Planning to Sell a New Product? Don’t Forget these 25 Marketing Should Have’s!

I’ve talked with many inventors and entrepreneurs who get very excited about their new product.

They’ve spent years building prototypes, convincing family and friends into investing in their idea and trying to meet the person who can help them get it listed with a retailer or distributor for instant sales.

Marketing your new product is that important step between creating a new product and selling a new product.

What many of them forget is that the marketing function takes a product over the bridge from the R&D phase of research and development into the sales phase of meeting with retailers, distributors and even the content for an ecommerce website where they can sell direct to the end user.

Marketing is about more than listing the features - it defines the benefits and advantages of the product - to each and every step along the supply chain. WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) is the rallying cry of each step and marketing provides the breadcrumbs to help each link understand their advantage for carrying a product thru the chain.

25 Key New Product Marketing Should Have’s:

1. Correct colors
2. Unique URL
3. Keywords
4. Defined benefits
5. Good margin
6. Competitive pricing
7. Strong photography from a professional photographer Cairns
8. Compelling description
9. Easy-to-Understand Reason to Buy
10. Wow factor
11. Memorable name
12. A clear way to reach the end user
13. Preferably a patent, a tradename, a trademark - something you can protect
14. Support materials
15. Testimonials
16. About the company launching the product
17. Independent test results
18. Social media bait - how to video? beautiful photos? Reason to like?
19. Instructions for assemble, care and use, battery replacement, etc
20. High resolution logos
21. Press release with media contact
22. Background Fact Sheet
23. Website with blog
24. ______________
25. ______________

Obviously not all the Should Have’s are appropriate for every product. It depends if you are launching a business-to-business product, a business-to-consumer product or a something else entirely. What’s your main channel of distribution? Mom and Pop retail stores? Big Box Chains? E-commerce from your website? Amazon or eBay? Each channel has a unique challenge for your product.

What are the two Key Marketing Should Have’s that I’m missing? Leave a comment below!

Want more?

For Entrepreneurs, Product Inventors and Anyone Else who wants to Bring a New Product to Market

Roadmap For Success is a 55 page PDF ebook in workbook format that you can download to take you from conception all the way through to bringing your product to market.

Don’t miss a single post! Receive every Branding & Marketing post conveniently in your email box. And if you are currently a blog subscriber using Feedburner, please resubscribe here. That service will be discontinued in July and you will stop receiving posts.