How to develop a successful marketing strategy for your latest item (Checklist) |

The strategy you choose for your marketing can be what the difference is between great sales and a flop launch. Create a marketing plan for the launch of your new product using this checklist.

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

In the case of launching the latest digital products, we can't be more in agreement.

For help in setting yourself to be successful to achieve your goals, we've created an easy-to-follow checklist of six points to build your plan for marketing. Utilize these tips to build your own marketing strategy that you can apply to every new product release.

Product launch marketing plan checklist

You can download a PDF copy of the checklist here .

Step 1: Set expectations for your launch

You can have the biggest marketing budget and the fanciest tools, but until you set goals, your marketing plan is just like a vessel with no rudder: unfocused.

Marketers are known to be in the tendency to set undefined objectives. We say things like "make more sales" and "drive involvement" without getting into how achieving those goals will look like.

What is the reason we do this? It's because it's hard to recommend specific general marketing objectives or methods to gauge success. Each creator is different and has their own key performance indicators (KPIs) according to their objectives.

The setting of goals that are unique to your company, brand, and product can 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 class, you could monitor the amount of website people who sign up to receive an email newsletter prior to the launch.

In contrast, if your goal is to convert new customers through social media ads it is important to monitor the number of people who click the Facebook advertisements, as well as how many people then buy your product.

For setting the appropriate objectives for your marketing strategy, we recommend the Goal framework SMART.

With the SMART goal framework, you create your goals in order to satisfy the following criteria:

Particular: Set detailed goals that focus on one particular area of your enterprise.

It is measurable: Be sure you have a way to measure your goal and monitor your progress.

Reachable:It's fun to dream big, but pie-in-the-sky goals are often a source of discouragement. Make your goals challenging, however, it is feasible.

Relevant: Check that your objective is in line with your brand, values as well as your overall goals for the business.

Time-bound:Give you a reasonable date to meet your goals. Deadlines make us accountable, and provide us with a timeframe to strive towards.

It could include: "By adding a pre-launch landing page to my website and collecting 100 email sign-ups for my pre-launch before launch day next month."

If you have specific goals that you have in mind and a realistic target with a strategy to get there, you can set yourself up for a successful launch. What your plan of action looks in the end depends on a number of elements, including your audience.

Step 2: Define your target audience

That question is just as important when preparing for the launch of a new product.

Here's why: You can't sell your product if aren't sure who you're selling to.

Your ideal customer is the group of potential buyers you're planning to sell your services or products to. In order to make your marketing most effective you must learn about your prospective customers as people and not just demographics.

That's where buyer personas come in.

Content marketing consultant Amy Wright explains : "Buyer personas describe who you would like to be your customers, what their days are similar to, what challenges they have to face, as well as how they decide."

A buyer's personality could appear as this image of one of Spotify's target customers:

Check out forums, online communities and read reviews on products that are in your field. You can ask yourself:

What are my target clients talking about on the internet?

What are the challenges they have to face?

What are their goals?

What do they value?

What language do they use?

If you understand the way your customer speaks and thinks, you can better communicate why your new product is a great fit for your audience.

Your customers wants to share their feedback and thoughts with your. 64percent of consumers want brands to connect to them. 90% of customers are more positive view of businesses that seek feedback.

If you engage in discussions within your own brand community You can create connections and connect over common values. It helps you get to get to know your audience more intimately, which can help to create marketing messages that is a hit with them.

One great example of learning from your clients comes directly from Tiffany Williams, founder of Rich Girl Collective .

( makes it easy for creators like Tiffany to create community-based brands, interact with their audience, and sell digital products through one single platform. Try it out on your own with a trial of a 14 day test. )

The more effectively you understand your audience's needs, the more you can tailor your marketing to fit the needs of your audience and demonstrate how your product can assist them in achieving their goals. It's important to know this information to proceed with the next phase.

Step 3: Establish your unique selling proposition (USP)

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

Beginning with the outcome you want to offer your customer, then work backwards to discover how your product achieves this outcome. It's your USP.

Your USP, also called your value proposition  will answer two of the following questions:

What problem does my product solve for my customers?

What makes my product different in comparison to my competition?

If you establish your USP, you're reaffirming that your product helps users achieve their expectations or get over an obstacle. And that's a key piece of launching a product successfully. 30% of startups are unsuccessful due to a lack of demand for their goods or services.

