You’ve been working on a project for a long time with an awesome team and you guys have come up with a great product. You are all aware that the product you designed is awesome but you know very well that it won’t do much if you mess up the launch. And when you consider the fact that only 25% of product launches are successful, you can conclude that generating brand awareness, selling the actual product and justifying the budget can be quite a task. Therefore, let these five tips help you launch your product well.
Preparation
This has to be the number one tip. As you know, designing and creating your product is only the beginning. Prepare your launch by getting to know your target audience. Get to know what they care about and help yourself by planning marketing activities by using buyer personas. A buyer persona is an imaginary representation of your ideal customer. It’s based on real data that revolves around customer demographics and online behavior and also your educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, concerns, etc. When you establish your personas, it will be easier to plan your marketing efforts and therefore prepare the launch.
Get a good grasp of your goals
Every business objective has to start with a clear goal. You have to understand your goals before you start anything with your product. Ask yourself why you are launching this product. Start with this question and then drill down a few more layers of ‘whys’. Begin with the ordinary goals like awareness, engagement and conversion/acquisition. That will be a good start. When it comes to new product launch, you should focus a bit more on the engagement part. Especially with your existing customers. Set realistic goals around the launch. Yes, it’s good to shoot for the stars but don’t overreach. TechCrunch won’t cover your startup immediately.
Be crystal clear
Your customers need to know exactly what they are getting from your new product. Therefore, have a simple and clear message and you’ll allow them to understand the product and most importantly find a reason why they should buy it. If you don’t offer clear and concise descriptions of your product, you can forget about good figures. Folks want clarity and they want it fast. If your find it too hard to craft your message, use a message map which is a framework used to create compelling messages for various audience segments. Maps can be simple and complex but they have several major purposes. These purposes include identifying key audience segments, discussing high-level goals for the audience segment and mapping key message to audience segments.
Get on with it early
It’s best that you start early. Things tend to go wrong and tasks tend to take longer than expected. And there is nothing more stressful than juggling too many things at once. That’s why you need to start early. Establish your personas and the activities you’ll use to reach them. Once you’ve done that, create a project timeline. Some product launches require more than a couple of months of advance preparation. Therefore, these timelines are critical to ensuring you stay on track. If you’re working on a major project or launching more than one product, do not hesitate to have two or more separate, detailed timelines. It can only help.
Don’t be scared of over-marketing your product launch
Okay, obviously, you don’t want to end up becoming the boy who cried wolf. However, there is something to be said for over-marketing your product launches. Surely, you will agree that the product launches we all actually hear about are the ones that are heavily promoted, well thought-out and to a certain degree over-produced. So, don’t be scared of over-marketing a bit. There are various promotional tactics that you can use to over-market your launch so don’t be scared of doing it. Many giants do it all the time.
Conclusion
Launching a product isn’t easy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. However, if you plan it on time and put together an interesting, exciting and fun show, it will be rewarding both for you and your customers. A good launch almost certainly promises good figures in the months to come.