Launching your brand into the marketplace is a daunting prospect, but it’s a crucial and transformative step in establishing yourself as a consultant. Our step-by-step guide outlines the five key elements for a successful launch. Discover how to position your brand, build anticipation, and set your brand apart from competitors.

The Power of a Well-Planned Launch 

Have you ever had a genius idea but felt unsure about how to share it with the world? If so, you are certainly not alone. However, as long as your idea remains stuck in your head, not being acted upon, it cannot be monetized. Putting your genius out into the world, making the leap and becoming a consultant in your field is a daunting prospect. However, having a well-planned launch serves to significantly ease this process, allowing for a smooth yet impactful transition. A strategically planned launch will increase your brand exposure, create awareness around your brand and set you apart from the competition. In this step-by-step guide, we will explore the five integral elements of launching your brand into the marketplace. 

Define Your Brand

Before you can hope to launch your brand, you must ensure that it is unmistakably defined. To do this, you must first identify your niche. What problems do you solve, who do you solve them for and how do you solve them? Additionally, you need to clearly define your unique value proposition. What sets you apart from other consultants or experts in your field? Your UVP should communicate the specific transformations or outcomes clients can expect from working with you. Clearly answering these questions allows you to firmly position yourself within the correct marketplace and establish yourself as an industry leading expert.

When defining your brand and establishing your positioning, ask yourself: 

• Who You Serve: Clearly identify your ideal client and their needs.
• What You Offer: Articulate the transformation or solution you provide.
• Who You Are: Share your unique story, values, and expertise to build trust.

Build Anticipation 

With your brand and positioning clearly defined, you want to start building some excitement and anticipation around your launch. Before purchasing your services (especially in the online space), your audience must get to know you and come to trust you. This can be done by consistently putting out valuable content that gives audiences an insight into your expertise, brand personality and solutions. As such, in preparing your launch you should carefully plan your content calendar. Include details of content type (blogs, social media posts, podcasts), when you will post, how this will align with and generate anticipation for your scheduled launch.

Continually engage with your audience throughout the launch process. Use multiple channels, such as weekly emails, to share valuable insights and build trust. Ask for their feedback and develop a trusted relationship with them over time, making them all the more likely to purchase from you when your launch date does come around. 

Keep It Consistent

Throughout (and even beyond) the launch process, you are going to be putting out a lot of content across all platforms. It is imperative that you ensure consistency across all channels. This mitigates against potential confusion, making it sure that there is no doubt as to what your brand offers, what your mission is and what you stand for. Having everything aligned will make your marketing efforts all the more impactful. 

You want to maintain consistency in your brand voice and messaging across all channels. However, you equally want to maintain consistency with your brand’s unique visual identity. Correctly designing your logo, colors, fonts and graphics is imperative and they must marry up with your brand personality and message. Once you have defined the visual constraints of your brand, adhere to them across all of your platforms (websites, social media, physical marketing materials). 

Sticking to your established brand guidelines will make your brand more memorable. For a simple yet pertinent example of this, consider Coca-Cola. Since their inception in 1886, Coca-Cola has consistently adhered to its guidelines for logo, typography, brand colors, and messaging, making small adjustments to stay relevant over time. As a result, they are one of the world’s most recognizable brands, to the point that you could pick out a bottle of Coca-Cola from a silhouette alone. Furthermore, maintaining consistency over channels and time establishes you as reliable and trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. This will ensure that clients pick your solutions over those of your competitors time and time again. 

Target the Right Audience 

All of the hard work that you pour into launching your brand may well be wasted if you target the wrong audience. You must position yourself in front of an audience that resonates with you, needs your solutions and is willing to pay for them. Many startups, particularly in the online space, struggle initially because they fail to position themselves in front of the right audience.

The first step in targeting the right audience is defining who they are. In order to do this, it is vital that you have a nuanced understanding of what you offer and who this benefits. Your understanding of who you serve may develop over time, so examine clients past and present to establish similarities. With an understanding of who your target audience is, now you need to find out where they exist. What social media platforms do they commonly use? What industry events are they likely to attend? Again, this may require a little trial-and-error, but as you hone in your understanding around this you will paint a clear picture of where you need to position your messaging. 

Set Measurable Goals and Metrics

With your launch ready to go, set yourself a series of measurable goals and metrics to track your progress. Use these metrics to see where your messaging is and isn’t resonating. This will allow you to tailor your approach and place your focus on those areas where your audience is most active. There are countless metrics that you can use to track your progress, so consider which ones best fit your purposes: 

• Impressions: The number of times a piece of content is viewed. 
  
• Click-through Rate: How many people click on a link included in your social media post or weekly email newsletter.
• Bounce Rate: How many people visit one page of your website and leave without exploring the site any further. 
• Engagement Rate: Number of people liking, commenting on or sharing the content you are putting out. 
• Conversions: Perhaps one of the most important metrics of your marketing efforts, are they capturing leads and resulting in purchases? Ultimately, if your conversion rate is low then you are going to have to adjust your strategy. 

Hit the Ground Running by Planning Your Launch

Making the leap to becoming a consultant in your field is a process as daunting as it is exciting. The process is a marathon, not a sprint and inevitably there will be challenges, failures and setbacks along the way. However, if becoming a consultant is your goal then at some point you will have to jump off and launch your brand into the marketplace. The good news is that, by following our five step guide to carefully planning your launch you can make your transition over to consulting smooth and impactful. Define your brand, generate some anticipation around your launch with a carefully planned content calendar and ensure that you are positioned in front of your target audience. From here, all that remains is to launch, measure your progress with clearly defined metrics and refine your strategy as appropriate. Carefully implement these five steps and you will be well on your way to establishing yourself as the go-to expert in your field.