In a world where new products are being launched left and right, it’s important to stand out, ensure you’re creating a launch strategy that aligns with your product, target the right audience and continue to look for areas of growth. With over 20 years of experience in fashion, beauty, retail, cannabis and other sectors, FAULHABER finds new and innovative ways to launch products and drive success for our clients. We’ve put together our 7 essential steps in hitting your product launch out of the park this year.

Pay Attention to Market Trends & Insights

Before launching any product, it’s important to look at what’s going on in your market and what’s driving buzz to plan your approach. Staying up to date with market insights, trends and what your competitors are doing allows for more insight to what is working and what isn’t to help craft a successful launch. At the height of lockdowns, brands had to pivot to prioritize traditional media opportunities and paid influencer campaigns. As our world opens up, we have seen a shift back to in person events, experiential activations and immersive brand trips. Looking at what is driving your industry and what is getting press, influencers and consumers excited is essential in understanding your market and ensuring your launch and goals align with what is currently driving success.

Be the Expert

Knowing your product inside and out is key to ensuring a successful launch. Carefully reviewing all press materials, learning key messaging and having first-hand experience with the product before a launch allows you to be the best brand ambassador and can maximize opportunities. At FAULHABER, we work as extensions of our clients’ teams – we immerse ourselves fully in our client’s businesses and are experts in all their products. Opportunities can arise in the most unexpected places – it’s essential to ensure you’re fully prepared, able to be the perfect brand ambassador and can speak to the product with credibility.

Set Clear Goals

Work with your team and client to establish what success looks like and set goals based on what you’re looking to achieve with your launch. To ensure your client is getting the best ROI and success is being measured properly, everyone must be aligned on what the goals of the launch is – whether that be general awareness, earned impressions, sales lift, attendance rate, consumer data collection or other metrics that add value to your clients.

Craft Concise Messaging

In PR, messaging is everything. This is your first touch point with press, influencers and consumers and can make a world of difference in reaching your targets. As we’re seeing the rise of shorter forms of content and new product launches on a weekly basis, ensuring the messaging is concise and hits the key points is essential for getting your audience’s attention and keeping them hooked. Whether you’re creating social content to support the launch or pitching media, crafting concise messaging that relays what’s most important about the product will help drive buzz and generate awareness.

Take a 360 Approach

For a successful product launch, a 360 approach is important for driving buzz and generating awareness across forms of media. A fully integrated campaign that includes both organic and paid initiatives across social and traditional media is key for targeting audiences from all sides. While paid support can help drive sales, it’s important to layer in organic opportunities to help boost brand authenticity and credibility.

Create Buzz

Creating buzz ahead of a launch can make all the difference in success when launching a new product. It’s important to get your targets excited about a launch – whether done through social media teasers or traditional media highlights. Think about what’s exciting to you as a consumer and keep your finger on the pulse to drive buzz and make your product a must-have ahead of launch day.

Track Your Progress

After all the heavy lifting is done, tracking and monitoring the progress and results is the final step to round out any campaign or launch. Any seasoned PR professional will tell you they can monitor results in their sleep – and while not the most exciting part of a launch, it is one of the most important steps. Tracking progress is not only how we measure the success of a launch, but also helps inform how we progress, advises any additional steps to take and sets the foundation for future launches.

Our team of maximizers can help you get the most out of your launches. Learn more about our services.