Chapter 10
IN THIS CHAPTER
Drafting your plan of action
Choosing the optimal time to launch your brand
Recruiting the press for some free publicity
Increasing your brand’s chances of going viral
The process of launching your brand is where all your preparation finally comes together and the rubber meets the road. You have a clear vision of your brand’s identity, what makes it special, and a clear sense of purpose; you know your audience; and you have a solid brand style guide, an Internet presence, and an email account. All systems go. You’re ready to launch.
All you need now is a flight plan that leads you through the process. In this chapter, you get the information and guidance you need to develop that flight plan.
Planning your launch campaign involves figuring out what to do, when to do it, how much money to invest in it, and how you’re going to measure progress and success. In this section, I lead you through the process of planning your launch campaign. In short, that process goes like this:
When I talk about where to launch, I’m referring to both online and physical venues or locations — wherever you choose to make a big splash and generate buzz. Online and physical locations may include one or more of the following:
One or more pop-up stores (see Chapter 11).
If you’re launching in a physical location, carefully consider where you’ll get the most foot traffic, especially people who are most likely to be interested in your brand.
https://www.etsy.com
). Although you won’t have your own domain, you can create a shop and open it to millions of customers in Etsy’s network.https://www.kickstarter.com
). What does fundraising have to do with branding? If you have a great idea, your fundraising effort can serve as a very effective marketing tool.https://www.apbspeakers.com
) or social media influencer directory, such as Find My Influencer (https://www.findmyinfluencer.com
), if you’re launching a personal brand.Whenever you launch or relaunch your brand or launch any marketing campaign, for that matter, confirm your key target audiences. In Chapter 5, I guide you through the process of defining one or more customer avatars — each a composite of all the people in one of your target markets. Do those avatars still represent the people in your target markets? If they don’t, now is the time to make adjustments. If they do, great; have everyone on your team study them again so you all have a clear idea of who you’re reaching out to.
Launching a brand sounds so easy. After all, it merely involves announcing your brand to the world — or to the small part of the world you’re reaching out to. It starts to get complicated when you ask yourself “How?” What specifically are you going to do to promote your brand during your launch?
The answer to that question depends on several factors, including the brand type (product brand, personal brand, and so on), the product or service you’re selling, your target audiences, and your budget and resources. If you’re launching a personal brand to market yourself as a consultant, you’ll need to build a website and a social media presence, write blog posts and articles, establish media contacts, network with decision-makers, and pursue relevant speaking engagements. If you’re launching a product brand, you’ll need to build an online store, establish a social media presence, write and distribute a press release, send product samples to influencers, and so on.
Make a comprehensive to-do list of specific things you need to do to launch your brand. Here’s a list of ideas to get your creative juices flowing (the good news is that you don’t have to do all of them):
Create the marketing materials you need, such as advertisements, signs, posters, banners, brochures, postcards, business cards, case studies, sales sheets, testimonials, flyers, loyalty cards, branded shirts, and promotional items (branded pens, mugs, keychains, and so on).
Give yourself plenty of lead time for designs, edits, approval, and printing (if necessary). See “Creating a launch calendar” later in this chapter for details.
Advertise in traditional media — newspapers, magazines, television, and radio.
You can create local, regional, or national ad campaigns depending on the distribution and availability of your products and services.
What’s the tenth biggest reasons why startup fail? Poor timing, according to a recent survey conducted by the Small Business Administration. Introduce your product or service too early, when customers aren’t ready for it, and you won’t make a splash. Introduce it too late, and your competitors may beat you to the punch. This statistic applies only to innovative product or service brands, but even so, when you’re launching any brand, timing can dramatically affect your success.
When you’re deciding on a launch date, consider the following factors:
To find holidays and observances relevant to your brand, search the web for the product/service type that best represents your brand followed by “holidays and observances” or search for “holidays and observances” and browse through the lists that turn up. You can also look up the best season for your product through Google.
When you have a comprehensive to-do list and a launch date, you’re ready to schedule launch activities, assign them to the responsible person (or people), and backdate them. Backdating is the practice of setting milestones on dates earlier than the date a project needs to be completed so that time is available to complete the project. If one of your activities is to deliver in-store demonstrations, you set the dates for those demonstrations and then set earlier dates to allow time to prepare for them.
You can use project-planning or collaboration software such as Google Workspace (https://workspace.google.com
), an online calendar such as Google Calendar (https://calendar.google.com
), a traditional day planner or 12-month calendar, or a table to create your launch calendar. Be sure to include the following details:
A great way to encourage your target audiences to participate in your brand launch is to offer an incentive, such as the following:
Swag, such as free branded T-shirts, baseball caps, keychains, refrigerator magnets, pens, or water bottles. If you’re opening a new gym, you can offer a free bag with a branded water bottle and gym towel, a protein bar, and a coupon for a free month’s membership.
Several online businesses specialize in manufacturing and selling branded promotional merchandise, such as Swag.com (https://swag.com
) and DiscountMugs (https://www.discountmugs.com
). You can also order swag in more general marketplaces, such as Etsy (https://www.etsy.com
) and Zazzle (https://www.zazzle.com
). Search the site for something along the lines of “promotional items with logo.”
Imagine what you would want if you were one of your brand’s customers. What would be valuable enough to you to make an initial purchase and tell all your friends about this great promotional offer?
Before launching your brand, identify which metrics to use to measure the success or impact of each activity and your overall brand launch. If you’re relaunching a brand, include prelaunch benchmarks for each metric to compare your brand’s prelaunch status with its postlaunch status. You may even want to compare your postlaunch metrics with your prelaunch benchmarks at certain intervals, such as one week, two weeks, and four weeks after launch.
