Launching a new product is a big event for the majority if not all the business owners. However, that step is not a goal itself, a product won’t make your revenue and pay for its costs. You need to understand some important things before launching every product. That can be different from the classic methods, but the principle is the same.
From the product idea to developments and ending with marketing, you have to look in-depth and find what will help in your marketing plan. Best of all, you should protect your revenue, but with a simple idea that will cost you additional spending, but, will make your business stronger than you can think.
Define your exact target market
This is the first step to understanding, if you define the exact type of audience and market, you will take your marketing to the next level and minimize risks, and best of all, you avoid wasting money and time. Small business needs some time to be strong and profitable. But, when it comes to risks, they can easily turn that business in another direction that you can’t control in any way, things are changing, and no one will show you its secrets. You should create your own way to build a business.
One of the biggest mistakes is to advertise a product to a large market and audience. In reality, there is no logical reason for that, especially, for companies with limited resources. What you can save today, will protect you tomorrow, at the same time, you should work and focus on the right people circle.
Understanding your market is not a hard job, but also it needs some time and work to find, if you’re selling a health book for example, then you should never promote it on sports websites and blogs. Your exact market is women and men interested in health, and you can find them using some simple questions.
Where are your target people?
One of the things to consider when launching a new product in the market. Ask yourself what websites a health fan will visit, and take simple research just like those people. Ask a simple health question on Google and you will find thousands of sites, blogs, and forums, where your product can easily be sold, or, at least get the intention. If you focus on these sites, you will maximize your work result and never waste your time and resources.
Another important thing, Facebook is not a real place to start advertising a small business. That’s the truth, a study made by Nielsen showed that 84% of brand’s fans have joined their fan page for a discount, or, a special offer, or even, to ask a question to their community. This really surprised me but when I’ve checked some of the big fan pages I can see that the study tells the truth.
What you see as comments and activity in the majority of fan pages for big companies is not real and natural at 100% as you expected. They pay a social media agency to bring comments and share their posts just to show that they are active.
Now, compare the total number of active people with the total number of fans which is by hundred of thousands in general. What you can see are just a few percentages that validate the study result.
The learned lesson here is, never base your marketing plan on Facebook, yes, you can still promote your products there. But, don’t expect good results only with a fan page, you should use their advertising platform. This is the right way to succeed on Facebook marketing.
You get clicks from interested people only, and you should refine your audience by age, language, region, and interest, check all the necessary options in your advertising company as you can.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter still a good marketing platform, and you can find your market there, you can use their platform to get followers and people who really want to interact with your Tweets and not just for fun.
Google plus is a real platform for serious people, less spam than Facebook and you can find interested people by joining Google plus groups and communities. Browse what people are looking for, and interact with them, this will help you to understand your market without losing good ideas.
Compare your product with competitors
This is a very important step that will add value to your product if you can make some changes, no one in this world is ideal and complete. Your competitors still make mistakes. You should ask yourself if you will like their way to introduce their products, or even, visit their website, and take notes with all the negative impressions that you can feel.
Believe it or not, a color or a layout can make the difference and change completely the visitor’s vision. So, take their negative points and turn them into your cool things.
I will take an example in this case, Kontera, was the biggest in-text advertising platform during the last 4 years. But, they have many problems when it comes to customer support, and revenue sharing. Publishers can’t solve their issues quickly and they end with closing their accounts.
Infolinks was a new brand network at that time but can’t be a serious competitor for them. They learned from Kontera’s negative points, and that is what really happened, Infolinks, now they’re the second biggest advertising network today and Kontera loses new customers every day, even their Alexa traffic rank is dropping.
Nowadays, the competitor study is a apart from success, you have to stay updated and learn from your competitors. They can’t correct all their mistakes, and you have large mistakes and problems to correct and make them your attractive sources. Customers move from a company to another for those problems, why close that door to yourself?
Website and product design
We can’t neglect the importance and the role of design when you have an attractive and good-looking website. You’ve walked the half making the customer stay on your site, the next thing is the content that should be good as well and with real value. And then you should present your product in the best way that you can. Make it relevant to the general website colors, psychology should be part of your web design and work.
Not all the colors work in all the product types, there are many ways to hire a good designer for that. Elance is a good example, where you can get a professional job. There is no limit to your design innovation, so, work hard on that and make a website that your competitors don’t have. Don’t forget the speed of your website, it works a big role and you should never forget that.
The font size is apart from the design, and you should keep it greater than 16 pixels. This is the ideal size, it’s the same size as a real book on average, people won’t read a small text and you should take that into consideration.
Product cost
Based on your market, you can make some conclusions about your product’s price. If your audience is young people in the range of 18-27 for example, you should keep in mind that not all of them can ay for $300 for your product. Adjust your price based on your study.
Ask some of your friends if they want to purchase that product if it’s not yours. And make sure to send a few emails to people you know, and ask for a survey, or, a short conversation to help you select the right price that will succeed.
The price has a big impact on your marketing success, don’t try to make it higher than its real value. At the same time, don’t make your product cheap just to get customers. Good people will buy your product if the price reflects the real value. If you have a digital product like an ebook, you have a better range of price decisions, even, if you offer a big discount for the launch, you still get revenue, you don’t have additional costs like the real products.
I won’t talk about the launching time, many people think that they should select the right time, such as holidays for example. But, this is not a real role to follow, things are not the same and you can launch your product when you want (expecting big catastrophes).
