10 Different Ways to Launch a Product
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With over 10 years of experience launching products we've put together a Product Launch Guide citing 22 different ways to launch a product. Here are 10 of those but you can download our full guide FREE here: http://bit.ly/ProductLaunchGuide https://www.yourfavouritestory.com/
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10 Different Ways to Launch a Product
- 1. Your Favourite Story 10 Different Ways to Launch a Product
- 2. Companies invest large portions of their budgets into product launches, but that doesn’t mean they are launching products the best way. It is easy to stick to product launch strategies you feel comfortable with and avoid taking a few risks. Where is the fun in that? Some of the biggest businesses in the world have grown because they took a chance and explored a wider range of strategies. A strong product launch can push a brand forward and increase sales substantially. At Your Favourite Story, we’ve worked with our clients to launch products for over 11 years. Our clients all have very different needs and customer bases, but each want to successfully market their product and ultimately make money.
- 3. Unfortunately, the Spray and Pray approach is still a very common launch strategy. It’s similar to the Big Bucks, Big Bang Launch however this launch method tends to last longer and generally be far more out of control both in terms of budgetary control and tracking approach. Marketing activity across many channels continues but marketing effectiveness is hardly measured in any way making this campaign very difficult to measure. Also, as this approach lasts for longer, it’s harder to see or attribute any campaign impact on sales. Is this approach good value for money? You will probably never know even though if set up correctly most marketing spend is highly trackable these days. But without enough evidence, you survive for another launch.
- 4. “we didn’t actually launch twitter at SXSW – SXSW just chose to blow it up. We launched it nine months before – to a whimper.”
- 5. Make or Break After all that investment in both time and money developing a new product, the launch can make or break the product.
- 6. To help relaunch Pepsi in 1996, Pepsi struck a deal with Air France to create a truly unique and inspirational marketing tool using one of only 20 Concorde aircraft in existence at the time. Founded in the late 1800’s, Pepsi’s distinct visual branding and packaging had changed several times over the years. But until this high-profile electric blue relaunch (in stark contrast to Coca-Cola’s distinctive red cans), their standard cans were a mix of red and blue. This unique paint job - taking over 2,000 hours of labour and costing over £150K - was completed at Paris Orly Airport. Under strict secrecy and under the cover of darkness, this aircraft was flown to London Gatwick where on the evening of 31st March 1996, it was revealed to press from over 40 countries. Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and tennis star Andre Agassi helped add glamour to the event. Wearing this special Pepsi branding, this aircraft toured another 10 cities across Europe and the Middle East before returning to its original Air France colour-scheme.
- 8. 1. Drip Feed Launch This is a great launch strategy where you already have a large fan base as you can whip up more excitement over a longer period of time by drip-feeding new content in the shape of rumours, stories or scandals. The press love this approach as it continues to create fresh content for them. With so much more content available, it even creates competition between each media outlet as each tries to publish the next piece of news first. In the case of music and film releases, the marketers behind the launch can even choose which media outlet they want to work with. This is normally based on the amount of exposure they could expect. Expect to see the latest blockbuster film being promoted on a national prime-time TV shows such as The Graham Norton Show.
- 9. 1. Drip Feed Launch The Deadpool marketing team went into overdrive exploiting the irreverent tone of the character across as many media platforms as possible
- 10. 2. Ground Swell Launch Instead of the hard job of trying to appeal to the masses in the hope that some segment will like and eventually buy your product, use your existing fans to promote the next new product in your range. Your unpaid sales army will be convincing and cost-effective if communicated to properly. Try and reward your loyal fans in some way – perhaps with exclusive news, sampling or even an event - but make sure it’s on brand with your brand.
