TpT Sellers, you’ve been given some bad advice
Recently I read a blog post for TPT sellers about marketing TPT products. One of the first sentences said, “Once you’ve finished creating a TPT product, now it’s time to start marketing it.”
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
TpTers – I see this overall approach constantly. There are a lot of well known teacher sellers who say this, and quite honestly it’s simply not good marketing strategy.
If you’re not considering your marketing plan BEFORE you start working on a product, you’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle and have already potentially wasted a great deal of time.
- You should be using your marketing plan to help determine what products to make.
One of the most important things you can do for your business is to identify a specific niche of products and the type of customer who needs that product. (This also forms a key part of your marketing message). If you’re making random products that don’t fit into that plan, it’s going to be much harder to market them effectively. - Your marketing plan should consider the stats of your existing products.
Sometimes we get so caught up in creating products, we don’t stop to consider the business strategy of what products to make. If you have two different lines of products, and the sales of one far surpass the other, hopefully it’s pretty obvious which ones you should add to first. Stopping to ask the question, “what will make the most money right now?” can often save you a lot of time. - How you market a product will change how you build it.
One of the most effective strategies that I use is writing a simple product description before I actually start working on the product itself. This might seem silly, but if I take the time to really think about how the product will benefit the buyer, then the product itself ends up being more complete and user friendly. Try it, you might be surprised how it changes your focus! - How you market a product could change how and when you complete & post it.
There are a lot of strategies behind how you release a product, particularly a large one. Bundles, growing bundles, and seasonal products should all be planned out with marketing in mind. - How you plan to market a product could impact whether you should even make it at all.
The unfortunate reality about TPT is that it has become a very crowded market. Many of the most successful sellers started years ago when the number of sellers and products on TPT were much lower, and it was much easier to get your products noticed. In today’s TPT market, if you are offering a generic product (especially as a new seller) it will be very difficult to get that product high up enough in the search results to get any traction. Before starting to work on a product, it’s important to try searching for the keywords that you plan on using in your title and descriptions to see how heavy the competition will be. - Building hype for new products helps them sell well right away.
When you provide a sneak peek into new products you are working on, your customers have a chance to look forward to them. This helps build anticipation about your product and increases the chances that some of those customers will buy the product as soon as it comes out.
- Using a minimum viable product helps you test your market and serve your customer better
There are so many sellers who put hours and hours and hours into creating a large product, finally post that sucker to TpT, and then are disappointed when it doesn’t sell like hotcakes. Creating the smallest possible version of a product first in order to test how well it does in your market saves tons of time and gives you the feedback you need to build the parts of your store that are needed most.
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