How to develop a successful marketing plan to promote your brand's new product (Checklist) |

Your marketing strategy can mean the difference between a successful sales campaign or a disappointing launch. Make a plan of marketing for the launch of your brand using this checklist.

A wise person once said, "By failing to prepare for failure, you're preparing for failure."

If it's time to launch a new digital product, we couldn't agree more.

To help you get set up for success We've put together the six steps to create your marketing plan. Follow these steps to create your own marketing strategy that you can use for every new product release.

Product launch marketing plan checklist

Get a pdf version of the checklist here .

Step 1: Set expectations for your launch

It is possible to have the largest marketing budget, and most expensive devices, but until you establish goals, your marketing plan is like a ship without a rudder: directionless.

Marketers tend to have a tendency to set undefined objectives. We can say things such as "make the most sales" and "drive involvement" without really digging into how achieving those goals will look like in action.

Why do we do that? For one thing, it's hard to recommend specific general marketing objectives or methods to gauge performance. Each creator is different and has their own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in line with their objectives.

Setting goals that are specific to your brand, business as well as your product may assist you in choosing the metrics you want to monitor before launching your product.

As an example, if your aim is to collect registrations prior to the launch of your online course, it is possible to keep track of the number of site visitors who sign up for the pre-launch emails.

In contrast If you're trying to convert new customers through social media ads it is important to monitor how many people click on your Facebook ads, as well as how many customers purchase the product.

To set the right objectives for your business plan We recommend using the Goal framework SMART.

By using the SMART goal framework, design your goals to meet five requirements:

Specific Create specific goals that focus on one particular area of your business.

It is measurable: Make sure that you can quantify your goal and keep track of the progress you make.

Achievable:It's fun to dream big, but pie-in-the-sky goals can quickly become discouraging. Keep your goal challenging and achievable.

Related: Check that your objective is in line with your company's values, branding, and overall business goals.

Timing-boundGive yourself a realistic deadline to achieve your goal. Deadlines make us accountable, and provide us with a timeframe to work towards.

Your SMART goal might be: "By adding a pre-launch landing page on my site and collecting 100 pre-launch emails before launch day next month."

With specific metrics in mind, a realistic goal, and a plan of action to achieve it, you can set yourself to launch your venture successfully. What your plan of action looks in the end depends on a number of factors -- including your target audience.

Step 2: Define your target audience

This is equally important when preparing for the introduction of a brand new product.

The reason is that you can't sell your product if aren't aware of who you're marketing to.

The target market is the prospective clients you intend to market your services or products to. In order to make your marketing most effective you must get to know your potential customers as people, not only demographics.

That's where buyer personas come in.

Content marketing expert Amy Wright explains : "Buyer personas describe who they are that you want to attract, what their days are similar to, what challenges they face, and how they make decisions."

A buyer's personality could appear like this illustration of one of the Spotify's targeted customers:

Check out forums, communities on the internet, as well as reviews of products within your field. You can ask yourself:

What do my potential clients talking about on the internet?

What obstacles do they face?

What are their goals?

What are they looking for?

What languages do they speak?

When you learn the way your customer speaks and thinks, it will help you present the reason why your latest product is the perfect match to the people they are.

Your customers is eager to share their opinions and thoughts with them. 60% of customers would like brands to communicate to them. 90% of customers are more positive perception of businesses who seek feedback.

When you create discussions in your brand community, you can build connections and bonds over values that are shared. It helps you get to know your target audience more intimately, which can help you create marketing messaging that is appealing to them.

An excellent example of how you can learn from your customers comes from Tiffany Williams, founder of Rich Girl Collective .

( facilitates creators like Tiffany to establish brand communities, communicate to their fans and also sell digital items on one platform. Try it out to see if you like it with a no-cost fourteen-day test. )

Overall, the better you know about your target audience and the better you are able to customize your marketing strategy to meet the needs of your audience and demonstrate how your product can aid them to succeed. You'll need that info to proceed with the next phase.

Step 3: Establish your unique selling proposition (USP)

When you have a complete understanding of the issues of your intended audience's, needs, and goals, you can determine your unique selling point (USP).

Begin with what you'd like to give your customers, then move backward to determine how your product achieves that outcome. That's your USP.

Your USP is also known as your value idea , answers two questions:

What is the problem my product can will solve for my clients?

What differentiates my product than my competitors?

If you establish your USP, you're reaffirming the product's ability to help people achieve their goals or overcome an obstacle. And that's a key piece of launching a product successfully. 30% of startups do not succeed due to a lack of demand for their goods or products or.

