The Best Way to Approach Product Launch Planning
We are living at a time when it’s easier than ever to start your business. The Internet has reshaped completely what it means to own a business and to share what you have to offer to the world. Online website promotion is something almost all of us suddenly became interested in. Digital media makes it so easy to let as many people as possible to know about your different aspects of your business and keep in touch with your audience.
Product launch has become a much simpler thing as well. It’s easier than ever to manage the launch even when your audience is located in many thousands of kilometers away from your physical location.
But at the same time, as there are so many products and brands to choose from, it’s getting harder to stay on top of the competition.
Let’s talk about the best way you can approach your product launch and what kind of mistakes you can avoid on the way. You might want to make sure that you don’t pass up any opportunities. Good and well-thought-through planning can help you a lot with that.
Here you can see what kind of opportunities there are that you can use during the launch to interact with your customers to achieve your goals:
A good plan always means setting clear goals. It means prioritizing your goals and creating a timeline. Planning allows you to spend and manage your resources in the most effective ways possible.
When launching a product there are a few the most important things one should think of:
- creating a plan;
- reaching your audience;
- encourage engagement and participation;
- convert visitors;
- build advocacy among your customers;
When approaching your planning, it’s best to hope for the best while also foreseeing the worst. So many things can go unplanned. Even with the most perfect plan, it’s impossible to be ready for everything. However, you are able to minimize the risks and be prepared for as many things as possible.
It is essential to have a vision and prepare a statement.
For example, if you are providing b2b services, you might want to start by preparing an e-mail strategy. You can proceed by building a social media marketing strategy. Then it’s time to plan the budget and set the right metrics.
You might know everything about your product. But when you are launching something new, your audience and future customers might have zero knowledge about it. So you might want to make sure that you take enough effort to explain what your product is and where it lies within the market. Also, you have to answer the question, how is your product different from its alternatives on the market? What makes it better?
It’s essential to send out a clear and appealing message that will make it clear for your future customers why they need your product. You need to make the value obvious to the client with your messaging.
It could be a great idea to imagine a timeline of your launch. When do you start building up? When is the launch? What is your tactic after the launch?
Make sure that on every step you are sending out a clear message that is relevant at every stage of the customer journey. Your audience does not want to be shamed or manipulated into buying something. They want to get an informative message about the actual benefits of your product and the value that it provides.
At the start of your planning, you might want to think about the possible interactions with influencers. They are very 2020, and both experts and influencers are extremely effective for growing the audience and building trust and boosting the visibility of your business.
Think about which platforms and what kind of influencers you need. Which are the ones that your potential customer might already follow? There are so many different options, and every case requires a unique solution. There are podcasts, there are bloggers, so many different voices out there, there will surely be some who will resonate with your brand and your audience the most.
KPIs and performance measurements are very important for every aspect of marketing in general, but a product launch is literally screaming for them. You must be able to adjust and tweak your campaign when you see that something is working and something isn’t at all.
KPIs normally include:
- click-through rates;
- e-book downloads;
- video views;
- sale per customer, etc;
One has to decide which KPIs are the most relevant for their own particular case and approach.
You might want to consider the opportunity of future expansion or upgrade system for your product. It is a perfect way to add to your income and provide natural growth using the existing customer base.
Resources and finances required for a product launch management may not be as high as website creation cost but you can save a lot by implementing smart planning and by foreseeing all unexpected things before they happen.
