Attention is the currency of the new brand economy and Brands vie for customer attention every minute of every day. This is all the more relevant to brands that are launching, whether it’s a product, service organization or even yourself. There’s a lot that goes into putting together a compelling brand launch plan, from creating the right messaging and assets to enabling your sales team and maintaining momentum. In this article, we have shared 4 high impact Actions for a memorable Brand Launch along with 4 phases that are relevant to these action plans. Phases depend on brand story, strategic positioning, buyer persona and competitor analysis. Success lies in aligning all these activities and phases to the story you are weaving around the brand.
Your brand doesn’t need to be perfect; you can provide service updates and revisions to better your brand in the long run. It is essential however that your brand is market-ready before launch. Once that’s done or well on its way there, tighten your seat belts because the work’s only just beginning. The Action Plan helps you prepare for the brand launch through 4 phases. I assume you would require 5 months or longer to prepare the brand for the perfect launch:
Pre-launch Prep: (Month 5 and 4)
Plan and execute the pre-launch activities. Develop a Go-to-market strategy, visualize the entire marketing funnel in line with the brand story and user experience you want to your target audience to experience. Use the Brand Launch Master Plan Cheat Sheet and outline your pre-launch, launch and post-launch activities. Outline a list of deliverables, dependencies and contingencies. Generate required content including but not exclusive to, brochures, ppts, promotion emails, feedback emails, marketing collaterals, word templates for proposals, website content, 10-20 SEO-friendly blog posts, social media posts, teasers etc. Build social media brand pages on relevant channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Don’t forget to gather and consolidate lists and databases of PR outlets, influencers, industry analysts, directories, forums, websites and other relevant databases for your online and offline campaigns. If you are launching a product that can be available for pre-order, tweak your launch activities in line with the pre-launch.
Plan for an internal brand launch where you can test the brand campaign and create brand champions who can help get the word out when it counts. Also, plan for an offline event during launch dates and post-launch activities to optimize content marketing efforts and lead generation.
Download the Brand Launch – Master Plan Cheat Sheet here:
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Pre-launch Beta Test: (Month 3 and 2)
Launch internally first to rally employees as brand ambassadors. Some may appreciate it while others may have concerns about the brand. Be a good listener and take the critique positively.
Trickle out your marketing efforts by releasing teaser campaigns on Social media outlets, influencer and PR channels to test initial reactions. Post blogs about the brand attributes/highlights and the problems that it can solve. Engage your audience by sharing the journey with “sneak peeks”, “behind the scenes” footage and sharing your brand’s story. This is also the phase where you should make the brand available to influencers, PR outlets and industry analysts to review the product or service offerings and experience the marketing funnel. By giving them a head start, your brand launch can be in sync with the content they produce. This timing can help amplify reach and impact of your brand tremendously.
Take this opportunity to test out the efficacy of all your systems. Check what’s working, what’s not and look at the results objectively. This will help you take future steps that can help realign the campaign. Cross-check if you are getting emails, whether landing pages and keywords are working, evaluate and make changes as per feedback. Stress testing in pre-launch means you avoid disasters and delays later. You can channel all that effort on launch dates in executing the plan and being responsive to feedback instead.
Launch: (a few days to a few weeks)
At launch, release the water built behind the dam. Push your marketing efforts into high gear and listen to the chatter. Activate Sales teams to capture leads and to qualify them. Engage quick service teams to help wherever needed. Leverage on partner influencer and PR outlets to release content simultaneously. At offline events, gauge responses and create content for later use. Keep your audience engaged with key differentiators, customer stories, details about how the offering provides a return on investment (ROI) to customers, contests, loyalty discounts, videos etc.
Post-launch: (rest of the month – 2 months)
Customer Retention is key at this stage. Monitor your social media channels and forge a relationship with your first customers. Review the effort in relation to the response generated and preferred outcomes of the campaign. Make changes and continue on to the next phase of the marketing journey.
Carry out activities such as highlighting customer stories, running a contest, launching a loyalty program, asking for ratings, etc. Don’t tire or lose focus and keep marketing activities ongoing while you make calculated adjustments to the content and fine-tune your systems. You can also entice your audience in becoming co-creators of your content. These activities are crucial to keeping your audience engaged after launch and help decide what the next plan of action could be.
The Phases give insight and inspire these 4 high impact actions:
ACTION 1: Create a Brand Launch – Master Plan!
Launching a successful brand depends not only on a distinctive brand strategy and visual identity system but also on a well-executed launch. This action sets people and systems towards a workable deadline of separate tasks and subtasks moving towards pre-launch, during launch and post-launch activities. Make a master plan that serves as a roadmap and a blueprint of your journey. Determine who needs to hear what by when, and then use this as your roadmap for implementation. Define realistic timelines and stick to it unless you are convinced some alterations would do good to the actual execution. To help you through this, a Brand Launch – Master Plan cheat sheet is available that lists tasks and maps it with subtasks, custodians and deadlines.
Download the Brand Launch – Master Plan Cheat Sheet here:
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ACTION 2: Setting up channels/tools/systems:
Putting together the right channel, tools and systems are crucial for delivery, feedback, database and lead generation. There are several ways through which your audience can experience your brand and you could make an impact on every touchpoint. Website, Offline Marketing and Sales Channels, email marketing using tools such as Mailchimp, Social Media Tools such as Hootsuite, ad channels like Google Ads, PR, Testers, Influencers, offline launch event, – the list goes on. Ensure that you set up all these channels, tools and systems way before you unveil your brand to the world. Each of these channels requires different execution timelines. Figure out which channel requires the longest time and plan backwards. Let analytics guide you with customer insights by measuring online and offline data. Systems in place will help measure performance based on which you can test, tweak and repeat.
ACTION 3: Content marketing plan and development
An effective launch is one that can be effortlessly linked to the creation of a cohesive content strategy. It should particularly be a strategy that covers all online and offline communication, like social, e-mail and PR activity. Build content repositories for Websites, Blogs, Landing Pages, Sales Call Scripts, Marketing Collaterals, Sales presentations, Emailer Content, Social Media Posts, Ad copy, Press Release, Event Resources etc. Develop proper audience personas and align them to your content efforts and business goals.
ACTION 4: TEST. TWEAK. REPEAT
Test every step of the way, revisit and tweak strategies and tactics. This action is crucial for the success of a brand even after launch. While executing the action plans, you may come across several situations when you’d question the return on investment – in terms of how successfully the brand has been received.
A brand launch is a lot of painstaking time and effort but done well it sets the tone and path for the future. Use these Actions to make the first impression a lasting positive experience that inspires brand loyalty. We are open to assist you to launch your new brand if you need it. Get in touch!
Let me know what you think in the comments below and if something can be added to make it a better brand launch!
