One of the most vital pieces of a successful product or service launch is crafting a robust marketing campaign that efficiently educates new audiences about your brand while simultaneously driving sales conversions. That last part is critical. If sales and marketing aren’t directly aligned, marketing initiatives waste time and money.
For consumers to feel confident in their decision to purchase your cutting-edge technologies or adopt your solutions, it’s imperative that they perceive you as an authority in your space. Authority is a demonstrable knowledge of the domain your company operates in. Some of the most successful content pieces are educational in nature: A podcast featuring industry leaders discussing data repatriation or a comprehensive guide on how to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in tech. It may seem counterproductive to pour time and energy into creating content that isn’t a “hard sell” of your new product, but that’s just not the case.
As you release various series and pieces that showcase your wealth of knowledge on industry topics, your brand becomes synonymous with comprehension of current standards. Who would you rather book a consultation with – a company that states they know how to help your organization or a company that actually shows it? The article you’re reading at this very moment is a textbook illustration of how to use this type of content to build brand awareness.
Key Takeaway: Don’t underestimate the power of authority content. While most content is designed to drive brand awareness or a sales initiative, authority content is designed to demonstrate expertise, relevance, and knowledge.
All too often organizations will overhype and quite frankly oversell their solutions when creating content pieces to market their technology. We’ve all seen how selling vaporware to end users can quickly turn a team of developers into an unhappy bunch – the same is true for promoting your product/service launch to your network. It’s critical that there aren’t any unwanted surprises waiting for your clients as they flow through your sales funnel. For example, if your social media posts state that your new software program can make communities safer, make sure you have the data and evidence to back that up. If there’s no actual substance behind your messaging, you’re a big part of the problem and your Go-To-Market (GTM) campaign will reflect that.
We’ve all experienced extreme frustration when a product we’ve purchased online arrives and looks nothing like the description – so scrutinize all claims and advertising you are circulating when crafting these campaigns and squash any misleading or disingenuous claims now. Creating false hopes will not only damage your brand’s reputation, but it’s a surefire way to eliminate any chance of repeat customers.
Key Takeaway: Foster an environment where marketing and sales teams can question claims and publish only the ones that can be validated and supported.
SEO optimization is a beast in and of itself, but we’ll just scratch the surface by saying that your content needs to fully utilize the impact of current trends. If you’re still publishing YouTube videos about how to convert your company’s operations to cloud computing, you’re too late to the game. Once something has already become an infamous buzzword, it’s lost nearly all value and the consumers of your content are probably scanning their screen for the unsubscribe button. Your followers aren’t foolish: they know when you’re just pushing irrelevant content out to jump on the bandwagon. Double down early on the trends that your organization is well-versed in and create collateral that fits right in with your GTM strategy.
When you’re launching a new product, chances are there’s some piece of innovation baked into it. Leverage the influence that comes along with that and tap into keywords and content that are just becoming part of the conversation within the industry. When you get in on the ground level of cutting-edge technology, you’ll be amazed at the response and engagement that surrounds your Go-To-Market campaign. People are always searching for that “next big thing”, and it’s crucial that you be the one to deliver it. This suggestion may seem like a fundamental to anyone in the marketing space, but it’s so often overlooked in the chaos that comes with getting a new creation out the door and in front of the consumer. Take the time to go through your campaign and adjust titles, metadata descriptions, keywords, and other pieces of your content that will help capture the attention of new users who stumble across your launch.
Key Takeaway: Words matter. Focus on ensuring you’re hitting the right terminology for the current trends and positioning your product in the places where innovation is occurring.
The copy and language that is used across your GTM promotional campaign may be the single most important piece of the puzzle – and it is way too easy to get it wrong. Your social media posts, press releases, YouTube descriptions, and messaging across the board must build excitement about your product while subtly encouraging the reader to engage with the particular Call-to-Action (CTA). Achieving the perfect messaging is a balancing act, and there’s so much to keep in mind. This is such a substantial topic that HP’s Tiffany Grant King joined Continuum CEO Sabrina Shafer for a full discussion on speaking with purpose, as it turns out that research shows listeners can only absorb 20-40% of what is said.
Any collateral that is primarily text-based needs to contain enough copy to educate about the new product but not so much copy that it quickly becomes a “TLDR” in someone’s feed. Do the research on the platforms you primarily push content to – you’ll be shocked at how many studies have been conducted to find the sweet spot for text length, number of hashtags, etc. Each platform has its own audience with their own consumption preferences.
One of the other key factors in creating useful promotional materials is making sure that your copy is something that genuinely connects with the targeted audience. Oftentimes, marketers will ask the engineers or developers for a detailed description of the new technology’s features and use this as the foundation for the copy used throughout the campaign. This is a completely viable method if your target audience is the engineering division or developer team of a company, but if you are looking to reach C-Suite executives, this will rarely ever work. Each audience has different language that they look for, and it’s important to cater to that. If there’s someone within your own organization that is comparable to your ideal customer image, ask them to create a sample of the messaging that they think would be effective at engaging them to interact further. You might be surprised at how well new perspectives improve your base copy.
Key Takeaway: Great marketing and sales collateral starts with an understanding of whom you’re speaking to. Define the personas you’re targeting up front and ensure the messaging is written to resonate with them.
Spreading a content campaign too thin is something that can have unwelcome consequences – but you simply must ensure that there is diverse material on a range of platforms. There’s that good old balancing act coming into play again…
It’s common for a product launch promotional campaign to only employ one type of content on one or two platforms. For instance, a marketing manager might craft a press release that gets published on the organization’s website and RSS feed when the launch occurs. That’s all well and good, but they aren’t making the most of the established audiences and networks that they’ve built across all channels. Imagine if that same marketing manager had published the press release on the org’s site and RSS feed, posted a few testimonials from established industry players on social media, added a 30-second announcement trailer to the company’s YouTube, sent out an announcement email to their mailing list, and booked the company’s CEO on a well-known podcast to talk about the new product.
Not only is the content available to all audiences, but the material itself is presented in diverse and new formats. It may take more energy and resources to achieve this kind of collateral variety, but it will have numerous long-term benefits. Cross-pollination of platforms is one of the most underutilized tools across content campaigns. Organizations are often concerned that their audiences will grow tired of hearing about the same product or service launch, but the fact of the matter is that you rarely ever have the exact same audience across all platforms. Someone who follows your brand on LinkedIn has probably only ever watched a couple videos on your YouTube channel. It is often said by prominent creators that upwards of 60% of video viewers aren’t subscribed to the overall channel, so it cannot be assumed that every video published is seen by your audience. Engaging every segment of your network will ensure that the launch will be seen by those who are not actively following your organization in every available space.
Key Takeaway: Your buyers consume content in different ways across different platforms. If you focus only on video, you lose the reader market. If you focus only on twitter, you lose the LinkedIn audience.
Let’s face it: Debuting a new solution is hard. That’s why Continuum is here to help you get it right. If you’re gearing up for a new GTM campaign, schedule a session with our team of experts. There are no magical keys to the kingdom that will make your GTM campaign a guaranteed success… but there are numerous strategies that have proven effective time and time again, and we want to enable your team to be able to fully deploy them.
Need help? Book a consultation with Continuum.
