Make your product launch event a success – 6 important considerations

You’ve your new product, it’s time to share it with the world. The launch event has to communicate and showcase what sets it apart, gets people talking about it, and buying it.

Author: Buz Ross   |   Date: 17th January 2018

The more you can do at the event, plus the build-up and directly afterwards, the more likely that people will carry the information with them and share it with their colleagues, friends and family.

These are some of the things that can help your product and event go off with a bang and not a whimper!

Should you use a theme?

A theme – what like fancy dress? A theme can run from your choice of the venue through to your goodie bags that the attendees leave with.

A theme isn’t just an idea for decoration or music, it should inform the whole event. For example, if you are launching a new health/clean-living drink, you could have blood pressure machines and health testing equipment to tie in with what your new drink can offer in benefits.

Consider your product or service, and let that inform the theme.

Using this as an example, you could have a talk as part of the launch which is about improving your health and how using health drinks and foods can help people improve their wellbeing. By using a speaker to re-affirm your product makes connections that attendees are more likely to take away and share.

As people leave they can be given samples of the product and other products or services that confirm how the product should be used and maximised. With a health product, this could include something to encourage healthy living, such as a FitBit or month’s membership for a gym. You could offer reciprocal promotions with this, with the gym to give out samples of your drink to people taking up the special membership offer and confirm the association.

The theme should be used in all pre and post event marketing material to reaffirm the connection prior to the event.

Choosing the perfect venue

This may seem to be a trivial matter as surely you want your product or service to be the centre of attention rather than a fancy venue but the atmosphere created by the venue can enable the product to shine, encouraging increased audience engagement and positive association.

If you are launching a scientific or technology-based product at a hotel conference centre you may not get the participation that you would get with a launch event at a science park or centre.

Also, consider the location regarding where your invited guests are mainly based. If they are spread over the country, then any location with good transport links should be fine, however, if your audience is mainly based in and around Birmingham, don’t make them travel to Liverpool for a 2-hour event!

When should I hold the event?

Seems like such a simple question. Many launches are on the day of the main launch or maybe a few days earlier to enable your guests to share content ready for the launch day.

Don’t hold it too many days ahead of the actual launch day, as it may fade in your guest’s memories.

Also, consider the type of product you’re launching, for example, a health drink is best launched at the start of the year, when people are thinking about getting healthy after the excesses of the Christmas and New Year holidays. It would also be the same time of the year to launch an app created for finding holidays offers. Thinking about this could save you time and money and maximise the product launch and the event.

Making the most of Social Media

You will have your guest list and depending on their commitments in your guests’ busy schedule, they might have to drop your event from their list, so how do you persuade them that they should attend, plus tease the people who are not on the list?

Social Media can be a powerful way of marketing directly and indirectly and can help build interest in both the product and the event itself.

You could run a social media contest for people to win tickets to the event. By doing this you are raising interest before the event and by using this platform you know that you will receive more publicity after the event too.

Avoid giving away too much information before the event; you want people to only get the full experience by attending.

Depending on your product you could also look to involve social media ‘influencers’. Working with these, you can also develop the relationship much earlier on, enable the relationship to last longer after the initial launch and ensure a continued higher profile.

Is this X-Factor or a product launch?

While you need your event to be informative and attendees leave having all the information they could need about the product, you want them to enjoy the day; making it fun makes it more memorable.

Having entertainment for an event could seem overwhelming, but around the actual launch you will need to maintain the interest of your attendees. It could be something which happens quite naturally, the venue and theme lending itself to an entertainment to keep it fun.

You could use a comedian compèring the event. This way the entertainment becomes part of the event, rather than an element feeling added on.

It could be created by directly involving the attendees, using a competition. Not only are they doing something fun, being entertained, but it’s also a good way of encouraging them to mix and discuss the product amongst themselves. This can also be used socially, again; if you are taking part in something you are more likely to share it socially with your colleagues and friends.

After the big event

You’ve survived your launch event, your product or service launch was a great success – now to maintain that and keep the interest going.

Ensure that you follow up with every guest who attended. Try to get their feedback, not just on the product, but the event itself; this will help you for subsequent events.

Do try to get in touch with the invited guests who couldn’t make it, maybe have a special offer for them, or a promotion specific to them, or if it is something that needs to be demoed, try to see if there is any way they don’t miss out. Going the extra mile at the start will repay you – people always remember positivity that has gone above and beyond their expectations.

Maintain your social media presence and potentially offer promos or incentives for people buying or subscribing to your new product or service.

Keep the interest high for as long as possible and you can always create buzz by encouraging people sharing their own experiences of your product. Using the example of a health drink, you could get people to share images of the craziest location they’ve drunk the drink and someone they think could do with it on Monday morning.

You want to keep people talking about the product and the launch event for as long as possible.

Good luck with your product launch event, we’ll be looking at other events over the weeks coming up, we’d love to hear your ideas too!

Why not get in touch and see how we can help?

We’d love to have a chat with you about your next event or project, give us a call on 01962 870408, or click to fill in our contact form

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