Last updated on April 25th, 2023 at 02:53 pm
it is anticipated that US e-commerce sales will reach $1 trillion for the first time ever.
In other words, despite the numerous difficulties brought on by a more competitive market, supply chain issues, and greater acquisition costs in digital marketing, e-commerce is flourishing.
Yet the sector doesn’t appear to be slowing down despite the imminent possibility of a recession.
So how can you stand out from the competition in a crowded market? Especially with the industry’s toughest advertising challenges and the highest client expectations to date?
By developing an effective marketing strategy, you need to raise demand. While combining that marketing strategy with precise demand forecasting, you can truly satisfy the demand that has been produced.
Here are three steps to boosting demand for your product:
1st step:
- To start, generate demand.
- carry out in-depth market research
- Analyze the competition
- Analyze market gaps
- Develop a demand generation plan.
2nd step:
- raise demand
- Adapt your marketing approach.
- Promote learning with content marketing
- Use scarcity to boost conversions and demand
3rd Step:
- Convert demand for a product into sales
- Think about various sales tactics
- periodically and assess the performance
- To meet the demands of the client
How to generate demand for a new product is phase one.
Market analysis
Market analysis can support assumptions and reveal new product categories. That is what makes it such a great place to start when developing demand!
Consider Lola as an example. The DTC menstruation wellness business had no intention of evolving into a sexual wellness brand when it first debuted.
Yet, Lola later discovered through surveys and focus groups that their clientele had unmet demands and was dissatisfied with rival products.
As a result, the company also added new items to address those needs. Moreover, sexual wellness items accounted for 14% of Lola’s overall sales as of 2019.
But how can you execute a comparable action?
carry out in-depth market research
Do you understand what your client wants? You ought should! But unexpectedly, marketers frequently pass over this straightforward beginning in favor of the more exciting portions of a concept (launching and selling).
But allow us to explain: There is no way to skip this step.
Research on market demand verifies your product and prevents a failed launch, excess inventory, and (perhaps) a tarnished reputation.
But it also gives you a sympathetic understanding of what your clients care about most. And this empathy is essential to creating a compelling product line that buyers will keep returning to.
Hence, for effective market research, here are 2 crucial items to consider.
1. Start by exploring all the available data.
You don’t need to engage a high-end research company to compile a 70-page study on the purchasing habits of 17 various buyer personas when validating a new product concept. With a little research, you can find all the information you require for nothing.
Before spending money on any external study, Market Research Society CEO Jane Frost advises business owners to mine their own internal data.
This can assist in keeping your scope reasonable and prevent you from becoming overburdened with pointless info.
Advice: As you pull these reports, keep an open mind. Customer behavior and demand are always changing.
Thus, let go of what you already know in order to remain open to new possibilities.
Here are some suggestions about how to begin conducting internal market demand research:
Analyze your own data. For instance, you may examine prior social media campaign performances or run website reports on your conversion funnel.
You can even assess email marketing performance by product category. Implement DMARC policy to ensure that email marketing campaigns are successful and your account is protected from harmful assaults.
At this point, cybersecurity is essential.
Go over session replays on your e-commerce platform to learn how customers use it and what they’re most drawn to.
To capture a play-by-play of visitor trips on your site, utilize a program like Hotjar or FullStory.
Utilize free, reliable statistics, such as the Census, your neighborhood Chamber of Commerce reports, “state of the industry” reports, or Google Trends.
Consult your clients. Conduct brief conversations to uncover the core reasons why people purchase your products.
Note everything down. Please keep all of your team’s notes and research in one convenient area, and present your key results in a document that is simple to reference (we use Notion for this).
Read: Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2023: What You Need to Know
2. Draw from a big pool to avoid cognitive bias
We only know what we know. So, when conducting target market and user research, be mindful of the biases and natural limitations you bring to the table.
This’ll ensure you leave a seat for other perspectives.
Think of it this way: If you’re a man in his 50s, chances are good that the people closest to you are also men in their 50s.
And those people will likely have similar shopping habits and financial priorities.
There’s nothing wrong with that. As humans, we naturally tend to surround ourselves with people like us, and we also tend to assume other people are like us.
For instance, US employees who teleworked during the pandemic’s early stages thought that half of Americans were also teleworking. The actual number was closer to 13%.
What does this have to do with increasing demand for your product? In product development and marketing, we may develop a strong belief about a product idea within this echo chamber of similar people and opinions (called cognitive biases).
Then, only after a launch totally flops will we realize that the product wasn’t what our customer wanted.
There are a few types of cognitive biases to watch out for, like:
- Anchoring bias (“All these other data points about my customer have to agree with my initial data point, or they aren’t true.”)
- Ingroup bias (“I want to only solve problems for potential customers who experience my problems.”)
- Confirmation bias (“I will only trust new information that agrees with what I already believe about my customer.”)
These cognitive biases are everywhere in our daily work. But they can be especially harmful when they affect your end customer.
For instance, after widespread backlash, Walmart recently reconsidered a Juneteenth-themed ice cream flavor.
This backlash accused the brand of culturally appropriating a holiday commemorating the end of US slavery (Yikes!). But with Walmart’s board of directors lacking diversity, big missteps like this are more likely to happen.
When a wider range of voices is involved in validating a product, you’ll naturally gather more nuanced insight into your product-market fit. And you may find out some important context you’ll want to know before the launch.
So, the earlier you can diversify your data sources in market research, the better your marketing efforts will be and the more customer demand you’ll generate for your product.
Evaluate competitors
Part of understanding your place within the larger market is checking out what your competition is up to! If you’re carving out a new niche, you’ll need to understand which (if any) companies meet the need you’re addressing.
Read: The Key to a Successful AI Project? It’s Not What You Think
Here’s a basic way to get started on this:
Make a simple list of the main competitors in your product’s space (if you haven’t already) Copy and paste the marketing messaging they use to describe their features and benefits
- Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of each competitor
- Remember that most new products aren’t creating a new niche.
- They’re instead inserting themselves into an existing one and re-contextualizing that product for a different audience.
Like the Lola example above, the menstrual wellness brand launched condoms and entered a crowded sexual wellness market.
When they did, they started competing against mainstays like Trojan. However, because Lola had conducted customer surveys (AKA, they “dug into the data they already had”), they introduced condom products that differentiated from the existing offerings.
Take Billie’s razors as another example. Their product copywriting hammers home their main differentiator against competitors like Gillette and Harry’s, mainly how their razors are designed for women and how they don’t upcharge for being a women’s product as their competitors do.
Product positioning this way ensures they speak to the audience unserved by those 2 competitors: younger women who want equal treatment.
