Well, that launch went well. (It did not.)

A few years ago I consulted to a small music tech startup that was launching a wireless guitar accessory that modified the sound of electric guitars.

The product was very innovative, and the company had raised money to launch it.

As is often the case with tech startups, the founders were two very tech-y engineers and had no marketing knowledge.

I knew my role as a marketing person would be challenging because I’m no guitarist and have no idea what their potential customers like.

But I’m creative and can find connections between things quickly, so I knew I could help them.

When I entered the project, the company had just completed a pre-launch of the product and it flopped.  Results were close to zero.

They said, “We don’t understand, this product is every guitarist’s dream come true.”

Hm.  

I reviewed all of their marketing and promotional materials in depth and watched hours of videos demonstrating the product, how they spoke about it and presented it to their audience.

I noticed that audio and video product demos usually played heavy metal or Jimi Hendrix songs.

I had this thought that MAYBE their people didn’t resonate with that kind of music, but I was immediately shot down with this idea.  And when I asked why this kind of music was always used in videos and promos, they said that this was their audiences’ favorite kind of music.  

How did they know this? They assumed it, because it was their favorite (and anyway, tech engineers know best – cue big eye roll).

Of course, I wanted to test this assumption, so when they signed a partnership deal with Guitar World Magazine, I pushed for a different kind of campaign  – to send a survey to the magazine’s 100K+ email list, which would help us nail down EXACTLY what guitarists wanted to hear.

Because they were eager to launch again (and launch with results), they went for this idea.

Well well well.

As it turned out, only 20% of respondents (over 500) favored Jimi Hendrix and heavy metal.  Most people favored Eric Clapton and Blues.

“Womp Womp, you engineering geniuses!” 

This was just ONE bit of data that surprised them and confirmed why the pre-launch didn’t work.

Please survey your people. Get to know them better, understand what they want so that you can serve content that’ll make sense to them and will let them know you get them!  

In the spirit of surveying, I’ve also created a summer survey!  I want to get to know you better, create content that’ll benefit you and your business and will help you share amazing content that will attract the RIGHT clients.

Help me create better content – – >> https://bit.ly/summer-survey-21

And because I ❤️ & appreciate your time, if you fill out the survey by Monday 9/6/21 at 11:00PM EDT, you’ll be entered to win a $100 gift card from Amazon.

I will announce the winner on Tuesday 9/7/21 at 3pm EDT and will notify them via email.

HERE is the LINK again

It’ll take you 10 minutes or less  – I really appreciate our connection 🙂