ESYB2 063 - Marketing Plan for an Innovative New Product
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[00:00:00] In this video, let's talk about a marketing plan for a company that is an innovative startup type of company. It hasn't been done before, like maybe you're doing like a new Uber or a new something. The issue with that is it's not a proven type of company. It's innovative. So there isn't a set of existing marketing strategies and we'll talk about how to tackle that.

But the first thing you've got to do because it's innovative, it's interesting. So you can take advantage of the newness of this idea. and get publicity. You can get publicity by pitching journalists and influencers. Just make sure that you understand that I'm talking about free publicity. Precisely because your idea is new and compelling, you can get free publicity.

If it wasn't unique, you would have to pay. Influencers, which you really can do, but very sparingly because often they're overrated. So you can hire some influencers during launch just to boost your launch. But be very careful because a lot of times they say they're good, but they [00:01:00] get you a lot less traffic than you thought they would get you.

A lot of them are overrated and it ends up being a loss of money. So just be careful in how you vet them and research which ones are good for you. But they can help you have a slightly bigger launch. And during the building of your product, make sure that you're actually establishing relationships with influencers, with journalists, so that when your product is a couple of weeks away from getting launched, you can reach out to all of them and say, Hey, by the way, we're launching this product.

It's on this date. And because you have a little bit of a relationship, nothing crazy like a relationship, just be tweeting at them, be commenting on their posts, just make sure they're aware of you so that they like you by then. It's a little bit of a warmer connection than if on day one when you launch, if you ask them, Hey, Can you promote me?

Of course, they're going to say no, because they don't know you. But if they already have some affinity towards you, they'll be much more likely to do [00:02:00] so. And of course, you can also do a press release on piweb. com. And you want to also ask and align all your business contacts and friends to just share during your launch date so that you can have as big of a launch as possible.

And hopefully, of course, you're going to be able to get publicity long term because of the newness of piweb. Now that's launch and that's publicity. But how do you find additional longterm marketing strategies that work for you when you're in a new situation? Like it's an, it's not a proven business.

It's innovative. So we don't really know what's going to work yet. So unlike the proven common types of businesses like local businesses or service businesses, the marketing strategies for those are known in your case, it's still mostly unknown. It needs to be discovered. So of course there are two things.

Before you launch, you must have some sense of a marketing plan that might work, not a random plan. Carefully thought out plan [00:03:00] of strategies that you think will fit your situation and will work. And also after you launch, of course, all your strategies will be theoretical. You'll have to experiment long term to find what truly is going to work.

This is the bad side of having an innovative situation because you are the one who has to figure out what's going to work. So during the planning, the questions you have to ask yourself is Can you align your business to get discovered in SEO? Is it shareable on social media? If not, how can you adjust little details about your business so that suddenly, oh, this is something people do kind of search for or, hmm, it's suddenly a little more funny or a little more shareable so that it takes advantage of social media and SEO and maybe it can stand out in both a little more.

And that's something you can do during planning. The planning wouldn't be perfect. Because it's all theoretical, but at least it would give you a higher chance to succeed in this. And the big, big problem to avoid is don't [00:04:00] get into a business that's unpromotable. That's a word I kind of made up, but sometimes businesses launch and then they have this rude awakening.

Oh, the SEO for MySpace. The social media is too crowded. The ads are not profitable. The influencers are too expensive and ineffective. And suddenly they run out of ideas. And they have a business, maybe a good product, no way to promote it. So that's what you really want to be careful of during the planning of an innovative company and don't start programming, don't hire developers until you have a reasonably good sense for how you will promote and whether it will actually work.

So. So ideally you'd have marketing expertise on your team. If you don't consult with multiple marketing experts because a lot of them are not as good as they say. So if you get multiple opinions, kind of like going to a doctor and getting multiple doctor opinions that will give you a [00:05:00] greatest chance to actually have a solid marketing plan before you launch.

