5 Ways to Launch Your Product Without Discounting

Let’s face it, discounting sucks. Discounts mean lower profit margins or in some cases taking a loss on every sale. Unprofitable sales are often followed by cash flow challenges, meaning difficulty replenishing inventory or paying yourself for all your hard work.

While the big box stores are known for using “loss leaders” to increase traffic and build brand loyalty, they also have financing to endure deep losses for future gains. This is a luxury few small businesses will ever have. 

So to launch your new product without offering discounts you’ll have to employ guerilla marketing tactics. These methods typically require a bit of grunt work to get going, but once setup can be highly effective.

1. Sweepstakes & Contest – Build an email list of prospective customers by running a contest. Offer shoppers the opportunity to win a free product or other modest prize like an Amazon gift card. To enter shoppers will submit their email address, and in some cases may be requested to take other actions, like add your product to a marketplace wish list, or follow your brand’s social media page. A winner is randomly chosen at the end of the contest and you send them their prize. Here is a list of sites where you can post your giveaway contest. Most allow contests to be posted at no cost!
2. Co-marketing – Almost all products have complementary products that are frequently purchased and used together. Most marketplaces will show a “Frequently Bought Together” section which provides good insights into what shoppers are often buying along with your product. If for example, you sell children’s clothes, it’s likely your target customers are also buying children’s books, backpacks, or bath supplies. If you have an email list, social media page, or any other network, propose a contact swap with other brands. Offer to feature their product in your email newsletter, or on your social media pages, and ask them to do the same. This is a no-cost way to increase exposure for your products in a mutually beneficial way.
3. Influencers – While slightly more costly than the previous strategies, influencers can be a highly effective way to quickly boost sales, without discounting. Find an influencer that is a close fit with your product niche, or use a service like the Rebaid Influencer Network to pair your brand with a relevant influencer. Have the influencer demo your product and share what they love about it with their audience. Influencer campaigns are often much more cost-effective than PPC or discounting for generating sales. This is attributed to the trust that shoppers place in endorsements by influencers as compared to reviews or other trust signals that are often viewed as dubious.
4. Forum Commenting – This may be easily dismissed as a spammy, low-impact strategy for generating traffic, but think twice before you pass on this. Remember GameStop’s multi-billion stock surge started as chatter on a Reddit forum, and comments including your product do not necessarily have to be spam. No matter how niche your product is, there are threads on internet forums discussing topics related to what you sell. As the creator of your product, you are surely an expert on what your product does. Find threads on Reddit or other forums relevant to your product and weigh in by sharing something of value. Include a subtle mention of your product, or link if allowed.
5. Create Instructional Videos – Each month there are 3 billion searches on YouTube. Many of those searches are people seeking instructional “How-to” videos. If your product is compatible with certain other products create a compatibility guide video. Or if your product requires assembly, create a video demonstrating how to assemble. Remember there is no cost to post a video on YouTube and it stays there forever. If your video generates just 10 views a day, that is 3,650 views a year. If even a small percentage of viewers purchase your product, that is a considerable number of sales that often require just a few hours of work to produce!

These strategies are a great way to start and get a foothold as a new brand while preserving precious capital. The drawback to these and most guerilla marketing tactics is that they are not scalable. When starting you often have more time than money, and these strategies work well as an initial launch pad. 

But as your brand grows you will notice you begin to have more money and less time. This is when you’ll want to start pursuing more aggressive, scalable launch and growth strategies. Inevitably this will involve at least some form of discounting. 

However, keep in mind discounts only generate sales velocity when shoppers are aware of the discount offer. If you simply create a discount/ coupon, but your website is generating limited traffic, or your listing is deep in the search results on a marketplace, you’ll see little change in order velocity. Websites like Rebaid.com help generate instant exposure for your promotional offers. With hundreds of thousands of active shoppers, Rebaid can quickly generate large order volumes when pursuing aggressive launch strategies.

Regardless of the launch strategy you use, remember that meeting and exceeding your customer expectations is a necessity. When your product begins generating authentic positive reviews and is shared amongst friends and family it achieves natural sales growth. So closely monitor customer feedback and constantly seek to iterate your product to ensure it is the best item amongst your competition!