In Step 3 we will discuss methods and strategies to do a soft launch for your new product or service in order to gain some initial traction and feedback from your future customers.
After you have carefully taken the steps to create your marketing plan and also audit your marketing plan, it’s time to put the people and strategies in place in order to launch your product or service onto the marketplace.
Product Launch Decision: To Launch or Not to Launch
Once you have carefully performed your marketing audit you should have enough information to decide whether or not you should launch your new product or service. If you still don’t think you have enough information, go through the following questions below to gain further clarity.
- Are there similar products or services in the marketplace?
- Is my product or service unique enough?
- Is my product’s price competitive?
- How long can I continue to market my product without seeing any ROI?
- What is my fallback plan if my product doesn’t perform as expected?
Answering these questions will provide you with additional clarity that you need in order to make the decision to launch your product or service.
Talking to your existing customers and giving them free samples and deals for your new product or service is also a great way to gain some initial feedback before you really start spending money on marketing and advertising.
Product Launch Team Selection: Select the Product Launch Team Members
In order for your product launch to have the best chance of being successful it’s important that you assemble a team of strong salesmen, operations and customer support in order to handle any questions or issues that can come up.
These should be people within the business who are intimately familiar with how a product or service works and all it’s related intricacies.
The product launch team tends to consist of some of the following people.
Product Launch Marketing Channel Selection
In the marketing channel selection process it’s important to establish how aggressively you plan to market in your specified marketing channels. This will typically be based on your maximum monthly or quarterly budget for your new product or service.
Once you have accurately established your marketing budget for your new product or service, it’s time to allocate that spend for each specific marketing channel.
As you are spending money on your advertising and marketing, you should be accurately tracking and adjusting it through each channel as you gain more clarity on which channel is performing the best and which channel is simploy losing money.
Product Launch Timing: Creating a Product Launch Timeline
Timing is an extremely important component when it comes to launching a new product or service. It’s important to first establish a solid timeline and schedule leading up to your official launch.
This should consist of prerequisites that need to be carried out before you can launch your product or service. It all starts with first establishing a timeline and then breaking down each week or month by it’s own individual milestones.
This is a sample product launch timeline and yours will look quite a bit different depending on the complexity and scale of your product or service.
It’s also worth noting that you need to be very conscious of the macro and microeconomic factors that are at play in the economy in order to consider whether your product or service launch should be carried out.
After you have established your product launch timeline it’s time to start carrying out the specific tasks set by each individual milestone. They will function as your guide and will hold your team accountable for each stage prior to the actual product launch.