Also, there is no market-place fit for your product. The measure of your product's market fit is the extent to which your product is able to meet demands of the customer. Your USP pinpoints that product-market fit, describing what differentiates you apart from your competitors and entices potential buyers to decide to choose your company.

If you aren't sure what makes your product stand in the market, do some market research and learn about the competition.

Do you have any issues that your competitors don't address? What can your service do differently? You might have a course that is more visually-focused that others in similar topics Perhaps your expertise gives you a different view of other artists who are in your area.

Your USP also helps you figure out how to market your product.

For instance, take Death Wish Coffee  as an example. The majority of coffee brands emphasize features like smoothness or flavor, but Death Wish is unique in its approach, claiming to be "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 marketing messaging highlights this distinct feature. Their USP might not appeal to everyone who drinks coffee however, it reveals why they are unique and is relevant to their market.

In the end, if you know what makes your product special and unique, it is possible to highlight this in your advertising. Utilize the same language the people you are targeting use in discussing their issues points. Your messages will resonate with the right customers.

You're nearly ready to share this message across the globe But first we must ensure that you're able to do so without spending a dime.

Step 4: Determine your marketing budget

If you're a designer it's likely that you aren't able to hire an outside sales force or in-house marketing personnel, and that's okay. But you need to determine how much you could be able to afford for marketing before you start running ads or commissioning your designs.

The good news is that you don't need a six-figure marketing budget to execute a successful strategy. Actually, more than one-third of small businesses are spending less than $30,000 on marketing each year.

As you figure out your budget, you might decide to set aside money for costs like:

Software and tools to create material, interact with your audience, and run campaigns.

Freelancers, like Copywriters, graphic designers, video editors and web designers.

Paid advertising, such as sponsored content such as paid search ads and social media ads. (We'll talk more about paid social advertisements in the following section.)

With your budget in hand now you're able to go to step 5 and select the most appropriate marketing platform for the launch of your new product.

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

Different tactics resonate with different audiences Different strategies appeal to different audiences, and not every strategy is suitable for each designer, budget, or product.

Plus, there are more online marketing channels out there than any one creator could tackle alone, so it's essential to find those that are suitable for you as well as your clients.

Here are a few of the most well-known channels you should take into consideration when putting together your marketing plan.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a must-have in any digital marketing strategy. Over four billion people will use email this year. They will send around 350 billion emails a daily.

Both customers and marketers enjoy email. 73% of customers rate email as their top channel for marketing communications, while 59 percent of marketers mentioned emails as their primary source of return on investment in the year 2018.

Email is also a reasonable alternative for small-sized businesses that have a tight marketing budget. It costs around $42 per one dollar invested , email has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) of any other marketing method.

These are some helpful resources to aid you in building your email list, choose an email service, to make the most of your marketing emails:

Social media marketing

Social media marketing works best when it is combined with both paid and organic initiatives. Organic social media marketing allows you to interact with the community as well as potential clients, while paid social ads help you get attention for your product.

In order to generate buzz about your new product, Twitter is a solid alternative. In one instance, a professional and marketer John D Saunders made use of the platform to create a YouTube video Twitter to launch a new online course:

John's video let his audience be aware of what they can expect from the course and saw high engagement with 30+ retweets and over 200 likes.

For paid social Ultra-specific targeting tools can enable you to connect with the appropriate people more quickly than what organic advertising could. More than 62% of marketers affirm that social media advertising has been in some way effective for their business.

Facebook ads can be a cost-effective alternative for small companies and solopreneurs looking to promote their newest product or service in front of a larger market. As an example, business trainer Melyssa Griffin utilized this video ad to announce her Pinterest training for bloggers.

When the correct audience segmentation put in place, Facebook ads like Melyssa's can result in digital sales for the creators.

Below are some other sources to assist you in mastering social media marketing:

Marketing content

Content marketing is 62% cheaper and could generate more than three times the leads than traditional marketing. It's a cost-effective way to reach your audience, establish your expertise, and establish relationships with potential customers.

Your ideal customers discover your blog's contents through search engines or other channels for distribution.

They learn from your articles and begin to trust the expertise of your team.

