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Artefact Team
Creative Graphic Design
Dublin, Ireland

Launching

Launching your new product/service is the most exciting and, at the same time, most nerve wracking, part of the whole marketing process. All the work you've done developing that product, that program, that website, that whatever. Now you've got to parade it in public, await the judgement of the market, succeed or fail gloriously or - for most - begin a long and arduous struggle. Not for the faint hearted. The biggest difficulty about launching a new business or product is getting attention. If you open a retail store on the high street the market is walking up and down outside your front door from day one, and it's a local market so the local TV or newspapers can be called upon (or time/space bought) to get you noticed.

Putting up a website, on the other hand, is like dropping a grain of sand on the beach. To make it stand out and get noticed takes a lot of work. Fortunately, you don't need to be noticed by everybody unless your site is one of these whose 'product' is getting in vast amounts of traffic so as to sell advertising, and even then you can't appeal to everyone. You could waste a lot of time and effort drawing meaningless traffic to your site. Now is when you begin to reap the rewards of having worked on environmental scanning, market research, positioning and so on. You launch by communicating the availability of your product/service to your target market. If the market is local, advertising through traditional popular media , press interviews, a grand opening or other launch event may be options. For most online businesses, though, the net is being cast much wider so that localised publicity may be a waste of time and money. For such businesses the product launch is not about making a sudden impact - it's a slow burn. You gradually get the word out, building relevant traffic on your site, judiciously using free advertising - paying where it makes sense, maybe joining advertising networks, swapping links, climbing the search engine rankings, visiting the relevant newsgroups, cutting out those activities that are not paying off, and redoubling the effort directed at those that are paying off.

Don't confuse the splash and impact associated with a launch with success. Often executives are happier to spend large sums advertising in national newspapers which they themselves read ( thus getting a false comfort that the company/product is getting a great public airing) than to spend relatively modest amounts on targeted advertising which would hit their target market much more effectively. The launch often feels like the end of a process but if it is, it's also the beginning of the process that really matters, so do not be taken in by show, do not be discouraged by small beginnings and keep your eye on the details that matter. As a famous golfer once remarked, you drive for show but you put for dough!

The launch may be phased. If there is a likelihood that there are bugs to be ironed out, you might consider a pilot launch in advance of your main launch. This would in effect be a limited trial run to test the product performance, the demand, the reaction, the FAQs, the problems encountered, the distribution system and so on.