Business  110  

How  to  Build  Launch  Plan  

Starting Place

•  Great product launches start with 3 raw ingredients

1.  Initial Product 2.  Target Customer 3.  Personas

Marketing Funnel

Initial Product

Not the ultimate product or the best product Def. The minimal product needed to get a specific target audience to buy and like the product “enough” to recommend it to others

For Launch Purposes

•  Product needs to be defined against multiple dimensions – 4Ps

– Product – Price – Positioning / Promotion – Place (distribution strategy)

Pricing

•  Example – Mama Cass – Food truck – 2 sliders for $8.00, 3 sliders for $12.00

Positioning / Promotion

•  “In a city glutted with food trucks it can be hard to carve out a niche” – NYTimes – Gourmet Vietnamese –  Initial promotion focused on food critics who

covered street food scene + traditional restaurant critics

Place

•  Food truck w/ set travel schedule as detailed on website

Target Customer

•  Who you expect to buy your product first and why

Convenience  

•  Age 25-54 •  Primarily Male •  Higher Salaries •  Multi-taskers •  On the go •  Goal Oriented

Young  Foodies  

•  Age 18 -25 •  Mixed Gender •  Budget •  Trendsetters •  Educated

Soccer  Moms  

•  Age 20-40 •  Primarily Female •  Secondary Ed •  Hold Family Dear •  Tech Savvy •  First to go home

Personas

•  Description that makes the target customer “come alive” – for you to stay focused on while developing your marketing plan

–  Ideally based on market research – i.e. talking to potential customers

Personas

Take all this raw input

•  Market Planning –  Initial Product – Target Customer – Personas

Marketing Funnel

Marketing Funnel

Launch Planning

•  What levers do we have to get people into the top of the funnel – Touchpoints, Influencers

•  What are some of the barriers we expect to encounter and how can we overcome them –  Inertia, Near Substitutes, Direct Competition

Launch Plan

– Venue – Press/Influencer strategy – Beta & Seeding strategy – Content Marketing strategy

Venue

•  Where/When You Launch –  If you are launching into an existing market,

often it is best to launch at someone else’s event

Press/Influencer Strategy

•  4 main categories of press/influencers –  Press, Bloggers, Analysts, Mavens

•  Your launch plan needs to… –  Identifying who these people are /how best to reach

them –  Target dates as to when you will brief them –  Think through the tools each group will need so they

can market you

Beta Plan & Seeding Strategy

•  Beta Plan –  Identify when you will beta –  Whether an invite will be needed –  Who will get invites to distribute

•  Seeding Strategy –  Identify who you will seed and why –  How many seed units you will need –  Consider ethical norms with press vs. channel

Content Marketing Strategy

•  Identify the content you will create –  Website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, Twitter page,

LinkedIn page – these are basics and are expected

•  Beyond the basics – what content do you need to create that will serve as a magnet for potential customers? –  Distribution plan for the content –  How you will make that content findable –  How you plan to reuse / leverage that content in multiple ways –  Call to action – what you want people to do after they get your

content

Par>ng  Words  

•  About OpenMarketing

– Marketing-driven Business Strategy – Content Marketing + Inbound Marketing