Welcome to a new year, with the exciting prospects of a new boating season ahead of us and the opportunity to take a fresh look at your marketing campaign for the year.

I have been asked by a reader what advice we could give about introducing his product, which is established in the sailing cruising market, to the Superyacht market. This is an interesting marketing problem, as it’s not as easy as introducing a Superyacht product - where you have already established a quality image - to the cruising market.

Here our friend needs to convince the new market, which may be sceptical, about a product normally used on smaller boats, of suitable quality, style and durability.

We’ve covered photography before, but nowhere is this more important than in the Superyacht market, where it needs not only to be good photography, but relevant too. The product should be seen on the right kind of boat with the right kind of people using it. Considerable thought needs to be given to this photo as it will set the style for the future of the product.

Offer product to a skipper to trial and comment; remember that on these yachts it is often not the owner that will make the buying decision for equipment, but the professional skipper. Provide a product to a well known writer in the market and invite his or her comments too. Ensure the product is available in the leading superyacht regions of South of France and Palma and attend the Monaco Yacht Show.

Importantly, make sure your website is fully in keeping with the market. Many skippers use the Internet as their natural market place. Unless you have a really unique product, this is not an easy market to crack for a small company with a low budget and it needs patience and planning to achieve penetration.