Marketing Launch Processes

When you are selling online or selling anything new or in a new way, you may want to understand the different ways to present your offer. So we will take a deep inside look at different types and elements of a launch, compare that with promotions and marketing ideas that go along with the launch process.

What do you have in place before a launch?

A few things to remember before a launch is:

• Understand your customers Build a business plan
• Have proper positioning
• Provide social proof with partners

Launch Versus Promotion What’s the Difference?

Promotion refers to raising customer awareness of a product or brand, generating sales, and creating brand loyalty.

Launch introduces something new to the market. I say it could be in a new way as well. Look at the different processes of launch and promotions so you can get a better ideas of the format used. This will give you an idea that you want to have a promotion or use actual launch strategies.

The product launch from this site here.

• The most cost-effect method is to launch only at your known key target market – those who are most likely to buy the product. Target your existing customers and those customers who go to your competitors.

• Know your competitor’s products well – their strengths and weaknesses.

• Understand the price differences between your product and your competitors but do not try to sell on price.

• Understand and be very familiar with your competitor’s sales and marketing materials.

• Highlight the additional benefits of your new product – remember – you are already preaching to the partially converted.

• Understand your customers and potential customers and how they purchase and what influences them to buy – via the internet, mail shots, local advertising, leaflet drops, via distributors etc – and set your strategy accordingly.

• Be prepared to run and manage several of the above campaigns at the same time – minimizing it to run one or two will almost guarantee failure – your message has to be reinforced.

• Be prepared to constantly modify your strategy as it progresses

Assuming that your product launch is as successful as you would wish, there are some points that I feel are worthy to mention:

1. Make sure that you have the infrastructure in place and the capability to support a dramatic increase in Sales.

2. Make sure that you have the sales capability to handle a large upturn in inquiries.

3. Make sure that you have adequate cash-flow to cope with possible high demands in raw materials, staff increases etc.

Hard Launch Versus Soft Launch

It’s all about the approach! The method you choose depends on things such as how much money you want to spend, the amount of attention you want to attract and the condition of your product. If you’re in charge of marketing for a product, learn the differences between a soft launch and a hard launch.

Most ideas are from this site here.

What is a Soft Launch?

A soft launch is something you do not want to drive traffic or attention to a product right away. This could be a upgrade to a product or package already. So, it may not be necessary to create a big buzz because it’s set to a limited number of people.

The main differences between the two methods is in how you achieve your desired goals. For a soft launch, a company could focus on updating its marketing and sales material or add new content to its website.

The activities are more geared toward the business side of things. One of the benefits of a soft launch is that there’s time to train and prepare staff to deal with handling a launch. A soft launch is less stressful and gives employees time to get better with public meetings and appearances.

What is a Hard Launch?

A Hard Launch is generally used when you want to create a buzz and promotion to a major new product or upgrade. This is what you want to heavily market. When it comes to a hard launch, the activities are more for the buyers’ benefit.

The overall goal is to generate as many sales as possible, so a hard launch requires more aggressive tactics to reach the public. Often with a hard launch, certain employees are expected to do interviews, presentations and demonstrations. One of the benefits associated with a hard launch is the ability to quickly make money and see results. Each launch has different growth results.

What to look for between a soft and hard launch

No matter which launch you choose, it’s important to avoid creating a marketing disaster. If you’re looking to see quick and dramatic results, choosing a hard launch over a soft launch is probably the best decision.

With a soft launch, it will take longer for you to see any significant results or income. For example, promoting a book with occasional blog posts and word of mouth is a soft launch.

You will see results, but they will take time. On the other hand, scheduling a book tour, sending out news releases, creating promotional videos and building an online following is a hard launch that will produce faster results.

Micro-launch

A micro-launch has short phases that introduces the new product or promotion to unique audiences. Most successful marketers like to test products to their existing buyer’s audience first, and this is how a micro-launch starts.

Start introducing it to your private list first with a deadline, move to the next phase to the public next. After you launch it to the public, keep it evergreen at a higher price it was launched.

The Top Producer Formula is currently going through a micro-launch. Learn more by attending the LIVE cast of this process by clicking the picture below.

Key elements in a product launch

A winning product launch delivers sales momentum for your company. It’s one of the few opportunities to go from incremental to exponential sales. So why do so few companies get it right?

It’s not because they’re lucky. It’s because they understand the 6 secrets of a winning product launch:

1. Matching Product Capabilities to Market Needs

2. Clear Positioning and Messaging

3. Setting Clear Launch Goals

4. The Power of Leverage

5. Priming the Pump

6. Timing the Launch to Maximize Sales –

See more of these key elements here.

Before you move to the marketing plan, it’s important to know how to build awareness. By building awareness, you improve the chances that your market will be interested in buying your product.

The following tactics will help to strengthen your efforts:

Marketing Plan

So marketing online is literally as simple as these 3 steps and you shouldn’t complicate it anymore than this:

1. Create – Traffic through blogging, videos, social media, paid ads, or magazine newspaper ads

2. Capture – Leads through a high converting capture page

3. Convert – Sales through your auto-responder

What do you do to market?

• Pick up the phone and call _____ people per day to invite them
• Send out ____ personal email invitations per day
• Reach out to one “center of influence” who can help you reach an audience
• Write, publish and promote one new blog post using the ideas above and the concepts in TPF as your focus
• Post on social media with the swipe copy from the affiliate center or to ask conversation-sparking questions

Take a step back, what are they?

In reality, all your potential customer wants to know once they’ve found out about you is:

• Does this thing work?

• How much is it?

• Do I want to pay for it?

The ideas are endless on what you can do! Be creative.

These ideas are shared from here too.

CREATE PRESS RELEASES FOR THE PRODUCT LAUNCH

Many companies use press releases to announce new products or upgrades to their existing ones. Press releases are most effective when the content is newsworthy (like a major product release) and they include a customer endorsement. Conduct beta programs to elicit product endorsements that you can use at the time of the launch. When distributing press releases through a newswire agency, news outlets will often republish them, spreading awareness of your new release.

REACH OUT TO THE PRESS

Over time, your marketing team will build relationships with different journalists and press outlets. At the time of a product release, your team can reach out to the press to entice journalists to write about the new upgrade.

UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE TO ANNOUNCE NEW PRODUCTS

Announce every new product or feature release on your corporate website. If you blog, then write about the new functionality and why it benefits customers. Anyone who regularly views your website will soon learn of the new upgrade.

USE TWITTER, FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST, LINKEDIN, GOOGLE+

If your organization has a Twitter account, then tweet about the upcoming release, including links to the press release, any web content and other marketing efforts. Aim to have your Twitter followers retweet these announcements, which can help to create viral awareness of your new release.

GARNER ENDORSEMENTS

Building relationships with third-party industry analysts and receiving endorsements can boost your marketing efforts. For example, Gartner Group and Forrester are well-known analysts that follow the technology space and evaluate and recommend solutions to their customers.

USE ADVERTISING

Advertising is another option for building awareness. This includes search-engine marketing (for example, buying Google AdWords) and other forms of advertising (for example, print, online).

BUILD DEMAND

Your marketing team can engage in the following types of activities to help generate demand for your product and create a sense of urgency for your prospects to buy.

CREATE EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

Email campaigns designed for existing prospects can help encourage their purchase decision. Follow-up these campaigns with a phone call to maximize effectiveness.

CREATE REFERRAL CAMPAIGNS

Use your existing customer base to generate additional leads through a referral campaign. Offer an incentive to your existing customers to refer a friend (for example, free maintenance for a year, or a gift). Because these new prospects will have had your product endorsed by a friend, the chance for you to close the sale is much higher.

HOLD CONTESTS

Hold a contest to collect contact information for prospects for a particular release. Set up contests prudently; make sure that you attract legitimate sales prospects, and not just anyone who wants to win the prize.

ATTEND TRADESHOWS

Tradeshows enable you to connect with a targeted audience that wants to see solutions to their market problems. Use tradeshows with care, however. They can prove a costly and labor-intensive way to generate leads, and might not provide the buyer persona you seek.

Example: Product launch marketing plan Company ABC has a new release of facial recognition functionality for its image manipulation software. The company wants to make a big splash. The goals of the release are to have 1,000 new prospects in the sales funnel.

Company ABC has been conducting a beta program with 50 customers over the last three months, and customers love the new functionality.

The marketing team decides to do the following:

• To build awareness:

Endorsements: They’ll secure five quotes from beta program customers.

Press release: They’ll use the best quote to create a press release.

Journalists: They’ll pitch a story to the photo management media, spotlighting how they’ve solved the problem of facial recognition for users, and include customer endorsements supporting the product.

Advertising: They’ll buy the term “facial recognition” on Google Adwords.

• To build demand:

Email campaign: They’ll create an email campaign for past trial users of the software to inform them about the upcoming release. They will reach about 10,000 people through the trial database.

Referral campaign: They’ll inform 3,000 existing customers about the new upgrade to prepare them for the release. They’ll also ask those customers to refer a friend—if they do so, they’ll be entered into a draw for an iPad. The marketing team estimates that they can generate 1,000 leads using these different tools to build product awareness and demand. By keeping careful metrics and tracking their activities and results, the team can assess for next time the effectiveness of every launch activity.

Endless possibilities when it comes to your imagination and creativity. When you register to the huge live cast below, you will see first hand how an effective launch is held, along with master selling and recruiting with mastery. Not only will the mindset blow you away, but the technology in why lead capture pages are very high converting.

See how this launch versus promotion is delivered in a masterful way to build a rapid relationship, rapport and responsiveness that you can change in what you are doing in your business launches and promotions. Take action and reserve your spot by clicking the picture below.