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Launching a new offer is a sign of a company that’s dynamic, evolving, and innovating. It’s the adrenaline of business activity and sometimes the fuel for growth. While success is within reach for new products, failure is never far away, whether due to an excessive price (compared to the value provided), inconsistent quality, or the trap of an offer designed behind closed doors (without drawing inspiration from the real needs of the target audience), etc.
Often, the mediocre performance of new offers is also due to weak communication during their launch. This refers to the inability to::
- Clearly articulate the value proposition in language that resonates with the target audience;
- Identify and leverage the right mix of formats and communication channels;
- Align with the buying cycles of potential customers.
If companies struggle so much to tell the story of their new products, it’s because the task is particularly challenging, requiring a combination of multiple skills that must overlap and complement each other: copywriting, targeting, selecting the right formats, activating the appropriate communication channels, and the ability to measure performance in real-time to make adjustments.
To support companies looking to maximize the chances of success for their new offerings, we have decided to dedicate a series of articles to the different facets of this process:
- Episode 1 – Launching a new offering: how to maximize success and avoid going off-track?
- Episode 2 – What marketing format mix should be used to communicate about a new offering?
- Episode 3 – Spotlight on an essential communication lever: Zeineb Makhlouf, Paid Media Manager, analyzes video in B2B
- The infographic summarizes the key steps for a successful communication plan.
The three pitfalls that threaten the launch of your new offer
The common denominator among new products or services that fail to find their audience is often “navel-gazing.”
These offerings are usually developed independently of the end user, guided by the biased compass of belief and intuition (at the expense of data), combined with a tendency to favour “easily available” resources over those truly needed to craft an offering that is genuinely useful and competitive.
This pitfall of navel-gazing can result in technically sound and relatively effective solutions, but ones that are completely disconnected from the real needs of the target audience. They effectively solve a problem that the audience does not have or considers secondary.
🔗 In the first episode of this series, we review:
- The three pitfalls that threaten the launch of your new offering: navel-gazing, neglecting the ‘micro’ dimension, and underestimating market inertia;
- The importance of market research and surveys in the development and launch of a new offering;
- The different types of studies to consider before designing and then launching a new offering.
What marketing format mix should be used to communicate about a new offer?
Even if your offering is well-developed, competitive, and aligned with the real needs of your target audience, it risks failing before it even begins without a communication strategy designed and executed according to best practices.
How many innovations have gone completely unnoticed, only to become financial sinkholes, due to weak, generic, or completely off-target communication campaigns? Failure can also occur if an innovative offering (or one targeting an uninformed audience) is not supported by an evangelization effort.
To sell, it’s not enough to be right (with a high-performing product). You must also ensure that people know about it. At this stage, everything depends on the relevance of the message and the marketing format mix:”
- Advertorials, a dense and ‘serious’ form of communication targeting an audience already engaged with a credible, legitimate, and somewhat specialized media outlet;
- Display ads, used during the awareness and discovery phase, relying on strong visual impact, contextual targeting, and retargeting;
- Social media formats, the core of the strategy: sponsored posts and stories, short videos, carousels, lead ads, etc.;
- Email marketing on a proprietary and/or third-party database to reach the core target audience directly.
🔗 Find in the second episode of this series the different formats to use to support the launch of your new offer.
Capitalize on a winning combo to generate business on social media
Exceptional ROI, wide reach on LinkedIn, a tool highly favoured by both consumers and B2B decision-makers… Short video ticks all the boxes for engaging audiences on social media:
- The video format entertains and presents information more attractively;
- LinkedIn prioritizes video in its news feed;
- Purchase decisions are increasingly being made by millennials;
- Decision-makers use videos to speed up their decision-making process.
Zeineb Makhlouf, Paid Media Manager at Infopro Digital Media, shares her expert advice in an exclusive interview, on how to effectively use video and integrate it into your communication strategy.
8 key steps for a well-structured strategy
It’s up to you!
To go further, explore all our marketing levers.