Launching New Product with Tight Budget Demands Smart Marketing Decisions
The weak global economy has businesses scrambling to find new, cost-conscious approaches to new product launches. But limited marketing budgets don’t necessarily mean limited launch success.
That’s the conclusion reached by sales professionals meeting in Las Vegas recently to plan release of the New Met Lab One™, a innovative new entry into the demanding field of metrology and gas flow calibration. The ML One™, developed by Bios International of Butler, N.J., builds on existing technology to deliver superior gas flow calibration across a much wider spectrum of uses.
It sounds less than exciting to the layperson. But to the semiconductor, pharmaceutical, energy and other fields dependent upon high-precision process controls, such innovations can mean millions and millions of dollars to the bottom line.
“The ML One™ clearly is a breakthrough product,” said Harvey Padden, CEO of Bios. “But it’s very tough sell in an economy like this, and we can’t justify an expensive traditional launch campaign. We had to focus our marketing less on a shotgun approach to getting the word out than a rifle-shot strategy of reaching exactly the right target customers with exactly the right message.”
The product’s marketing plan, developed in conjunction with WestWord Communications, focused on aggressive use of video and other interactive techniques designed to provide a hands-on product experience involving the Bios sales force and individual customers.
“Initial results have been great,” Padden said. “Allowing people to see and touch the product give us a chance to explain the value and payback far more effectively than any ad or brochure. When you’re offering a product this sophisticated and this valuable, it’s the personal touch that makes all the difference.”
See the marketing video produced by WestWord Communications and WalkerTek Interactive Marketing of Fairfield, N.J., at http://vimeo.com/29853666.