That's why there's no fit between your product and market. The measure of your product's market fit is what you can do to ensure that your product will meet the needs of customers. Your USP determines the product-market fit and explains what sets your business apart from others and entices potential buyers to select the company.

If you're unsure of how your product stands in the market, do some market research to find out more about your competitors.

Are there areas of pain that you're not addressing? What can your service do different? It could be that you have a class that is more visually-focused than others on the same topic Perhaps your expertise offers a unique viewpoint from the other makers within your field.

Your USP will also assist you in figuring out the best way to promote your product.

Consider Death Wish Coffee  as an example. Many coffee companies highlight characteristics like smoothness or flavor, but Death Wish has a distinctive strategy, boasting that it is "the most powerful coffee in the world".

Death Wish knows that their target market is looking for extra-strong and a kick in the pants coffee. Therefore, their advertising messages highlight this distinct feature. Their USP isn't likely to appeal to everyone who drinks coffee, but it showcases what makes them unique and is relevant to the market they are targeting.

All in all, when you know the uniqueness of your product You can emphasize that in your advertising. Use the same language that your intended audience is using in discussing their issues areas. Your messages will resonate with the right customers.

It's time to start sharing that messaging across the globe However take a look to ensure you can do it without breaking the bank.

Step 4: Determine your marketing budget

As a creator You probably don't have the budget to hire an outside sales force as well as an in-house marketing team which is fine. But you need to determine how much you can afford to spend on marketing before you begin running ads or commissioning your designs.

The best part is that you don't require the resources of a 6-figure marketing budget in order to execute a successful strategy. Actually, more than one-third of small businesses are spending less than $30,000 on marketing annually.

While you work out your budget, you might decide to set aside money for costs like:

Software and tools to create contents, connect with your audience, and manage campaigns.

freelancers such as writers, graphic artists, video editors, and web designers.

Paid ads, for example sponsored content, paid search ads, and social media advertising. (We'll discuss more on social media ads that are paid in the following section.)

If you've got your budget and your budget in place, it's time to take the next the next step, which is to select the right marketing platforms for your product launch.

Step 5: Choose the channels you want to use for your marketing

Different tactics appeal to different types of audiences Different strategies appeal to different audiences, and not every strategy will work for every designer, budget, or product.

Additionally, there are many more than a few digital marketing channels available than individual creator can tackle on their own, so it's important to identify the most suitable ones for your needs as well as your clients.

Here are some of the most popular channels to consider including in your marketing plan.

Email marketing

It is essential to include email marketing in any digital marketing strategy. Over 4 billion people will use email this year. Together, they will send approximately 320 billion emails per daily.

Both customers and marketers love emails. Customers and marketers alike love it. 73% of users rank email as their preferred channel for marketing messages, and 59% of marketers cited email as their top source of ROI in 2018.

Email can also be a cost-effective alternative for small-sized businesses that have a tight marketing budget. With an average of $42 for each dollar spent , email has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) in any marketing method.

These are some helpful resources to help you grow your email lists, pick an email marketing platform to make the most of your marketing emails:

Marketing through social media

Social media marketing is best when it is combined with both paid and organic initiatives. Organic social media marketing lets you engage with the community as well as potential customers. Paid advertisements on social networks help you gain attention for your product.

In order to generate buzz about your new product, Twitter is a solid option. In one instance, a designer and marketing expert John D Saunders made use of a video on Twitter to promote a new online course:

John's video made sure his followers know what to anticipate from the training and was a huge hit that included 30+ retweets as well as more than 200 likes.

On the paid social side Ultra-specific targeting tools can help you reach more of those who are relevant faster than traditional methods could. In excess of 62% of marketers say that paid advertisements on social media have proved in some way effective for their business.

Facebook advertisements are a low-cost alternative for small companies and solopreneurs who want to put their latest items to a wider market. Like, for example, business coach Melyssa Griffin utilized this video ad to advertise her Pinterest workshop to bloggers.

If you have the proper audience-targeting set up, Facebook ads like Melyssa's convert into digital product revenue for creators.

Here are some additional tools that can help you master the art of social media marketing

Marketing content

Content marketing cost 62% less and generates more than three times the leads as traditional marketing. It's a cost-effective method to connect with your target audience and establish your knowledge and establish relationships with potential clients.

The people you want to attract discover your blog content through search engines or other channels for distribution.

They gain knowledge from your writings and start to believe in your expertise.

