How To Plan A Product Launch

Congratulations on conceptualizing and realizing an amazing product! Your passion came to fruition and now it’s time to figure out how to plan a product launch that debuts it to the world. However… we’re about to say something that might surprise you. In fact, a lot of what you read in the following article might surprise you quite a bit

As industry professionals with over 10 years of experience, we actually don’t recommend that you plan a product launch at all.

Give us a few minutes to explain. We think you’ll be glad that you did.

The Best Way To Plan A Product Launch Is To Leave It To Professionals

Would you agree that creating your product took dedication, knowledge, skill, and experience? Inspiration is certainly part of that formula, but even that springs from deep familiarity with the subject. Perhaps you encountered a problem and found a novel solution to solve it without any experience in the field. However, even that illustrates a visceral connection to the project.

You wouldn’t visit a plumber for help with your car … even if he was the best plumber in town, right?

We say all of this with the greatest humility, but we firmly believe in letting professionals handle their areas of expertise. It’s what they do. Handing them the information they need to work and focusing on your strengths and your role is part of the holistic economy of motion we practice at Lineup Concept. It’s one of many reasons we maintain relationships with vendors at the pinnacle of their verticals.

We choose wisely so we can trust and delegate to the professionals we do business with. That’s what we’re recommending.

You’ll save yourself a lot of time, stress, and potential missteps if you work with a professional event planning team with experience. People like our team are familiar with how to plan a product launch because we do it for clients every day.

That doesn’t mean you’ll passively sit by while someone like us gets to work, however. You’ll be involved at all crucial points and perhaps most importantly, you’ll do the next several things we suggest long before you find the right event planners to collaborate with.

We Could Tell You How We Plan A Product Launch… But We Won’t

We aren’t keeping secrets because we don’t want to lose a client. We simply don’t want to waste your time by sharing surface-level information that you can find anywhere else online. We don’t think it will really help. It’s not the best use of your time.

There are several things you can do, however, to set your product launch up for raving success.

That’s what we’re really about to detail for you: the pre-planning. We’re going to talk a little about marketing and a little about PR, as well as help guide you toward firming up your branding.

You can take the knowledge and insights this article provokes and share it with your event planners and they’ll appreciate that you’re ahead of the curve. It will make their job easier and your event more successful and exciting.

Here’s what you can expect to read about in the following paragraphs:

Creating a product launch event timeline;
Defining and expressing your brand identity;
Delivering ideal customer information to your event team and how to gather this information;
Social media presence for your brand and you personally;
Your target audience for the event and information about them;
Your content strategy leading up to the event;
Elevator pitches and one-sheet deliverables you can share with your event planning team;
Working with your team to choose the correct venue keeping your branding in mind;
Gifts you may hand out to attendees;
After event follow-up strategies;
Post-event content strategies including gaining early customer feedback; and
Choosing the right event planning team.

Plan A Product Launch: Timing Is Everything

We recognize that by the time you find yourself searching for articles like this one, you may already have an event date in mind. However, if that date is flexible or if you have not yet begun thinking about your timeline, we encourage you to consider several things before you cement that date.

Take a brief second look at the bullet list immediately preceding this paragraph and ask yourself how prepared you are in each area.

Who Are You And Who Are You Trying To Reach?

We feel it’s particularly important to consider vital components like your brand identity, the information you have gathered about who you see as your ideal customer, and who you’re targeting as an ideal event attendee. We also feel it’s very important that you develop concisely punchy delivery systems to explain the essence of your brand and product to others. We’ve referenced these concepts in our bullet list as elevator pitches and one-sheet deliverables.

If you have a marketing team, they have probably already assisted you with many of these initial planning considerations. If you have not worked with a marketing team, we strongly encourage that you research these concepts and even consider having a consultation with a marketing professional.

We understand that these concepts might seem far removed from your actual product launch event. However, truly successful events blend a certain artistic approach and vital social leveraging in order to achieve an objective. That objective is to reach your customers, motivate investors, network with other industry professionals, and introduce both your brand and your product to an audience.

You’ll spend many resources in order to realize your product launch. These resources include time and money. We want to empower you to gain the best return you possibly can and we believe that having a detailed and defined understanding of your specific objectives is vital. That includes a firm understanding of who you are trying to reach.

Coincidentally, these things will not only help your event planning professionals understand who you are and therefore be able to embody that in all the many aspects of your event. They also fortify your company’s ability to branch out in several professional directions because they form the true foundation of your marketing strategy.

Your Brand Identity

We encourage you to think about creating a digital presentation or physical binder that contains marketing and branding foundational components like your mission and value statement. It’s also an excellent idea to include as much information as possible about both your customers and potential event attendees in this presentation or binder.

