How to Promote a Product: 16 Ways [Proven & New]

Here, we’ll look at 16 effective ways to promote a product. 

Each way comes with an example to show you how others do product launches and promotions to boost customer engagement and revenue. 

Get started:

• Building a strategy to promote a product

• Ways to promote products [list]

Building a strategy to promote a product

You can divide all ways to promote a product into two areas: 

• Onsite (on your website)

• Offsite (outside of your website)

You can start by trying different combinations:

Paid ads or social media (offsite) > sales promotions, discounts, product bundling, and/or popups (onsite)

And getting more specific:

A popup with a special offer or a BOGO deal (onsite) > promoting products by sending marketing emails to those who signed up with that popup (offsite).

Here are all major ways to promote products:

Next, you’ll see why these ideas to promote products are worth trying for your business.

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How to promote a product 

• Onsite notifications

• Product-specific popups 

• Discount popups

• BOGO offers

• Product bundling

• Collaboration with other brands

• Product giveaway

• SMS discount coupons

• Free sample 

• Sale promotions

• Product quiz 

• Product email

• Social media marketing

• Influencer marketing

• Customer reviews

• Blog content

1. Onsite notifications

Having onsite notifications on a website means you can promote your products on a homepage with a social media-like feed with messages. 

Here’s how onsite notifications work: 

• They appear as a bell in your website’s header 

• Visitors notice the bell (it has a red circle with the number of unread messages)

• Visitors click the bell and find the product

• Visitors click the link in the notification and go to a product page

This is how promoting new products with onsite notifications looks like (courtesy: Asphalte, one of the most successful fashion brands in France). The visitor clicks the “bell,” browses the feed, and chooses a product to check out:

The benefits of product promotion with onsite notifications:

• Clean homepage

• No interference with the brand experience

• You let visitors discover products on their own

• Drive potential customers directly to your products

Last but not least—

Onsite notifications are effective: in the case of Asphalte, 11.5% of visitors who clicked notifications contributed to 42% of their monthly revenue.

Another business, Black Ember, promotes a limited edition of one of its best-selling products with this campaign:

In 21 days, this campaign drove 2,059 visitors to that product:

Again, going to the product page was something that visitors decided on their own after discovering the “bell” in the Black Ember website’s top menu.  

Both Asphalte and Black Ember, they were able to promote new products (which makes notifications perfect for fashion marketing) and raise a lot of awareness among visitors.

Also, you can take advantage of the built-in AI Wishlist, which is a machine learning-powered feature that'll help you put the right products before the right shoppers:

And—

Of course you'll be able to allow your visitors to add the products to the shopping cart directly from the feed:

You can promote products on your website this way, too. Onsite notifications work on all websites, integrate with popular ecommerce tools, and have powerful targeting and analytics.

No cc needed, unlimited free trial. Learn more about AI Wishlist

Also—

Get more details on Black Ember’s campaigns and find out how you can engage your visitors more effectively right away:

2. Product specific popups

Product-specific popups are one of the best ways to promote a product because they focus the attention of customers on specific items. 

Examples:

• An email signup popup that focuses a product to motivate visitors to convert

• A popup with a link to drive shoppers to a page with a product

• A popup that shows a product only to visitors who viewed it before

Let’s see all of these in action:

Flaus is promoting its product (the world’s first electric flosser!) with an email signup popup on the homepage. The campaign is featuring a nice product image, a unique value proposition, and a nice discount:

This product promotion example is great if you, for example, sell one or a few items.

(By the way, Flaus used Wisepops to make that popup).

Next—

This campaign (a popup for driving traffic) is different. 

Instead of a generic “sign-up-for-our-newsletter” message, this product popup promotes the item to the visitor who has viewed that product before. So, it won’t appear, for example, if you visit the site for the first time.

The visitor can just click Shop Now and go straight to the product:

Showing products to returning visitors like that is easy to do with page targeting.

You just need to add your chosen product page to campaign display settings in your popup app, for example:

Another advantage of this product promotion popup is the unusual position—zero interference with the browsing experience.