- 11. 3. Big Bucks, Big Bang Launch Over a very short period, make a lot of noise quickly by trying to dominate as many channels as possible making it difficult for your audience to miss you (unless they are on holiday). It’s a known fact that repetition in advertising works, so with this approach, it’s all about making a big splash quickly. Apart from it also being annoying seeing the same advert repeatedly, this approach is expensive and therefore luckily for the viewers, it’s not sustainable. However if done right, you should see a spike in sales which could be attributed to this activity. For best results, try and theme your big bucks, big bang launch around a key seasonal event such as Halloween or Christmas. Call of Duty 11-11-13 Dominate a day
- 12. Chanel – $33 million (2004) Chanel No.5. created one of the most expensive commercials of all time. The ad spared no expense to highlight the lavish lifestyle and glamour of the Chanel brand within the 2 minute commercial. Starring Nicole Kidman and Rodrigo Santoro as two star-crossed lovers in New York city. 3. Big Bucks, Big Bang Launch
- 13. 3. Big Bucks, Big Bang Launch Honda Accord https://youtu.be/bl2U1p3fVRk The 2003 Honda Accord product launch campaign spared no expense – and included everything (literally). The advert took 606 attempts and cost £4m to produce. The commercial used every part of the Honda Accord to start a chain reaction.
- 14. 4. The Growth Hack Time to go a bit wild and test out various methods of marketing to find one that works best for your brand. Growth hacking is the process of experimenting across all channels of your marketing strategy to explore various growth methods. Many of these strategies are unconventional and can offer amazing results for businesses ballsy enough to attempt them. Big risk, big payback Dropbox used a sign up driven homepage to growth hack their company and increase signups and referrals. Hotmail’s “Get Your Free Email at Hotmail” Tagline
- 15. Airbnb Born out of the need to pay rent, Airbnb has revolutionised the bed and breakfast industry. Cashing in on the consumer need to find hotel space during busy seasons or for events, while not wanting to pay the price of a hotel room. The inventers set up a simple website to rent out their flat for a night for the reasonable price of $80. How did a simple room rental turn into a international rental service? Growth hacking, the inventors realised what they needed was more people like them willing to rent out their space, they turned to Craigslist to poach potential properties and grow their listings. As of spring 2014, the platform had 10 million guests and 550,000 properties listed worldwide 4. The Growth Hack
- 16. 5. The Shocker Launch This style of self-publicity during a launch phase is getting ever more popular and more advanced. It’s based on the Michael O’Leary approach of “No PR is bad PR”. However in 2016, Donald Trump took this to extremes to help him win the US presidential election. The idea is to say or do anything that the press then turn into headlines and associate to you. Your wider profile wins as the public become more familiar with your brand - in some cases regardless of what is said as in this principle, this is quickly forgotten. This is a high risk strategy that first needs careful consideration with perhaps a tad of science thrown in. The end result may strongly divide your audience. Just hold your majority over other brands.
- 17. Peta The animal rights activists take their marketing campaigns further than most brands, their shocking ads capture headlines not always for the best reasons. 5. The Shocker Launch
- 19. 6. The Big Event Launch Build hysteria about a product even before it’s launch by promoting its launch event. This has been perfected by Steve Jobs whenever he launched the latest Apple products. Rumours start first, then even before they know what the product is, the media start reporting on the launch of “something” soon to be launched. This increases FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) so more people start following the news and now need to find out more as the clock continues to count down to a very defined launch time and date. On the day, the launch can be further hyped with the help of charismatic speakers plus appropriate celebrities, and now with interest is so strong, the event could be streamed live so anyone worldwide can be the first to see and now want your new product. “The iPhone 3G sold over a million units on its launch weekend”
- 20. 6. The Big Event Launch Automotive companies love this launch approach initially launching at public motor shows, but now streaming technologies and more online followers, they can go self-sufficient
- 21. 7. Limited Supply Launch Create increased desire and demand for your product by either limiting production numbers or implying scarce supply. The human nature of people wanting what they can’t have kicks in thus helping speed up the sales process. Creating scarcity can be achieved in many ways such as restricting volume, restricting retail outlets or restricting opening hours. When you do open for sales, you should have a healthy queue. This technique is used well for major pop/rock concerts, book launches or for seasonal purchases such as the year’s hottest Christmas present. Ferrari are masters at understanding how many units they could sell and then producing one less to keep both demand and prices high.
- 22. 7. Limited Supply Launch
- 23. 8. Soft Launch For complicated products or where products need to be seen as first to market (not always the best tactic), soft launches are ideal. Like any product or organisation, continual development and improvement is essential, however with soft launches, this helps speed up development as it’s essential to listen to feedback from your end users and then respond through rapid communication and product enhancements making your product as good and as useful as you can. This launch approach is now a staple way of launching software as updates can quickly rolled out. Just be careful of damaging your brand as users can quickly find flaws and hackers can quickly find holes if you have rushed product testing.
