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4 Ways to Product Launch Excellence
Product launches are one of the biggest milestones for all companies. Announcing something new can invigorate sales teams and the company at large. Most importantly launches let customers know you are improving their services with innovations and more competitive offerings. Whether product launches enhance your brand’s visibility, solve customer issues, or try to increase your company’s overall income through increased functionality and features, a successful product launch depends on a firm commitment. Studies and surveys show failure rates between 35-80% for new product launches. Use the following four best practices to ensure the success of your product launch.
1. Build messaging that resonates with sales teams and prospects
Know your audience and speak to them. A product launch has several audiences: customers, industry analysts, sales and marketing team, investors, partners, and employees. However, the two most important messages across all of these audiences are: how does your sales team recognize the problems prospects are facing, and how do you uniquely solve these problems? Example: PerimeterX – Web Scraping. Perimeter X does an excellent job of messaging to several audiences and industries for their solutions. Their use case, industry, and product messaging helps their internal and external audience understand the company and its products.
2. Rollout a blog series reinforcing your launch
Create rolling thunder based off an editorial calendar which lays out a series of blog posts highlighting different use cases, customer challenges, and important ways in which your product addresses core needs. Example: Amazon Web Services. AWS continues to publish relevant content from their own employees and their partner network to share product enhancements and new solutions. By publishing current content, AWS continues to stay at the forefront of the IaaS industry.
3. Activate a community engagement campaign
Customer engagement is key to any product launch. Use your community to spread the word about your new product release. Leverage the successful customers of your product and let them share in the promotion. Develop contests. Provide giveaways or swag for customers who engage and discuss. Encourage guest blogging. The more involvement from customers leads to brand loyalty. Example: Micro Focus ArcSight. ArcSight utilizes its Protect 724 community engage with their customers. The community is used to post updates on products and services, assist users with product use, allow users to develop solutions together, and gather feedback and insight on products and functionality.
4. Release a whiteboard launch video
The easier a solution can be understood, purchased, implemented, and utilized the better the product reviews which are critical to purchase decisions. Use product releases as a chance to spread messaging of simplicity. Videos are a great method to share the concept, release, and benefits. Whiteboard videos are also extremely simple to create, digest, and share. People like animation. People like simplicity. People like social media. Publish and share. Three minutes of direct messaging can go viral in a series of tweets and shares. Each sales person has their own network, their own connections, and their own prospects. By encouraging them to promote the launch through direct messaging to customers and prospects or through social media, you amplify your product launch success. You can always work with sales leadership to develop incentives or spiffs, which always work well.
We hope you’ve found these 5 best practices to be helpful for your next product launch. To discuss how Aventi Group can help your company have a successful product marketing launch, feel free to contact us.
