Ready, Set, Launch: Is Your Brand Prepared For The Spotlight?

As seen on Forbes

By Kathleen Lucente

It’s that time of year when companies are preparing to unveil themselves or a new offering. Every summer, like clockwork, I hear from a slew of prospective clients wanting to talk about public relations (PR) for their launches. Our conversations either impress on them that now is the time to be working together or that they have more work to do first.

While there are many important checkpoints before a launch, there are a few I consider essential before companies invest in a public relations campaign. If you can answer “yes” to the following questions, you might be ready for PR.

If you’re not resolving a challenge or filling a need, you’re offering something lovely that no one wants to buy. Knowing that customers will want to pay you is crucial, and knowing your actual value to them is even more so. If you can’t confidently confirm such demand exists, allocate resources to conduct market research to find out.

Companies that go to market with products no one needs or wants don’t get noticed. If you can’t prove to investors, industry influencers and reporters that your product generates and satisfies a demand, your appeal stops there. You must validate how much customers need your offering — and what it costs them to be without it — before you can clearly articulate its worth.

Do you need to educate people about what you’re selling, or are they already convinced and just waiting for you to provide it? That’s a crucial question that will influence your narrative and how you reach your audience.

Are there other such options on the market, or are you the only one? Give investors and analysts a clear idea of why you exist, what similar approaches have previously been attempted and why customers will be clamoring for yours. If you’re a disruptive force in an existing market, you’ll need to prove you can pilot a company that looks past the old way of doing things to adopt new technologies and methods.

Maybe you’re entering an established field that’s already a bit crowded — for instance, business-to-business (B2B) fintech, an industry in which many clients consult business media and judge a vendor’s stability by investors and seasoned management hires. In any case, you need to pinpoint where and who your likely customers are and explore the potential necessity of targeting them using digital marketing, strategic ad buys and other tools or methods beyond traditional PR.

Almost any company has certain influencers who move leaders toward a purchasing decision. A B2B tech company’s sales department might actually need to target three different types of clients: the early adopter, the seasoned skeptic and the educated leader. Depending on their stance, they might get their information from trade or business magazines.

Your sales and PR teams should be working together to identify client segments, determine best approaches to speak to each audience and determine how media relations and content efforts can move potential customers down the sales funnel. That way, PR can prioritize media outreach, customize story angles and seek interviews with the right thought leaders and influencers.

Your PR plan needs to establish a strategy that maps to your goals. Reviewing your short- and long-term visions helps your PR team think tactically about showcasing your story.

That means, if we’re setting up a major media interview that won’t be published for five months, you should be ready to talk off the record now about plans that will have impact then. It’s crucial to share as much as you can with your PR partner.

PR should be involved at every stage of product development and ideation. With my clients, I insist on seeing feedback from beta testers, pilot users or others who preview the offering firsthand. It’s a way of identifying weak spots like, say, a clunky user interface that needs fixing before going to market.

If you haven’t done these dress rehearsals and dry runs, you’re not ready for prime time. PR professionals want their clients to shine, so being a critic is part of our job.

Early testers and adopters also reveal how people respond to your product and why they’re willing to buy it. That information defines your marketing, your social media strategy and your messaging to the press. The better you know your product and customers now, the better the chances of a successful launch. Your sales team will thank you for that!

If you’ve worked with a PR agency before, this part of the conversation is easy. Companies new to the process might not realize the ramp-up time needed before a launch or the marketing and social media follow-up involved.

It’s essential to be honest and clear at the beginning about how much you’re able to spend on a PR campaign. If your budget is too modest for your goals, you should know that upfront. A PR partner can help you be selective and use funds wisely rather than create a plan you can’t afford.

We like to see success defined at the relationship’s inception so that everyone understands what’s possible and how your money can work in strategic ways. With a realistic idea of your needs and budget, your PR partner can customize an approach to make the brand impression you’re looking for, whether that means targeting several audiences at once or specific markets over a longer period of time.