- 24. Early Access Get in before the crowds do! Early access gaming is a funding method where consumers pay to play video games in early stages of development. This gives them a chance to test out Alpha/Beta versions of the game before it’s in a final version is created – these early access funds are often put towards the continued development of the game, players can give feedback and report any bugs to help speed production. This product launch method has seen great success for indie gamers who struggle to find funding. 8. Soft Launch
- 25. 9. Advertainment We have all become accustomed to advertising and now many people subconsciously filter out blatant attempts at advertising. However when advertising starts to offer something else such as entertainment, this starts to get interesting and can seamlessly bypass our mental blockers. The best advertainment is where the product becomes part of a bigger, more entertaining script. The product can then be shown in action allowing key product highlights to be demonstrated increasing the appeal of the product and without viewers feeling they are being sold too. With a strong story and loads of new content, this can be adapted to work well on TV, radio, web sites and even in DM if you’re still into that. The only downside is this can be quite expensive to pull off.
- 26. Red Bull Stratos Jump This out of the world experience by Red Bull takes a literal leap into the spotlight. Felix Baumgartner ascended to 128,100 feet in a stratospheric balloon, making a freefall jump from space (breaking the World Record), before parachuting to the ground. The jump was livestreamed on Red Bull’s website, the jump was watched live by over 8 million people. 9. Advertainment
- 28. 10. B2B Launch Sometimes you may not sell directly to your end users. In this case it is vital that your distributors are fully sold into your new product and can therefore sell it on properly to your end users. Ideally you want them to love your product so much your retailer recommends your product above other potentially similar products they may also sell. DEWALT As part of the launch activity around their new XR Flexvolt product range, DEWALT put on a massive event in Barcelona for their independent retailers allowing them to hear, see and experience the new range while also having a fun day
- 29. DEWALT The XR Flexvolt product launch included a new website dedicated to the new range, but instead of focussing just on the tools, the site featured videos of real tradesmen/women using the tools and explaining why the tools are so good. Rolled out across 13 markets, the http://futurejobsite.dewalt.co.uk was created by Your Favourite Story
- 30. The product launch experts www.yourfavouritestory.com 0845 456 6042 5th Floor, 6 Corbet Place London E1 6NH Want more? Download our eBook for 22 types of product launches or contact us for one on one guidance for your next product launch.
Editor's Notes
- Deadpool Released on February 12, 2016 The launch of the Deadpool film starring Ryan Reynolds used good old fashioned billboards. Perhaps not unusual by itself, but for this launch, the marketing team went into overdrive exploiting the irreverent tone of the character across as many media platforms as possible. They created everything from custom emojis and new Tinder profiles, to fake Facebook clickbait gags such as ‘43 Secrets the Internet Will Never Tell You About Kittens’ and email campaigns such as ‘Twelve Days of Deadpool’. Building on the personality of the film, the biggest weapon was Ryan Reynolds himself. He single-handedly ran away with the character across social media; tweeting as Deadpool himself and answering fan’s questions to posting images of the movies script annotated by Deadpool. He even attended Deadpool Beauty Pageants.
- Heinz reaches 11m people and adds 30k fans with Facebook product launch Heinz called on its Facebook community to help promote new variations on its Ketchup and soup products. Launch of its latest Five Beanz product. The Heinz Beanz Facebook page has a highly engaged community of 150,000 fans that call themselves the Beaniez, with some even posting photos of their Heinz tattoos. fans use the page for fun and entertainment, so the brand responds to that with light hearted content such as games and quizzes. The Five Beanz product was created to reflect the fact that people’s tastes change as they get older, so the campaign was named ‘My Grown Up Beanz’. It launched a Facebook quiz app that told people which of the five beans they had grown up to become in response to a series of questions about their personality traits. The idea was to get people excited about the product but also to tie into above-the-line marketing. To encourage people to take part and share the app, five winners were picked every hour and sent a personalised bean and every user that invited 10 people to take the quiz was given a goodie bag. Heinz also offered Facebook fans a coupon so they could try the product, but to try and prevent people from downloading loads of coupons each voucher was tied to a Facebook ID. This also gave Heinz some data on the shopping habits of its fans. The campaign ran for two weeks and achieved impressive results: • 22,143 took the quiz to apply for a personalised bean. •More than 10,000 users shared the app. •The campaign reached 10.8m people on Facebook. •It reached 3m people reached outside of Facebook through Twitter, blogs and news sites. •The Heinz Facebook community grew by 30,000 extra Beaniez. It’s not easy for FMCG companies to generate excitement among consumers around product launches, but Heinz are in the fortunate position of having well-established brands with loyal customer bases. Heinz have also taken time to cultivate active communities by engaging and rewarding them through social media. This allows them to then run campaigns such as the Five Beanz launch, which both increased customer loyalty and helped to gain extra publicity for the brand.
