Product Launch Marketing Plan in 8 Key Steps
Product Launch Marketing Plan in 8 Key Steps
Product Launch Marketing Plan in 8 Key Steps
Simone Somekh

Simone Somekh

Oct 27, 2020 ‧ 9 MIN.

Each year, over 30,000 new products are introduced to the market, but 95% of them fail.

Every business claims they have reinvented the wheel, but with so many innovative products in the market, it is challenging to persuade consumers to buy a new product. In this fast-paced and ultra-competitive world, launching a new product takes significant planning. Without a proper product launch marketing plan, your product might fail to deliver on the expectations of your target buyers.

In this article, we will learn why it’s essential to create a product launch marketing plan, discuss the eight key steps to create a product launch plan, and see some examples of successful product launches that you can replicate. 

Importance of a Powerful Product Launch Marketing Plan

Here are some of the reasons, why a product launch marketing plan is necessary:

  • When your product meets the expectations of your users, your brand reputation is enhanced, leading to more sustainable profits in the future.
  • A proper marketing plan ensures that your new product is seen, used, and discussed by your target audience. 
  • Chances of product failure are reduced because an intelligent marketing strategy helps to acquire new customers right from the start of your product launch. 
  • A successful product launch drives new business leads and loyal followers.
  • You generate attention for your company which opens the doors for new business partnerships and investments.

Now that you have understood the significance of a product launch marketing strategy let’s discuss how you can prepare a pre-launch strategy.

Define Your Pre-Launch Strategy 

You have plenty of plans and significant goals to achieve, but without a pre-launch strategy in place, it would be harder for you to accomplish them. 

A pre-launch strategy is helpful to identify which channels are going to be useful and how you are going to capitalize on each one of them.

Here are some pre-launch strategies to try out:

  • Use content marketing to bring in traffic to your website. Your product launch will be much easier if you have tons of relevant traffic on your site.
  • Create lead magnets to build your email list. A single email regarding your new product launch will inform thousands of your email subscribers so that you get traction immediately after the product launch. 
  • Acquire followers across all your social media channels. Keep your followers in suspense regarding the launch of your new product. Curiosity at peaks can do wonders to increase the level of engagement.
  • Identify influencers and collaborate with them because they will help to spread the word about your new product with their followers. This is a surefire way to raise trust in your new product which is so essential to defeat your competitors.
  • Host some live events or webinars around your product launch date. Give discount coupons to people so that the news of the product launch spreads like wildfire. 

8 Steps To Create A Product Launch Marketing Plan

8 steps to create a product launch marketing plan

Step 1: Identify User’s Needs

You can’t prepare a good marketing strategy if you are not aware of the pain points of your target customers. There are several ways to identify the needs of your target audience. Here are a couple of ways to do that:

  • Conduct surveys to understand what features in your product will attract the users the most. You can ask them about the products they are currently using and why. Lastly, you can question them how much they are willing to pay for a product if it can solve their current needs. This way, you will get an idea about your recent competition, the needs of the users, and you can also decide a suitable pricing strategy for your product. 
  • Take the help of social media analytics built around a powerful predictive analytics model to uncover the fundamental needs of user-generated content. There are several studies that indicate that data acquired via social analytics platforms correlate very well with actual product purchases. 

Step 2: Study Your Competition

You are going to compete with hundreds of products that are already existing in the market. Hence, it is always better to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your closest competitors so that you can stay a step ahead of them. 

Here are some of the things to look for in your competitor’s marketing strategy:

  • Prepare a list of keywords they are targeting both organically and inorganically. You can use tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs to identify these keywords. This will help you to include all such keywords in your marketing strategy.
  • Compare the content your competitors have on their website with your content. You can determine the style like blogs, videos, case studies, or gated content and replicate the best-performing ones.
  • Look at their social channels like how many followers they have, what is the engagement level, how frequently they post, etc. This will help you determine your social media marketing strategy. 
  • Identify all the gaps that you have in your websites like a content gap, keyword gap, backlink gap, traffic gap, and conversion gap. When you list these things in a sheet, you are in a better position to compare your current situation with your primary competitors. You can then analyze the time and work required to defeat your existing competitors. 

