Written by Allison Herrera, Becca Miller, & Brittany Prats
When preparing a new product or opening up a new business, marketing awareness sometimes falls short on entrepreneurs’ minds. Of course, entrepreneurs know that marketing is of the utmost importance, but their focus is on the matters at hand, resulting many a times in missed marketing opportunities. Think about it – upcoming movies hype people up by movie trailers, commercials, press releases, pre-launches with the actors/actresses, cross collaborations with other brands, etc…all leading up to the reveal of the movie itself!
Your product, business, or brand should not be any different. As movies prepare for their launch, your upcoming reveal should also generate buzz and get people excited for more information! Here’s three reasons why…
1. A pre-launch marketing strategy jumpstarts conversation and generates buzz.
The number one objective in marketing a product, company, brand or service is STARTING A CONVERSATION. When launching your product and setting it up for success, it’s important to build a plan that creates intrigue and anticipation. When you do this, your customers will gain curiosity and interest within your brand and your product. Just by teasing your product or information about it, you are already generating interest with your customers. Start planning your marketing about six to eight weeks before the launch date – this will help get your product to market faster and to a more receptive audience.
2. A pre-launch marketing strategy creates a receptive and engaged audience to sell to.
After we start a conversation, we create an opportunity not only for your message to be delivered, but to deliver your message to an audience that is interested and engaged. It’s all about establishing that relationship of trust and loyalty within your audience. A big part of establishing those crucial relationships is nurturing during the pre-launch period, throughout the launch, and even post launch.
You really have to keep your audience engaged in a way that makes them want to come back and get excited about your brand. If you present your business, ideas, and overall brand in a way that helps your audience to get to know you on a deeper level, then they will be more likely to support you in the future. Engagement can be increased through something as simple as giving teasers and hyping up your launch to make your audience more excited about this product that they know nothing about.
Consistently nurturing your audience helps build upon that already existing relationship. You have to keep that constant contact throughout the entire pre-launch and launch period in order for them to stay interested. Just because they supported you in this launch doesn’t mean that they will next time, so be sure to always engage with your consumers. This will not only help to build up your brand loyalty, but it will also make your audience feel that they can really trust your brand and therefore give you a more successful launch in return.
3. It guarantees your product or brand will already have somewhat of a following or audience.
When you take the time to create your product, you should put the same amount of time and energy into marketing it. When you don’t advertise early on, you’ll run out of people to talk to and to launch to. This is because there’s no anticipation or marketing of your product which doesn’t peak anyone’s interest.
When launching a product, think of it as the climatic scene in a movie. There are scenes that are building and building up to the most important part of the movie, and without those scenes your audience wouldn’t know what to expect or what’s happening. During the early advertising stages your audience will have an understanding of what you’re offering and why they should keep an eye out for your big launch.
When your customers have a reason to care about your launch, then they’ll be ready to watch for your release. Not partaking in early advertising is basically launching your product to a bunch of empty seats. After all, you did all the work for your new product, why not put the same amount of effort into marketing it?
In sum, you want to be on the ball before it starts rolling. But don’t worry…this is where we come in! Give us a call & we will help get you started.
