Product Launch Manager Online

Valpolicella Wine Tasting at New Year

Last time I posted a small comment on my blog about wine, my web site statistics went stratospheric.  So, purely in the interests of statistics, I have once again pointed my taste buds in the direction of some interesting Italians!

I was fortunate enough to spend New Year with friends who have a wonderful Italian wine cellar.  One of the benefits of having a dozen or so from each vintage is that you can open wines at various stages of their development and decide whether they could do with more time or should be finished off or relegated to the in-house wine rack for quaffing.

We started the evening with Zenato Valpolicella Superior 2007 which was a great palate cleanser.  Valpolicella is from the Veneto region of Italy and is second only to the Chianti region in terms of volume. This wine set the scene nicely for the following beauties.

Second-up was a 2003 Ripassa Valpolicella from Monte Faustino, very fruity and smooth wine. It was a drier style than the Zenato and had a lot more tannin.  This was a fine example of the Ripasso style of wine.

Lastly, we had another 2006 Ripassa Zenato Valpolicella wine with a lot of structure which needed a few more years to be at it best.  John the owner of the cellar had tasted the 2005 version of this wine previously and in his opinion the 2006 was definitely a better wine.  It would be worthwhile tracking this one down and putting a dozen the cellar.

The overall verdict for the evening was that the 2003 Ripassa Valpolicella from Monte Faustino was the best wine of the evening.  A half hour after removing the cork the wine had opened up nicely and we accompanied this with a gourmet homemade pizza – a match made in heaven if I dare the cliché. 

Molto bene

We are now connecting with people across the globe more frequently than ever. 

Have a look at the amazing growth of Skype, (the Voice over IP telecommunications provider), since its inception.   There were over 27.7 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes alone in Q3, 2009.

We are, after all, social animals.  The popularity of Twitter, Facebook and the hundreds of other social networking sites proves that! 

However, something in the human psyche drives most people to seek out face-to-face contact and eventually one-on-one voice conversation.  

 This is where Skype is filling the gap.  With free calls via the internet to many places around the world, along with free video calling, I believe that Skype will continue its meteoric rise fuelled by this rise in activity on the social networking sites.

I wonder how many of you have initiated a Skype call based on a previous conversation on Twitter or Facebook?

Dean Whitbread at MCL3 - Photo by Chris Hambly

I had intended to sit at the back of the room and get a sales pitch together for a project I was working on but there was no hope of that at Media Camp 3 in London!  It was billed as a un-conference, presumably to get across the fact that you’re not stuck in a theater being lectured at.  I found that the space created allowed everyone to contribute, interrupt, interact and react and that made for a stimulating day. A big thanks goes to Chris Hambly for getting it all together.

First up on my agenda was Jamie Riddell with “Setting up a Business with No Investment and Succeeding”. Jamie shared his experiences of setting up his business on a shoestring budget.  This session reminded me of my own trials, angst and tribulations when setting up my own companies. Of particular emphasis here was the absolutely necessity for formal legal contracts when undertaking business transactions.

The next session I attended was Benjamin Ellis with the intriguing title of “Advanced Cat Herding”. He used the term to describe the impossibility of managing creatives by conventional means.  Benjamin has a simple but powerful management philosophy which has proven to work within real organisations.

After lunch, I took in Sylwia Presley’s thought provoking look at social media ethics and how companies might engender trust online.

Finally, I braved a session with Dean Whitbread who spoke about good and bad crowds, survival, ugliness, tolerance and potential beauty.  To illustrate his point, he inflicted gratuitous violence upon two cabbages.  Not only did he viciously assault a common green cabbage but he sliced a prized red cabbage clean in half!  This was done, all in the name of the science of crowd behaviour, to illustrate the tree-like effect of twittering.  Then, to add insult to injury, he admitted he was taking both cabbages home to eat them!  

I had a great day and my sales pitch eventually got done the next day.

Check out some of the media camp 3 presentations here http://drop.io/mcl3

We have a guest post today from Rory Ramsden, one of my fellow product launch managers.  Rory answers…

Who or what is a product launch manager?

You may never even heard of such a specialist job description. And if you have, do you know what a product launch manager really does?

Let me explain.

You know how every time Apple launch a new mobile or laptop or some such there’s a queue of raving fans on launch day that seems to go round the block all wanting to buy it and buy it now?

Well, that’s no accident. It all came about because a product launch manager executed a well thought out product launch plan.

Grab a coffee and I’ll tell you the story…

It all started some months ago with a few hints made by un-attributable sources. These hints were dropped in places where people talk. The rumour mill began to work leading to company denials. The rumors persisted.

Finally someone inside Apple came right out and said that they were working on this new game-changing product but he was not at liberty to say any more.

The market pressed for answers to their questions. The rumours became more detailed. Just detailed enough to whet the appetite. And tease even more speculation from Apple’s super well-defined market.

The clamour for more information grew to a crescendo. What will it do? How will it do it? When will it be available? How much will it cost? The community of now raving fans twittered, blogged and updated their Facebook pages.