The marketing professionals refer to these types of materials as your brand Bible or branding guide.

You’ll be able to hand this presentation or document to your event planning professionals and it will provide them with an incredible depth of information about who your brand is and how it expresses itself to the world.

Your Customers And Attendees

The information you give your planning team will inform their choices about venue, overall event styling, any music or entertainment at the event, and even an overall feel for the event itself.

Who do you see using your product? Who is your product launch tailored to? Are you looking to invite a special, VIP customer pool that you’re giving initial access to your exclusive product to? Or, are you inviting fellow industry professionals in order to gain feedback from people who are colleagues or even potential vendors of your product?

All of this information is very important to the team bringing your event into reality.

If you don’t have this information yet, don’t panic! Although we feel that the best course of action is to work with a branding professional team or a marketing expert who understands how to develop comprehensive profiles of potential audience segments, you can use things like your social media presence, questionnaires delivered through lead magnets, and landing pages to gather information.

Even simple, informal email outreach to colleagues and other people in your industry to are avenues to consider. This type of information gathering is often called crowdsourcing.

Think about what you want to know about who you’re trying to reach and ask questions. It’s a great idea to incentivize a response from your subjects by providing them some small discount either to attend your launch event or by your product once it’s launched or some other gift to thank them for taking the time to engage with you about your product.

Keep in mind every interaction you have with both colleagues and customers is another opportunity to cement and express your brand identity. Assume whatever tone you’ll consistently use in these communications and be sure to foster positive rapport with anyone you contact.

Plan A Product Launch: Social Media And Content Strategies

We all know that social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience whether those individuals are potential customers or potential event attendees. The social media climate is always changing following social trends that are often at The Cutting Edge of a special kind of groupthink that occurs in the unique space of the internet.

customers are increasingly concerned with who they’re doing business with. They are more likely than ever to spend a few extra minutes scrolling back into your social media history and even identifying front-facing individuals in your company in customer service, management, or even owner rolls.

For this reason, we strongly suggest did you consider the history of your social media presence as it relates to the things you’ve said through your brand page as well as your personal page and the pages of your most visible executives or management personnel. If you are concerned about any potential statements you may have made in the past, don’t hesitate to make your profile private.

We encourage readers to work with their marketing team or content strategy Professionals in order to create professional pages for company owners, inventors, and management personnel. It’s important to have some social media presence and not appear that you are hiding your past, however it’s also important that the tone of these pages is professional, friendly, and depending on your industry, reflective of both of you are values and values that appear to work well for your peers and competitors.

We are certainly not telling you to go with the flow, conform, and not stand out. Instead, we hope you’ll find a way to express your most authentic self even through professional Pages you create. However, we do want to encourage you to think about you are front-facing expressions and what people who don’t know you who may want to do business with your brand might take from these expressions.

Content Strategies

Once you’re comfortable with the state of your house when it comes to your social media presence, it’s time to think about some type of content strategy leading up to your event.

We would again like to stress that we strongly recommend that you work with professionals who are experts in the field a marketing and content creation when it comes to this area. However, as a broad statement, we suggest thinking about Gathering email addresses, setting up email lists that are properly segmented, offering incentives in order to gain access 2 people who might be positive toward your message and product, and creating content that provides value to people so you begin fostering a positive parasocial relationship with potential customers and colleagues long before your product launches.

When You Reach Out potential attendees are customers, you want them to feel positive about seeing the communication in their news feed our email inbox. Your content strategy leading up to your event also gives you yet another valuable opportunity to teach your audience Who You Are.

If you can include crowdsourcing opportunities where you ask for feedback from your audience about what they’d like to see at a product launch event or what their questions are regarding your product that’s even better.

Innovation certainly helps brand stand out. However, there is much value In identifying the needs of your audience and providing them with things that meet those needs. This Fosters positive feeling about the interaction and creates a sense a value.

You may want to spend some time interacting and certain groups or on other social media Pages where your target audience may spend time. Building relationships and establishing a recognizable presence in the spaces you hope to occupy in a business sense only benefit you in the future.

The old saying goes you only have one chance to make a first impression. In many ways your product launch is that first impression and you want to approach it with as much positive momentum in valuable information as possible.

Plan A Product Launch: Working With Your Event Planners

Now you’ve done all the background work and you’re in a fantastic position to provide an incredible amount of valuable information to your event planning professionals.

We’ve already suggested putting together some type of presentation, whether physical or digital, that includes important facets of your branding. You’ll provide this in advance or bring it to your initial meeting once you set up a consultation with an event planning Team.

As you move through the planning process with your team, refer back to these materials and ask yourself and your team whether things like the venue you’ve chosen, any free gifts or merch you’re offering to attendees, and the styling of the event reflect these objectives and principles.

