Successfully Launch a New Product with Practical Strategies

If you’re planning to launch a new product, you have to keep many different factors in mind. It obviously helps to have a great product, but there’s a lot more to it than that. You have to make sure there’s a strong demand for your new product. You also have to create a strategic new product launch marketing plan. Let’s look at how to launch a product, one step at a time.

Set Your Goals

Before you even begin determining how to launch a new product, you should set down some objectives for your launch. You can create a goal such as selling X number of units by a target date. Or you could have a weekly or monthly goal. You may need to shift your expectations upward or downward at some point. But it helps you focus and stay on target if you have specific goals right from the start.

Identify Your Market

The most significant factor that determines the success of a product launch is having a targeted market for what you have to offer. You start by doing traditional market research, looking into the demographics for your product. Study the competition, if any. Figure out what advantages your product has over the competition. Conduct polls and surveys via your email list or on your social media pages.

Test Your Product

You need to test your product to make sure it performs as intended. You also want to test the public’s reaction to your product. This phase helps you avoid investing lots of production and marketing costs into a product that still needs tweaks or improvements. If it’s a physical product, you should have prototypes or samples that can be given away. Digital products are easier to give away. Remember that you want people in your target demographic testing the product. Ask them for detailed feedback on what they like and don’t like about it. Make any necessary adjustments.

Develop a Marketing Budget and Strategy

Your new product launch strategy must include a marketing plan and budget. There are many ways to publicize your product launch, including SEO, social media, paid advertising and more innovative techniques such as guerrilla marketing. Your marketing plan will depend on your budget, your personal preferences as well as what is likely to work best with your product. It’s helpful if you already have an email list, a social media following, a YouTube channel or a direct mail list. When it comes to marketing, you have to be ready to test and tweak constantly. Your marketing strategy will probably change as you observe what works best.

Create Advance Hype

It’s extremely important to get as much pre-launch publicity as possible. However you choose to market your product, it’s never too early to start. You should make videos, write blog posts, send out emails and talk about your product on social media well ahead of the launch. You should also try to create some media buzz with press releases and pre-launch live or online events.

Launching a new product is an exciting yet challenging process. The above guidelines can help make your launch more organized and successful. In reality, many of these actions should be taken at the same time. For example, you can be testing your product while building pre-launch buzz. You have to be both patient and flexible when launching a new product. Don’t get attached to a particular idea of how it should work. If one type of marketing proves unprofitable, try something else. If people don’t like a certain feature of your product, change it. Remember that it’s ultimately your customers who will allow your product to succeed.

Author: Frankin Watson is a freelance writer and marketing executive specializing in social media marketing. At the moment, he is working for Cover Girl Promotional Models to improve their outreach.