Ever tried selling ice to Eskimos?
Some products are just difficult to sell. From compression latches to welfare trailers, all marketers have encountered products and services that just need that extra push to generate sales. Even if they’re important everyday essentials, they can be a tad difficult to sell.
Although the ultimate goal of marketing is to target products and services that customers are ready to buy, some of these offerings need extra attention or awareness. Customers, however, come in a variety of forms, so marketers must identify the ideal target market for products that present marketing challenges. Not all products and services can benefit from a thousand-pound TV ad or a glowing hoarding in the city.
The real litmus test is when customers are not buying your products or subscribing to your services. It suggests that you are either targeting the wrong audiences or your marketing strategy is failing. With so many marketing tactics available, take a creative approach to marketing and selling unique products and services.
Get the best out of the various marketing tactics and put a creative spin on the advertising to successfully market any unmarketable product.
In this article, we explore five ways of marketing products and services that seem unmarketable.
1. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Many businesses know the importance of SEO, but what roles does it play in helping a business market itself and its offerings?
The primary advantage SEO offers is promoting brand awareness. Brand awareness
is how familiar your customers are with your brand, products, and services. Whether you’re a new business owner or a locally established player, greater brand awareness increases brand recognition and overall sales.
Having a good SEO strategy in place backed by search ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) helps a business build its brand. Search engine ads are keyword-specific, meaning your target customer segment depends on what keywords people enter. You can also refine your audience targeting through various segments such as demographics, preferences, and life stages.
Let’s say a potential customer is looking for ‘welfare units to buy’, and they land on your website. Having your brand rank on the first page when browsing for related services and products can affect their purchasing decision. Even if they do not buy from you, they will notice and become more aware of your brand. When it comes to making the final purchase decision, your brand could rank high on the consideration set.
A well-crafted SEO strategy helps create brand awareness and build positive associations with your brand. In turn, it can help boost your ratings and help convert leads.
2. Outdoor advertising
Businesses try hard through various creative ways to stand out from the competition and garner the attention of potential customers. One such traditional medium to market any product or service is using outdoor advertising.
Outdoor advertising strategies tie well with other advertising strategies such as online, in-store, promotional, print, TV and radio. It can not only increase brand awareness but also boost the visibility and effectiveness of ongoing promotions and marketing tactics. Hoardings, feather banners, display signs, buntings and flags are just a few mediums used by local and national, small and large-scale businesses to market their product and service offerings and promotions.
Many seemingly unmarketable brands can leverage the power of outdoor advertising through various campaigns.
3. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a relatively new marketing tactic that has taken the industry by storm. It thrives on the sales maxim of ‘people wanting to do business with people they like’.
Today’s customers may not be satisfied with TV ads and outdoor hoardings alone; they want someone to hear, support, educate and entertain them. Enter influencer marketing, which was riding on the wave of social media marketing and has now evolved to craft a niche of its own.
Influencer marketing can help you discover and reach new audiences and potential customers, build brand awareness and foster trust. What’s more, if you know your audience, you can build and engage them through influencers for marketing your
products and services, regardless of your company size.
Influencers are usually individuals or groups of people who are paid to create specific content for your brand. They are creators or celebrities who build domain expertise or wield influence over a certain niche and build a sizable following and target audiences. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat and Twitch are the most popular platforms for influencers. These platform influencers can be classified into five tiers: nano, micro, mid, macro, and mega.
Whether you want to promote artificial cricket pitch installation or cricket bowling nets, you can find the right type of influencer for your product or service offering. In such cases, a popular influencer who’s well-versed in cricket or a famous cricket player can promote this product or service to reach the right audiences. Besides driving conversions, their authentic presentation and engagement foster deeper customer-brand relationships, increase reach, boost social engagement, and gain higher earned media value.
4. Service marketing
Intangible services are more difficult to market than tangible products and services. They are harder to market and sell because these services cannot be seen, touched, or experienced by the customer before purchase. While it may seem difficult, it’s not impossible.
Marketers can explore more creative ways to sell and market services such as therapy sessions, insurance, healthcare, hospitality, airline bookings, and related services. Through various service marketing techniques, marketers can get creative in exploring and adding various tangible elements and make an intangible offering more connected to the customer.
This marketing approach relies heavily on building strong customer-brand relationships and continually providing exceptional service quality. Some strategies for creating enduring relationships with your clients include feedback channels, loyalty programmes, customised solutions, and individualised communication.
The service marketing approach goes way beyond traditional product-based advertising and promotions. It aims to create customer value and meet their unique needs and requirements.
For instance, you pay for an airline ticket but have no idea how the service and experience will turn out before purchase. It’s up to the airline to ensure they uphold their brand promise or service promise and deliver a memorable travel experience.
However, it’s important to note that there is nothing tangible about the promise. Airlines can promote themselves as more than just a service provider by incorporating tangible elements of personalisation and attention to detail.
5. Social proof
Your business may succeed in generating traffic online or offline, however, are you generating enough conversions and sales? Website visitors don’t convert at first
glance; to sell, you will first need to earn their trust.
Building trust is possible through social proof, which is a psychological phenomenon
and a fundamental marketing principle in the e-commerce industry that allows a
company to gain the trust of potential customers.
Social proof is described as the tendency to depend on others’ opinions or actions and use it to validate a shopper’s time, money and interest in the product or service. It’s also known as informational social influence.
Social proof has influenced the decisions of shoppers closer to purchase. This phenomenon is powerful at capturing shoppers’ attention, making them naturally curious about the buzz. For instance, you won’t hesitate to check out an unknown brand because of the positive things being said about it.
Common social proof agents are customer testimonials, the number of followers and subscribers on a brand’s social pages, referrals from friends, certifications, expert recommendations, and celebrity endorsements. You can leverage the power of social proof to market niche category products or services such as gluten-free foods, vegan foods, upcycled apparel and accessories, and recycled lifestyle apparel and accessories.
To sum up
Products and services that seem unmarketable and unsaleable certainly present unique challenges of their own. However, this calls for marketers to employ unique approaches and creative marketing strategies in the form of influencer marketing, outdoor advertising, service marketing, social proof, and search engine optimisation.
In addition to leveraging these strategies, marketing professionals must find the right target audience, understand their unique needs, engage and build trust, and deliver their product and service promises.
Combined with a strong digital presence and a marketing plan, exceptional customer services and experiences go a long way in establishing strong and long-term customer relationships. All these approaches can turn seemingly unmarketable and unsaleable business offerings into something that captures attention, holds interest, and builds success.