- Dominate a day: Call of Duty is one of the largest video game franchises in the world. Their marketing strategies are big, noisy and definitely demand the attention.
- Chanel – $33 million (2004) Chanel No.5. created one of the most expensive commercials of all time. The ad spared no expense to highlight the lavish lifestyle and glamour of the Chanel brand within the 2 minute commercial. Starring Nicole Kidman and Rodrigo Santoro as two star-crossed lovers in New York city. Reportedly Nicole was paid $3 million for starring in the ad – not a bad paycheck.
- Honda Accord The 2003 Honda Accord product launch campaign could have gone very very wrong in fact the advert took 606 attempts to compete, and cost the company £4 million to produce, imagine how expensive it could have been.
- Both Hotmail and Dropbox have used growth hacking methods to grow their business. Hotmail created a memorable tagline “Get Your Free Email at Hotmail” and urged members to invite friends to use the service. Dropbox had a similar idea rewarding referrals and creating a sign up driven homepage to increase users.
- Born out of the need to pay rent, designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea to rent out their San Francisco apartment. Promising a home-cooked breakfast in the morning and three air mattresses on the floor to guests interested in staying the weekend. The two decided against posting on Craigslist because it felt too impersonal – instead the pair chose to build their own site. This was 2007 – fast forward and Airbnb is one of the largest hotel alternatives world-wide. As of spring 2014, the platform had 10 million guests and 550,000 properties listed worldwide, along with a $10B valuation How did they do this? Growth hacking and a lot of determination. Growth hacking methods: In 2008, the founders needed a way to raise money to continue growing Airbnb. Playfully using the American election as inspiration they bought a ton of cereal and designed special edition election-themed boxes. Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s, which they sold at convention parties for $40 a box. They sold 500 boxes of each cereal, helping them to raise around $30k. This wasn’t their only method of growth hacking – famously they used the large user base on Craigslist to their advantage…. Not always in the most ethical of ways. The most famous growth hack from Airbnb is the Craigslist poaching – the founders realised the best chance for them to grow would come from more people adding their apartments to the website world wide. Using a bot the company sent out emails to people who posted on Craigslist urging them to check out Airbnb. This growth hacking method grew Airbnb substantially and although spammy did the trick and made them the business they are today.
- Peta are masters of shock! They like to get a response even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. Many of the ads tend to feature a lot of gory images, nude models and challenging opinions (calling a dog Hitler isn’t a positive).
- When it comes to big event product launches, Steve Jobs perfected the formula. Often teasing before a launch and altering the media that a product will soon be available without giving away key details. The iPhone 3G sold over a million units on its launch weekend.
- Car brands are notorious for using big event launches to captivate an audience, thanks to online streaming, anyone can be a part of the big unveil. These online viewers are important to generate conversation about a new product and ultimately grow the hype for the product.
- Amazon are masters at promoting limited time offers and showing when stock is running low – this mentally pushes a buyer closer to purchase as they don’t want to miss out. Musicians do this quite often, planning new merchandise around holidays seasons and offering limited editions/quantity and online only exclusives to interest fans into purchasing.
- Battlefield 1, Star Wars Battlefront and Tom Clancy’s the Division are just a few of the video game titles who use early access funding techniques to launch their video games. Fans get a first look at the early development of their favourite games while helping fund the next level of production. Indie game developers have been using this method to bring extra funding to their productions and find new audiences for their games.
- This out of the world experience by Red Bull takes a literal leap into the spotlight. Felix Baumgartner ascended to 128,100 feet in a stratospheric balloon, making a freefall jump from space (breaking the World Record), before parachuting to the ground. The jump was livestreamed on Red Bull’s website; the jump was watched live by over 8 million people.