It’s not just the media landscape that’s struggling with over-crowding; today’s brands are tasked with rolling out a steady stream of new and improved products in a marketplace already flooded with them.
To stay competitive, most companies turn to their R&D teams to collect buyer insight. This insight helps not only design products that inspire customers to purchase, adopt and champion them, but also create winning marketing strategies around the products’ launch.
Buyer insight can tell you which story angles and content formats will resonate the most with your target audience, as well as which communication channels will reach them.
Long gone are the days of companies relying solely on creative ads and colorful collateral to explain why they think their product is the best choice.
Although this sort of functional content still has its place, today’s market leaders are where they are because they know that establishing credibility and authority through informational content marketing is the key to driving revenue.
Draft your product marketing blueprint
To demonstrate your brand’s – and in turn, your new product’s – value, you must first establish a strategy behind your product launch. This should include identifying who will be part of your product launch team; personas for your internal, channel and external audiences; the markets you want to target; talking points; KPIs and more. Together, these components will create a cohesive blueprint to prepare your brand for a successful product launch.
Define the story
The story of your product launch isn’t that your brand has a new product. Gather the facts about the product from your internal stakeholders – what does the product do, what insight does your sales team have about customer needs, how does this product differentiate you from your competitors?
You can use this information to develop multiple approaches that address different segments of your market. Get creative with your story, but keep your target audience’s needs in mind.
Reel your audience in and keep them on the hook
Once you’ve established the key messaging points about your product, you need to determine what content formats, promotion channels and sales tools are needed to attract and track leads within your customer pipeline. Will you need blog posts, press releases, case studies, emails, PPC advertising, demo videos or something else entirely?
Get others involved and reach out to those potential customers with engaging content offers that will have your audience interested in hearing what you have to say.
While each piece of content should provide a unique touchpoint that helps nurture leads and customers, all of your content must be unified and consistent in its message and branding.
Measure efforts before, during and after product launch
Take stock of which channels and messages resonated with your audience, and which ones didn’t. Assess whether your brand’s market share stayed the same or shifted for better or worse.
Continually measuring the results of your efforts through all stages of your product launch will provide you with the data and context needed to improve future product planning.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: How to Refocus Your Product Marketing on Credibility, Not Collateral
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