Whether it’s a new business, or a new product, the race towards launch day is an exciting time. Today we’re looking at the ways you can get ready to turn that launch day into a success.
Research
Starting early on your journey towards launch, research is important from day one. From initial concept testing, to find out if consumers understand and accept your idea and see a need for it in their lives, through to questionnaires assessing the strength and effectiveness of your brand overall and specific advertising in particular, research allows you to feel confident about the success of your product or business.
Skimping on the research can leave you prone to embarrassing failure later on. If you don’t know the market that exists for your product, or how to communicate the strengths of your business to your customers, you could find that the investment you’ve poured into development doesn’t have any pay off!
Early Marketing
The best advertising doesn’t just tell customers about your business, it creates anticipation for the next big development. You can see this for yourself in the movie industry – long before a studio is ready to announce when the next Avengers film (for example) will be released, they begin to build anticipation by releasing teasers just hinting at its existence.
You can incorporate some of this philosophy into early marketing for your launch day – creating anticipation for your product or business ensures a healthy audience for it on the first day it’s available (or when you open your doors), and generates word of mouth.
Building a buzz about your launch day isn’t always easy – and might not be appropriate at all if there’s no novelty value in the product you’re releasing. Trying to build excitement and anticipation for a digital accountancy solution might actually undermine its success, because ‘excitement’ isn’t a value people look for in accounting software.
Launch Day
As the day you launch your new product or business approaches, you need to prepare with some more direct advertising – seed the date in consumer’s minds with posters, a digital campaign, and in-store: if you have access to an existing pool of loyal customers, you need to make use of them to boost the profile of this new effort.
If you’re opening a new business, try to build bridges with existing businesses in the area – if they can display publicity for you, or refer customers your way (in return, perhaps, for some reciprocal advertising further down the line) you can launch with a head start towards success!
