Marketing

Planning a Product Launch? Think Influence Marketing

September 7, 2010

How to Market an Upcoming Product Launch

The product launch for your expansion stage software company is coming up and you don’t have a huge budget. What do you do? Don’t panic: you can still effectively garner attention on the cheap by utilizing an influence marketing approach.

If you think influence marketing could work for you, follow these 11 steps to build buzz and generate interest in your upcoming launch.

Roadmap Your Marketing Activities

It’s one thing to have a boatload of ideas on how to market your product; it’s another thing entirely to have a solid strategy of implementation. Think organization and structure as you plan to unleash your marketing activities. The shotgun approach won’t work here—you can’t satisfy all of your expectations at once.

Focus your energies on batting out the easy ones first—such as posting a splash announcement on your company blog – and then work your way up to the more time-consuming and complicated tasks, such as embarking on a lengthy video content creation venture.  With the smaller tasks out of the way, the larger ones will appear less daunting.

Craft Messaging and Content Early on in the Process

Know exactly what you’re going to say and show before you step into the room. If you generate a handful of varied (and perhaps contradictory) messages, you run the risk of confusing your audience and muddling your brand. Similarly, producing disparate presentation materials can catch you in a bind. Owning a solid language will help guide your overall release strategy; without it, you’ll be a regular fixture at the drawing board.

Remember to keep it simple. In “Making the Complex Simple: Brand Messaging,” the Garfield Group dissects the Dyson vacuum cleaner advertisements to reveal how less becomes more. It’s not about rattling off hundreds of eye-popping features in 30 seconds – the messages have to allure you to want more answers, or satisfy them all at once.  Plus Dyson ads somehow many vacuums look sexy. Who knew?

Reach out to your Influencers

If you correctly followed the steps of creating an influence marketing strategy, you should have a trustworthy relationship with your influencers. Now is the time to call on them.

You might try reaching out to your influencers all at once. While traditional press releases are an effective way of marketing, all too often they are sponged up by mainstream press and regurgitated line by line. Let someone else take your work for a drive. Let’s say, for instance, that you managed to snare the cynics at the Gizmodo tech blog, known for their snarky and original perspectives. Offering these writers information about your release date as it approaches could give your launch a modern spin you hadn’t anticipated.

Schedule One-on-One Briefings

Similar to the step above, scheduling one-on-one briefings with influential analysts, bloggers and editors not only lends the impression that you’re personally and privately revealing key information to respected sources, it allows said sources to take your presentation and transform it into a language that works for them and their audiences.

Score Exclusive Product Announcements

The media loves exclusive announcements and interviews. When one source has the story by the root, other media outlets clamor for a taste. Giving one source the exclusive rights to a breaking story not only shows how much you value that source, but it works in the source’s favor as well: all day, that one hyperlink will be riding high on Google News, catching the eye of millions of readers.  The more clicks that link gets, the happier you’ll both be.

Distribute News Releases

Press releases may seem old fashioned in this era of modern social networking, but their efficacy is undisputed. They’re not as simple as you might think, though. Digital River provides a list of 9 tips on creating and distributing the best news release you can, including skipping HTML and attachments, utilizing RSS feeds, and planning for perfect timing.

Co-Host a Webinar Series

Stand at the side of industry experts and your debut product by co-hosting a webinar series. Webinars have essentially replaced seminars in that they are accessible to anyone with an Internet connection once they’re posted online.

If you’ve never hosted a webinar before, there are some things you need to keep in mind. Here’s a helpful list of guiding tools to get you started, including:

  • ensuring your presentation tech is supported
  • conducting practice runs
  • creating a tight schedule; and
  • of course, keeping that customer support number handy.

Beta-Test Your Product with Key Customers

Whenever Mozilla releases a new beta of its popular Firefox web browser, the tech world stops, listens, and then gets their hands dirty experimenting with the new features and plug-ins. Conducting a beta test with key customers and/or media outlets is a great hands-on way to build interest in your soon-to-be-released product. And, like many of the points on this list, beta tests make the tester feel special and appreciated for their knowledge of the industry.

Leverage Marketing Database with Others

Expand your e-marketing campaign by partnering with other tech companies who share your interests. Build upon your preexisting database of e-mail addresses, shake hands with potential business partners, and watch product launch awareness grow. To ensure your e-marketing campaign is a success, check out these helpful hints, such as: make sure the “title” and “from” fields in your email are as specific as possible; keep your e-mail messages succinct; and create a clear call to action.

Use Social Media

Social media is the new law of the land. Entire brands have been launched by implementing social media alone. A fun example is the Kogi Korean BBQ, a Los Angeles taco truck that moved around the city, updating its location on Twitter. Once the tech-savvy discovered where to pick up a cheap and delicious lunch, lines began to wrap around the block, perhaps motivated by the novelty alone.

Make sure your strategy is sound by reading up on how to properly present your company online.

Additional Resources for Product Launches

Don’t let a thin checkbook get in the way of a successful product launch.  Use influence marketing to showboat your hard work – and get the recognition you deserve.

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Amanda Maksymiw</strong> worked at OpenView from 2008 until 2012, where she focused on developing marketing and PR strategies for both OpenView and its portfolio companies. Today she is the Content Marketing Director at <a href="https://www.fuze.com/">Fuze</a>.