MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR PRE-LAUNCH PREPARATIONS

For the vast majority of new product or service launches, the opportunity is not at grave risk of being lost if you allocate some extra time to do the rest of the pre-launch tasks as fully as possible. The market will still be there. It is rarely an actual race with other drivers rushing towards a finish line. Your rollout will still seem entirely new to your prospects whether you force a first impression today or bake it to perfection, then serve it up tomorrow.

Excitement- yours and your markets- can be just as high- if not higher- WHENEVER it is actually taken to market.

Build in the time to do it all right and you will have the smoothest, most effective launch possible.

Any surprise fires will likely be flickers instead of raging infernos. Instead of corporate chaos, you can enjoy tidy order. This BETTER way is driven by managing personal want (for ASAP monetization) so you make sound marketing choices.

Every item in the pre-launch checklist we just shared should reflect dazzling design and attention to detail. For example, if you put next to nothing into your website promotional content or your launch marketing creative, you waste a huge opportunity to obviously demonstrate that you- as seller- see great value in your own product or service.

If you show a prospect that you don't care enough to showcase your product or service in impressive ways, why should the buyer perceive it has much value? Perceived value is a major contributing catalyst for maximizing revenue. Each buyer needs to believe that YOU believe.

So many companies get this very wrong... and then wonder why their offering is not selling as well as they expected. Often it comes down to a simple exercise of real effort: did you give the whole launch proposition your best BEFORE you went to market? If you:

• did, it will show... and you'll make it as easy as possible for marketing & sales to do their parts into the launch and beyond.
• did NOT, no quality of marketing and sales will be able to make up the difference of what you could have made vs. what you are actually making.

A great product launch is rarely a "build a better mousetrap" proposition. The modern world is NOT likely to beat a path to your door. Sure, a relative few always seem to come from nowhere and buy with little prodding, but the vast bounty of real opportunity waits for you to go to them. If you covet that full bounty, you must proactively seek out a shrewdly-targeted market and impress them into choosing your product or service over competitive offerings. Does the quality of the mousetrap matter? Absolutely... but much more so in keeping the sale than making it.

The final whack at this probably-long-since-dead horse: for the entrepreneur or manager wanting to take his or her baby to market, do not short-change any part of the process. Every part matters. Done well, great revenue & profit can result. Short-changing or overly rushing generally yields the opposite. It is a choice YOU completely control and make. So the rush option is not the only way unless you choose to make that launch mistake. Choose wisely. Manage your launch wisely.

THE ARTISTE vs. THE SCIENTIST: A MONEY-MAKING MERGER OF MARKETING GENIUS

A good product or service launch plan is a blend of art & science. The "art" of marketing is made up of a mixture of instinct, guts, creativity, design, intuition and luck. The "science" is fact-based, quantitative, logical, almost always results/metrics-driven, with concepts strongly supported by thorough customer & competitive analysis. Neither in isolation is THE way to go. A ideal blend of both gets products launched as effectively as possible... which is how you maximize ROI.

When seeking some expertise to help you take your product to market, beware of going with any source that doesn't exhibit a solid blend. The pure artists can showcase "WOW!" designs that really dazzle because their palette is grounded in human senses, emotions and influence. The scientists can showcase metric minutia but hard, cold facts, figures and data cannot overcome the artists sizzle. Nevertheless, it's the BLEND that is your friend. Let's dive into each...

MARKETING ARTISTS FOCUS ON EMOTION, PIZAZZ, DESIGN, ETC.

Some marketers rely almost solely on the art side, which allows for quick turnaround and maximum agility. However, the impact of the art-centric marketer is often heavily dependent on luck. Over-reliance tends to yield expensive flops with only occasional hits because the artist doesn't put much into the grunt work of the marketing scientist. Since the science has not been done, the explanation of why tactics did not work is also gut-based opinion(s).

Usually, this kind of marketer will simply lean on an early hit (if they get one) to mask what is likely to be many other project failures. The whole marketing effort is shrouded in smoke because objective measures answering "WHY?" do not exist.

To work with this kind of marketing partner requires extraordinary trust & faith by the client or employer. And unfortunately, that employer must simply keep trusting that the marketer knows best throughout the relationship, because everything is unquantifiable opinion.

This marketer wins clients on glitz- portfolios of impressive promotional art for former clients. They usually encourage big splash approaches. Often they can NOT quantify how the examples in the portfolio actually performed for their clients because their focus is about how great the work looks NOT what it actually accomplished. The want is to stir you emotionally and/or grab your attention. If so- to them anyway- the marketing already worked.