Step 3: Create Your USP 

USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition, and is one of the best things that enable your product to defeat your competitor’s product. USP helps your audience to understand why your product is superior to its competitors. Hence, creating the right USP for your business is of utmost importance.

Your USP should be based on four things:

  • Customer’s needs.
  • Competitor’s offerings.
  • Distinctive benefits that your product offers.
  • Brand promise. 

Your business USP makes your brand value for your audience. Your marketing plan should highlight the USP everywhere.

Step 4: Beta Testing

Beta testing helps to get rid of bugs and other issues before the product is launched in the market. You should never miss this essential step in your product launch marketing plan.

The beta test can be of open and closed types. Open beta tests allow everyone to test your product while closed beta tests present this option to a limited group of users. 

Testing ensures that your product can work in extreme environments. This way you will be able to launch a powerful product in the market which would be loved by all. 

One of the best platforms to test your product is ProductHunt. You can quickly test the effectiveness of products because the products with the most votes in the niche categories reach the top of the list.

Step 5: Launch Your Product

After you have received sufficient feedback from your future customers about the performance of your product, you are now prepared to launch it. 

Make your product launch successful by promoting it heavily on every channel where your target audiences are present. 

Considering the budget, you have for your marketing; you can leverage the power of influencers to make your product launch a grand success.

Step 6: Adopt An Omnichannel Marketing Strategy  

You should create a strategy to reach your ideal customers. The best way to approach today’s customers is to launch an omnichannel marketing strategy. You should provide a seamless buying experience at every customer touchpoint. 

Both offline and online marketing channels should be considered. Some of the channels that you can include in your brand promotion include:

  • Newspapers
  • Billboards
  • Radio ads
  • Television ads
  • Social media
  • SEO
  • PPC marketing
  • Content marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Video marketing

 

Step 7: Predict The Success 

Successful businesses observe the present and predict the future. 

Nowadays, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence have made it easier to predict the success of your marketing campaigns. You can know even before investing whether your campaigns will return a positive ROI. 

In predictive analysis, you build a baseline model to compare different sets of data with other AI models such as Tobit Model, Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and many others. Data is derived using the historical campaign data, and the results obtained can accurately predict the success of your next campaign. 

Step 8: Collect Feedback And Take Steps To Keep Your Customers Happy

Feedback is a crucial step at every stage of the customer journey. 

Hence, you should collect proper feedback, both online and offline. Moreover, you should use the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to collect, scan, and derive meaningful data from the acquired feedback.

[banner_text text=”Get granular insights for any industry” button_text=”Learn more”  button_link=”https://www.revuze.it/products/revuze-explorer/”]

How Revuze Can Support Your New Product Launch

AI-powered platforms such as Revuze are useful in supporting new product launches.

A leading US cosmetic brand was able to save $9M from a failed product launch. The company was able to gain a quick turnaround from an unsuccessful product launch in weeks. Revuze helped the brand to increase product sales by around $600,000. The main challenge was to increase the number of sales from the new product launch because the sales continued to decline. Hence, the company collected user feedback to measure the sentiments of the people and find the reasons that caused a decline in sales.

Revuze was able to know the reasons as to why the customers were unhappy with the launch of the new product. The platform collected data from several sources like eCommerce websites, review sites, and marketplaces. The results were compared with the insights collected after six months of analysis with the data collected by the Revuze platform in just a few weeks. Both the insights were identical.

Moreover, Revuze offered insights that helped to understand the ‘why’ behind the disconnect of the user base. It also allowed the business to reconnect with the audiences resulting in additional sales of $600000.

Digital Marketing Strategy For Product Launch

You can’t ignore the power of digital channels to spread awareness about your products. No matter whether you are selling B2B products or B2C, your audiences are found online. 

You just need to identify whether your target audiences are reading publications such as Forbes or using TikTok. A segmented digital strategy is needed to reach them. 

Clearly plan your product launch goals like reaching a group of people within a set period or increasing the buzz around your brand on target channels.

It is better if you target just a small number of prospects at a time and then expand your marketing aggressively over time. 

It’s all about offering the best digital experiences to your customers. Hence, all your digital assets such as the product landing pages, PPC landing pages, product usage guides, sales copies, demo videos, email copies, and blog posts should offer value to your audience.

