Product Launch Readiness: Get your brand ahead of the competition

HiveFire on Content Curation (Feb 8 2010)

1. Wendy Marx of Marx Communications as a quality presentation titled "How to Improve the ROI of your New Product Launch".  In this presentation, Wendy outlines the five important product launch steps product teams should execute ensure a successful product launch meets its objectives.

   She includes the following product launch action plan to increase a successful product launch ROI:

   1. Acquiring a correct positioning and message
   
   
   2. Defining the target audience
   
   
   3. Developing Collateral in sync with your audience
   
   
   4. Lining up and preparing spokespeople
   
   
   5. Developing an announcement strategy

   These steps are all good product launch essentials.  I would also recommend that any new product launch team consider these as a foundation to a sensible PR strategy.  However, if all your competitors are able to use the same strategies, where is the PR edge for a new product launch? Is there any way to increase the ROI on a new product launch?

   If a brand team can articulate the main issue their new product addresses, then that team should seek an edge by initiating industry conversations, around their new market issues, much earlier than the product launch activities and PR events.  To accomplish this, a product team should collect all the relevant industry conversations around the issue their product addresses.  They should curate these conversations around the discussions most important to their customers.  They should then publish these conversations and insights in an easy to access, branded presence that the industry may access.

   Sampling, reviewing, and publishing insights from the industry delivers three advantages to the product launch team:

   1. It introduces the team to the industry as leaders involved with critical issues in the market before any promotion or product-focused marketing efforts
   2. It provides market intelligence on how the product team can improve its positioning and messaging for maximum relevance
   3. It seeds the company brand as an industry leader and insider, giving it an edge during the eventual PR efforts for the product launch events.

   Product teams that can curate and share the critical issues of the market in which they plan to engage a product launch conversations, will have an edge over other teams that only launch their industry conversations during their market introduction efforts.

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