What is a great product that was poorly marketed?

Product:

A product I believe creates tremendous value for its customers is the PUR Faucet Filter. The PUR Faucet Filter is certified to reduce over 70 contaminants including 99% of Lead in the tap water, offering a clean and safe drinking water for its users. The company has won several design awards for its product. The product is affordable for most US households compared to expensive filtration systems. Customers are rating this product very highly - Pur water filters have received a rating of 4.3 out of 5 on Amazon, putting them among some of the highest rated products.

Market:

In the wake of the Flint Water crisis, there is a lot of awareness about the quality of tap water in the US. Many households across the US and the world are choosing to implement filtration products to ensure their family has access to clean drinking water. Therefore, there is a large and growing market opportunity for water filtration products. According to Grand View Research, the global home water filtration unit market size was valued at USD 8.6 billion in 2018 and is expected to register a CAGR of 15.9% from 2019 to 2025.

Why is this product marketed poorly?

For the marketing evaluation of this product, I will focus on the product messaging & positioning on the product website and assume that the website is the best representative of the company’s public-facing GTM strategy.

A quick review of the PUR Faucet Filter website shows that there is a lot of room for improvement of the messaging & positioning of this product.

• The product messaging is focused on the features and functionality of the product instead of the benefits of these features
• The company further complicates the messaging by introducing various features as brands that are part of the product - an example of this is: “MAXION® filter technology and innovative design.” that is featured on the website
• The company has not done a good job of telling a “story” for this product. The product page lacks customers' success stories and why the product is important
• The company doesn’t do a good job of providing proof points for the product, ex: before & after stats or images of filtered water could be used to share the benefits of the filter
• The product messaging lacks educational content regarding the contaminants in the tap water and their effects on our health
• There are no endorsements from officials in the field - an endorsement from a healthcare professional or a government official would considerably increase the credibility of the product
• The product lacks social proofing from influencers, a vibrant community, or from social media

I believe addressing the issues outlined above would considerably enhance the messaging and positioning of the product and lead to increase in business.

How would you market it differently?

Step 1: Gather data to understand current standing

I would start by gathering data to better understand the product, the buyer, and the market.

For the purposes of this exercise, I will focus on our website as the sole driver of revenue for this exercise. I would start by reviewing the PUR Faucet Filter’s web page analytics, sales data, and competitive differentiation. Additionally, I would conduct a survey to understand customer satisfaction from our existing email database. Lastly, I would research keywords, influencers, trends, and valuable content to get a better understanding of customer behavior and market trends.

Let’s assume that I have completed my research outlined above and here are my key findings:

• Current product sales are 100,000 per month via the product page on pur.com
• Our target buyer persona is a mother of 2 in her 40s mostly based out of the US
• Survey of Pur mailing list shows that customers love our products once they purchase it however, they have a difficult time finding out about our products online
• The online research results yield to an increasing concern about Lead and Chlorine in the tap water as well as environmental movement against bottled water
• Interviews with customers also show that customers are unaware of other contaminants in the tap water and their effects on the human body

Step 2: Set goals

The goal of this exercise is to increase business. I would build a marketing funnel to outline the current state of the website sales.

After reviewing the existing standing of the business, I would aim to increase website traffic and our sales by 20%. This means that our goal is to increase the number of product purchases from 100,000 to 120,000 per month.

Step 3: Evolve the messaging and positioning

I would leverage the key findings above to build new messaging and positioning for the PUR Faucet Filter. Based on the assumed findings above, I would evolve the messaging to focus on educating our target audience about two key areas:

• The negative environmental impact of drinking bottled water and why drinking tap water filtered with the PUR Faucet Filter is the best choice for the environment
• The number of contaminants in the unfiltered drinking water and their long term effects in the human body. How PUR Faucet Filter improves the health and well-being of our customers.

To bring these two key messages to life, I would enlist the help of our customers, influencers, and experts to share their stories of switching from bottled water to tap water with PUR Faucet Filter. I would shape these stories in the two key messaging pillars above. First one on how the individuals above are feeling better about their health after switching to Pur filtered water. The second one on how they are feeling better about contributing to the protection of the environment.

Step 4: A/B Test

In order to test my hypothesis, I would keep the existing page and build 2 new pages that focus on our 2 messaging pillars above. One of these new pages would focus on the impact that PUR Faucet Filter is making on the environment by reducing plastic consumption. The other page would focus on the impact that PUR Faucet Filter is making on the health of our customers. Both of these new pages would feature:

• A story aligned with our messaging: As a company we are dedicated to protecting the environment and improving people’s health with easy access to purified water
• Key benefits of PUR Faucet Filter based on our messaging for that page
• Customer stories about the impact that PUR Faucet Filters are making on our customers
• Educational content such as videos, infographics, and blog articles about negative environmental impact of bottled water as well as the negative impact of drinking contaminated tap water
• Social media and community sections where our customers can share photos and stories about how they are using PUR Faucet Filters

Once the pages are completed, I would split all web traffic to the PUR Faucet Filter product page among these three test pages to understand which messaging resonates with our target audience.

Step 5: Launch and review

I would carefully review the funnel and conversion metrics such as the number of visitors, number of content downloads, number of purchases, total revenues, and average dollar amount per purchase to compare the test and the control pages in our A/B test.

After gaining a statistically significant amount of data, I would implement the messaging on the page with the best conversion rates (largest number of content downloads, purchases, revenue, and average dollar amount per purchase).

After directing all traffic to the winning page, I would continue to track the performance of the new messaging on our goals of increasing purchases by 20% per month and make ongoing improvements to our messaging based on goal attainment.