
Here are some tips for creating viral pins on Pinterest:
- Use great photos (i.e. visually appealing)
- Include relevant keywords in your pin description so people can easily find your pin (Pinterest is a visual search engine)
- Pin it to relevant group boards with a huge number of followers
Useful Resources:
Turn Your Etsy® Shop into a Sales Machine Course at CreativeLive
Get Free Targeted Traffic From Google
Who doesn’t like free organic search traffic from Google?
People who find your products through search engines are highly qualified leads because they are actively searching for it.
So, what are some companies doing to get a huge amount of free targeted leads from Google for their products?
They create relevant content that help their target customers solve their problems.
For example, Shopify is very good at using content marketing to drive traffic and get leads for its business.
If you are not familiar with Shopify, it’s an e-commerce platform that sells a subscription to software as a service that helps you to sell, ship, and manage your products.
So, how much FREE organic traffic does it get from Google every single month?
About 3.5 millions website visitors.
Are these people qualified leads for their products?
Below is a screenshot of its top pages with highest traffic.
You can see that, almost all the topics are directly related to e-commerce.
For example, the top 4 most visited pages bring combined monthly traffic of 350,000 people, and these are highly relevant articles about dropshipping, e-commerce and e-commerce software.
The best part is that people who are searching for information about dropshipping, e-commerce and e-commerce software are most likely looking to start an e-commerce business.
And these people are exactly what Shopify wants to promote their product to.
So, creating a blog for your business is a cost-effective way to get free targeted leads for your business.
What do you need to start a blog?
First, you will need to get a domain name and set your blog up.
Typically, you can get a decent blog set up with a $3.95 per month web hosting plan from Bluehost (I used it to set up this website).
There is also another web hosting that I recommend which is NameCheap. And its basic plan starts at $1.44/Month.
Although Bluehost is slightly more expensive, it offers FREE domain name and also FREE SSL (which helps make your website secure) while NameCheap will charge you for both separately.
Also, an email autoresponder software is a good-to-have because you can use it to build a list of email subscribers.
The reason why you want to build an email list is that you can keep in touch with your audience and promote your new products to them.
If you are having a tight budget, there is an email marketing software called MailChimp which allows you to use it for free as long as your list of subscribers does not exceed 2,000.
However, my experience with MailChimp is not very pleasant.
After getting fed up with the FREE service, I finally decided to sign up for GetResponse which I am still using right now till this day.
You can sign up for GetResponse for a FREE 30-day trial NOW.
Lastly, I recommend this keyword research tool called “KWFinder” ( which I am also using to find low competition high search volume keyword ideas for my blog).
You can read my experience with “KWFinder”here.
With this keyword research tool, you will know for sure that your audience will be interested in reading what you are going to write, even before you start writing.
Useful Resource:
Blogging Masterclass: How To Build A Successful Blog In 2020
Get Interviewed On Popular Blogs & Podcasts
Doing an interview on popular blogs and podcasts is also one good way to get your products in front of your target audience quickly.
This is very similar to how movie stars will tour around the country and go on popular talk shows to promote their latest movies.
So, this promotional method is not really new.
In fact, there is a group of people who have been using this strategy to promote their products for a very long time:
- Authors promoting new book release
- Online course creators
- Coaches (i.e. business coach, career coach, etc)
Tim Ferris, an author of multiple best-selling books, often arrange interviews with popular bloggers and podcast hosts right before his new book launch.
For example, when he was launching his book called “4-Hour Body”, he did an interview with Copyblogger.
This is just one of the MANY interviews he did to promote his new book.
When he was launching his book called “4-Hour Chef”, he used the same strategy again.
Below is the podcast interview he did with EOFire to promote his latest book.
For this strategy to be effective, you cannot blatantly promote and sell your products during your guest appearances.
Instead, it’s important to give a lot of value to the audience and get them to remember you and like you.
When is it a good time to promote your product during the interview?
Generally, it will be at the start when the host introduces you and at the end of the interview when you are asked to share about your products.
During the interview, you might be asked questions related to your products but that only happens if it fits the theme of the interview.
Useful Resources:
Power Your Podcast with Storytelling
Create A Youtube Channel
As more and more people start to use YouTube, creating a YouTube channel and growing an audience is another good way to get your product in front of your target customers.
One YouTube channel does this very well.
Below is a YouTube channel called “Ryan’s world” which is all about children’s videos.
In just a few short years, it has built a huge following with more than 23 millions people subscribing to its channel.
Now, he even has his own line of products such as children’s toys and clothes.
With a popular YouTube channel, all he has to do to promote his products is to make a video and upload it to YouTube for millions of subscribers to see.
Further Reading:
How You Can Start A Profitable Online Store (In 12 Weeks Or Less)
Conclusion
Free product promotion methods do work and also help save a lot of money. The key to getting results with free product promotion methods is to choose one that is more suitable for your business and then focus all your time and effort on this. This is almost always better than trying too many different ways to promote products at the same time and risk spreading yourself too thin.
A great read, thanks Gladice!