Sign up to your mailing list, or they follow your social media accounts.

You keep them updated about your product launch.

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

It is crucial to write blog articles with real value not simply longform product advertisement copy.

Be sure to create your blog content in a way that is search engine optimized (SEO) with SEO in mind. SEO makes it easier for your readers to locate you when searching for appropriate keywords and phrases. That's why over 64% of marketers spend time on SEO.

Below are a few resources that can assist you in establishing SEO and Content Marketing:

Website and landing pages

Imagine this: your launch marketing strategy is going exactly as you planned.

Potential customers are flocking to your website to know more about your product, sign up for pre-launch updates, and eventually make a purchase. The next step is to design an effective landing page to make the effort you put into it pay off.

Validating your product ideas.

Building your email list prior to the day of your launch.

For your landing page prior to launch Include a brief description of your product, and explain the reason why they should join for more information and to be informed when your product launches.

Have a look at Nicole Saidy's description of the product for her online training course: Learn to become a UI/UX Designer .

Nicole is aware that the process of transitioning to user experience design can seem overwhelming, but she's here to assist. She helps her audience decide if the solution will be beneficial for them, through direct communication with their pain points.

Here are some additional tips for designing pages for landing and products that bring in sales:

With your marketing channels chosen You may believe you've finished your checklist. But there's one more vital step to make the most of your launch marketing and set yourself up for success -today and in the future for many product launches to come.

Step 6: Keep track of your results and keep iterating

Our sixth and final step, tracking your results and iterating on your marketing will be more of an ongoing process than a checklist task.

Following the launch of your product, review the goals you set at the beginning of step. If you're not achieving the goals you set, there's an opportunity to improve and implement changes future launches or to refresh your marketing strategies.

For example, let's say the email marketing campaigns you've created aren't performing as well as you expected. Click-through and open rate is lower than what you'd prefer, but you still have time to make changes before launch day. You may want to run some A/B tests .

Testing A/B (or split-testing) is the process of changing various elements of your email, one at a time, then watching how these changes affect your performance.

If you were A/B testing various subject lines such as your clients get the same email with the exception of the subject line. By comparing the two rate of open, you could see which subject line performs better and then apply the information to improve future email campaigns.

Remember that experimenting with new ideas and allowing yourself to make and learning from your mistakes will help in your development as a designer.

You may discover that one of the channels you've chosen isn't the right fit to your company or target audience. This is valuable data to incorporate into your next product launch strategy.

"Experiment! It's challenging to figure out what to do online marketing, and every group of potential clients is different. Therefore, you'll need to test to find out what's effective (and the ones that aren't). With everything you do take note, analyze the results, and modify your techniques to improve them. There isn't a single panacea here!"

"To be successful in running a company, you must first get comfortable managing a business that isn't successful, since most of the time the success will come later."

In the Startup Curve , invented by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham  the term "failure" is an inevitable phase. It is experienced just prior to when your business begins to grow towards growing and scaling.

Final word:

Do not be afraid to play around on your marketing strategies to determine what works best for you, your brand, and your audience. By keeping your goal in mind, and some perseverance, you'll be on your way to an effective launch strategy that you can use for several product launches that are to come.

Craft a go-to-market plan for your launch's day's and its success

It's been a long process to develop something that your customers will enjoy. A successful marketing plan can help all that effort pay off on time for the launch.

In case you're wondering, here's the six steps to create the marketing strategy you want to use for the launch of your product:

Set SMART goals for your product launch. Find out the meaning of a successful launch to you, and what measures you'll keep track of.

Define your target audience and get to know them as people and not only as demographics. Research your customer base and talk with them in order to find out more about their needs and goals.

Establish your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes your product the best choice for the ideal buyer? What makes you different against the rest?

Determine your marketing budget. There is no need to invest an arm and a leg to develop a campaign for marketing that drives sales.

Select your channels for marketing. It is imperative to use email marketing, but there are many other options available to select from. Figure out which ones align with your goals and audience.

Track your results and keep iterating on your marketing strategy. More you understand about your clients and their needs, the better your subsequent product launch marketing strategy will be.

Be aware that you may not succeed 100% at first, but that's okay. It may take some time and trial, until you've found the best way to serve your business and customers and your product, you'll soon be a marketer with results of the launch to prove that.