Steve is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at Convert2Media, a leading affiliate network. For over 7 years Convert2Media has set the standard in Online Performance Marketing. When it comes to directing your online budget, there are many places to choose from. Their team of experienced marketing professionals can provide you with an analytics-based approach to getting the most out of your online marketing activities.
Hacks of Product Launch by Steve Howe
1. Outsource specialty roles (when you’re up against the clock, nothing comes close to giving you peace of mind more than having a workforce that is available when you need them most). In my case 9-5 wasn’t going to get the job done. I had to outsource and hire specialty roles. Don’t be cheap and hire professionals.
2. Home team advantage: use your local resources and community. Building a grassroots squad or movement is a lot easier when you are on your home turf. Use every advantage you have and think outside the box in an effort to reinforce your brand awareness during your launch. Also, try your best to launch around a larger event which might bring a larger audience together which shares an identical interest with your product or brand.
3. Every single day be sure to start on your hardest thing first and plan for the worst. This gives you time to adjust in cases where “anything and everything“decides to show up and try and piss on your plans.
Challenges
1. Urgency: sometimes I feel like a robot without emotion in the real world and want everything to happen immediately. I don’t understand why some people set such low standards for quality work output. Time management and efficiencies become frustrations of mine. I love people who operate at a high level of efficiency.
2. Measuring marketing impact of non-trackable expenses: depending on what type of product launch you’re doing you can have expenses in goods or materials which is hard to quantify ROI. Coming from a digital marketing background it was difficult to take the leap at times and no know how to measure the impact (awareness vs revenue)
3. Stay in your own lane and stay focused. Along with the launch journey, lots of parties will come along and try and get you to modify your plans to include this or that or change this for that.
Stay true to your vision and goals and don’t try to be all things to all people. Consider everything but stay focused on what got you this point — you!