Part Six – Product Launch

A ten-part series exclusive to NZBusiness in which successful serial entrepreneur Mark Loveys provides a succinct ‘how to’ guide for would-be entrepreneurs – to help take your idea to the world.

PART 6. PRODUCT LAUNCH

My experience with product launches comes from the various software start-ups I’ve been involved with, that have typically sold software or cloud services to businesses. I expect that most of the concepts discussed here will be applicable to other types of businesses, but there are bound to be some differences and exceptions in other industries.

Early adopters

Prior to launching a product or service in a geography or market segment, seek out suitable friendly “early adopter” customers that would be typical of the market you are targeting. 

Work closely with them to understand their needs, ensure they have an excellent experience with your offering and make sure you have confidence that your offering genuinely fits a real market need.

Market communications

Engage the services of a public relations (PR) specialist who has experience within the business sector in which you operate. This specialist should be skilled in articulating the value of your offering, should have contacts within relevant media organisations, be proficient in social media and have experience in publicising businesses and/or offerings in your market sector.

You and your PR specialist should spend time with your early-adopter customers to understand your value proposition to them and, importantly, how they articulate and recognise this value.  This will ensure you use the most effective language and highlight the most relevant value points of your offering. 

This is all about making sure your target audience understands and relates to your messaging.

Customer success stories

Customers who have had a successful experience with your product or service and are prepared to be your advocate are among your most powerful assets in releasing something new to the market.

Produce a case study or customer success story document relating to each of your early-adopter customers. This needs to be a professionally produced document with direct quotes from your customers, value points clearly articulated, along with photographs and logos representing your early-adopter customers. Ideally, include good quality photographs of the people being quoted, because future customers will pay more attention to people they can see and relate to.  

Spreading the word

Work with your PR specialist to produce a news release that has an “angle” that makes it interesting and newsworthy. An angle is often something about you, your customer (your case study), a market need that you address and/or some interesting background challenges or obstacles that you overcame in bringing your offering to market. Your PR specialist should be able to help you produce a newsworthy news release.

Once you have your news release and case study documents prepared, you can send them out to relevant media organisations, as well as social media. Again, your PR specialist will be able to help you ensure that you reach the right organisations and the right audience.  

With news media, you might choose to give a selected publication an “exclusive” which lets them publish your story a few days in advance of other media outlets. The intention is that the selected media organisation gives you a bigger and/or better position in their publication in exchange for the “exclusive” story.    

Mark Loveys has been dubbed ‘one of New Zealand’s most successful serial software entrepreneurs’. He was the original developer of Exonet, the ERP software suite now called MYOB Exo, and former chairman and co-founder of Datasquirt.
As co-founder and former CEO of Enprise Group, Mark helped establish EMS-Cortex ‘cloud control panel’ software as a leading international solution and was instrumental in the sale of EMS-Cortex to Citrix in 2011. These trade sales have a combined value of more than $50 million.