Apple leaked more details. Steve Jobs spoke to a few key people. The anticipation ramped up even more. Apple’s competitors got frightened. Apple was dominating the agenda. No-one who was anyone talked about anything else. The buzz built and built.

The new product launch was being expertly managed.

At the 11^th hour, a video went viral. It revealed just about all you wanted to know.  This was a sneak preview of this never-before-seen sexy looking new object of desire. There was still no mention of the actual price. Apple reassured everyone that they could afford it.

Now all your friends were talking about it. They seemed to talk about nothing else. You didn’t want to be left out. You did some research for yourself. Got yourself onto a ‘jump to the front of the queue’ list. Now you would get one hours advance notice of the doors opening. Now, you were a raving fan.

After all, you could not be seen NOT to be. All your friends were.

Then came the launch day announcement. Everyone was super excited. The bad news was that not everyone could buy one. The factory was on overtime but there was no way they could fill the demand.

Et Voila… raving fans sleeping on the street all night. They just had to. There was no other way of being sure of buying one. They had to be one of the first through the doors

What do you think? Are they simply buying a new mobile phone or laptop?

Or

Are they buying an icon? …a status symbol? …a physical affirmation to their friends that they are just the coolest thing on two legs?

Well, of course they are buying a well designed product packed full of remarkable features and incredible benefits. A game-changing device. You have never seen such a smooth, clean design before. You have never seen such a wafer thin laptop before.

It stands out from all those other perfectly serviceable products in the market place. It is not bland.  It is remarkable.

No-one can accuse Apple of me too marketing

That is because Apple use the same product launch techniques that we could put into action for you. They built a conversation with their prospects. They created buzz and anticipation. Everyone was caught up in the excitement of the launch. The market was engaged and wanted the launch to be big.

Then came the ‘scarcity’ trigger. This amped up demand. When the product finally went on sale, there were so many buyers that the idea of actually have to ‘sell’ the product was redundant.

The Product launch plan is packed with psychological triggers, a sequence of actions using different modalities and different tools. It has a well-crafted story. It identifies and answers objections early.  It responds to frequently asked questions.  There is a conversation with the community.

A product launch manager develops and executes a disciplined well worked out sequence that turns a product launch into an event with a capital E.

If Apple can do this then you can too … with our help. We are specialists. We can help you transform your business with your next product launch. We can help you take your business to the next level… in more ways than one.

Straight out of the gate, you have to decide what you want to achieve with your launch… Do you want to grow your list of paying customers?  Do you want to become the go-to guy in your market?  Or do you just want to make oodles of moolah, money or indeed cash?

These are some of the questions only you can answer. 

You know the old adage that goes something like this [I’m paraphrasing here] …

If you set out without a route map and without a destination, you will arrive somewhere but it certainly won’t be where you expected.

So start now. Decide what your one launch goal will be. Then take the first step to achieving that goal.  Fill out this quick questionnaire and tell us something about your business…

We’ll get back to you real soon.

Recently I saw a question posted on a networking site about a new business start-up.  This person had created a B2B membership site but it was very unclear to me what the site was actually offering.  This probably occurred because the site was built out of demand from another product he was selling to the same clients.  The new membership site was meeting a very real demand but because it was closely linked with the other product, it was seen by existing clients as a bundle rather than solely as a membership site.  When demand started to dry up from his existing client base, he started to look at ways to build the membership site as a stand-alone business.

I started off the discussion by asking what was his USP – Unique Service (or Sales) Proposition.  This is what distinguishes your product or service from your competitors.  It has to be very clear WHAT you are selling and HOW you are different from other similar businesses. The USP is at the very core of your business offering. This is pretty standard marketing analysis that needs to be done for every new business.  It also needs to be re-visited regularly as it will evolve as the business grows. 

The USP of the membership site as a standalone business had not been considered and going through this exercise can help to identify the main focus of this new business and to target new customers.

Having just visited France to watch the All Blacks thrash the French national team in that brutal game of Rugby Union, I managed to evaluate some local wine whilst staying Aix-en-Provence.  The signature wine of that particular town is a lovely peach coloured rose.  This rose is very fresh and slightly reminiscent of my favoured new world wines from New Zealand.  It was well worth sampling!

A successful product launch is made up of a number of related actions in a very defined sequence.  Take a look at these 6 main components of a product launch.

 1.  Pre-launch setup (timing, team and tools)

2.  Marketing collateral development

3.  Creating the Offer

4.  Developing the launch conversation

5.  Project managing the launch

6.  Post-launch review

 Most launches will go through this sequence and a sophisticated product launch may have up to 150 tasks under these main components.  All of these tasks need to be managed and executed at the right time, with the right tools, to the right audience to ensure a successful launch.

 The post- launch review is critical to ensure that the next launch can be improved and also to examine whether there are any opportunities or ideas for further launches.

A product launch manager aims to significantly increase your online sales using an array of tools and events to reach your customers.  A product launch can be used not only for new products but also for services and existing products.

Your organisation can also benefit from other short and long term effects of the product launch such as building your customer base, getting feedback from your customers, increasing brand awareness or obtaining input into new product development.