A successful brand launch is no easy feat. Whilst this is an exciting time as you’re introducing your new brand to world, it can also be an overwhelming period, as you create and execute a precisely choreographed timeline across multiple platforms, for multiple audiences, all without a hitch.

Whilst you’ve spent countless hours creating your business and your brand, you now need to spend time planning a successful launch and as the saying goes; fail to prepare and prepare to fail!

Whether you’re starting from scratch or re-branding, launches are an opportunity to tell a compelling story about your product or service, its functionality and the impact it will have on people.

Read on as we share our top five tips on what you need to know to deliver a successful brand launch, once an agreement has already been reached with your target retailers.

Fully Understand Your Product Appeal & Customer

Having a comprehensive understanding of your product and customer is key to achieving your core business goals. In order to conquer your competitors and flourish in a highly saturated industry, it’s crucial to fully gain an understanding of your brands identity, what there is to know about your product as well as their place in the market. Selling becomes much easier when you know all about what you’re selling, and who you’re selling to. Immerse yourself in understanding your own experiences of using the product, delve into your customer feedback and evaluate your internal sales records to date, to identify what you are delivering in its most basic form, and to whom.

Research The Market & Competition

Simply put, without customers, there is no product, so market research is crucial to gathering data to learn more about your target demographic and pinpoint potential competitors, so your brand can market itself more effectively whilst planning your position in that space. There are many ways of doing this including monitoring the effectiveness of sales, ascertaining the quality of services and understanding the channels of communication provided by competitors, as well as assessing the active competition. All of these will set you in good stead to keep up with market trends and maintain a competitive edge by sizing up your business opportunity.

Finalise Costs To Be Competitive

Pricing is one of the first things that a consumer notices about a product and it is one of the deciding factors when it comes to making their decision on whether to buy it or not. An effective pricing strategy is essential to help your business set a product price which is in line with the competition, whilst maximising revenue and delivering a good profit. To ensure sustained profitability, take into consideration a price which covers the production cost, contributes to company overheads costs, and delivers suitable profits, all whilst giving your brand the much-needed competitive edge in the market.

Set Clear Distribution Objectives

In order to successfully infuse the marketplace of your chosen retail targets with your products as efficiently and profitably as possible, clear distribution objectives need to be set. Be flexible on timings. Whilst product availability is important for consumer convenience goods where the customer does not want to wait to buy a particular brand, for unique and important products, immediate availability is less critical. To create differentiation over competitors, the delivery of these objectives becomes critical, with some of these requirements including how long it takes to receive the products, the process and delivery of an order, consistency and reliability of the delivery as well as the communication between brand and retailer. Be realistic with your objectives, you’re better off setting attainable targets to over-perform for your retailers, rather than underdeliver for them.

Market! Market! Market!

Whilst the term ‘marketing’ can seem vague, it covers an abundance of activities such as SEO, Public Relations, Social Media and Email Distribution, with the sole aim to make people aware of your products and services whilst persuading them to buy the same. Is an essential part of any business because it is what helps a company reach new customers, maintain long-lasting and ever-present relationships whilst generating leads. When people are well-informed about your product, your sales will increase, thus making marketing a great tool for many business establishments to create revenue options. Be prepared to make the investment in marketing and believe in the process!

We hope our list of top tips has helped you to understand how to manoeuvre your brand on to the path of delivering a successful launch.