Our Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing Workshop was a Great Success!

A half day workshop on October 27^th, 2010 organized by Midas Touch Consultants was a great success with professionals from variety of streams attending it.

Amongst the audience, we had CEO and marketing professionals of India’s leading antivirus software company, former MD of a well known software product engineering and quality engineering services organization, Owner of a usability services organization, Sales Consultants, Co-founder of an organization providing expert services in the area of software testing and quality engineering, Head of Strategy and Consulting from a Outsourced Enterprise Product Sales consulting organization, Head of Marketing of leading Thermal Insulation Material dealers, CEO of a public relations and communications company, Strategic Marketing Consultant, Event Head from an enthusiastic startup and also a student who is leaving for an overseas job soon.

The workshop covered various aspects in online marketing such as Website Optimization, Web Analytics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing. With lot of real-life examples, it made it easier for the attendees to understand the concepts.

The most enjoyable part of the workshop for me, as a presenter, was the very enthusiastic and participative audience. Through their questions and participation, they made sure that they understand whatever is being explained in the session. Not only this, they also asked lot of questions relevant to their own area of business. The collaborative learning gave good insights to everyone. The discussions revolved around how online marketing can be used for consumer products, how it can be applied for software products, services or to niche enterprise products and how social media can be used for enhancing personal brand.

For revision of concepts, we played a nice game (built using Harbinger’s YawnBuster software). The correct answers to the questions asked during the game convinced me that the audience has well grasped the concepts. Even post the afternoon break where we all relished on some yummy snacks, the participation levels were as high as before and there was absolute no lull – either the snacks were not tasty or the presenter engaged the audience with interesting discussion topics – and I would like to believe in the later one -:)

I felt especially good when one of the participants coming all the way from Mumbai mentioned that the workshop was worth her travel!

Thanks everyone for making it such a great event and for those who missed it, we look forward to see you next time!

Product Launch Checklist and More….

Okay, so now you have completed conceptualizing a product idea, the design is ready and your engineers have started building it. What next? You obviously gear up to make a big launch of the product.

What is the checklist you need to go through before you can say that you are ready for the launch from the marketing perspective?

Here are some items which I think are important:

• Naming the product
• Product messaging
• Product positioning
• Target market segmentation
• Sales strategy
• Pricing and introduction offers strategy
• Marketing plan preparation
• Advertising channel identification and finalization
• Channels identification (?)

Coming to more of operational items: 

• Logo and website design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Literature Preparation (brochures, flyers, conference panels etc)
• Sales tools preparation – whitepapers, demos, FAQs etc
• Press release
• Newsletter preparation and opt-in management
• Social media promotion strategy and preparation for the same - you can’t avoid this if you want to reach out masses in a short time

Can anything more be added to this list?

Once you have the checklist ready, what do you think is the best way to plan and execute these items so that none of these are sidelined just because “we don’t have time right now!” or "we can always do those later"?