Since you started your business, you have been dreaming about this day. The day you release a product into the market. And that day has arrived but after a few days there are limited sales, and it looks like your product is a dud but why? Did you tell your market about this new product? Did you prepare your staff to be on point with their knowledge about this product? If not, then your product may fail but we are here to help you create a product launch which will place your product in the minds of your customers. Here is the checklist for your first product launch:
1. Know who your customer is
As with any action in business, you need to have a clear idea of who your customer is, and which niche you are aiming your product at. Think about their demographics, interests, and pain points. Think about how your product solves their particular pain point. Furthermore, consider the size and willingness to spend on the pain point of your target audience. This will all help you with the next step.
2. Create a positioning statement
This statement clearly states how your product satisfies a particular need in the market. When you write your position statement, there are three core elements to consider:
- Who is the product for? Here you will focus on your target audience.
- What does the product do? By answering this question, you will explain how your product solves your market’s pain point.
- Why is it different from other products out there? Lastly, you need to consider your unique selling point. Here, you will look at how your product is different from all the others available. It is important to consider the direct and indirect competition for your product.
3. Collect feedback and testimonials from beta users
Before you release your product, it is important to get a few early adopters and loyal customers to test it out. This will allow you to fine-tune any performance issues or usability concerns.
For those users who rave about the product, you can ask them if you can use their testimonials in promotional material for the launch of the product. These testimonials should focus on how the product solved the user’s pain point and not just be general praise for the product.
4. Set up sales and distribution channels
Look at where your customers like to buy. Do they buy online, in-store or both? Depending on their preference, you will have to target those channels with your marketing. If they use online means, you may use social media to target them and if they prefer to buy in-store you may use street pole advertising to target your clients. You should also focus on how you will deal with packing orders and errors in orders.
5. Develop sales enablement documents and train your staff
The worst position for your business is having a customer who knows more about your product than your salespeople do. This will cause a lack of faith in your brand and your product. You should create some sales documents which help your staff. They are:
- One pager: This should be a summary of the most important information that your staff need to sell the product.
- Slide deck: Slide decks are useful if your product is a bit more complicated to explain and your staff need to walk your customer through the process of the product. Slide decks allow you to include graphs and diagrams of how your product works.
- Case studies: Get testimonials from happy customers about how certain features have helped them to succeed in business. These case studies help your staff to show prospective customers how your product has benefitted current users.
- Demo video: These are useful if you need to show how your product works. A demo video should be informative and focus on how the product solves your customer’s pain point.
6. Design support documentation for client services and support
To make sure that your customers have a similar experience with whichever touchpoint they use in your business, you need to design some support documentation which is in line with your branding. The following documentation is required:
- Documentation and help pages: This could be the pamphlet which gives directions on how the product works plus website pages which offer help with certain features of your product.
- Frequently Asked Questions: There are some questions which customers will repeat so it is important to create a page which answers these regularly asked questions.
- Suggested responses: Depending on the voice of your brand, your staff’s response must be in line with it. By creating a few responses for frequently asked questions your staff can adapt as they see fit.
7. Produce branding for the product
Firstly, when creating the packaging, name, and colours of your product, it needs to be in line with your business’ branding. You need to ensure that it looks like it came from your business.
8. Compose marketing collateral
You will need to create some marketing collateral to use to promote your product on different marketing channels. The type of collateral will depend on where your customer spends most of their time but here are four types of collateral to create.
- Blog posts: These are great pieces of marketing as you can break them down and use them on your social media and you can send links to them in your company’s newsletter.
- Newsletter: This is an email which you can use to build your brand up as an industry thought leader.
- Social media posts: Depending on the platform, you will need a collection of images and text which align with your brand.
- Landing pages: It is important to design a specific page which talks about the product. This will make it easy for customers to click a link and be directed directly to the information they are looking for.
These are eight items to check off to market your first product launch.
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