What’s Product Promotion? How-To Guide and Strategies

Successful product promotion grows your customer base, builds trust, and drives sales, generating enthusiasm for your new offerings. However, it can be challenging to advertise items in an authentic, eye-catching way.

This guide lays out the best methods for content creators to promote products. We’ll share real-world marketing campaign examples and step-by-step strategies for boosting sales.

What’s Product Promotion, and Why Is It Important?

Product promotion is the process of raising awareness and generating interest in a new offering through channels like advertising, social media, and sponsored content. A well-executed promotion strategy introduces your product to build enthusiasm and trust. Done right, it engages both new and existing customers, strengthens your brand, and drives revenue.

How To Promote a Product as a Creator

As a content creator, turning your passion into a viable business is often a major goal. Whether you produce handmade items like pottery and soap or just want to sell merch, here are the steps you’ll take for a new product launch.

Choose a Promotion Strategy

Influencers typically have three product promotion options: Selling their own product, partnering with a brand, or sharing affiliate links. 

When selling your own product, you’ll have more control over the promotional offers you can create. For instance, you won’t need anyone’s permission to put a discount on your productivity app or line of print-on-demand T-shirts. 

Partnering with a brand usually means being sponsored to promote their product. In these cases, the company often provides a script or talking points to ensure you highlight specific features.

Another option is affiliate marketing. Instead of being paid upfront, you earn a commission whenever someone purchases items using your personalized links. This approach gives you more flexibility — you choose which products to promote and how to discuss them. However, being enthusiastic and persuasive is still important to encourage sales and boost earnings.

Create Engaging Content

Whether you're promoting a specific product or simply building your personal brand, regular engagement with your audience is key. The stronger the connection you create, the more receptive they’ll be to your future recommendations. 

Let people get to know you by consistently sharing informative, entertaining, and authentic content. Tools like Captions can streamline the video production process, freeing up more time to focus on creating meaningful uploads.

Post Across Multiple Channels

Broaden your target audience by releasing content across multiple channels. That includes social media marketing, blogs, newsletters — everything you’re comfortable with, but not more than you can manage. 

Promoting on multiple platforms expands your reach and protects you from sudden changes on any one of them. This is another excellent use case for Captions, which lets you quickly repurpose video content to meet varying platform guidelines.

Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)

Highlight the purpose of each upload — whether it’s to promote a product or grow brand awareness — with a strong call-to-action telling people what you’d like them to do next. This could be a “Buy Now” or “Click to Subscribe” button, for example. To avoid confusing your audience, keep things simple and focused by presenting just one CTA per post.

8 Product Promotion Strategies For Creators

Here are eight time-tested strategies for promoting new products.

1. Discounts and Offers

Offering discounts or promotions can prompt customers who’ve been considering your items to finally make a purchase. Limited-time offers tied to holidays or new releases are especially effective. Share discount codes through email and social media to keep potential customers in the loop.

2. Giveaways and Contests

Offering free items is a powerful way to generate interest. Whether it's a free instructional PDF or a chance to win something of value, this type of promotion is an effective way to build a mailing list of customers interested in your product. Simply have people sign up for your newsletter to qualify, and you’ll have an engaged group of followers to send updates to.

3. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is a popular and profitable advertising strategy where brands hire influencers to promote their products. Big companies like this tactic because it allows them to connect with the content creator’s existing audience. These followers already trust the influencer’s opinion, making them more likely to purchase the advertised items.

As a content creator, you can take the same approach by collaborating with others in your niche or sponsoring micro-influencers to advertise your merch or other offerings.

4. Unboxing and Product Reviews

Unboxing videos highlight the experience of opening a product, focusing on details like how it fits in the box and what the packaging looks like. Small touches, such as magnetized lids or ribbons, enhance the experience. 

It’s common practice to follow an unboxing with a product review. For example, tech reviewers might explore the screen options, while makeup creators typically swatch and use the product in a look.

These methods work together to make the item appealing to both open and use, ultimately driving sales.

5. Tutorials and How-To Videos

Creating in-depth tutorials and how-to videos shows your expertise in the field, meaning potential customers are more likely to trust your opinions on products. 

