How I Turned Around a Shark Tank Product

How do you market your product when competitors come in and start replicating it??

This is exactly what happened to one of my Shark Tank clients after their patent expired.?

Tough spot to be in ... and no running the price down isn't the answer.? Thankfully there are a couple of options when marketing your product or service that can help you keep your #1 spot in the market.?

So let's get into it...

A Little Background

Before I dive into the strategies that you can use, I want to give you the background story.?

I run Facebook Ads for this client. Before I came on, their ad account was run by another agency.?

One of the main things this other agency did was run sales. Not just once or twice, but all of the time. 30% off all the time isn't great product positioning.? So I knew that had to change.?

Having multiple competitors cranking out cheap alternatives and then putting your own product on a steep discount wasn't a great spot to be in if you're trying to build a long-term business and brand. Another important note is the client was receiving an average?Cost Per Purchase (CPP) of?$35 when they discounted their product. Which didn't leave much room for profit with the 30% off.?

Oof.... that's a real tough spot to be in. Not impossible though to turn around and get better results.

Here are the exact strategies I took to turn this around. ?

Strategy #1: Your Messaging

When running ads your messaging and product positioning to your target market is the determining factor if you're going to have a successful campaign or not.? Another way to say this is your goal is to clearly explain how your product or service is going to solve the issues that your customer is having.?

In this situation, the first thing I had to get rid of was the product being constantly on sale.?Mainly because this dilutes the effectiveness of a large sale, like Black Friday. Also when you have multiple competitors, especially if they are cheaper, you have to focus on your messaging.?

Now I don't know about you but I personally hate when you take the time to read something and they don't get to the part that actually helps you. So here's exactly what I did.?

1. User Generated Content (UGC) This type of content is when someone records themselves talking about why the product is amazing and how it helped them. This is a great way to show social proof. This type of ad content was one of the most effective that I used.

2. Product in Action Images and videos can speak louder than words. Sure you can talk about why your product is effective, or you can just show an image or video of it being effective. Sounds super easy but capturing people's attention while they are scrolling, easily showing the effectiveness of your product and getting them to take action can be difficult. I made sure to test ads that I thought captured each of those points.

3. Videos on Why Our Product is Better We have competitors coming out with similar products. Because of this, I made sure we also ran ad content that conveyed why our product was superior to our competitors.?

With this new set up I was able to consistently get CPP at $35, without having to do a 30% off sale.? At the end of the day, the messaging on why your product is superior can outperform having a sale.? ?

Strategy #2: Repositioning

This particular Shark Tank product was positioned for mechanics.? While we were getting good results for that part of the market, the product could also be used in various other industries.? I listed out various industries that this product could work for and started testing those. Plumbers, hair salons, make-up, and Lego building were some of the sectors I started targeting.?

Utilizing similar content strategies that I mentioned above, I was able to get anywhere from $17 - $32 CPP across different industries.?

The reason I bring this up is there are times when a product or service can be repositioned in the marketplace for a different industry where you can potentially get better results.?

It's not something that most marketers think of but can be utilized as a strategy to bring in better CPPs. ?

In Closing

As marketers, we're not always handed the best product to market, however with some adjustments you can take a product and dramatically improve results.? ?

The Short

1. Don't let your patent expire

2. Don't have your product always on sale

3. Work on your messaging?

4. Reposition your product

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