Many businesses, especially ecommerce websites, advertise products with similar campaigns, especially shown in unusual positions.

Another example:

Dolce & Gabbana promotes a popular product like that:

Creating these non-intrusive ecommerce popups is also easy with a good popup software, and you’ll be able to capture your visitors’ attention and drive traffic to product pages easily.

In fact—

You can choose the position of a product promotion popup with one click in Wisepops:

If you’d like to try promoting products with popups, there are plenty of popup software out there. 

But let me recommend Wisepops.

Wisepops is made for marketers and business owners—it’s simple to use and you can create and publish any popup in minutes.

Besides, you get a suite of pro features like unique Shopify discount codes, A/B testing, targeting of Klaviyo segments, and deep targeting.

No cc needed, unlimited free trial.

3. Discount popups

Unlike product-specific popups, these ones are all about discounts.

While discount popups can be a bit interrupting (that depends on the display settings, though), they are a proven way to promote products by giving visitors an incentive.

Example:

Discount popups are a part of the product promotion strategy at Blume, a successful Shopify store. This one gives 20% off for the first order (note an image with products, too):

This way, Blume visitors know right away that they can get a good deal.

And this strategy works—

Blume converts 5% of visitors with this campaign (see the case study below).

There’s also one more reason why this Blume campaign is successful. If a visitor decides to close the popup and browse products first (which happens all the time!), they can still easily get the discount when they need it. 

Here’s how: when they close the popup, it automatically changes into a very small tab that stays in the left bottom corner of the screen. If the visitor finds the product they like and wants to get the discount, all they have to do is click that tab:

By using the tab, you can promote your products and services with popups and keep the discounts accessible even after visitors decide to close them. 

You can get the same results as Blume: see how you can grow with popups.

Or get started with converting your visitors today:

No commitment, unlimited free trial

This step-by-step guide will also be helpful to speed things up: 

How to create discount popups

4. BOGO offers

BOGO (“Buy one get one free”) is an effective tactic to promote products—you give a free item for purchasing two others. Many customers would be all for taking advantage of this offer.

Usually, the free product is a replenishable item or something that complements another, more expensive product. 

Types of BOGO sales for promoting products:

• Buy one, get one half price

• Buy one and get a free sample

• Buy two get one free (also called B2GO)

• Buy a product from one category and get a free product from another category

Example:

Here’s a B2GO sale that promotes a brand birthday sale:

How you can use BOGO to promote:

• Excess inventory items (especially seasonal)

• Products you need to sell faster

• New products

Having this promo once in a while (say, once in a couple of months) can help raise awareness of products by having visitors explore our website more.

5. Product bundling

Product bundling is a strategy in which you combine products you want to promote as a single unit sold for one price. Using product bundling can help sell more by increasing the average size of orders.

Types of product bundling:

• Pure bundling. Only you choose the products in the bundle

• Mix & match bundling. Customers are free to select products

• New product bundling. Includes new products and is available for a limited time

• Cross-sell bundling. Involves products from different categories that go together

• Excess inventory bundling. Combines old inventory products and includes extra discounts

• BOGO bundling. You give a product for free for buying products you chose

Examples:

CODAGE Paris promotes their products with a BOGO bundle offer:

One more—

A product bundle sale that also gives an extra 10% discount code:

To market your products more effectively with bundling, add promotional messages about them at high-traffic places, like your homepage, in a website bar, or in a popup. 

6. Collaboration with other brands

Do you have a partnership with another business? 

Do your products go well together with theirs?

If yes, then you can effectively promote your products to customers by doing a collaboration. This way, you'll double the marketing effort and tap into new audiences.

Example:

émoi émoi collaborated with Superga to promote a special B2GO offer: free collector socks for buying two matching pairs of shoes (for a mom and a child). 

This product promotion campaign was advertised on émoi émoi's website like that:

If the visitors clicked, they went to the special émoi émoi & Superga collaboration page where they could pick the shoes and the size.

There, they also applied the promo code to unlock the offer:

émoi émoi has done a great job promoting products like that.

