Business owners are familiar with building their own go-to-market strategy. It’s the official plan of how a new product gets launched, who the target audience is, the marketing plan, and sales strategy. But each product, industry, and market are different — especially in the manufacturing and industrial world. And with the move toward a digital transformation of sales and marketing, more manufacturers and industrial companies are incorporating digital tactics into their go-to-market strategy. But according to a small business survey done by Thomas, only 15.69% of small businesses in the U.S. are using digital marketing as a primary marketing tactic and 30% are still using .
The following steps outline how to plan your new product launch with digital marketing and newer better methods of growth.
1. Research Before You Do Anything Else
Many companies focus on the design and manufacturing of their new product and postpone research and promotion planning for later. Lack of preparation before you launch is a a big factor that causes new products to fail.
- According to Harvard Business School, some new 30,000 consumer products are released annually, but as many as 95% of those products will fail to make significant sales.
- About 75% of consumer packaged goods and retail products fail to earn even $7.5 million during their first year.
Research for your go-to-market strategy should answer a few things:
- Why you’re launching your new product
- Are there any competitors in the market
- Who the new product is for
- What will be your customers’ concerns when presented with the product
- How you’re going to get people to buy the product
- What are your metrics for success
With a new product, the last thing you want are wasted resources and a surplus of products in your inventory that never get shipped, so take some time research the details of the competitive landscape, distribution, your audience, and the buying journey. Refer back to your unique selling proposition to help guide you and use the data from your website, Gartner and Forrester, and Thomas WebTrax to make key decisions.
Want to follow a industrial buyer through their entire journey from search to a phone call?
Research also involves testing your product. Run trials with some customers to make sure its differences in your current products will sway new buyers to purchase. This makes sure there’s a market for it. Testing for compatibility and performance problems before launch makes sure your product doesn’t fall short of claims, because even the slightest issue might have your most loyal customers lose trust in you.
Your current customers are key. The more you know about them, the easier it will be to reach new buyers — so keep your customers involved during the development process of your new product.
2. Build Your Foundation
Many of us are familiar with customer success. We hear it all the time to put the customer first. When it comes to launching a new product, employee engagement is no different to business success.
Are All Your Teams Aware Of The New Product?
New product launches don’t involve just your sales team and your product experts. Everyone’s feedback — especially those outside of marketing, sales, and product — is important to help steer a launch. As you plan, make sure your entire company is in a position to support fast growth. If you don’t have a plan to ramp up quickly across all your departments — billing and customer service included — don’t be afraid to delay your launch.
Educate your company on relevant parts of your go-to-market strategy including product specs, pricing, and why you’re launching something new. Just like your buyers, your employees consume information in different formats. Send out email newsletters, conduct regular product update meetings, and create videos employees can watch on their own time.
Improving your teams’ product knowledge boosts your brand’s interactions with customers and gives a sense of trustworthiness and competence. Inevitably, this translates to:
- Improved sales
- Faster resolution rate for customer issues
- Better employee retention rate
Is Your Website Up-To-Date?
Think of your website like a machine on your shop floor. Would you invest in the latest and greatest technology and let it just sit there on its own? Innovative shop owners know it needs to be finely-tuned and optimized to make sure it’s running at peak performance. That’s the same concept for your website.
Incomplete data has always been a common challenge among distributors and OEMs. Don’t let it be the cause of your new product launch fail. Buyers can’t buy what’s not on your website, so before you launch, make sure all your systems are in place and your content is aligned. A seamless online product experience drives more customer sales and enhances your relationship with vendors. And more relevant content on your website boosts your website ranking in Google.
Poor support will ruin the customer experience of your new product and company. Make sure your teams are prepared for whatever comes their way with the right online tools. Is your website synced to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to build and manage customer relationships? How will buyers learn how to use the new product and how will it benefit their customers? People will have questions — make sure your team is well-equipped to answer them and your website has the must-haves to be one of your best salespersons.
3. Set Your Product Promotion Plan
There are plenty of cases where a brand new product has no flaws, has nothing else like it in the market, is a perfect fit for customers, but still fails. This is where poor product promotion could be at fault.
Most business owners claim that getting a product in front of customers is easy. But smart marketers know that getting in front of the right customers is the hard part.
The right message should be communicated through the right channels — everything has to be aligned. Go back to your research and identify where your leads are already engaging and then build strategies to maximize the use of those channels.
Selling a product is not the same as preparing the market to buy your new product. Before your product launch, your promotion should aim to build awareness. Refer to your research phase about your customer buying journey. Determining how much people know about you before they engage with your product will give you an idea of the type of content marketing you need to reach them.
Don’t just rely solely on word-of-mouth and cold calls. Take a more proactive approach and investment with inbound marketing. We’ve seen success for manufacturers and industrial companies that execution a promotion plan with a mix of videos, email marketing, and social media — click here to read how one manufacturer increased leads by 285%!
Get The Guide: How To Get Started With Video Marketing
When creating your promotion messaging, stick to these tips:
- Highlight advantages the customer cares about. They want a solution to their problem. Limit your content that talks specifically about your company.
- Be truthful. Don’t use buzzwords and don’t give consumers false perceptions of reality.
- Don’t bash your competitors. Steer your content back to value and leverage customer testimonials. People are going to believe what actual customers say over what you say.
A Digital Strategy Drives Growth
In order to avoid product launch failure, it’s a must to embrace new technologies internally — not just on your shop floor with machine learning, AI, and robotics. Planning your strategy before you launch and getting the product to its official launch date is only half the battle. Think about your long-term strategic objectives and how your product will adapt over time to continue meeting customers’ needs. If your company isn’t in the best position to launch and continue to support and optimize the product as needed, your company will fall behind. According to a small business survey conducted by Thomas, 28% of manufacturing and industrial companies in the U.S. are planning on launching a new product or service this year — is yours set up for success?
If your resources are limited, competition is fierce, and the need for quality leads is high contact our team of manufacturing marketing experts.