Who tends to lean on the artists? Those already completely sold on the success of the product themselves, often with other people's money to put toward the marketing budget. These top-line leaders crave pizazz because attention brings in leads and leads become revenue. Their cup is half full and they fully expect each new campaign to make it runneth over.

We believe that this kind of marketer simply gives in to the pressure of short-term thinking or the drive for shortest-term results. They believe that they can sacrifice proven risk-reducing approaches to get something out there... and then hope for the best. Pressure motivates short-cuts, which will occasionally work out... but more often lead to disappointments. If something doesn't work well, there's always fancy new media readying for the NEXT campaign.

All that shared, marketing artists play a crucial role in a successful product launch. You must capitalize on the positive variables of this contribution to maximize success.

All great launches require an impressive presentation of marketing creative, website creative and so on. The masses need to be stirred, grabbed, tickled, shocked, titillated or surprised. Many times, it STARTS the sales process and/or greases the wheels.

For example, many buyers of a new car are often grabbed by the modestly differentiated contours of the metal skin and the color of the paint job- both of which probably account for less than 8% of the total cost. Some artist came up with the shape & color... and that won the dealer enough prospect interest to motivate a chance to sell customers the whole car.

BI has "WOW!" artist talent in our network, offering impressive services to be tapped when we need to dazzle prospective buyers of your product or service. We can connect you directly to them or manage them on your behalf.

MARKETING SCIENTISTS LEAN HEAVILY ON QUANTIFIABLE RESEARCH, HARD EVIDENCE, ETC.

Marketing scientists are more quantitatively driven in their approach. The science proves the validity of marketing ideas. Science-oriented marketers strive to support everything with quantitative facts & metrics. Logic rules their process.

They can marginalize the artists "have faith" requirement for their clients by backing up ideas with hard evidence that supports new concepts. This obviously requires more work and thus takes more time... but it helps a client gain greater peace-of-mind in each new thrust and facilitates an objective way to measure the effectiveness of every marketing effort. In short: the marketing scientist recommends the discipline to do the research to uncover the way forward, then tests small (to further verify), before rolling out on a larger scale to mitigate any lingering doubts.

The downside to the science approach for smaller companies is that it takes time. The small company tends to operate in a time frame of right now... today... this hour or even this minute. The work involved in the science approach involves time frames measured in weeks and months. Some of the science is ongoing for years. For example, competitive analysis should never stop; keeping up with the competition is an ongoing discipline at all truly great companies.

An impatient startup or small company making demands for speed over the science will tend to drive themselves away from what they really want: big ROI from the least possible use of cash, human & time resources. The science must be there to truly deliver cost-efficient thrusts that yield results. If you want to do something new but are concerned about the cash & time risk, you need the science to mitigate that risk. Impatience and risk minimization do not pair.

Who tends to lean to the scientists? Those with greater risk aversion, less sure of probable success and the bean-counters who hunger for any way to grow their own confidence. The science can reassure these leaders. Their cup is half empty and needs the promise of a refill... maybe 2 or 3 promises. They fixate on their cup leaketh to empty instead of filling back up.

Lastly, marketing science plays the biggest role in finding so-called "low hanging fruit." All of the analysis will point the business to where the best ROI can be realized. Where the artist uses a wide-spray, buckshot approach, the scientist aims, aims again, tweaks their sights and checks their aim again. This market refinement leads to superior ROI. It basically narrows in on the specific slices of a market(s) most likely to buy.

As such, some think of marketing arts as being more about lead acquisition (exposure, branding, grabbing attention, etc) and marketing science being the part of marketing most adjacent to- or even overlapping some of- the sales function. The scientists strive to make the marketing discipline yield tangible, measurable results: customer conversions, retention, revenue, profit, etc. There's no smoke & mirrors.

BI has marketing science-focused talent & companies in our network of specialists. We can tap into this talent to bring as much quant-driven support, testing & validation to your objectives as needed.

BLENDED ART & SCIENCE IS THE SMARTEST WAY TO MARKET

The perfect marketing model doesn't take a side. Perfection blends the best of both to strike a balance of the artist's "WOW!" with the confidence and risk-reducing benefits the scientists deliver. Engaging our experts to help you take your new product or service to market is the easiest way to apply an optimized blend for your business. We will tap into deeply-experienced resources in both camps to help you monetize your product in well-proven ways. Contact us for a FREE CONSULTATION