In fact, the onsite notification (the one you saw earlier) drove 289 visitors to the page with the promoted products (that’s an 8% CVR):

To make your product promotion with partner collaborations effective:

• Pick a theme to make the offer special

• Choose products that go well together with your partner’s items

• Use a discount code to know how many offers were applied to cart

• Promote the offer on your website with multiple channels (in émoi émoi's case, it was onsite notifications and embeds

7. Product giveaway

Giveaways are a good way to promote a product to new customers (and build your email list, too).

Ideally, you should give away something you sell—to give your potential customers a taste of your product and make them want to come back for more.

Wildcraft, for example, gave away a new product alongside a second one:

Next—

Faguo is running this product giveaway campaign as a spin-to-win popup. The prize: a pair of expensive Faguo sneakers.

This product promotion campaign was also successful, generating tens of thousands of new leads for Faguo. So, they’re running it all year round.

The campaign is activated on both the desktop and mobile versions of Faguo’s website, which was a good idea:

If advertising your products with a giveaway sounds interesting:

• 10 giveaway ideas to get started (with examples)

• Spin-to-win popup guide (if you want to find out how they work)

Or—

You can try creating a spin popup (just choose a template to get a head start):

More details about Faguo's product promotion campaign:

8. SMS discount coupons

You can also promote your products with text messages—many customers don’t mind them at all.

The first step is to build a list of phone numbers, which is also pretty straightforward to do. One way is to use signup forms on your website: newsletter signup forms, popups, and other onsite tools. Just add a field for a phone number entry (available in all lead generation tools, most likely including the ones you’re using).

Example:

This popup offers a discount code in exchange for a phone number:

You can create a campaign just like the website pop-up example above easily by adding a phone number signup field to a signup form of your choice.

If you go with popups—

In Wisepops, this is done in a few clicks: in the popup editor, find Phone in the Blocks menu and drag it onto the template like that:

Feel like experimenting? Dive right in and try our popup form builder.

Just create a free account to get started (takes less than a minute):

Inspiration for you:

Examples of SMS popups

9. Free samples

Free product or service is a proven way to stimulate trial and awareness of products (both popular and new ones). 

This way to market products is popular in many industries. For example, online clothing & accessories stores offer free samples in BOGO sales, and meal subscription businesses give away free samples.

Example:

Sundays for Dogs, a pet food store, promotes its Chicken recipe with a free sample box:

What is great about this way to promote products is that Sundays for Dogs chose to display this offer on exit, e.g. when a visitor is about to leave (hesitating whether to try their service).

A free sample can be that last step that stops shoppers from hesitating.

On top of that, the free samples also help with getting customer reviews for the business, which, in turn, helps build reputation:

Exit intent popup examples are everywhere, partly because you can do a lot of things with them (product promotions, driving traffic to product pages, reminding visitors of abandoned carts, you name it).

And, of course, it also helps that exit popups convert 3% of visitors on average (the top 10% convert 19.6%, though).

10. Sale promotions

A sale is obviously not the most groundbreaking but still one of the best ways to promote products. But we’re going to focus here is that a diverse sales strategy is the best.

That is, trying different types of sales is key.

Here are the sales promotions you can experiment with:

• Percentage sale (“20% sitewide sale”)

• Dollar value discount (“Get $20 off your order”)

• Flash sales (those lasting 24 hours)

• Product category sale (dresses sale, jackets sale, etc.)

• Special sales (free upgrades, VIP discounts, etc.)

• Holiday and seasonal promotions 

• Free one-day shipping

• “$X and under sale”

• Brand birthday sale

So many sales you can promote your products with! Let’s now see a few examples of campaigns advertising products using them.

Flash sale from Charlotte Bio (note how easy it is to apply the code):

Next product promotion example—

Net-a-porter’s percentage sale on selected products (note how they promote the sale in multiple ways: a website banner and a small popup):

Next—

A special sale.

Pedego Harlem promotes two products by offering a free product for buying them:

If you’d like to see more examples—

Sales promotion examples from 20+ online businesses.

