Once you’ve created your new product or service you need to have a solid strategy for promoting it to your customers. The first step is making sure you know exactly who these customers are, then you can go about bringing your product to their attention in the most effective way possible.
With so many information streams available to the public these days - both online and offline - it’s vital that you have an integrated approach to all your marketing. This will mean having a comprehensive and cohesive plan for the pre-launch, launch and ongoing promotion of your product. This will likely include your own website, social media, emails to customers, advertising and reviews.
Integrated Marketing Communications is a simple concept. It ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. Integrated Marketing Communications can require more effort to create as you need to work with multiple teams to deliver a single campaign, but the advantages make it worthwhile. You can create a competitive advantage and boost your sales. You will help your customers make a buying decision by having a unified image. A unified campaign will help to build trust in your brand and cut through the number of messages customers receive on a daily basis.
With this in mind we think long and hard about how we can create integrated marketing campaigns for ourselves and our clients, and one of the areas we have developed is ‘Tried & Tested’.
Product ‘Tried & Tested’ reviews and articles are a traditional way for companies to promote their new products and a popular feature of many printed magazines. They have also begun to transfer to digital too with magazines and bloggers producing kit guides and product run downs.
‘Tried & Tested’ may be considered to be a bit old-fashioned and many companies are investing in influencers as a ‘modern’ way to promote products. Depending on the product category, this can work well, but it’s increasingly tricky to find genuine value for money - as well as influencers - that are the correct fit for the brand.
We looked for a way we could revamp product reviews, bring in some influencers and integrate the campaign with the rest of the marketing strategy.
Until recently video has been underused in product promotion, and we realised we could use it as a new way to bring brands and products to life. We enlist the help of actual users - genuine influencers. In our line of work these influencers are in the guise of superyacht captains and senior crew. The aim is to educate the audience fully about every aspect of each item on review as we create ‘real-world’ tests. As part of the online articles that go along with the videos, we link to the purchase website so it makes the buyer journey seamless.
One example of the way we do this is our Water Toys Test:
https://yachting-pages.com/articles/tried-tested-best-water-toys.html
Water toys are an essential product in the superyacht industry. Popular for the excitement and fun they create, toys are a staple part of life on board – so it’s important for captains to have a flawless knowledge of the best new products on the market.
Yacht toy specialist EAMS Yacht Tender Center joined forces with Yachting Pages and an army of experienced crew in the South of France to review the products that will be trending in 2021. The crew, consisting of captains, officers, instructors and engineers, each provided scores across various helpful metrics that we’ve averaged out to provide an overall result.
Video ‘Tried & Tested’ articles such as this have proved they are an effective part of integrated campaigns for product marketing. The test in our example has shown us that we have curated an effective approach to product testing, one that we will refine and keep fresh with new creative ideas.
By Nathan Bees, Yachting Pages https://www.yachting-pages.com/