Event Launch Strategies

All event launches start with having a plan. I’m not going to discuss how the business opportunity was discovered, how the product specifications and development has taken place nor how we conducted our market research and early stage planning. This is because all of that work has already been done before we launched these blogs. Here onwards I’m just going to talk about what we’re doing now to launch the product which is almost ready (in testing phase).

The first thing we do is map out our strategy and list all of the sequences we are going to execute for each strategy so that we end up with a master plan that is a compilation of multiple micro plans that detail each phase of the launch that we can then put together into a master plan. We use mind-mapping software to do a lot of this so that my team are always able to see the overall strategy or big picture and can then break it down into compartments where they can also see an overview. Its important everyone is on the same page and able to contribute to the overall strategic planning. (If you are more comfortable using Work Breakdown Structures or other project management tools, that’ll work fine as well. The idea is to draw out the basic map of the launch).

Here is the high level Planning Sequence that we put in place for the Events Listed Website launch plan.

1. Register domain names & build some pages to establish your brands basic look and feel. Of-course this involves creating the required brand attributes before settling in on design direction. We chose to use our avatar (character) in Miss Abigale on the main website to introduce the visitors to the sites content. This character is consistently present in our marketing campaigns and messages so that readers and prospects can get accustomed to it. We have this step already taken care of.

2. Use robot.txt files to block search engine spiders from crawling the site until it is SEO ready. If you’re not proficient at SEO on page structures it’s important to contract SEO professionals who know their stuff to do it for you. If you get this wrong it can cost you a huge amount in terms of opportunity costs without you event realizing it. We have a team of SEO professionals working on the site content as of day one.

3. Formulate the product development and testing sequence into a time-line, so that the launch preps can be aligned with the product development. Since our product is already being tested right now, we have already undergone most of the product development modules successfully. However, I will share the timeline with you in my next post to give you a clearer picture of what it looks like.

4. Plan our blog & content strategy in line with above product development time line to be tied into our marketing strategy though we give this component of the launch its own heading on the basis that content is always king. (I’ll add more detail on this in later posts).

5. As discussed in my previous post, we would want to then define any off line marketing strategies we aim to deploy along with outlining our online or Internet marketing plan for driving traffic to the site (will add more detail in later posts).

6. With all these components of the launch listed we can start to plan our launch. We do this by breaking the launch into 3 sequences & plotting them into a time line (more detail in later posts).

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Social Traffic - The Book

Today’s tip! To get search engine traffic you must own software that’s capable of showing you everything the search engine spiders see.

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