How to Market Multiple Products and Services

Businesses are constantly making adjustments to accommodate the needs of their consumers. As your competition also challenges you to step up, you have to find unique ways to market your products/services in a manner that appeals to your target audience. While I wish there were a straightforward formula to leverage your strengths and captivate your consumers, the reality is that one size simply does not fit all.

Consider the following parameters when creating your marketing strategy:

• Product/Service Offering

From offering one niche luxury product targeted towards the high net worth individuals to multiple products that are geared towards a wide demographic, businesses vary in their approach. Your marketing strategy is largely dependent on the type of business you run and the products/services you offer.

• Customer Profile

All consumers broadly fall into one of three categories: price sensitive, quality sensitive, or reputation sensitive. The key to marketing your products well is to understand the buyer personas, what they are looking for and what factors matter most to them when selecting a product/service.

For the price sensitive consumers, discounts, offers, and promotions can help them feel that they’re getting greater value for the money spent. Quality sensitive customers will be enticed by the sheer quality of experience from the products/services they are considering to purchase, and are willing to pay a premium for it, if needed. With this valuable knowledge, you can then tailor your marketing strategy to suit your target audience.

Reputation is an important parameter in today’s day and age. With easy access to Google and other web-related search engines, information is at our fingertips. Reviews and opinions about the brand can make or break a business. Reputation sensitive customers are discerning and are better equipped to make well-informed decisions. This is extremely critical in the leisure and hospitality sector.

• Social Marketing

People are attracted to businesses that have a greater purpose beyond making profit. If there are two businesses that sell the same product, one at a lower price with no greater purpose and the other at a slightly higher price with an eco-friendly motto, consumers are more likely to buy from the eco-friendly business.

So, know what your business stands for and why you do what you do. This will make a world of a difference as it will make you much more memorable to your consumers when you are being compared to your competition. Whatever your story may be, make sure you craft it in a way that connects emotionally and sparks curiosity in your consumers and thus help you stand out from your competition.

• Telling a Story

As you create new products to serve the changing needs and desires of your target audience, or extend your product line with a variant, it is vital to connect with your consumer with a unique story. If you’ve already established yourself in the market and built trust amongst your consumers, then your consumers would want to know how your product came to be and what it has to offer.

It may be tempting to take your consumers for granted because you’ve already established your presence and reputation in society, but as the saying goes, “pride comes before a fall.” Always seek to engage your consumers. Entice them by offering what they want and show them that you created the new product or service with them at the forefront of your mind.

• Staying Relevant

Connect, listen, and talk to your consumers. Continue to keep them in the loop and stay up to date with the latest trends or any other relevant information. Be part of their interests, passions, and the other touch points. You will have a greater chance of winning them over and retaining them.

With an understanding of the parameters you need to keep in mind when crafting your marketing strategy, the next step is to dive into how to execute successfully. As this usually involves several moving parts, it’s crucial that you maintain razor-sharp focus on your goals, delivering your products/services to your target audience in relevant, creative ways, and empowering your team to do their best work. Here are the key areas you could consider:

Craft a Relevant Narrative

If your business offers more than one product in the same category, catering to the same audience, you may want to consider a marketing communication strategy that includes more than one product under an umbrella brand, such as Amul in India. No matter how established your business is, you have set a specific budget for marketing, and you want to maximise your budget as best you can. So, what if there is a way to market two products at the cost of one? This would save you valuable resources that can be used for something else.

You must first consider your target audience. If you are trying to attract the woman of the house, perhaps you would create a story that follows her throughout her day. Upon waking up, she might prepare breakfast for her family, and you could use this opportunity to highlight a product that may help her efficiently do this. Then, after a long day of errands and work, you could introduce an innovative cooling pillow that helps her drift off into a peaceful slumber.

As the example illustrates, your marketing strategy would depend on the products that you are trying to sell and your target audience. As you take these factors into consideration, you can then craft a story that will effectively captivate your target audience and entice them into buying your products. If you can market more than one product within a commercial, then you’ve saved time and money.

Another strategy to consider is to focus on telling one story that highlights a product that would best serve the needs of your consumers. At times, trying to tell too many stories may only lead to confusion, so if you can’t seem to craft a narrative that effectively sells multiple products, then focus on one that will draw in your target audience. Once you’ve convinced your target audience to buy the first product, you can then introduce the second.

Too Many Cooks Won’t Spoil the Broth

A business with many products but no people on board will never succeed. Even if this business is your “brainchild”, it can only take off successfully if you trust people to help you create a narrative, establish a marketing strategy, and put your plan into action. Trying to market multiple products on your own will likely leave you feeling stressed, frustrated, and disappointed with the outcome.

If you offer diverse product categories, it is ideal to hire several people to handle each product category individually. Trying to cluster irrelevant products into one may be disastrous and leave your consumers feeling confused. Everyone on your team should be on the same page with your core values and marketing strategy so that you can attract your ideal audience and achieve your desired sales target. Giving each team member a distinct product line/service will also help them build expertise in a particular product line or service to understand the customer better.

As with any team, there should always be a leader that oversees each product manager and filters out what should be released into the market. The role of this leader is to help everyone see the bigger picture and what role each product plays in the bigger narrative. Oftentimes, each product manager may get too focused on their own vision of the product that they forget the overarching goal and vision of the brand or the organisation.