You must target every digital marketing channel like SEO, PPC, email marketing, affiliate marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and video marketing. 

Besides, you must have a digital PR plan ready before the launch date. You can try buying sponsored posts and promoted posts on platforms where your prospects are present. Every major digital channel like Forbes, Facebook, LinkedIn, Entrepreneur, YouTube, Buzzfeed, Twitter, and others offer lucrative advertising models and sponsored post options. 

You should also not forget the power of online influencers. Take your time to collaborate with niche influencers and ask them to promote your newly launched product. This will help prospects to establish trust in your brand. 

Lastly, try your hands on viral marketing because videos having excellent content have the highest chances of going viral. Don’t shy away from taking help from viral marketers and YouTube video creators to make your digital product launch a success.

Product Launch Plan Checklist

Let’s brush up on the knowledge acquired so far. To make it easier for you to plan your product launch marketing strategy, here is a checklist to bookmark:

  • List down the needs of your audiences.
  • Identify your target market.
  • Collect feedback.
  • Define your USP.
  • Build your email list.
  • Create content to reach niche audiences.
  • Plan the content of your live events and webinars.
  • Collaborate with influencers and journalists.
  • Prepare a press release.
  • Study your competitors.
  • Double-check your pricing strategy.
  • Have promotional offers and discount coupons ready.
  • Test your final product before launching.
  • Rigorously promote the product via SEO, PPC, email marketing and social media.
  • Get in touch with affiliates.
  • Continue to collect feedback and optimize your product and marketing strategy.

Product Launch Campaign Examples

Now, let us discuss some of the best examples of successful product launches:

1- Acura

Luxury automobile company, Acura, used the power of influencer marketing to reach car lovers at the launch of their new luxury Sedan. The campaign was named as #TLXExperienCecampaign.

Besides, they launched a mobile-first marketing campaign named “What a Ride”. The campaign was colorful with lightning-fast images. 

The campaign was a massive success that helped Acura achieve 3,00,0000 impressions in the first day itself. The exciting part is, most of the auto influencers became Acura customers. 

The influencers shared honest reviews of the car on their blogs and social media profiles which helped Acura gain tremendous exposure leading to massive brand popularity right from the launch of their new product.

2- Harrys

Harrys has been successful in converting visitors into customers by presenting them with a trial offer. The biggest USP of Harrys is the product trial which Harrys promote rigorously via social media. 

The company runs social media ads and brings in traffic to their website. When customers visit the site, they are attracted to try the trial offer for just $5 which consists of a five-blade razor cartridge, a rubber handle, shaving gel, and travel blade cover. The shipping is also free. 

Once, the visitors are converted into customers; efforts are made to make them repeat customers. The idea is simple – get your USP right, use social media to attract prospects, and make efforts to convert your existing customers into regular customers. 

3- Mondelēz

The global snacking brand, Mondelēz used YouTube TrueView ads to promote the launch of its new product, belVita breakfast biscuits. 

TrueView ads use the skippable in-stream ad format. Only users who are interested in viewing the ad see them, while the rest can skip the ad.

Mondelēz wanted to increase brand awareness, and hence they opted for the TrueView ads. The campaign was optimized during its run to show only the best performing video, and it was able to achieve a 79% brand recall rate.

Conclusion

Product launch is the most crucial part of your entire product lifecycle. It documents your ideas, goals, KPIs, and processes. Without an intelligent marketing plan, your product might not be able to acquire customers right from the start. 

Don’t forget that your competitors always have an eye on your products and they won’t leave any stone unturned to compete with your products. Proper market research and proactive planning are necessary to keep an upper hand. 

Follow the steps discussed in this article to prepare your product launch marketing plan. Always take proper feedback from the customers at every stage of the buyer journey and continue to optimize your product to offer an excellent experience to the customers. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Simone Somekh

Simone Somekh

Simone Somekh is a New York-based writer and editor who specializes in marketing and communications for B2B SaaS companies. He teaches Communications at Touro College and he is the author of an award-winning novel published in four languages.

Simone Somekh is a New York-based writer and editor who specializes in marketing and communications for B2B SaaS companies. He teaches Communications at Touro College and he is the author of an award-winning novel published in four languages.