My secret learnings after a successful product launch campaign
After 3 years, we managed to launch a campaign for a specific product in a B2B startup which changed the startup’s vision and ambition for the marketing team. Launching products and generating leads is not a simple task, and in this web post, I will explain my takeaways as leading this product launch for a B2B startup.
Campaign overview
I took the time to write 2 blog posts explaining how we managed to generate 30 leads in a month with a product launch campaign for B2B startups. The cases I exposed previously on my website can give you an excellent overview of:
- The product scope.
- The startup purpose.
- The product launch strategy.
- The channels used (and how we defined them).
I highly recommend you to go through the cases before or even after this blog post; it is an excellent opportunity for marketers and enthusiasts about the subject to understand in an easy way how a product launch can be structured and executed.
CASE: AIDA Model applied in a product launch strategy
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CASE: 30 sales opportunities in a month with a content marketing strategy
Insights of a Head of Marketing
When I look back and think about the challenge proposed to the area, I have one feeling: pride. Leading the strategy that would change the course of the company was a huge responsibility, and after going through the process with a successful result just for the first month, those are the things that I realized:
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Study everything about what you’re selling and to whom you’re selling.
Sometimes the marketing team is not an expert on the product. In this case, we were responsible for launching an AI system for manufacturing. I am graduated in Business Administration and following a career path in Marketing. What do I know about AI and manufacturing? Well… now, I kind of know something. Taking the time to study your product, identify the public target and study them was a must. All the time spent chatting with the development team, searching for content online, searching for possible competitors, and “stalking” our persona online led us to a successful landing page and copy.
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Understanding the benefits of your product is a must.
It was easy to explain the product. After studying a lot, we could even demonstrate it to a client if needed. But… the demonstration process is after the primary goal of the project launch. To demonstrate it to someone, I need to catch their attention, and people get interested in something if they understand its value and have the benefits clear in their mind. They can visualize it working and solving a possible problem-or existent need. Many discussions happened involving the question: what is in it for the customer? And when we were able to identify the actual benefits, we adjusted all our communication channels to focus on that.
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Have a clear goal in mind.
When creating the campaigns so many times, we had to look back and ask ourselves: is it going to generate leads? Believe it or not, many of our ideas were not directly related to lead generation. Marketing campaigns have so many different objectives; you can aim for brand awareness other than lead generation. In our case, the goal was clear: we wanted to generate qualified leads for sales. After having that in mind, every little idea we got in a brainstorming session had to answer this simple question “is it going to generate leads?”.
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You don’t need a huge budget, but you need something to start.
Most startups are still learning about their products and the market, and a lot of testing needs to happen – in a scenario where the budget is not that huge. To create a good campaign and meet your objectives, you don’t need an extra budget; you need a good strategy and allocate your resources accordingly. If I tell you that we reached 30 leads in a month, spending a little more than the minimum required for the LinkedIn campaign, would you believe it? Of course, the more money you add in, the more results will come; however, in a product launch campaign, sometimes it is better to try it on a small scale before going to a broader one – also because the first demonstration will teach you so much about the product that changing and adjusting things will become natural. You’ll feel more confident about the marketing and sales approach.
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Analyze, analyze again and change things if needed!
Last but not least, do not leave your campaigns away. You must keep an eye on everything. The 30 leads were generated, but a lot of things happened. Our campaigns got disabled by LinkedIn, and we had to start over; the budget for the week ended before we expected, our website went off due to a server problem, and we had to adjust the campaign. So many things happened, and we could only identify them because we got an eye every day on the results. For the analysis, we performed it with the LinkedIn dashboard and our marketing automation tool, integrated with the CRM to track our leads better (the campaign’s primary goal).
5 learnings that I will take with me for life. I would like to know about you, which learning did you connect the most, and would you add something else to this list?
Share below with comments 🙂