Product-focused Advertising: Types, Tips & How Userpilot Can Help

How do you cut through the noise and ensure potential customers notice your product? Enter: product-focused advertising.

This strategy focuses on highlighting the unique value your product brings to your audience and crafting a narrative that resonates with them.

When implemented well, it can help you attract customers, improve in-app engagement, and drive long-term retention.

Let’s find out more!

TL;DR

• Product-focused advertising is a marketing strategy that aims to generate interest in a specific product by highlighting its key features and benefits.
• The product-focused approach helps you deliver a clear product value proposition, improve your brand image, and demonstrate competitive differentiation.
• Types of product-focused advertising every product marketing manager should consider:

1. Product-led growth.
2. Product-led blog content.
3. Email marketing.
4. Paid digital.
5. Influencer marketing.
6. Cold outreach.
7. Community marketing.
8. Event marketing.

• Tips to improve your product marketing strategies:

1. Identify your target audience and buyer personas.
2. Clearly communicate your USP to potential users.
3. Conduct a competitive analysis and show your target audience how you differ from competitors.
4. Choose the right marketing communications channels to reach your audience.
5. Create marketing materials and distribute them.

• As a product marketing tool, Userpilot empowers you to:

1. Drive word-of-mouth marketing with your power users.
2. Promote new features with in-app ads to upsell users.
3. Send targeted marketing emails based on user behavior in-app.

• Ready to get started? Book a demo now to discuss with our team!

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What is product-focused advertising?

Product-focused advertising is a marketing strategy that aims to generate interest in a specific product by highlighting its key features and benefits.

This type of advertising emphasizes what makes the product unique and better than competitors, often showcasing its capabilities, innovative aspects, or how it solves specific user problems.

You might wonder if it’s any different from product marketing—they’re similar but not the same.

While product-focused advertising is primarily about advertisements and promotional messages, product marketing focuses on the entire process of researching a product, bringing it to market, and ensuring its success.

Benefits of product-focused advertising

An effective product advertising strategy delivers the following benefits:

• Clear value proposition: Product-focused advertising directly communicates the product value in ways the target audience can relate to. For example, Slack’s advertising frequently highlights the tool’s ability to improve communication and collaboration within teams, contrasting the traditional, often disorganized nature of email communication.
• Improved brand image: Consistently showcasing your product’s features and problem-solving capabilities will enhance your overall brand image and create a positive brand experience for customers. Over time, your audience will begin associating the product’s positive attributes with your brand itself, which leads to increased trust and loyalty.
• Competitive differentiation: From social media ads to full-fledged product marketing campaigns, advertising offers creative freedom to address your audience’s concerns and highlight how your product stands out from the competition.

Types of product-focused advertising for your marketing strategy

Combine the following advertising types to reach a wider audience and boost customer retention.

Product-led growth

Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy that places the product itself at the forefront of customer acquisition and expansion.

This approach begins by offering customers a taste of your product through a freemium model, free trial, or interactive demo. As customers experience firsthand how your tool resolves their challenges, they not only become more inclined to continue using it but may also advocate for it, spreading positive word and driving further adoption.

The key to developing an effective PLG strategy is to deeply understand your audience and create product experiences that resonate with their pain points. This is where product growth tools come in. With a platform like Userpilot, you can easily track user behavior, collect useful data, and trigger personalized experiences that draw users in and nurture them toward conversion.

Product-led blog content

Product-led content marketing goes beyond traditional blog posts to create engaging content that addresses customer problems while subtly promoting your product’s features, benefits, and use cases.

It helps you attract organic traffic through search engine optimization and positions your brand as a go-to thought leader in your niche.

Here’s an example from Userpilot:

Email marketing

Unlike business marketing channels like print ads, social media, TV, and radio, email marketing hasn’t seen a significant drop in reach over the years. This makes it one of the most effective tools for nurturing leads and fostering customer relationships.

