Having spoken to hundreds of speakers and promoters, a commonly phrased question, especially among the veteran speakers, is: "Is the product launch a fad?" Phrased another way: "Can I just ignore it and continue doing marketing to fill rooms and/or speak at live events?"
While nobody can predict the future, it's instructive to look at historical trends. We contend that the Internet has proven to be the most efficient means of distribution and has wiped out companies that have high overheads. Let's look at what's happened in other industries and why you must do a product launch immediately.
In the mid 1990s, as the Internet came on the scene, executives at traditional businesses (also known as brick and mortar companies) dismissed the Internet as a curiosity. That is, they simply could not envision a day where day to day commerce would be done over the Internet.
One very enterprising entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos, "got it" and decided to quit his high-paying hedge fund position to launch what is now known as Amazon.com. Many much larger companies that didn't "get it" never managed to catch up and were left behind.
As a point of reference, Amazon.com has over the twice the profit margins of traditional retail businesses due to the efficiency of marketing online and being able to serve a global marketplace (Amazon.com also enjoys a much larger market capitalization vs. much larger retailers such as Barnes & Noble, thus creating phenomenal wealth for its investors).
Likewise, other industries, such as the travel industry and the stock brokerage industry, ignored the Internet at their peril. Ask yourself this question: when was the last time you called a travel agent to make a plane (or hotel) reservation vs. just booking it online? Likewise, for those of you that own stocks, when was the last time you called a broker to trade stocks vs. going online?
Similarly, the realtor industry has gone through its share of upheavals as well. In a recent National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey, over 85% of homebuyers first go online to do research before calling a realtor.
As a final example, a significant reason that Apple has managed to come back from the brink of bankruptcy to become a market leader is because of how well they have managed their product launches. Witness the ubiquity of the iPod, the iPhone and several products which are now household names.
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