what to know about marketing and selling a single productA lot of startups, particularly in the technology industry, just have a single product that they’re trying to sell. This is obviously quite a unique situation from when you’re a company selling a slew of products, and it may require a different marketing strategy.

In general, the following are some things startups with one product should know about marketing and sales.

Marketing Methods

When you’re a startup marketing a single product, first and foremost you want to focus most of your efforts on making sure your audience understand what your product is and what it does. Often companies that have a single product tend to focus marketing on features rather than benefits, and that’s not the route to take.

All of your marketing needs to be driven by the benefits you can offer your audience, and you need to make sure they have a clear understanding of what it is your product does, especially if it’s a new innovation. This can be done through the use of a whiteboard animation or explainer video.

You also want to focus a lot of your marketing on the concept of education. You want to offer research, whitepapers, explainer videos and more that don’t just promote your product but provide a rich, educational experience for your audience. This will help you fill the void that may exist in your marketing as a result of only have one product to offer.

The Benefits

You may think it’s going to be tougher to market and sell a single product, but in reality, there are some benefits to doing business this way, and these benefits are important to understand. You’re part of a niche market, and if you know anything about digital marketing, you know that identifying a niche is essential.

You have your niche already identified for you, and you can work on making sure that not only your product but also how you market it are better than anything else out there. You also have the ability to closely define your audience so that you’re not trying to market to everyone and finding your tactics aren’t sticking.

It’s easier to look at the only behavior and analytics of your audience when you’re focusing on one product and not just refine your market based on that data, but also your product.

The Downsides

Just as you should recognize the strengths you have as a startup selling one product, you also need to be aware of the potential downsides. Knowing the downsides of a single product can help you tailor your marketing in the most effective ways.

First, you’re not going to focus your marketing on return customers. A lot of marketing is based on the idea of building the loyal customer, and while of course, you want happy customers that would be willing to return to you if they needed to, they’re not likely to need to unless you’re making big updates.

This means that you need to focus marketing more on new customers and much less on fostering a relationship that would encourage repeat buyers.

Finally, marketing also isn’t going to be reliant on the idea of cross-selling where you increase your revenue by offering complementary products to your customers. What you might do to overcome this obstacle is instead build partnerships with other companies that offer complementary products and work on revenue sharing.