How to successfully launch a product or service:

By turning a great idea into a moneymaker through marketing

Great ideas die every day. Sometimes in someone's mind. Sometimes in conversation. And at other times, really tragic times, great ideas die after millions of dollars have been spent trying to save them. It's our contention, and if you study the landscape you'll agree, that great marketing has the ability to save (almost) any great idea from failure. Here's how to launch your product or service using marketing to drive success.

Partner up

Before anything else, schedule meetings with communications agencies in your region — even if your idea is still young and immature. While many agencies tout they can do anything for anyone, don't believe it. Demand that your agency has experience in your category. If they're well versed in launching new products, services or brands in your industry successfully, all the better. They'll understand the landscape more intimately, speeding up thinking and saving you from free-spending with the hope of lucking out on a solution.

Get in position

After choosing an agency, push them hard to do what the good ones do best. Specifically, they should be helping you carve out a distinct niche and develop key messaging around the unique, ownable benefits of your product or service. Some people call it brand discovery or brand essence. Be willing to adapt your idea according to their recommendations, but make sure the positioning and the story they craft are head turning — with everyone who hears your pitch uttering, "Tell me more."

Create a compelling presentation

A business plan is great, it's a given. But your agency should turn that business plan into a presentation that's visually and verbally stimulating. Whether you're going for buy-in within your company or funding from an outside corporation or venture capitalists, your positioning, story and presentation will make or break the meeting.

Open the door

Getting a meeting inside your company with the right people to present your concept should be a natural. Getting meetings as an entrepreneur — meetings with people who can truly make your idea explosive — is much more difficult. A great agency will develop and recommend a list of key people you should be talking to. Additionally, they'll get you in the door by creating a direct mail piece that slips under the gatekeeper and into the hands of someone who simply can't say no to a meeting after seeing it.

We've told you what you should do to successfully launch a product or service. Follow the links to the right to see how we did it in real life for our clients. It all started with a great idea. If you've got one and you want to see it fly, we should talk. Drop me a note at kreedy@leereedy.com.