Whether launching a game-changing product or updating your current product line, it takes plenty of advanced preparation to release a new product. It’s vital to perfect your positioning and messaging, plan your product launch activities, launch a strong marketing strategy, and secure working capital. There are a lot of moving parts involved in a new product launch, but following a checklist is a great way to ensure that you don’t miss a step.
Learn about your target customer.
Creating a product that solves a problem and meets your target customer’s needs starts by learning what drives your customer. Conduct market research to learn about your customers’ goals, motivations, and pain points so that you can create a value-added solution. Engage with current and potential customers, and dig deeper into any pain points they mention to get deeper insights into your customers’ needs. Once you learn about your current and potential customers, you can create a buyer persona on to focus your efforts on.
Understand the buying journey.
All the steps in the buying journey influence a potential customer’s decision to make a purchase. A smart franchisor knows customers’ source of information, who influences the purchase, and events that may encourage spending. Customers engage with brands differently depending on what stage of the buying process they’re in.
Set a launch goal, and plan your strategy.
You’ll need to create a go-to-market strategy to launch and promote your new product. It’s also a good idea to consider the type of content you’ll use to market to potential customers during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage.
Set specific goals for the launch of your new product that will help it succeed, and use them to focus your launch tactics to align with those goals. One of the best ways to set goals is to create SMART goals—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Your launch goals could be as simple as establishing a new product name or generating new sales leads.
When considering the type of marketing content you’ll create, think about a secure way to upload photos and videos. A great way to store and share photos are with a subscription-free picture storage device for your home. Meet IBI comes with 1TB of storage space for over 250,000 high-quality photos and 100+ hours of videos. The photo storage device collects and backs up photos from your smartphone, hard drive, social media, cloud storage accounts like iCloud, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, and more. You can use the mobile app to arrange photos in sharable albums and folders and send private links to family members.
Create promotional content.
Create marketing content that aligns with your go-to-market strategy and SMART goals, such as authoritative blog posts, high-quality demonstration videos and tutorials, and optimized landing pages. By now you should understand your target customer and how to effectively reach them with marketing. Create content through the view of your target customer, including the best place to post content, and tailor your marketing plan.
An essential part of creating a strong brand identity is knowing your franchise business’s story and being able to clearly relay it. Having a strong marketing team or public relations professional is the best way to translate and tell your story in a way that connects with potential customers.
An effective digital marketing strategy is to create high-quality video content that can be used on your business website, social media channels, and other marketing platforms. Working with a professional videography company that specializes in video content, commercial photography, and animation for promotional and advertising purposes is a great option for creating effective content.
Coldea Productions provides a range of video services including product videography, explainer video, and video content marketing. Their team of marketing and visual content creators has years of experience helping businesses improve their online presence and grow their brand.
Start planning the next version.
You can’t test a new product enough before launching it. The more feedback and insights you have about the utility of your product, the better you can deliver your intended experience. Don’t forget to revise your marketing materials and plan as well, including your web landing pages and social media accounts.
Do spend sufficient time testing and tweaking your new product, but don’t take too long to arrive at a final product. Dawdling and pushing back your product launch timeframe could be the reason your product fails. It’s a good idea to release the product and start making plans for the next model. The planning of your next product will be influenced by consumer feedback. Listening to and watching how your customers respond to and interact with your new product is the best way to create an ideal product that suits their needs.
Most entrepreneurs planning to start a small business need to seek investors for working capital. Starting a franchise business as a franchisee also comes with startup costs and the need for working capital. Traditional financial institutions offer business owners limited lending options, which is why franchisors refer franchisees to an alternative lender with a franchise business focus.
Franchise Lenders specializes in franchise revenue loans for borrowers in need of working capital for their business venture. The lender helps borrowers get approved for a range of lending options including SBA loans and simplifies the process to get funding in the hands of borrowers faster.
Track the progress of your go-to-market strategy once your product launches. Pay attention to how your strategy is performing and be ready to make adjustments to your plan if it needs improvement. Follow up on the launch goals you set and see how well you have achieved those goals. Look at what worked, what didn’t work, and make the necessary adjustments for your next product launch.
There are three important tips to keep in mind as your franchise business prepares to launch a new product. Make sure that your product positioning reflects cultural shifts and clearly defines how your product solves changing needs and demands. Schedule a recurring meeting with your stakeholders to discuss how things are going and ensure everyone is on the same page. Always make sure your product team knows what is happening with the marketing strategy. They can offer unique insights that can help shape your marketing campaign.