They sign up for your mailing list, or they follow your social media accounts.

You keep them updated about the launch of your product.

They're excited to buy your latest product, help you, and continue to take lessons from you.

It is crucial to create blog posts with real value not simply longform product advertisement copy.

It is important to compose your blog posts using search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. SEO makes it easier for your readers to locate your site when they search for appropriate keywords and phrases. That's why more than 64% of marketers are actively investing time into SEO.

Here are some resources to aid you to get started in SEO and content marketing:

Website and landing pages

Imagine: You launch your campaign and the marketing strategy is going as planned.

Visitors are flooding to your website to learn more about your products or sign-up for announcements prior to launch, and then decide to purchase. You need to create a landing page that makes all your hard work pay off.

Validating your product ideas.

Create your list of emails prior to the day of your launch.

For your landing page prior to launch, include a short description of your product and tell visitors that they need to sign up for more information and to be notified when you launch.

Take a look at Nicole Saidy's descriptions of products of her online class, Learn to become a UI/UX Designer .

Nicole knows that the transition to user-experience design may seem overwhelming, but she's here to assist. She helps her audience decide if the solution is the right one for them by speaking directly to their pain points.

Here are some additional sources for creating landing and product pages which generate sales

With your marketing channels chosen, you may think you've reached the end of your checklist. However, there's a crucial step to make the most of your launch marketing, and to set yourself up for success -right now, and throughout the many product launches to come.

Step 6: Keep track of your results and keep iterating

The sixth and last step, tracking your results and continually evaluating your marketing process, is much more of a continual method than simply a check-list task.

After and during your product launch, revisit your goals that you established at the beginning of step. If you're struggling to meet your goals, you have the chance to gain knowledge and implement changes next time or even review your existing marketing efforts.

Let's take an example. For instance, suppose the email marketing campaigns you've created don't perform as you'd hoped. The click-through and open rate is lower than what you'd like however, you can make adjustments prior to launch day. It may be time to conduct some A/B tests .

The process of A/B-testing (or split-testing) is the process of changing various elements of your emails one at a given time, and then observing how the changes impact the effectiveness of your emails.

If you were A/B testing different subject lines, for example, your customers would receive identical emails except for the subject line. When you compare the rate of open, you could determine which subject line is better, then use that knowledge in future email campaigns.

In the end, keep in mind that experimenting with new ideas and allowing yourself to make and make mistakes can help you grow as a creator.

You may discover that one of the channels you've chosen isn't the right fit for your business or audience. That's valuable information to bring into your next product launch plan.

"Experiment! It's challenging to figure out what to do online marketing, and each group of possible clients is different. You'll need to play around to find out what's effective (and which ones aren't). With everything you do take note, analyze and tweak your techniques to improve them. There's no one magic bullet here!"

"To succeed in business, it is essential to begin by becoming comfortable in running an unsuccessful business, as most of the times it's the latter that's successful."

Within the Startup Curve , coined by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham  the term "failure" is a standard phase that happens right before your business is on the verge of scaling and growth.

The bottom line is:

Don't be afraid to experiment in your marketing strategy to discover which strategy is most effective for you as a brand, your product, as well as your target audience. If you have your objectives in mind, and some time, you'll be on your way to successful launch strategies that you can use for many product launches to come.

Craft a go-to-market plan for launch day success

You've put in the effort to make something that your customers will enjoy. An effective marketing strategy can make all the efforts pay off when it comes to the day of launch.

To recap, here are the steps you need to take in creating the marketing strategy you want to use to launch your new product:

Set SMART goals to help you launch your new product. Figure out the meaning of a successful launch for you and the measures you'll keep track of.

Determine your audience's needs and then get them to understand them as individuals rather than just demographics. Research your customer base and talk with them in order to find out more about their needs and objectives.

Establish your unique selling proposition (USP). What is it that makes your product an ideal choice for the ideal buyer? What makes you different from your competitors?

Determine your marketing budget. You don't need to spend an amount of money to make a marketing strategy which drives sales.

Pick your marketing channels. Marketing via email is essential however there is a variety of other platforms that you can choose from. Determine which platforms are compatible with your audience and goals.

Monitor your performance and keep iterating on your marketing strategy. The more you know about your customers, the more successful the next launch of your product marketing strategy will be.

Keep in mind that you might not be 100% successful the first time, and this is fine. You may need to go through some time and trial, until you've found which method works best for you and your customers, you'll be a product marketing expert with launch day sales to show it.