Treat email as an ongoing process, not a one-off marketing strategy. Regularly share valuable content with your audience to educate them and keep your brand top of mind. Doing this will allow you to attract potential users more easily while making existing users receptive to your account expansion efforts.

Example: Userpilot’s Product Rantz newsletter delivers weekly emails that educate subscribers and help them stay informed about product growth trends.

Paid digital

As the name suggests, this product-focused advertising strategy involves paying to display your promotional content on various digital platforms.

The most common paid acquisition channels include search engines (like Google), social media networks (like Meta or LinkedIn), websites, and mobile apps.

You can combine paid digital with some of the other tactics we’ve discussed so far. For example, create LinkedIn ads about your product and prompt users to sign up for your free trial or request a demo (remember the point on product-led growth?).

Influencer marketing

This strategy is similar to paid digital advertising, but instead of directly targeting your audience with creatives, you’re promoting through a person—an influencer.

Because influencers have already established a connection with your audience, their recommendations carry more weight than random ads seen online. This trust can significantly boost your brand’s credibility and help you drive sales.

Consider these factors when choosing an influencer to advertise your product:

• Relevance: Does the influencer’s content and audience align with your brand and message?
• Reach: How large is the influencer’s potential audience?
• Engagement: How active and involved is the influencer’s audience?

Cold outreach

Cold outreach is directly contacting potential users who haven’t previously interacted with your product. Whether through emails, phone calls, or social media messages, the method you choose should align with your product’s nature, your target audience, and your overall marketing growth strategy.

To make the process easier, use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo.io, or Lemlist to access valuable contact information, automate follow-ups, and personalize your messages.

Community marketing

Community marketing is about building a useful and engaged community around your brand.

This could be as simple as a dedicated Slack or Discord channel where customers can exchange tips and get their questions answered.

Or, you can take a more ambitious approach with full-fledged community-driven marketing campaigns, like Figma’s ‘Config’ events, which bring together designers for workshops and networking.

The scale of your community marketing efforts will naturally depend on your available resources and specific objectives. But, regardless of the approach, community-led growth translates to greater customer loyalty and a powerful organic growth engine for your brand.

Event marketing

Event marketing involves organizing or participating in industry conferences and workshops to build brand awareness.

A good example of event marketing is Userpilot’s Product Drive—an annual event featuring top thought leaders in product marketing. This year’s event is scheduled for 8th and 9th October:

Tips to improve your product marketing strategies

Now that we’ve explored the various types of product-focused advertising, let’s shift our focus to refining your product marketing strategies and achieving desired results.

The following tips will help:

Identify your target audience and buyer personas

Without a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach, your marketing efforts will be scattered and ineffective.

So, begin by conducting a thorough wants and needs analysis to understand your audience. Aim to identify their demographics, pain points, motivations, and preferred communication channels.

Here are a few ways to gather this crucial information:

• Analyze customer journey data to uncover behavior patterns and insights into what motivates your customers.
• Use feedback surveys to collect valuable firsthand data from your existing customers about their needs and preferences.
• Conduct market research to gain broader insights into your target audience and identify potential opportunities.

Once you’ve gathered this data, document your findings in a user persona template. This will provide a clear and easily interpretable representation of your ideal customer, helping you tailor your marketing strategy for maximum impact.

Clearly communicate your USP to potential customers

A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a simple statement that highlights the key benefit or feature that positions your product and sets it apart from competitors.

Want your USP to truly resonate with your audience? Make sure it hits these three key points:

• Memorable: It should stick in their minds long after they’ve left your website or seen your ad. Generic phrases like “great service” or “top quality” won’t do the trick.
• Authentic: Don’t just make promises; deliver on them. Your USP should be deeply ingrained in every aspect of your business. From the way you design your product to the way you interact with customers, ensure that your unique selling point is evident in everything you do.
• Customer-centric: Always put your customers first. Your USP should address a genuine need or desire that your target audience has. Think about the problems they face and how your unique offering can provide the solution they’ve been searching for.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s Userpilot’s USP:

Userpilot empowers product teams to drive growth without coding. Our all-in-one platform combines user engagement, customer feedback collection, and in-depth analytics to boost activation, adoption, and revenue. With extensive customization and advanced features like auto-capture, we deliver powerful product insights and growth tools at an affordable price.

