September 2009 – Feature: Ignite Your B2B Product Launch

Are you holding your new products back by following old marketing rules? Here are 12 digital-age, B2B-specific rules to push your new products ahead of the competition.

By Dan Adams

You’re ready to launch your new product. You’ve put together some snazzy literature, whipped your sales force into a frenzy and are about to go after some prospects. If this sounds familiar, be nervous. It’s so 20th century. And it’s seriously limiting the sales potential of your new product.

Before you’re ready to launch your product, you should be asking new questions that acknowledge the rapidly evolving power of the Internet. Questions that sound like this:

How do we ensure that prospects find us–not competitors–when they do a Google search?

How do we get key influencers within prospect companies to promote our product for us?

What product positioning will attract multiple job functions inside a prospect company?

How do we integrate online media with traditional media, e.g., trade shows and sales reps?

My new e-book, “12 New Rules of B2B Product Launch,” (go to www.b2bproductlaunch.com for a free download) takes a fresh look at what it takes for a B2B supplier to launch a new product with remarkable success. These new rules are focused strictly on selling to other companies–not end consumers. Drop the 4 Ps of marketing you borrowed from consumer goods marketers (product, price, place and promotion) and replace them with the 4 Rs: Launch the Right Product with the Right Message using the Right Media to the Right Prospects. Here’s a quick tour of these new rules:

Be easy to find–when your prospect is ready
Research by MarketingSherpa shows that the rules of engagement for B2B transactions have changed. In 80 percent of transactions, the customer now finds the supplier. So you need to be more “findable” than competitors on the Internet–and more interesting.

Link “early-stage” to “late-stage” marketing
Early-stage marketing relates to learning about customer needs; late-stage marketing is about promoting your solution for those needs. The early stage is often botched or, more likely, overlooked entirely. During the early stage, B2B suppliers can uncover customer “hot buttons” and gather other intelligence to give much more punch to their late-stage promotional efforts.

Get inside their minds with positioning
Ries and Trout brought us “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind”–much of which can be adapted for B2B markets. For instance, it’s a wonderful advantage to be the first supplier to occupy customer mindspace in your category. If you can’t be first, create a new category where you can be. While it’s extremely hard to change prospects’ minds, they are surprisingly open to new information–hence the power of webinars, presentations and whitepapers bringing new data, strategies, best practices and products to their attention.

Help Prospects advance along the buying cycle
When your sales rep finds a prospect, he knows how to pitch your product. But what if your prospect on the Internet–and you have no idea where his head is? He might be totally unaware of your company and product. Or, he could be doing final comparison shopping. Since a one-size-fits-all marketing message won’t work, let the prospect decide when to move to the next stage. You can do this by providing a stream of offers or tools (e.g., a price-estimate calculator, whitepapers or a product sample) that prospects can accept when they are ready.

Use engagement–not interruption–marketing
Interruption marketing happens when you barge into your prospect’s world. With engagement marketing, you let the prospect invite you into his world. And this only happens when you provide the prospect with a variety of fresh content that is useful from their perspective: a free whitepaper or webinar concerning his problems, interests or industry.

Customize for industry concentration and position
I cover eight traditional and eight online media in my e-book. But which to use? Consider industry concentration and industry position. A supplier might use a completely different media mix to promote a new product in one market segment versus another.

Build a keyword “cattle chute”
Here’s how it works: Send out news releases rich in useful content that will appeal to readers of online magazines, journals and blogs. Include a link to your website and keywords that your prospects will likely use in their Google searches. When prospects search using these keywords, the articles they find will lead them to your website. And the Google search ranking of your website just went up simply because those third-party articles are linked to it.

Use word-of-mouth to build buzz
Additional research by MarketingSherpa indicates more business executives are impacted by word of mouth than anything else. There are many ways to boost WOM marketing:

Connect early with industry thought leaders. Identify key decision-influencers within large prospect companies and arm them with internal selling tools.

Promote to people already in groups so they can discuss your product.

Seek opinions from industry experts–commission lab tests, seek evaluations or create advisory panels.

Use powerful new online marketing tools
Online media generally have lower costs per lead and stronger analytics to measure effectiveness. Done well, they put your B2B prospects to work for you, letting them find, study and tout your products. Consider these eight online media: news release, search marketing, e-mail, webinars, whitepapers, online advertising, web micro-pages and emerging media.

Integrate traditional media into your strategy
Don’t drop traditional marketing or you’ll lose three important dynamics:

1. Traditional branding builds familiarity which prompts more clicks and enhances your search and other online efforts;
2. Face-to-face word-of-mouth strongly influences decision-makers; and
3. Prior, non-digital relationships make a huge difference in buying decisions. Plan to blend some combination of these traditional media and platforms into your launch plan: print ads, trade publication articles, tradeshows, road shows, direct mail, trade speaking engagements, customer seminars and sales visits.

Make your sales force look like geniuses
Part of a stellar product launch is great sales force training and tools. (See “24 Suggested Sales Tools” on page 22 of my e-book.) But the other part is a strong lead scoring and nurturing system. Create a matrix based on attribute scoring (i.e., how important is this prospect?) and behavioral scoring (i.e., how ready is this prospect?). Then agree on who “owns” each cell in the matrix–marketing or sales. Finally, decide specifically how prospects will be advanced to the next stage.

Pull it all together in a launch plan
Create an integrated launch plan that includes key documents such as prospect profiles, message briefs and media guides. A solid launch plan will accomplish four things:

1. Collect – It consolidates and tracks everything–your action plan, media contacts, budget, lead scoring, etc.
2. Plan – It provides tools and aids for your team to prepare for a great launch–without reinventing the wheel.
3. Communicate – It informs important stakeholders of your plans.
4. Measure - It provides metrics to measure progress–and to build corporate learning for the next launch.

Sound like a lot of work? Perhaps. But it probably pales in comparison to what you’ve already invested in developing your new product. Here’s some good news: If your B2B competitors are still using the old rules, you’ll gain a strong competitive edge by following just some of the new rules. But don’t get too comfortable. Time and tide–and the rules for great B2B product launches–wait for no man.

Dan Adams is president of Advanced Industrial Marketing. He is the author of the 2008 book, “New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth.” For more information, please visit www.b2bproductlaunch.com.