New services…

After a lot of thinking, planning and learning, I am pleased to say I will be introducing a new service in the new financial year. It is exciting to start something new, although I have been doing it quietly already, and I’m starting promotions this weekend at the Business Mums Conference.

The question now is – do I build anticipation and wait for 1 July to announce my new service, or do I tell you now? Which would you prefer?

My thoughts on such decisions:

• building anticipation is a great way to develop curiosity and (for a blog) an effective way to encourage repeat visitors
• there is no point in annoying people with part of a story so any ‘coming soon’ message needs to be intriguing and not mislead
• what does a launch date signify? Is there a strong reason to delay something new? If there are legal or IP or technical reasons to not give details in advance, be very careful of how you present any teasers
• don’t build up to a launch you aren’t sure of – it destroys your credibility and any excitement if your wesbite says “our new product will be in store on 10 June” and it’s now July.
• building up to a launch can start the process of search engine optimisation  and getting some traffic and ranking for your webpages. This may be limited if you can’t use keywords in advance but it at least gives you a URL to use in preparing marketing and advertising

Launching a new product or service also raises questions such as using the same brand and business name or not, pricing the new item, packaging the new with the old, and where to focus future marketing.

As for my new service, I am not launching it until July because my website can’t be ready before then (preparing a conference presentation and client deadlines took priority.) And you’ll just have to wait a little longer to find out more…