Here are a few metrics you may want to track:
https://analytics.withgoogle.com
) or a similar website data collection and analysis tool to track the impact of your launch on the number of visits to your website.Press coverage: Set up a Google news alert for your brand name to receive email alerts whenever your brand is mentioned in the news. To set up an alert, go to https://www.google.com/alerts
, type your brand name in the box near the top of the page, and click the Create Alert button.
If you reached out to any specific media outlets or journalists, follow up after your launch to see whether they posted anything. If so, get the link to the post so you can share it on your website, blog, and social media accounts. You may also want to take a screen shot of the piece to use in your marketing efforts. See “Tapping the Power of the Press to Launch Your Brand” later in this chapter for more about working with the press.
These metrics provide a good general indication of your brand launch success. More difficult metrics to track include brand consideration, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. See Chapter 4 for more about monitoring these and other metrics.
Using the to-do list you created (refer to “Creating a to-do list” earlier in this chapter), create a budget for your brand launch. I recommend using a spreadsheet application or a budget template in the personal or business finance program you use so it can handle the calculations for you.
Here are some of the expenses you may want to include in your budget:
Launch party: Venue, food, beverages, music, and fun stuff (video, mascot, prize drawing)
If you’re building partnerships with other brands that have deeper pockets, consider asking them to sponsor your launch party.
Perhaps the most important phase of any brand launch is the internal brand launch, when you reveal your brand to everyone in your organization. A successful internal launch generates the organizationwide buy-in necessary for a successful external launch.
Your internal launch should be fun and engaging, but it needs to get down to business too. The purpose is to build support and enthusiasm for the brand while overcoming any internal resistance to it. Sometime during the business portion of your internal launch, take the following steps:
Reveal your brand identity.
Show your logo and slogan, and explain what they represent.
Introduce your brand promise.
Your brand promise reflects what you promise to deliver to customers. It’s why customers will choose your brand over other options (and customers always have other options).
Give every member of your team a quality branded gift.
Gifts may include polo shirts with your brand’s logo, pens, notebooks, and so on. Gifts don’t have to be expensive, but they should be high-quality items reflecting the quality you expect from everyone in your organization.
Ask everyone in your organization to embrace the brand and become brand ambassadors.
Emphasize the importance of not just talking the talk, but also walking the walk. Everything employees do at work and even away from work, everything they say about the brand, and everything they post about it on their social media accounts must reinforce the brand’s identity and promise in a positive way.
The press is powerful, but it’s also needy: It thrives or dies on the news it reports. Every journalist loves a great story. If you can deliver a compelling brand story, reporters and their readers will eat it up. You’ll get lots of free press and additional content to talk about, blog about, and post to your social media accounts.
In this section, I explain how to attract members of the press and get them excited about your brand, but first you must tackle the question of whether to outsource press contact to a public relations (PR) firm or consultant or handle that job internally.
A PR firm or consultant can be a powerful asset when you’re trying to get press coverage because they have (or at least should have) solid relationships with members of the press and know how to pitch a story. A skilled PR firm or consultant can get you relevant press coverage for your target demographic, assist you in your launch campaign, and save you considerable time.
Unfortunately, they can cost you a considerable amount of money too. As with most things in marketing, you have a choice to make: Do you want to spend the time or the money? If you’re a small-time operation, you probably have no choice but to do the work yourself. If you’re a midsize operation, hiring a PR firm may be the best choice. And if you’re a large firm, you may have the resources to hire a dedicated PR person or team.
If you don’t have any glowing references for a PR firm or consultant to contact, start by researching brands in the same industry as yours, and visit their websites to find out who they use as their press contact.
If you decide to serve as your own PR specialist, keep reading for additional guidance.
When you’re acting as your own PR person, your first order of business is creating a list of journalists and influencers you want to reach out to. You want a long list, of course, but limit it to relevant people — those who serve the audiences you’re targeting.
Start your list with journalists and influencers you already have in mind, such as journalists from magazines and blogs you read, and active, influential members of the social media communities you belong to. Then add to the list as you encounter more people who meet your criteria. Searching the web for magazines, blogs, and newsletters that people in your audience are likely to read may also turn up some useful leads.
When you’re preparing to launch your brand, create a hit list for the journalists and influencers you want to contact so you can keep track of your communications (see Figure 10-1).
Organizations and people send out press releases to announce anything newsworthy that members of the press may want to write about. A press release is a necessity for any brand launch. You want as much free press as you can get (ideally, mostly positive), and sending out a press release is one of the best ways to get it.
In Chapter 8, I provide some basic guidelines for writing a press release. In this section, I offer additional suggestions specifically for brand launch press releases.
When creating your press release, include the seven essential elements below:
A press release is worthless if nobody reads it. Most press releases land in the cluttered Inboxes of overworked journalists. You need to give them a compelling reason to open your press release and read it. The key is to get creative with the Subject line of your email message and the headline in your press release. Here are a few examples of compelling headlines:
Why Dollar Shave Club Co-Founder Michael Dubin No Longer Believes in DTC
— Dollar Shave Club
This Out-of-Home Campaign Wants to Make You Think About How You’re Feeling
— MadHappy
NYC’s Trendiest Salon Launched the Coolest Summer Nail Art
— ChillHouse
Every business on the planet wants its brand launch to go viral and bring in a rush of customers, followers, and brand ambassadors. You can’t do that with traditional marketing — highlighting the features and benefits of what you’re selling and trying to convince your audience that what you offer is better, faster, or cheaper than what’s already available. You do it by creating content that people feel overwhelmingly compelled to share with everyone they know.
“What kind of content is that?” you ask. It’s the kind of content that meets one of the following three criteria:
https://twitter.com/Oreo/status/298246571718483968
). Twitter users couldn’t believe the speed and cleverness of the ad and quickly retweeted it.Here are a few suggestions for creating a viral marketing campaign: