Product Launch Marketing:
A Complete Go-to-Market Plan
Introduction
Welcome to our Product Launch Marketing: Complete Go-to-Market Plan. This guide outlines our strategic approach to effectively introduce our new product to the market. It covers key aspects such as target audience identification, value proposition development, messaging framework, and demand generation tactics to ensure a successful launch and sustained growth.
1. TARGET AUDIENCE
Who are you trying to target?
How do you identify and segment your target audience?
How do you know if you're at product / market fit?
2. VALUE PROPOSITIONS
Understanding core components of a value proposition: competitive advantage, positioning, unique selling proposition, and value
Calculating product value with math
Defining value propositions without math
3. MESSAGING
6-step progress for building your messaging framework
Copywriting: how to do it + 4 tips to do it well
4. GO TO MARKET TEAM
Who's involved in bringing a product to market?
Choosing a team that suits your strategy
Defining success metrics for your team
5. DEMAND GENERATION
2 models for demand generation
An example of a demand gen campaign
7 common demand gen tactics
6. THE MARKETING MIX
Calculating the marketing mix
Building your marketing mix
7. PRICE
The basics of value-based pricing
4 common pricing tactics
Let's start.
TARGETING
WHO YOU TARGET
This is all about the WHO of your go to market strategy-how to select your audience, what to look for in a good target audience, and how to link your audience to your overarching go to market goals.
1
How to set the business goal that your target audience is going to help you achieve?
2
The role that supply and demand plays in target audience definition.
3
Common B2B / B2C segmentation tactics and strategies.
4
How to size your market?
Before you select an audience, set a clear numeric goal
The entire point of a strategy is that it's a means of achieving an objective.
Without an objective, your go to market strategy is aimless.
Starting with a strategy is a recipe for disaster!
When I worked at one B2B SaaS company, I had identified the perfect target customer for a new product. It was a match-made-in-heaven. The needs of the customer aligned perfectly with what the product delivered. The strategy was perfect! But there was just one HUGE problem: the customer segment was just too darn small. Even if I sold the product to every single member of that segment, it would barely have made a financial dent. You must have a goal, such as a clear financial objective, before you have a strategy. In my case, my goal required an imperfect strategy (i.e. pursuing an imperfect target customer) because the goal was more important.
Pick your target customer
STRATEGIC MISTAKES
Cascade through everything, and usually, a poor strategic decision results in tactics that don't work, no matter what your budget.
FIRST STRATEGIC DECISION
Usually gets made is choosing a target customer.
If you choose the right customer, then you have a larger margin for error when it comes to executing your campaign.
Scenario 1
NO DEMAND
First, you have a product where there truly is not enough demand to support the primary goal.
Let's say you're launching a new pet insurance product specifically for retired racing greyhounds.
You can probably create a value proposition and messaging that's hyper-relevant to your target customers.
2 million retired greyhounds
You need 4 million to achieve profitability.
While your product might be great, there just isn't enough demand there to make the product work.
You need to pivot to serve a larger target audience.
Scenario 2
NO DEMAND… YET
Currently, there's no market for their solution, but the potential market is huge, and they're going to crack it wide open.
This is called category creation and, if executed correctly, it can be extremely effective.
You tend to get first mover advantage and all the perks that come with that, including brand awareness, thought leadership, and zero competitors.
CATEGORY CREATION is extremely difficult.
There are years of zero or no profit and revenue, and you are usually required to spend huge sums of money on demand creation.
Only then can you start the process of demand generation and start to see returns on your marketing spend.
Category creation is a long-haul play.
If your product isn't sufficiently unique, you may find that your years of creating demand can be stolen by a newer, faster-moving competitor who swoops in once you've done the hard yards of category creation.
Scenario 3
A LOT OF DEMAND… BUT A LOT MORE SUPPLY
CHOOSING A TARGET MARKET
This is more involved than simply finding the ideal buyer. It requires studying the overall market and determining whether that is a space in which you want to participate.
A particular market may seem unattractive because it has a lot of competitors, but if you happen to have collaborators with a lot of clout in that market, then it could be strategically.
Segmentation
WHO'S GOING TO BUY THIS?
There are dozens of different ways to define your target audience. Which strategy you choose will depend on your specific circumstances, but here are some tactics you can use to define your ideal client profile, or ICP:
1
Firmographically:
In business-to-business marketing, it is common to divide customers based on their industry, because in this case your 'customer' is actually an entire business.
