Launching a brand new product is a huge marketing challenge. Not only are you introducing this product to the world, you must also convince them life will be infinitely better because of it. Media has become a vital tool in amplifying and spreading the message about a new product. This is primarily, because it provides marketers with large potential reach. But beyond reach, a media strategy can also help launch your product and boost your marketing in other ways.
Building Brand Awareness with Media on a New Product Launch
Assuming the product being launched is not a brand extension or spin-off of a current product there is one glaring obstacle all new product marketers have had to overcome: you have no brand awareness. People probably don’t know who you are. They don’t know what your product is or what it does.
How a media strategist helps: Once you have identified your target market and crafted a campaign around your product you can begin buying media. Media formats can range from TV and radio commercials, to display and native ads online, billboards and outdoor, or magazine and newspaper ads.
Media planners can help you with identifying the ideal market and customer for your product and then advise you on what are the most popular media consumption platforms to reach them. They will also help you determine how often you should be advertising on that channel to optimally generate the brand awareness for your product.
Once you’ve decided which combination of platforms to reach them with, the media buyer will negotiate the rates, make the buys, monitor and report the progress of your campaign. Depending on the platform you’ve chosen they will also be making adjustments to the campaign as necessary to maximize your product awareness and budget.
Market Conditions and Media Strategy for a New Product Launch
Understanding the market conditions and crafting a media strategy around it. New products tend to fall into one of two categories:
- They are a new entrant into a category with lots of competitors, or
- They are a completely new product unlike anything currently out.
Each of these present their own marketing challenges and require different media strategies for generating brand awareness around the launch of the product.
How media strategist helps: For a new entrant into a crowded category a media strategist can help you craft a media strategy with a competitive analysis. This data will help you learn where your competitors are buying and placing media, who they are targeting, and how successful they are. This data is a useful foundation for beginning a media strategy and marketing mix for your new product launch.
With this information you can develop a strategy custom to your product. You can target this same audience, consider going after a different group, or a mix of both. You can also consider incorporating some of the media buys that have worked for them or use the data of what didn’t work and go in a completely different direction.
If you are launching a completely new product there likely won’t be a competitor to analyze, so the strategy will be different. In these cases we’ll recommend heavy market research to understand the potential audience for this product. Media strategists can help you develop and oversee focus groups, surveys, trials and demos to get this information.
With this data the media planning and buying team can get a glimpse at what types of people would be interested in your new product, develop personas for them, and begin to build a media plan. Your product may attract a more niche audience, buyers can also help you determine if that is the case and if so help you devise strategies for finding and reaching them as well.
Simplify a New Product Launch with a Media Partner
Launching a new product is not without its challenges. Partnering with a media buying and planning team like Capitol Media Solutions can help prepare your marketing team to reach the right audience in the right places.
A media planning and buying professional can make this daunting undertaking slightly easier by helping you:
- Identify the ideal audience to target.
- Developing a media strategy to reach them.
- Creating a media plan based on their consumption preferences.
- Negotiating rates for media buys and value add.
- Monitoring and reporting campaign progress.
For more information on how to launch your new product, contact a media strategist at Capitol Media Solutions.