INC Magazine: 5 Ways to Get Your Product Discovered Online

In today’s competitive attention economy, brands don’t really get a seat at the table without having a great strategy for getting their products discovered by customers. Especially online, nothing can be left to chance—which is why most modern brands have no problem investing in updating their sites, search marketing, and other ways of helping consumers find products that are relevant to them. But not all strategies are created equally.

Even with all the customer data at their fingertips, brands still think too small—treating every product touchpoint as individual channels when they should be unified under a single product discovery ecosystem. Brands have always been able to look at macro industry and cultural trends.

But being able to balance those against granular, real-time data on what people are engaging with in social, through emails, and via their browsing and purchasing habits, gives a much more complete picture about the types of products and experiences that are really resonating. And now, with AI agents, AI search and other tools taking curation to an entirely new level, it’s become even more important that products present a unified front.

Think of it this way: modern product discovery works a lot like music streaming does. Music isn’t consumed in album format anymore. You’re much more likely to experience new music as a function of some kind of personalized algorithm.

Because of this, everything about a song (from the music to the artwork to the description) has to be great whether it’s listened to in context or not. But creating this type of product discovery ecosystem takes serious consideration that goes beyond launching a new e-commerce website.

1. Handle the boring stuff, the fun stuff, and the future stuff

The ecosystem should be made up of three fundamental pillars: the technical fundamentals (making sure your tech stack actually works and integrates properly), the product storytelling (onsite content, email marketing, advertising creative), and the strategic planning (what data you’re collecting, how you’ll use it down the road). Tools like Shopify, Meta, and Braze make a lot of this easier, allowing you to handle, manage and pull insights from all three pillars under the same umbrella.

2. Treat product discovery as a flywheel

Stop thinking about product discovery as a single touchpoint like onsite search. Instead, build an interconnected ecosystem where social media discovery feeds ad performance, which influences CRM and onsite browsing, ultimately driving purchases. Each consumer interaction should inform the next, creating a continuous loop of learning and optimization.

For example, in our own work with Oreo, every time it does a partnership with someone like Post Malone, we actively watch engagement and purchases which enables us to further customize their future experiences with the brand. That way, we’re able to follow up with the next thing that we think each fan will be interested in.

3. Let your customers tell you what to build next

Pay attention to what people are actually doing with your products, not just what focus groups say they might want. If you announce a product or service and a ton of people are signing up early for a specific offering, model, flavor or design, that’s telling you something about what else they’d buy. Look at which emails people open, what they’re sharing on social, and what they’re browsing but not buying. For Kinder’s, this meant using a broad range of first-party data to learn which products, flavors, and even methods of cooking were resonating with their consumers—using real-world behavior to inform their next moves.

4. Only show ads to people who actually care

This may seem obvious but if you’re collecting tons of data about who’s interested in what, it’s your responsibility to use it thoughtfully. When someone browses a specific product category or engages with certain content, use those signals to serve relevant recommendations rather than blasting generic ads everywhere. This creates a better user experience and higher conversion rates while building trust with consumers who increasingly expect personalized, non-intrusive marketing.

5. Make sure AI can actually find and recommend your products

AI search is becoming a bigger deal, and you need to think of it like another type of customer. Start with the basics: clean up your product feeds, make sure your descriptions are consistent across all of your DTC channels, and organize your content so it’s easy to parse. When someone asks ChatGPT or another AI tool for a recommendation, you want your product to show up. That means being technically solid across the board, not just having a pretty website. For Happy Family Organics, that meant building AI-specific dedicated landing pages, separate from the pages for human shoppers.

Above all, brands need to understand that, regardless of the size of your company or organization, there are so many more touchpoints in the consumer journey than there used to be. So, product discovery efforts need to be robust and intentional, serving a consistent, personalized experience regardless of where (or what) you are.

Read the original at INC Magazine