You might be a business that has worked hard on developing a specific product or service. Now you are thinking of launching it in the market. However, without crafting a well-planned product launch strategy, you would hardly achieve the desired receptivity for your product or service. Thus, it becomes crucial to implement best practices of a product launch by developing the right strategy for the same.
You need to plan your approach in advance so that you know exactly how you would be launching the product. Sit with your team, do your research well and plan out who will be working on which step of the strategy. There is no room for mistake. Your launch strategy is going to define how you are going to capture the market and lead it.
Following are seven full-proof tips to make your product or service launch successful.
1. Understand your product
Before presenting your product to the world, you need to understand it thoroughly. But what it takes to get that kind of understanding? You may consider the following questions:
- Which demand in the market is fulfilled by this product or service?
- What value is it adding to your customer’s lives?
Your product or service should attract enough people to make it financially feasible. Similarly, it is equally important for your product or service to fulfill the customers’ multi-level requirements- including quality, performance, and price.
To recognize the niche that your customers are benefiting the most from is the surest way to make a launch successful.
2. Know your audience and competition
Once you understand your product or service, it is time for you to develop the same understanding of your audience and competition.
Identify if you need to create your audience base for this particular product or already have an existing customer base. Once this is established, you can maneuver your efforts in that direction. For instance, Adobe understood its target audience before making its encounter digitally as an Adobe Marketing Cloud. It conducted a study with Edelman Berland’s help, which is known as ‘The State of Online Advertising’ to decode the challenges faced by their target audience. Such research resulted in increased sales of the company by 45%.
On the other hand, understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses can help you improve your product launch strategy. For example, Apple crafted its strategy around the fact that customers need a quality smartphone which wasn’t the case with existing smartphones in the market. Such an understanding of the competitors helped Apple to sell more than 231 million iPhones by 2015.
3. Know your USP & UVP
You have studied the market, got an understanding of your audience and competition. Now is the time to establish a unique selling proposition (USP) and the unique value proposition (UVP) about a product or service you are offering. Your USP and UVP helps you present your product or service in a more compelling way.
4. Plan in advance
One of the important thing you need to include in your planning is to find the right media people or reporters. It might take around 8 to 12 weeks prior to your product launch to get contacts and build relationships with the established media. Once you are connected to media persons, you can discuss with them about the value and significance of your product or service. In turn, you can grab a place for your upcoming product or service in that media outlet and achieve desired visibility.
5. Approach Influencers
Social media influencers are the people who tend to own the Internet through their blog writings, social media channels, videos etc. They usually have a massive audience who follow them regularly and get influenced. Then why not consider these influencers to promote your products or services. You can provide them with a trial and ask them to share a review about it on social media channels. This way, you can attract a new audience for your product.
6. Create Online buzz
You can give an edge to your product or service launch by creating online buzz about it. Today’s audience tends to retain things that have consistent visibility online. Thus, you may explore many options to get such retention. For instance, you can launch teaser, share sponsored posts, set a countdown clock on your website, etc. to generate excitement about your product weeks before the actual product launch among your audience.
7. Keep it simple
Your job is to make things simpler for media, influencers, your audience, and other stakeholders so that the information is easily available to them and they do not need to hunt for the required information. Thus, you need to create simple content, videos, and demos to make it easier for people to introduce about your product in a better way.
Conclusion
A product launch is an important stage in your business cycle. You cannot afford to turn a blind eye to its implementation. There are a few guidelines and tips you can consider before launching your product or service. These product launch practice tips will help you create an impact with your offerings and get a significant share of success in the market.