11. Product quiz

With quizzes, you can promote one, several, or an entire product collection. They are one of the best ways to do so because they make the selection fun and personalized.

Example:

Stumptown Coffee Roasters sells a bunch of different types of coffee (original blends, organic, decaf, ground, and more). To promote their product range (including new products) more effectively, they created a quiz for shoppers: 

I took the quiz myself—it was quite fun (even had to answer what my favorite season was).

Anyway—

In the end, the quiz generated a specific product recommendation:

This way, Stumptown uses ecommerce personalization and encourages visitors to try their products in a non-pushy, fun, and easy way. 

You can do that, too—

All you need is to come up with questions and get a couple of ecommerce tools (say, Typeform for adding the quiz to your website and Wisepops to maximize awareness among visitors with popup forms, onsite notifications, and bars).

12. Product email

Your email subscribers are obviously your best bet to grow your business. So, marketing your products and services with emails is a must.

Ideas to promote products with emails:

• New product launch email

• Product collection launch email

• Email promoting only one product/feature

• Email that focuses on the benefit of using a product

• Email promoting multiple products

• Email with a product review

• Email with best sellers

Let’s now see a couple of examples.

Taylor Stitch promotes a best-selling product with a cool-looking email like this:

Holo Taco, a nail polish brand, is advertising the new collection of chrome nail polish:

13. Social media marketing

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, you name it—your business should be where your customers are. That, of course, includes more than having a profile.

How to promote products on social media:

• Make posts with high-quality lifestyle product images and short videos (reels)

• Use Commerce Manager to manage all product promotion activities on Facebook and Instagram

• Mix product promotional content with educational content, how-to videos, and polls

• Invest more in Tiktok product videos if your audience uses this platform (today, fulfilling order through TikTok is totally possible thanks to collaborations with shipping platforms)

• Use customer-generated social media content and share it on your website, social media profiles, and email marketing campaigns

Last but not least—

Add social media links to your website and encourage people to follow. Building your following is a non-stop process and the website is a good way to start.

14. Influencer marketing

Here’s how influencers can help you advertise products:

• Contests

• Giveaways

• Unboxing videos

• “How-to use” videos

• Product reviews

Example:

Danny Packs, a social media influencer who reviews backpacks, made this video reviewing Black Ember’s new product, the Shadow:

15. Customer reviews

The vast majority of your potential customers use reviews to evaluate a product or service before buying. So, reviews from previous customers can be a powerful way to promote your product. 

To get started with this strategy:

• Get a product review app to speed things up. If your store is on Shopify, try an app like Judge.me or Rivo (both have free plans)—they’ll help automate collecting reviews

• Encourage your customers to leave reviews. An easy way is to send emails to those who bought your products

• Display reviews in prominent places on your website. Those places include product pages, the homepage, menu pages

Examples:

Taylor Stitch displays reviews on products pages in sections:

Next—

You can also display reviews in popup forms to maximize product awareness and interest:

16. Blog content

You can promote your products with long articles, videos, short posts, how-to guides, listicles, and other blog content. Each piece you make can be an informative and useful source that introduces potential customers to your product and expertise.

Example:

Snif sells fine fragrances and scented candles.

The blog at Snif is full of advice that educates visitors on anything related to those products:

Every piece of content is, of course, an opportunity to promote products.

Example:

The piece on “Nostalgic smells that will take you way back”—I couldn’t resist finding out what those were—has a long list, with each one featuring a link to a product (highlighted):

Summary

You can market your products and services in so many ways, as you can see. 

I recommend building your strategy by combining the onsite and offsite channels into one plan. Since the best way to promote products depends on your customers and their behavior, you’ll be able to cover more touchpoints this way.

Also, let me recommend our tool, Wisepops, for onsite promotion. It gives you four channels: onsite notifications, popups (of any imaginable kind), embeds (signup forms you can add anywhere on your website), and website bars. 

Give it a go with a free trial—as you’ve seen from this post, it helped many online stores achieve impressive results.