Setting goals for your business launch

The purpose of a launch can vary considerably - from reaching and selling to as many people as possible as fast as possible, to dipping a toe in the water to test, learn and adapt. We’ve listed some of the key motivators below.

If you need to make as many sales as possible from day one, you will likely go for a hard launch.

This is a full-scale launch of your business to your entire audience all at once. It’s especially important for businesses that provide your sole income, or which have set running costs, that need to start generating income from as early as possible to remain viable (such as a cafe or venue).

To successfully launch your business with a bang, you’ll need to run a co-ordinated marketing campaign across multiple channels to raise awareness prior to launch, which does require a bit of budget behind it, and potentially expert help. Your marketing could include running a pre-launch campaign across all relevant marketing channels, such as social media, press, influencer marketing, email, and paid advertising. You want to maximise visibility among your target market and generate enough interest from the get-go. A hard launch often includes promotions, special offers, or even physical events to raise awareness and generate interest.

A hard launch does carry a higher risk, as your new business is visible to your entire potential audience from the start. Any issues with your product or processes can impact your brand and generate negative feedback. It’s important to factor this into your planning and potentially offer discounts or incentives while you get on your feet, and communicate effectively with your customers and resolve any issues quickly to keep them on board.

However, on the positive side, a well-planned hard launch can propel your business forward. It can attract attention from the media, create a big brand buzz, attract loyal customers, and help you generate the revenue you need. And of course, you will gain a huge amount of insight during the first few months which will help you refine and improve your business as you go.

If you are launching an innovative or new product or service that isn’t available in your market, you could consider launching with an MVP. An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a stripped-down version or offering that tests your idea in the market.

Launching with an MVP can be a great way to fine-tune your product or service and gain valuable feedback, before you go into full-scale production. This is because no matter what research has been done, you can never be completely sure who your customers are or exactly what their needs are, until you try something for real. What people say in research or focus groups often differs from what they actually do when deciding to buy or use something.

Your MVP could be as simple as:

• an advert encouraging people to sign up and find out more about the service you’re thinking of launching, so you can see if there’s demand
• a small run of your key product that you sell slightly discounted in return for feedback, to gauge interest and gather hands-on insight on your product’s design.

From there, you measure what’s worked and what hasn’t, and decide whether to keep going or ‘pivot’ to something different. For more on this approach, the Lean Startup by Eric Ries is worth a read.

You may have a finished product or service, but you need to test your processes before you go into full production or finalise operations. For example, you may wish to test your marketing, your website functionality, the way you provide your service, your logistics, etc.

Delivering good customer service is about much more than just your core product. It’s about the shopping experience, the order or purchase process, and effective delivery or fulfilment. It’s about having the resource to meet demand at the right time to avoid unhappy customers.

One way to do this is to restrict the number of people who know about your business on day one, and slowly expand it once things are ticking over smoothly. This gives you a chance to collate and respond to feedback quickly, change your processes and adapt if needed, and deliver a positive experience for all your customers to build future word-of-mouth referrals.

With a soft-launch, if something does go wrong, fewer people are aware of it, giving you a chance to recover with minimal reputation damage.

This can be ideal for businesses in food and hospitality which can use it to test menus or recipes and train new staff for a few weeks before progressing to a higher profile launch. Or, for hand-made craft businesses where you’re not sure if you have the capacity for a big surge in demand.

Of course, your approach to this will need to take into account the minimum amount of sales you will need to achieve cashflow and to be profitable.

A phased launch is useful if you eventually plan to have a whole suite of products or services, but you need to work up to it and build your capability and cashflow first. In this case it’s best to start with a limited range and see how things go. Start with the simplest option of your product or service that’s likely to have the widest possible appeal, combined with the one that’s most likely to capture attention.

For example, let’s say you’re launching your own T-shirt designs. Rather than launch straight away with 15 different colours in a multitude of sizes (giving yourself a cash-flow issue and the problem of where to store them all) perhaps pick a single very bold colour to stand-out in your ads and images, and one neutral colour which is likely to have a broader appeal.

You’ll probably end up with a series of mini-launches for each new or extended product or service you add in. This gives you the opportunity to test, learn and adapt, as well as keep things fresh with lots of exciting new choices for your existing customers, while you build revenue to boost your growth.

Regardless of your launch aims, the overarching marketing goals for different businesses are likely to be similar during launch, it’s just the balance and scale that will vary. Before you start your marketing, make sure you’ve created a marketing plan, and understand different marketing techniques to find new customers.

• Build awareness and interest. A key goal in marketing for launch is to raise awareness and drum up interest. This could be done through pre-launch communications, and a marketing push across all channels - including social media and paid advertising when you launch and beyond.
• Increase sales. As you gain traction, you will want to maximise sales. Online, this could be by analysing which traffic sources perform best, or altering the images, copy, and layout of your online shop to increase conversions. In-person this could be through up-selling products or services, booking customers for repeat appointments, etc.
• Build a database. As your following grows, you will likely want to build a database of existing and potential customers. Encourage people to follow you on social media and sign up to your mailing list. Consider a sign up form on your site and offer incentives to sign up such as discounts and savings, free consultation, free downloads, etc.
• Gather feedback. Whilst income is important, sales also allow you to test and learn. Feedback allows you to assess how customers feel about your product or service itself, your price, your customer service, processes, etc. Gather feedback in any way you can - e.g. by linking to a feedback survey in confirmation emails, by asking customers in-store, etc. Find out more about gathering feedback.
• Encourage reviews. Reviews can hugely influence customer decisions. Encourage reviews by adding review functionality to your website, using review sites, and reminding customers to leave reviews. Remember to actively monitor reviews and respond to them in a timely and measured way. Find out more about managing reviews and responding to customers online.