Product teams need to think like marketers to amplify product growth and adoption through key product promotion strategies within the product itself.
Every interaction should serve as a subtle nudge toward deeper engagement.
From there, deeper engagement will lead to higher product adoption and more sales – the ultimate goal of product promotion.
What is product promotion? Quick recap
Product promotion, also known as product marketing, is how you sell your product whether inside or outside of the product. The goal is to increase sales by building brand awareness and highlighting the value and benefits of your product to potential customers.
Companies use different strategies to promote their products, depending on whether they’re B2B, B2C, or D2C. What works for one company and industry won’t necessarily work for another, so you need to find the approach that works for you.
In this blog post, we’ll focus on in-product marketing strategies that can transform passive users into active advocates.
In-product promotion strategies in 2024
1. Align with marketing teams
Not in the product per se. But product marketers should be embedded in product teams!
Dismantling silos between marketing and product is the first step towards successful in-product promotion.
Establishing a collaborative environment means promotional efforts can be seamlessly integrated into the user journey, enhancing the product’s value proposition without disrupting the user experience.
Ready to send your marketing teams a virtual hug? 🤗
2. Hyper-personalize product experiences
Hyper personalization is a key strategy for a growing number of product and marketing teams.
It’s not just about greeting users with the (now) standard ‘Hello [Name], but also about triggering the right message, content, and offers at the right time.
It allows for real-time communication with users, guiding them towards features and next steps that make their journey feel effortless.
Netflix is a good example of how to create personal experiences by leveraging data analytics. The streaming service tailors its content to individual users by considering a wide range of factors. These include the user’s viewing history, their ratings of previously watched films, the duration of viewing sessions, geographic location, and more. This approach means that every user’s experience feels tailored to their preferences.
Hyperpersonalization plays a pivotal role in customer education, feature adoption, and ultimately, in building a deeper connection with the product to turn users into paying or long-term customers.
3. Include offers and Incentives
Crafting personalized in-product offers, like free trial expansions for inviting team members, not only drives product growth but also improves customer loyalty.
These strategies create a win-win situation – users get more value from their current service, and product teams see a spike in engagement and adoption rates.
Check out this example from Clockwise. They offer a free trial extension just as the trial expires and personalize the offer even further by recommending team members for you to invite.
4. Localize your product
Would you use an app that’s only available in Greek? No, thought not (unless you’re Greek).
If your product is global or has the potential to go global, you should add product localization to your product promotion strategy.
Localization involves the adaptation of your content for different markets. Translation is often the first step in the localization process. The next steps would be to change the design, user experience, and messaging to make sure products look and feel local.
You don’t necessarily need to be expanding into new markets either. You might just spot a language gap among your existing customers, like Fetch. The team at Fetch noticed an increasing number of Spanish speakers using the rewards app in the States and translated it into Spanish.
Since the team at Fetch translated their content, they’ve seen a 78% increase in active users.
5. Win at user onboarding
Did you know that 60% of users find bad onboarding experiences a dealbreaker?
According to a study from ProfitWell, onboarding directly impacts your product retention, and great onboarding leads to a higher willingness to pay.
That’s why you need to consider your onboarding experience when thinking about your product promotion strategy. First impressions matter, especially in SaaS.
To win at user onboarding you have to know your users – who they are, what they want, and when they’re ready for it. This comes back to the previous point about personalization.
You need to personalize the onboarding experience so users only see features that are relevant to them. You also need to make it easy for them to follow. Products are often complex to understand right off the bat, so you need to break it down for users. Think, one step, one feature at a time. That way users can digest information and instructions more easily.
Find out what Ben Shih, Senior Product Designer (Growth) at Lokalise, learned from analyzing good and bad product onboarding experiences.
6. Gamify the user journey
Gamification transforms mundane tasks into engaging challenges, encouraging users to explore new features and return to your product.
Whether it’s through completion badges, leaderboards, or milestone rewards, adding elements of play within your product can significantly increase user interaction and, by extension, product adoption.
It’s not just about playing games. It’s about making the journey through your product a rewarding experience that users want to repeat and share.
7. User-generated content and community-building
Encourage your users to be your product’s ambassadors by making it easy to create and share user-generated content. This could be through reviews, testimonials, or social sharing features embedded within the product.
Additionally, creating a community around your product where users can share tips, achievements, and stories creates a sense of belonging and loyalty. This strategy not only amplifies positive word-of-mouth but also provides invaluable feedback for further product enhancements.
In short, product teams need to promote products, not just marketers
The journey to amplifying product growth through in-product promotion is both strategic and iterative.
It requires a deep understanding of your users, a commitment to aligning product and marketing efforts, and the agility to adapt strategies based on user feedback and analytics.
By concentrating on hyperpersonalized messaging, localization, personalized offers, winning onboarding experiences, gamification, and community building, product managers can turn their products into a powerful tool for acquisition, engagement, and retention.
Want to learn about how localization can help drive product growth?
Read more about how Revolut, Ding, and LumApps accelerated growth through product localization.
