"Marketing Tips for Launching a New Product," by Kim T. Gordon

These valuable tips include details about differentiating your product from the competition's; cutting costs by targeting your ideal market audience; choosing the most effective sales and marketing channels; and verifying the efficacy of your market approach before fully committing to the launch. Read More>>

"How to Avoid Six Common Pitfalls of the Launch Process," by J. Mark Carr 

Product launch mistake No. 1: Inadequate or misinterpreted product development research. No. 2: Inadequate and lackluster product launch team. No. 3: Allowing standard company procedures to stifle innovation, creativity. Get the details and read the rest of the pitfalls in Mark Carr's article. Read More>>

"How Marketing Can Go Beyond the 'Make It Pretty' Syndrome," by Laura Patterson. 

Successful marketing is customer-focused--well, duh. Yet all too often marketing departments place too much emphasis on making the product look sexy, says Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo, as cited in a recent article by Laura Patterson. Marketing is more than a creative function, says Patterson, that pivots on four critical customer-focused marketing processes: synching one's products with the needs and wants of customers to create customer value; making every customer "touch point" communicate value; monitoring the effectiveness of every company function in delivering value; and managing customer relationships. Read More>>

This month, most of the articles are designed to help you launch or re-launch a product or service. There are many details to consider in your plan to tell the world you have something new they just can't live without! 

In today's economy, it's more important than ever to continually alter, change, and improve to survive. There was a time when you could bring something into the market and continue to offer it year after year unchanged, and still have customers beat your door down. Now we have all been conditioned to believe that products and services are out of date shortly after they are introduced. Even if your product is still just as needed today as it was last year or the year before, our "this year's newest - latest - greatest" syndrome will not let your customers feel they are getting the best if you haven't tweaked and moved it along its evolutionary path. It is a sad but true fact that our fast-paced lives have produced this incredibly short selling window between product generations. If you have been part of this industry for a long time, you still remember the solid and steady sales of the good old days...but don't get trapped!