For instance, on the YouTube channel Simply Nailogical, Cristine Rotenberg spent years showing people how to create complex nail art designs. In 2019, she launched her own line of polishes called Holo Taco. People quickly supported the brand because they knew she was passionate about quality polish and wanted to create a product she (and everyone else) would love using.

This technique isn’t limited to the beauty space — anyone can create tutorials, from simple explanations of how to do a particular task to deep dives into what a product does and how it works.

6. Email and Newsletters

Email and newsletter lists are a powerful way to stay connected with your audience and keep your products and promotions top of mind. These messages can include anything from industry insights to product launch details, giving you a direct line to your most engaged potential customers.

This approach is especially useful for content creators who do limited releases rather than maintain a fully stocked shop. YouTuber Sorrels Souls, for example, creates and paints 3D-printed animals like frogs and fruit bats. Every few months, she drops a new batch for sale and sends out an email alert before the launch. Her creations sell out quickly, so subscribing to her newsletter is the best way for fans to stay in the loop.

Building a strong newsletter following takes time and effort, but once established, it becomes a reliable channel for reaching motivated buyers ahead of your next release.

7. Podcasts

You can start a promotional podcast or be a guest on someone else’s. Having something more to say is better than simply pushing your product. Present yourself as an authority on the subject, and share industry insights and tips that people will find helpful. Listeners who find this information helpful will start to trust your opinions and will be more receptive to product plugs.

8. Skits and Comedy

Many creators opt for a skit-based approach to ads to engage viewers. This is particularly important online, as ads often appear in the middle of content, and influencers don’t want people to skip over the commercial or click off the video entirely. 

With comedy bits, you can put your personal spin on an ad — even if it’s sponsored content — and share an inside joke with your followers, both of which can connect better with viewers. YouTuber Eddy Burback, for instance, often starts ads by green-screening himself into silly situations, like in a microscope lens. Others go further, creating entire scenarios around their products.

Product Promotion Examples

Product promotion, advertising, and marketing require detailed planning. It helps to compare your efforts to competitors’ ad campaigns — here are a few real-world examples to inspire you.

GameGrumps Merch Skits

Popular YouTube channel GameGrumps often uses humorous skits to advertise their products. One example is their series of Shorts titled “Events of Our Existence,” a parody of the popular soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” 

In the Shorts, a couple has disagreements over their relationship, and one character says the other doesn’t appreciate the GameGrumps merch she bought him. He denies this, telling her how much he loves the soft merch featuring designs from some of their favorite artists. She asks if he’s telling the truth, and he says, “I’ve never lied about GameGrumps merch.” The series runs across several videos, adding new characters and dramatic plot points along the way, but always keeping the focus on merch. 

This tactic works so well because the dramatic dialogue and acting are silly parallels with a T-shirt ad. The commercial is funny and out of place, encouraging people to keep watching even though it’s an ad. Further, it’s a series, so people may want to tune in to find out what else happens to the characters. 

Abram Engle’s Sponsored Giveaway

Creator Abram Engle makes funny posts about his orange cat named Kurt. Abram partnered with Fresh Step litter to do a sponsored giveaway. Entrants submitted videos of their cats doing silly things, and the winner would receive $10,000, a year’s supply of cat litter, and a billboard in Times Square featuring the winning pet. A one-eared black cat named Uno won the prize, along with the title “The Freshest Cat.” 

The posts drove plenty of engagement to both Fresh Step and Abram’s Instagram pages, with Reels reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers. It also increased engagement on both channels, as people had to comment on the posts to vote for their favorite felines.

Promote Your Products Effortlessly With Captions

Product promotion involves plenty of planning and a well-implemented marketing strategy. Fortunately, producing this content doesn’t have to be difficult. With Captions’ Product Video Maker, you can highlight your product’s best features to your audience with almost no effort. AI will write your script, custom avatars will read it, and Captions will edit it into a polished promotional video in seconds. Then, it’s just as easy to make variations or entirely new videos for all your different social media channels.

Connect with potential customers faster with Captions.