When you have this Cornerstone to refer to, you’ll see so much of the stress melt away from the event planning process. Not only do you have a competent, experienced, professional event planning team taking care of all the Myriad details like permits and Staffing and vendors, but you also have a guide that dictates the direction this highly creative process moves within. It’s a structure that informs the creative decisions that occur during the planning process and actually allows greater freedom in areas that make the most difference.

In your initial meeting with your team you may want to discuss how involved you see yourself being in the planning process, and whether you have certain ideas in mind all ready. We strongly encourage you to share any pre-existing ideas or concepts that you have with your team as soon as possible. It may spark their inspiration, direct their approach, or give them an opportunity to suggest a different way to achieve the same objective. You paragraph your overall goal is to merge your deep understanding and investment in your product and Company with their incredible understanding of event planning and their own industry.

Leveraging The Lasting Returns On Your Investment

While your event planning team it’s working their magic, we encourage you to think about the many ways you can continue to Leverage your product launch as a part of your extended marketing plan.

Consider things like setting up opportunities to gain customer feedback and incentivize customers to provide that feedback. There are number of ways to do this that include but are certainly not limited to involving attendees and product demonstrations during the launch event or providing them with free samples in exchange for their honest reviews of your product. It might be an excellent idea to set up a Rewards program before your product launches and promote it to your event attendees particularly if they are potential customers or clients and not just other professionals and colleagues in your field.

Consider inviting members of the press or other content creators to the event, giving them free passes to attend in the hopes that they’ll provide free promotion after the event itself. Provide these individuals with a small package that includes some of the things you provided your event planning team including your brand identity information and information about your product that they can easily refer to in creating their content.

We encourage you to get creative when it comes to envisioning the ways you might use your product launch experience in the content you derive from it later in your business. Make sure to include General waiver information in the material attendees agree to when they booked entry into your event or specifically to anyone involved end product demonstrations on the site. This ensures that you don’t have to chase people down later in order to gain their approval for you to use their image in your marketing materials.

However, you certainly can reach out after the fact in order to let these individuals know that their images appearing in your materials because it gives you another excellent point of contact on a more personal level with some of the people who attended your event. Anyone involved in a product demonstration or some type of targeted interaction during your event occupies a special relationship level with you and your brand and fostering this is a great way to gain future sales and build brand loyalists.

Plan A Product Launch: How To Choose Your Event Planning Team

We’d like to take a moment now to talk briefly about things to consider when choosing your event planning Team.

We’ve already discussed why we strongly recommend that you not trust something as important as your product launch to someone in your in-house marketing team or management team. Those individuals may make excellent Liaisons between your brand and your event planning professional, but an event planning professional is invested in their craft and Industry and has invaluable experience that they bring to the process as a matter of their professional role. This helps you avoid paying your staff or spending your valuable time researching how to hold an event. It leaves much less up to chance.

This is perhaps especially true when it comes to the online event space. Although it seems much more possible to plan and execute an online event yourself, that may not be the case. You must think about logistics and the likelihood that some technical difficulties during the event might prove both stressful and crippling when it comes to expressing your message and showing off the product you spent so much mental and physical energy to bring into the world.

Look for Professionals in your area to have an established history. It’s even better if you see some examples of their work either through their online and social media presence or because you’ve attended one of their events personally, and you admire their work.

Take the time to read reviews, reach out to past clients and asked about their experience, or ask your potential event planning Professionals for references. It’s perfectly acceptable to briefly explain the type of event you’d like to hold and ask your potential event professional four examples of work they’ve recently done that they feel relates to your vision.

You looking for a team that is efficient, professional, but communicative. It’s an excellent sign if their portfolio includes both traditional and Innovative events in a variety of venues that reflect a variety of styling Aesthetics. You want to book a consultation with anyone you’re considering and ask questions gaining a feel for their approach with clients as well as how informed they seem about their profession. You paragraph finally it’s appropriate to ask about relationships they have with local vendors and venues. You want to feel confident that the individuals you choose to work with for your product launch event have the network in place to provide you with a broad and holistic possibility field in order to increase the potential of your product on 2 back.

Call Us For A Free Consultation

If you think you’d like to work with us on your next product launch or Professional Event, we’d love to hear from you! Please use the contact form on our website or contact us by phone.

You’re always excited to connect with new potential clients as well as provide any assistance we can in creating artistic, holistic, effective, evocative, memorable moments for our clients.

Finally, if this article helped you in any way we’d really appreciate it if you’d share it with someone else in your field you think might benefit from it. We hope that some of the information we’ve shared with you today can help clients connect in a more effective and meaningful way With their event planning team no matter whom they choose to work with.