GO-TO-MARKET!

Most call it go-to-market strategy and planning, others simply call it marketing communications. We call it a brand launch. It's the culmination of strategy, energy, ideas, nerves, deadlines and expertise manifesting into the brand's voice to reach its target market.

BRAND LAUNCHING TODAY REQUIRES SOLID PREP WORK:

STEP 1. IMMERSION (Month 1)

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Think Tanks: Dive in with our clients and establish the go-to-market brief for this new brand, or in many cases, the brief to reposition an existing brand and redeploy it into the market place. The Biz: Understand the business model and collaborate how this new brand will deploy, as well as review similar business models and understand success metrics and pit falls. Competition: Conduct and/or validate competitive research to understand competitive brand positions and the strength of the positions they hold. Perceived value: Conduct or evaluate industry/market research to understand what specific ROI attributes customers/clients value most from an emotional vantage point. Differentiators: Detail brand's superior value features or differentiators and align with those the target industry/market value most, then prioritize the differences from most valued [most likely to move the masses to buy your brand over your competitor's brand] to least valued. Buying process: Review, understand and/or craft the customer's/client's buying process for the brand. Most often, we'll modify the process to fit specific environment for a product category. A common purchasing process is: Discover. Learn. Believe. Try. Buy. Re-buy. Recommend.

STEP 2. SKETCH OUT (Month 1.5)

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Develop (literally draw out) a "straw-man" communications plan in order to establish the following: Objectives: What are the key milestones defining success for this brand from today, through launch, and into its first year? Budget: Align the objectives with the established budget in year 1. Timeline: Place objectives and budget investment along the timeline for year 1.

STEP 3. BRAND STRATEGY (Month 2 & 3)

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Establish the Brand strategy Craft Brand position Design Brand identity system Determine key word strategy and cement long-tail key word portfolio that drives all content creation for the brand communication assets as well as the website itself Design key brand communication assets Create SEO optimized digital collateral system for sales team Validate critical brand strategy assumptions and key creative Segment markets by industry/verticals Create why-to-buy messaging to target each decision maker type within each vertical market to be personally relevant to their life Concept the big idea creative to carry the brand's message to market Determine educational leadership strategy for brand Develop consumer package design [B2C] or craft sales team's new business presentation [B2B] Establish 3rd party/customer validation strategy to support brand position

STEP 4. LAUNCH PR PLAN (Month 2 & 3)

Craft public relations plan including press releases and use of social networking tools (i.e. blogs)

STEP 5. LAUNCH WEBSITE (Month 4) Develop website strategy and execute. We typically recommend creating and deploying what we call the self-service website. This website enables a visitor to self-qualify themselves as a viable prospect for your brand following the predetermined buyer's purchase process established in Step 1.

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Develop landing pages or micro sites by industry / vertical market Deploy initial SEO strategy and development plan, creating a dynamically alive web presence with a pre-determined pipeline of daily/weekly updates to the website content to capture our target traffic as determined in our long tail search word portfolio. A/B test creative, promotion, key words and conversions using PPC-leveraged landing pages

STEP 6. LAUNCH INBOUND MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN (Month 4.5)

STEP 7. GO PUBLIC (Month 5)

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Launch PR campaign, referencing 3rd party validation and blog conversations just as the online murmur is beginning to buzz into an ongoing conversation

STEP 8. LAUNCH ONLINE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN (Month 6)