Are You a New Product Marketer? Here are 8 strategies for a Remarkable Product Launch

For those of you who are starting out in Product Marketing, launching a product is one of the most important things you will ever do as it covers ALL the activities that are important to be a great product marketer. It requires careful planning and execution, a clear understanding of your ICP and value proposition, competitive challenges, and market expectations.? Here are 8 strategies for delivering a stellar product launch

1. Consumer psychology and drafting a compelling narrative

To launch your product successfully, one needs a deep understanding of customers. Conducting a First Principles Analysis maps corporate objectives to what clients care about and how your organization will fulfill those cares.? This exercise, in turn, will actually identify effective activities to meet your organization's strategic objectives.

For instance…

Corporate Objective: Establish 10 Beachhead customers in the US Market.

Customer “care abouts”: I want a product that will meet my particular personal and professional objectives and make my life easier, not harder. I don't want to fret about its capabilities.

Activities: Consumer research on simplifying product workflow. Identify items customers expect to improve over what they have currently. Create positioning and messaging that demonstrates how products address their “care abouts”. Develop marketing campaigns to address market, prospect, and customer expectations.

Tools to support activities:

• Attitudinal segmentation of customer needs, attitudes, and behaviors associated with buying.
• Conduct surveys and business ethnographic research to identify their articulated and unarticulated needs.
• Perform “follow me homes” – direct observations of your customers in their work environment.

Once you understand your customers, you can create messaging and experiences that resonate with them:

1. Use their language, not yours.
2. Go heavy on feature/benefit content. Stay away from Speeds and Feeds
3. Tell me a bedtime story.? Focus on customer reference stories that illuminate how customer needs are met. Tell stories that illustrate how the product or service can help your customers.
4. Make it easy for your customers to take action.
5. Be authentic and transparent.
6. Always put your customers are the center of everything you do.

2. The See-Try-Buy Experiential Marketing Model

Experiential marketing elevates product launches by creating immersive, multisensory experiences that allow customers to interact with the product firsthand which improves inquiry generation. For example,

See:? develop an online experience where through video and imagery where prospects can look at and understand the benefits of the product.?

Try: provide an interactive experience of the product with additional offer such as webinar participation.

Buy: Provide the evaluation and decision content that a consumer needs to make a product decision - white papers, “how to’s” etc.?

Here are some additional tips for creating a successful experiential marketing campaign:

• Use an ABM-light approach to ensure experiences are unique to your prospect segmentation/
• Use multiple senses to create a more immersive experience - such as employing a gamified experience
• Measure, and optimize, - rinse and repeat.

3. Cultivate Strategic Partnerships

Of course, you know how to cultivate relationships with strategic partners. You know… the ones that share your brand ethos and believe in partnership to generate revenue.? But here are a few caveats:

• Work with your partnership team to get this done. Don’t go it alone.
• Ensure partners are clear on mutual goals.
• Both partners should carry the budgetary burden. It doesn’t have to be equal in terms of contribution size but each organization should be contributing to MDF (Market Development Funds).

4. It's All About the Data

Data-driven insights inform your product launch strategy in a number of ways:

1. Riding the wave of particular market trends
2. Marketing campaign optimization
3. Segmentation and ICP accuracy
4. Consumer preferences (which should align with your initial consumer research)
5. Offer effectiveness
6. Evaluating adjacent and cross-sector market opportunities
7. Messaging effectiveness

5. Curate Exclusive Pre-Launch Experiences

To create a sense of exclusivity and anticipation, tier 1 customers and prospects should have privileged access, insider insights, or personalized interactions to develop them as brand ambassadors.

Consider:

• Inviting tier 1’s and early adopters to private launch events
• Provide early access to the product
• Provide exclusive content and offers

By cultivating an aura of exclusivity and anticipation, the brand buzz is nurtured, and excitement is generated among your premier customers. This buzz can be used at both the top and bottom of the demand funnel.

6.? Thought Leadership

I’m not going to say that “content is king” - because that phrase has been floating around for at least 15 years. But it is important to infuse your marketing with intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking content. You do this to fulfill some core objectives:

• Position the brand as a thought leader and authority in its industry, which means prospects will desire to spend time learning from your organization. This translates to inquiries.?
• Authority-oriented content such as white papers, how-to's, industry trend analysis, etc. ensures businesses engage with their audiences with insights that promote prospect interest in experiential marketing which provides the information prospects seek as part of a See it-Try it-Buy it experience.

Great subject matter expert content is the result of:

1. Ensuring your Subject Matter Expertise is current. Yes, you have SMEs in the business that are the actual authorities on whatever is relevant in a given market but make sure this knowledge is current and informed by recent market events. If the business is not current in its knowledge, this will raise serious trust issues with prospects.
2. Being original. Don't just regurgitate what's already been said. Offer your own unique perspective on the topic.
3. Being engaging. Use strong visuals, clear and concise language, and interesting anecdotes to keep your audience engaged.
4. Being provocative. Ask thought-provoking questions, challenge the status quo, and offer new ways of thinking about the topic.
5. Being relevant. Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience's interests and needs.
6. Being consistent. Create a regular stream of high-quality content to keep your audience engaged.

7. Radical Customer Centricity

Building genuine relationships with your customers is essential to the success of any product launch. By engaging in active dialogue, listening carefully to feedback, and responding with empathy, bringing customers and prospects close to the brand and the Customer Experience that a given prospect or customer experiences then either cements or loosens that connection based on the Cx quality.

• Hosting live events or webinars where one can interact with customers in real time.
• Offer personalized support and attention to customers.
• Share the company's story and values so that customers can connect with your brand on an emotional level - remember that preference drives the likelihood to buy and paying a price premium.

8. Continual Evaluation and Refinement

No project would be complete without an optimization component and product launches are no different. The right KPIs need to be established to monitor and optimize launch performance.

Example KPIs:

• Funnel conversion
• Channel performance
• Funnel leakage
• ROMI
• Closed Won/Closed Lost ratio
• Cost per lead

Predictive analytics such as propensity to buy should be considered as well.

Remember, product launches are an ongoing process. Don't expect to see results overnight. As a matter of fact, I set expectations with executives that the initial campaign performance will suck and that they should not expect meaningful returns for 6 to 8 weeks post-launch.?

Be brave, and have fun. Write if you get work.