Conduct a competitive analysis and show your target market how you differ from competitors

Thoroughly analyze your competitors’ products, marketing strategies, and target audiences. Identify their strengths and weaknesses, and pinpoint areas where your product excels.

Share your competitive analysis results with the whole marketing team. Then, have brainstorming sessions to craft marketing messages that emphasize your product’s differentiation and unique value proposition.

Here’s an example of comparing Userpilot with one of its key competitors:

Choose online advertising channels to reach your audience

To ensure your product advertising reaches its intended audience, start by analyzing where your target customers are most active online.

Then, select the acquisition channels with the highest potential for engagement and conversion. For example, if your audience is more active on LinkedIn than on Twitter, focus your social ads on LinkedIn.

Additionally, implementing a multichannel advertising strategy can be beneficial. Identify the top three to five places your audience frequents and target them there.

These can include various social media platforms, search engines, advertising networks, and relevant industry-specific websites.

Create marketing materials and distribute them

Develop a diverse range of marketing resources, such as blog posts, research reports, videos, case studies, whitepapers, and infographics, that cater to your target audience’s interests and pain points.

Once you’ve created these resources, strategically distribute them across multiple acquisition channels. But don’t stop there—maximize the impact of your content by repurposing it. For instance, a blog post can easily become a short, engaging video or an eye-catching infographic for social media.

Lastly, conduct regular content testing to assess content quality and note improvement areas.

How can Userpilot help with your product-focused advertising?

Userpilot is a product marketing tool that provides valuable insights into user behavior and empowers you to deliver targeted user experiences.

Here’s how to maximize it for your product advertising:

Drive word-of-mouth marketing with your power users

Leverage Userpilot’s NPS surveys to gauge customer satisfaction and identify those truly delighted with your product (your “promoters“).

Segment these promoters and trigger an in-app modal that asks them to leave a positive review on G2 or share their experience on social media.

These users are already your biggest fans. They’ll be happy to share their positive experiences, creating authentic word-of-mouth buzz that organically attracts new customers.

Promote new features with in-app ads to upsell users

Userpilot enables you to create contextual upsell flows that trigger based on specific user actions.

You can tailor these in-app ads to the user’s journey, making your offers feel timely and relevant, which is key to driving engagement and conversions.

For instance, imagine you’ve introduced a new advanced analytics feature in your product. You can set a usage threshold for the basic analytics tool—say, when users run a certain number of reports or reach a data limit.

Once they hit this threshold, an in-app message like the one below automatically appears, notifying users they’ve reached their limit and inviting them to upgrade.

Send personalized marketing emails based on user behavior in-app

Userpilot’s integration with HubSpot lets you personalize your email marketing based on how users interact with your product.

Here’s how to achieve it:

• Step 1: Connect Userpilot and HubSpot to establish a seamless link between in-app behavior and your email marketing platform.
• Step 2: Set up automated email workflows in HubSpot that trigger based on specific in-app user actions, like completing onboarding, reaching milestones, or showing interest in features.

Conclusion

Your best bet for winning at product advertising is to create a comprehensive multichannel strategy. Thoroughly research your audience to understand what channels they prefer, then tailor your message to showcase your product across these channels.

Remember, most customers interact with your brand multiple times before making a purchase, so every touchpoint counts!

If you’re looking for a tool to gain valuable insights into user behavior, collect important data, and trigger personalized experiences, consider Userpilot. Book a demo today to discuss with our team how it can help you take your product-focused advertising to the next level.

Try Userpilot and Take Your Product Marketing to the Next Level

Get a Demo

• 14 Day Trial
• No Credit Card Required