Enjoy this week’s guest post by Amanda Sparks and learn what the most common product placement mistakes are so you can avoid making them!
To better understand the importance of product placement, let’s do an exercise with your imagination. Imagine you are the top chef in a restaurant and you want to impress your clients. What do you focus on, apart from taste? You use several techniques to make your dishes look fabulous and make your clients eat with their eyes first. The same happens when you think of product placement. Your product becomes more appealing when you display it in an amazing way, thus impressing your clients with a flattering look. For example, you can use a vivid color scheme, or a special packaging to make your clients choose your products instantly.
Your product becomes more appealing when you display it in an amazing way, thus impressing your clients with a flattering look. #business #biztips #smallbusiness #entrepreneur #makers Share on XThere are several elements you can take into consideration when you think of your product placement:
- The presentation and position of your products on the shelf
- How you display your product on landing pages and online advertisements
- Place your products strategically in TV spots and videos
- Use ingenious methods to display your products on the product pages.
This article is going to give you five relevant examples of mistakes many companies made when they placed their products on the market. Take a look below and discover what you shouldn’t do if you want to increase your sales.
5 Key Product Placement Mistakes That Businesses Make
- Lack of control over in-store merchandising
If you go for a walk in a grocery store, you will discover that the best-selling products are those displayed at eye level. You will notice that the name-brand and higher end products are precisely at the level of your eyes, making it easier for you to understand what you are going to buy. What is more, the shelves are organized to the tiniest details with the labels placed frontward.
One common mistake many businesses make is that they forget to keep control over their products’ merchandising. Usually, products are tossed on a bottom shelf. There are also cases when the products are not visible or appealing when displayed on the shelf. Therefore, it is essential that before you place your products in the store, to establish very clear merchandising goals and rules.
- No buzz is created around your product
It may be that you have a fabulous product which is going to appear on TV shows. Moreover, you might have leased a generous billboard right in the middle of the city to promote your product. Or it may be that you sponsored a local artists group who are promoting your products in their shows. This is great news, but this doesn’t mean it will bring you success.
You need to let people know about your achievements. Therefore, one of the best ways to do it is to talk about it on social media, create relevant videos, or by creating press releases. You need to create buzz around your products, and these are the most productive ways to do so. On the other hand, if you feel that you don’t have enough to do it and make your clients enthusiastic about your products, you can always check some of the best writing services to make sure your content is engaging. A good idea is also to use tools like:
- Evernote – organize your ideas with this tool. You need a clear schedule for content marketing and obtain the results you aim for.
- BuzzSumo – this tool helps you to identify the topics you are going to write about, helping you to find influencers in your industry and market your content wisely.
- You cut costs in the wrong moments
Product placement is a strategy which also involves costs. Unfortunately, one of the most frequent mistakes advertisers make is that they don’t invest in image quality and production value. Customers will convert three times more if they see that you use high-quality images. If you use a lower image quality than your competitors, then it might happen that you will lose your clients. Therefore, if you decide to cut costs, think very well from where you are going to cut them as image quality is very important.
Many online stores or websites that prefer to use free images that they find online instead of buying high-quality photos can cause issues. What issues do these lower-quality images create for your website? Low user engagement rate, high bouncing rate, less income generated by traffic.
- Lack of focus on your product’s benefits
The first thing your customers see when they buy your products is the packaging. Therefore, you should draw their attention from the first moments they receive your products. If you fail to capture their attention on your product’s biggest benefits, then you will lose that client for good. As the packaging is so important, you should make it more appealing to your customers by inserting eye-catching information as well as colorful and quality images.
“If I were to give some examples that come to my mind immediately when I think of a product, I would mention those that I see on the packaging. The text mentioned on the packaging is something that you shouldn’t neglect. Customers are very savvy, and they read the descriptions to the tiniest details. Therefore, if you want to place your products correctly, you should pay attention to how you write your product description”, says Marina Williams, a marketing specialist at Essay Typer.
- Using the wrong vehicle for your product placement
If you decide to use a vehicle for your product placement, you should at least choose the one that your audience will appreciate, meaning that you need to know what your target audience wants and do things accordingly. If you want your company to seem reliable, you cannot attach it to some hilarious, yet inept characters.
In the end, it doesn’t even matter which promotion channel you are going to use. Your main priority is to make it look as good as possible. This involves control over the way it is placed in the store, keep high standards in terms of image quality, and think twice before you decide your strategy in terms of packaging and product placement.
Amanda Sparks is a professional marketer and blogger. She is passionate about developing innovative and customer-friendly solutions for brands. You can follow Amanda here on Twitter.