Because the leader can assess if the marketing of each product category falls in line with the brand’s vision, the team may be able to save time and resources by synergistically clustering similar products together. With limited time and resources, the team must work together to reduce the cost of marketing as much as possible.

Managing a large marketing team is a lot like running a family. Your team must work within a certain budget to ensure that every essential task has enough resources to support it. When working with multiple product managers, each product manager may have an idea of when the product should be released to the market, but it may not be the right time in light of the bigger picture. So, the role of the leader is to keep every project in perspective to ensure that everything works together smoothly.

Attract Your Target Audience

No matter what story you tell, it will not make a difference if you don’t learn to speak the language of your target audience. The way you market a product for a homemaker would be different from how you would market it for a student. Each generation speaks a different language, uses different slang, and desires different products and services.

While some people are eager to jump into creating a story to market a new product, it is important to take a step back and understand your target audience. Get to the core of who they are and what they want, so that you can speak their language and market your product in a way that will draw them in. If you are marketing a product that is generally loved by all, you still should choose a core target audience to tailor your marketing story appropriately.

Defining your target audience will help you answer a lot more questions and guide you in the process of marketing your product. Once you have your target audience, you can determine if you need one person or multiple people to market the product. For example, if you want to sell ice cream to different groups of people, you would need several people to market your product for each target audience.

When you hyperfocus your attention on marketing one product, it may be easy to lose sight of the bigger story that your brand is trying to sell. So, it is important to always keep the larger story in mind so that your product complements the story rather than distracts consumers away from it. This will make sure that your consumers will always know what your brand stands for. For example, TATA Sons, a salt to airline conglomerate, always stood for trust, quality and giving back to the society.

While it is important to focus on establishing a suitable timeline to introduce new products into the market, it is also equally vital to understand your competition and determine what their strategy is in attracting and retaining consumers. This valuable market information will give you insight into what product you should release and when you should release it. This depends on your overall business objective in light of your competition and the consumer market.

Focus on What Matters Most

As your business expands, it is easy to lose sight of your vision and potentially take on more than you can handle. If you try to add a new branch to your business that may be considered unconventional, then you must first consider what your purpose is for doing so. Even if you are a very successful brand who has established a notable reputation in society, setting up a new branch may only confuse your consumers and may end up hurting your reputation if it is poorly executed.

This was certainly the case for the consumers of one particular company in India. This company was well-known throughout India for specialising in a particular product, but they suddenly decided to offer an overwhelming range of products. While it was quite a feat to accomplish, it ended up confusing customers and their underlying narrative was lost.

One of the late entrants in the FMCG sector in India, Patanjali Ayurveda, has been consumer’s favourite due to its affordability, use of natural and organic ingredients. It positioned itself as a healthier alternative coming from an Indian enterprise. After its initial traction and success, sales dropped.

The key factors leading to the decline in Patanjali are lack of innovation, general trade distribution issues, dilution of the ayurvedic credentials on an excessive extension of categories, a strong competitive response from large MNCs with their own natural ayurvedic offerings, and an incoherent communication strategy.

After garnering huge popularity among consumers, Patanjali ventured into many other categories besides FMCG. With such aggressive expansion, the business verticals became difficult to manage and ensure quality as promised. As a result, various quality issues emerged leading to a decline in sales.

Don’t get caught up in trying to outdo your competition by branching out to areas that are outside of your expertise unless this is a carefully calculated step that would enhance and support your narrative. If someone wants to buy a watch, they are probably more likely to buy it from a company that specialises in watches rather than one that sells a whole range of apparel and accessories.

Determine your company’s focus from the beginning to create the foundation of your marketing strategy. Are you promoting the brand, the company, or the product category? Once you have decided what your objective is, make sure that everything you present to your consumers is consistent with your narrative and your primary objective.

Empower Your Team

The primary objective must then be shared with every member of the marketing team in order to guide your team in their marketing strategy. If you’re working with a larger team, it won’t be easy to make sure that your message stays coherent throughout each marketing campaign. But you must learn to trust your team to incorporate your primary objective into their marketing strategy.

At times, a leader may be tempted to micromanage her team with the best intention of protecting the brand and the reputation among the consumers. However, if the leader ends up controlling every aspect of the marketing strategy, then your team will feel stifled, which will ultimately hinder their creativity and the ideas that they have to offer.

Once you have established the guidelines to help your team understand your objectives and overarching goal for your brand, take a step back. Give them space to dream, create, exchange ideas and execute marketing campaigns that may end up surprising you for the better. Trust your team to bear the responsibilities you’ve given them and enjoy watching what they have to offer.

1. Understand Your Consumer

Fully grasp the core of your consumers. Who they are and what are their motivations and concerns? Invest time into building a strong consumer persona for each product offering. Based on this, tailor your marketing strategies to attract and emotionally connect with the appropriate target audience to positively grow the reputation of your brand.

2. Be Resourceful with Marketing Budgets

Running a business is similar to running a household. You must work within a certain budget to accomplish all of your tasks so that you do not spread yourself too thin. Prioritise. Each marketing campaign will cost you something, so strategise carefully to maximise your resources for the most important projects.

3. Trust Your Team To Do Their Job

Don’t scrutinise every little detail of your team’s process. The more you suffocate them, the less likely they will be able to do their job well. Instead, empower them with the vision you have set for your brand and allow them to work their magic. It may turn out even better than you could ever imagine!