How To Host A Product Launch Party That Kills
It’s all come down to this: how to host a product launch party that impresses every guest in attendance!
This after you’ve slaved away on your product or service for months or years. You’ve taken care of the little issues where you pulled your hair out. And you’ve celebrated the tiny victories.
Now, after all that work, expense, and struggle, you’re finally ready to unveil your company to the world. Congratulations!
It’s time to make a big impression — and sustain the energy of your launch into the next phase of your company’s growth.
Finally launching your product or service can be an exciting time. But since a mishandled launch can squander one of your new company’s biggest opportunities to build momentum, it can also be a time of significant stress. So what can you do to ensure you stick the landing?
Thanks to our experience helping partners and customers enjoy successful launches both inside and outside of Robben Media, we say this. Founders and business leaders who understand where to invest their time and energy when building their product launch enjoy far more success than those who try to figure things out as they go along.
You might call this the “game within the game” of product launches.
Planning an event with a fantastic venue, a fun atmosphere, and memorable experiences is obviously important.
But what can really help your company sink or swim is whether you strategically approach every step of the planning process to maximize your launch’s ability. When you execute, you showcase your company’s core value.
Before The Product Launch
Build a Simple, Persuasive Story Around Your Launch
Your product launch is a time for you to introduce your company to the world.
This can be a strength, but also presents many potential challenges. Like, what’s your plan to get your brand’s message across in the most powerful manner to capitalize on the extra attention?
Before you even start to think about the operational side of what your product launch looks like, you should have a finely tuned “story” that communicates who your company is and what makes your company’s offerings valuable in as few words as possible.
This shouldn’t be the kind of long form origin story about who your founders are and what inspired them to create their company that you might compose for your website’s About page.
Instead, you should focus on a one- to two-sentence description that’s simple to remember and makes it extremely clear who you are, how you’re approaching the market, and why your offerings have value.
No matter how fun your launch event ends up being, if your guests come away from your launch without a super clear understanding of exactly what your company does and why what it does matters, you’ve already shot your company in the foot.
Design a Product Launch That Puts Your Value In The Best Light
Now you have a super clear vision for exactly what everyone who leaves your event should understand about your business.
So how can you creatively design an event experience so that your product is as conspicuous and exciting as possible?
In other words, can the value proposition that drives your product to success be the value proposition that drives your launch event to success? How closely can you relate these two?
For many product types, a perfect match-up might not be realistic. But the more you can build your event experience around the features and benefits of your product, the better.
For example, let’s pretend you’re launching a digital marketing company that focuses explicitly on authenticity and transparent brand communications. What if a major element of your launch event was a marketing competition rebranding major companies to be more transparent and authentic, with prizes for winners including free marketing work performed by your new firm?
Imagine how the participants who left that event would describe what sets your new firm apart from the competition compared to a more basic event with just cocktails and appetizers. (Even better, you can still have cocktails and appetizers at your more ambitious launch event!)
Ideally, your launch event will be an experience that’s exciting on its own, but made even more exciting with your product experience attached.
This isn’t something to rush. Give yourself the time and resources you need to make an unforgettable launch happen.
During The Product Launch
Get Everyone On Your Team On The Same Page
This one might seem a little obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people can get it wrong.
Take me, for example. I’ve personally made this mistake when planning an event for a company.
Working with a different firm, our goal was to put together an impressive and memorable booth at a major tech networking event in our city. As the project manager for the event and operating on a shoestring budget, I put together a booth that parodied Apple’s Genius bars, but with our company helping solve business problems instead of tech ones.
I worked my butt off leading up to the event, ordering uniforms, customizing our booth decor, developing giveaways, and managing all the minute logistics.
One thing I failed to do, however, was train my coworkers on how to pitch our company. I assumed they would know how to explain what we did in a concise and clear way. After all, they worked there every day!
The result was that the event was far less consistent than it could have been. I had to spend far too much time at the event trying to teach people last-second pitching skills instead of managing other issues. I tried to manage way too much myself. And inconsistencies in our tone when communicating with prospects made our booth somewhat confusing.
Learn from my mistakes. Ensure everyone working your event has strong pitching skills ahead of time. And that your messaging and tone is consistent no matter who’s speaking.
Doing this can make or break all the work you put in before the event.
Make It Exciting To Attend The Event
When you’re trying to finesse your event and maximize the amount of traction you can get out of everything you’re doing, it might be easy to get lost in the planning and strategy.
Above all, fun should be one of your top priorities. Not just for your event participants, but for you and your team as well.
A fun, exciting event is actually its own strategic advantage. Think about how many more Instagram and Snapchat stories you’ll be featured on if the attendees at your event are actually having a good time?
The strategic, calculating side of event planning that I’ve described earlier in this article is really important. But it can’t be your only priority when planning your event. If they are, you’ll risk an event that seems dry, callous, and that doesn’t pair your brand with a positive memory and impression.
Elements like venue, the food and drink, and the general event atmosphere should be prioritized just as much as your plans to showcase your product and laser target your messaging.
After The Event
Continue To Reach Your Audience
Hopefully, your guests come away from your event with both some really positive memories and clearly understand your company’s value.
Continuing to keep them engaged after your event ends is critical to generate future marketing and sales opportunities.
Think about the channels and methods you’ll use after your event ends to continue to push your brand’s momentum forward. And take the necessary steps during your event to maximize the reach of those channels and methods is critical to long-term success.
A successful post-event marketing strategy spans multiple channels including SEO, paid ads, and email marketing. Each message should emphasize elements of your brand that weren’t covered in detail at your event.
For example, you could write a good social media post that looks back on the event and calls attention to a specific feature of your product or service in detail.
Additionally, maximizing your opportunity to connect personally with event attendees is a great way to further maximize the lead-generating potential of your launch event.
Tagging attendees in event photos, for example, encourages them directly to share your event’s post-marketing much more persuasively than simply posting photos that make your event look good.
Learn From Your Successes and Failures
The launch of your brand’s latest offering is, in many ways, the end of a long journey. You should take the time to celebrate your success.
That said, now is not the time to rest on your laurels. Your launch event is almost surely a hotbed of extremely valuable information about your successes and failures.
After your launch event, work with your team to translate as many insights as you can from your experience. What seemed to really connect with people, and what didn’t? How can you improve future events, or your product as a whole, based on what you now know?
As soon as your product launches, start working on ways to add value, improve existing features, and fine-tune your product or service to better fit your market’s needs.
Ultimately, if you focus your efforts on creatively demonstrating your product or service’s unique value in a clear, exciting, and fun way, you’ll be well on your way to maximizing the amount of traction you can get out of your product launch event.
Ready to transform your next branded event? We’re happy to help. Apply to become a customer and we’ll get back to you ASAP for all of your marketing needs.