2
Behaviourally:
That is, you divide customers based on certain behaviours such as how much money they spend or how much time they spend using your product. It is very important to focus on your most profitable segments.
3
Motivationally:
Overall, we would say that the best approach to segmentation is motivational. That is, you separate your customers based on their motivations for using your product.
4
Demographically:
Segmenting based on demographic information like gender and age.
These approaches to segmentation are not mutually exclusive. You can actually combine them or use different ones for different purposes-one for strategy and another for media buying.
VALUE PROPOSITION
The Value Proposition
VALUE PROPOSITION fundamental component of your marketing strategy.
It's an internal tool that will help focus your marketing on the value you bring to solve specific pains for your specific audience.
Good value proposition should be made up of 3 different components:
Competitive Advantage
Positioning
USP
Unique Selling Proposition
This is the single reason that sets you apart from both the competition in your category and from the next-best alternative. It should be a combination of a critical feature set, the benefit that the customer gets, and how that relates to the pain you solve for.
They difference is that your USP is highly specific. It's a single feature / feature set that sets you apart from everyone else.
Positioning
The choice about which aspect of your product you're going to focus on to add the most value to your target audience.
This is who we are and how we help.
If you don't want this, then our product is not for you.
1
Positioning is critical
2
Positioning often feels like it should be obvious, but it rarely is.
3
Positioning is as much about saying what you're not as what you are.
4
Every product is positioned.
Value: How customers benefit
Value is the dollar amount that customers get back when they buy your product.
$100
Product
$500
Customer Saves
$400
Your Value
Value is something that you actually calculate.
Saving people thousands of dollars or reducing their order processing time by 1 minute.
If your product doesn't actually save your customers money it may still save them theoretical money.
Calculating Product Value
1
Identify the cost of doing nothing
2
Calculate the cost + benefit
3
Look at your own product
What's the cost of your product? What sort of return can your customers expect to get?
REMEMBER:
There are a few different ways that a company can offer value-cost saving is by no means the only one.
Why bother calculating value?
Many marketers rely on messaging to drive value, focusing on what customers want to hear rather than focusing on where the product adds value.
A bit of math can help you to quantify the value that your product creates in your target market.
What to do if you can't calculate value?
Math is undoubtedly your friend when it comes to value propositions.
But there are a raft of products that provide significant value that can't be calculated easily.
The customer the dollar value is the calories and enjoyment they're getting at a low price.
The value it provides its customers is cool. It creates and markets an image of what a coke-drinker is, then sells the drink as the path to achieving the image they've created.
Your value proposition does not need to be unique
They don't always need to be unique!
You don't always need to emphasize how unique your product is.
Your buyer probably doesn't care what makes your product unique-they just want something reliable at a reasonable price.
In this case,
Emphasizing uniqueness is a waste of time.
MESSAGING
What to say and how to say it
MESSAGING is how you tell the world about your product.
WHY SHOULD I BUY THIS?
It bridges the gap between:
1
Positioning
2
Demand Generation or Advertising
Great Messaging:
1
Tells your target audience what you do and why they should buy you.
2
Uses the language your target audience uses.
3
Surfaces the problem your audience has, and drives action to solve it.
4
Communicates the value you provide.
Your messaging framework should also work to positively build your brand equity.
One question I get a lot is:
"Why bother with all of this? Our sales team knows what to say and who to say it, too!"
Keep your product and your company moving in lock-step towards your objective, you need to keep everyone on message, all the time.
MESSAGING FRAMEWORK is the best tool to do that.
If your MESSAGING FRAMEWORK helps you to work out what to say
COPYWRITING is all about figuring out how to say it.
Building your Marketing Framework
It can effectively be broken down into 6 manageable steps:
1
Find the features your audience cares about.
2
Find the advantage of your selected features.
3
Link your advantages to value.
4
Group the benefits you offer by themes.
5
Map values to personas and build use cases.
6
Build the framework.
1. Find the features your audience cares about
Product Features:
A black stand
A power cord
Plug and play software
A remote
4k resolution
You should have a refined features list of things your product does that your audience actually cares about.
There are a few ways to get this information:
1
Talk to your existing customers (if any) about what features they love about your product or competing products.
2
Review old support logs or call transcripts. Are there consistent requests to address a problem that your new product solves?
3
Talk to your product owners. Why did they recommend building a feature in the first place?
2. Find the advantages of your selected features.
An advantage is why you included a specific feature.
3. Link your advantages to your value.
People don't buy features or advantages, they buy the VALUE, or benefit, that they get from your product.
VALUE → the "so what" of your product features and advantages.
If you can clearly communicate the value of your product-and do it in the language of your target audience—you're legions ahead of most go to market teams.
The result is that most teams go to market with features and advantages, and make the consumer create the value themselves.
By forcing yourself to clearly delineate between advantages and value, you can chip away at your product to get to the core reason that someone would buy it.
How do you make this important distinction between advantages and value?
FEATURE
What does the product do?
ADVANTAGES
What's the advantage to your audience?
VALUES
Why does your audience care?
COPYWRITING is about communicating the value of your product, to your audience, as clearly as possible in a way that compels action.
1. Speak directly to the buyer—and do it conversationally.
"YOU"
"YOUR"
3 Guidelines you should follow:
1
Use a conversational tone.
"such as" "like"
2
Write in the second person, as though you are speaking directly to the buyer.
"Automate your accounting," is better than "Automation for accounting."
3
Witty, brief headlines usually aren't effective—keep it straightforward.
In general:
It's better to just get to the core of how your product creates value. You can do this by focusing on the outcomes that the customer wants.
GO TO MARKET TEAM
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Who needs to get involved?
GOING TO MARKET is a team sport.
There might technically be a go to market "owner.
Go to market teams are made up of everyone who touches the customer throughout the customer lifecycle:
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Customer success or support.
Marketing
Often leads the go to market strategy because they have so much influence early on (as you might have noticed.)
Marketing covers most of the stages of go to market strategy that we've covered so far.
Marketing teams are also well-positioned to lead the go to market strategy because they connect product, sales, and customer success.
Sales
Sales is responsible for one thing:
CLOSING BUSINESS
How you approach sales with your go to market team depends on your average contract value (ACV).
Why?
Because sales means headcount—the most expensive part of any go to market strategy.
DEMAND GENERATION
How to build demand for your product
DEMAND GENERATION
All about getting the right people to put up their hands and say,
"I'd like to talk to a salesperson about your product / service."
Especially critical in the B2B world.
1
Every deal is worth more (and you can therefore spend a lot more money acquiring each customer)
2
Buying is a long, drawn out, and collaborative process involving lots of moving parts and different people.
The Demand-Generation Process
Awareness
The stage when customers don't know who you are or what you do to turn leads into closed business.
Common tactics and channels here include blogging and SEO, and brand awareness campaigns where the focus is simply to get your name in front of target customers.
Consideration
Consideration is when they're looking at different vendors, and are considering you as a potential solution.
For some businesses,
This is when you put them in touch with a sales team.
For some organizations,
This is when you continue to promote content, but content that requires a bigger time commitment from your prospects.
Conversion
Conversion is when prospective customers are looking at your specific solution, and are evaluating you in a lot more detail.
Key assets include:
  • Product and pricing pages
  • Free trials
  • Ecommerce purchasing.
Keep your content customer-centric
It can be tempting to create content from your perspective, rather than from the perspective of your customers. For instance, it's fairly easy to break your content up into sections based on key product features.
They don't spend every day obsessing over your product and its capabilities. Instead, they are spending their time worrying about things like how to grow their business, speed up their process, or stop customers from leaving.
It is a good idea to organize your content from the top-down, beginning with customer pain points and aspirations
"Reduce inventory carrying costs."
PRICING
Align your price with the value you create, not the cost of the value you create
You're price should not be a function of cost.
It should be a function of the value you create.
Would you only charge that company for a day's worth of work?
No.
It shouldn't be a major factor on the final sale (other than to set a basement value).
Anchor your price to something more expensive
There are two vastly different pricing approaches you could use here:
Charge a price similar to other SaaS products that your target purchases ($120/month).
Charge half the price of the employee's wage ($1,500/month).
You just saved them $1,500 per month!
Price Discriminate
People should pay for what they use (or more precisely, for the value they receive).
That's why it's important to charge people differently based on their needs.
Create Demand.
Capture Revenue.
Scale Profitably.
Schedule a strategy session to start growing demand with T.A.Monroe
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