With the growing media attention around remote deposit capture (RDC) you might assume the product sells itself. However, as with all new products, a market plan is critical to the economic success of your RDC initiative. It is the blueprint for how you plan to achieve your program goals and objectives. Unfortunately, it’s been my experience that many banks and credit unions introducing RDC products rely on a “build it and they will come” approach, which rarely works outside of the movies.

Merchant RDC is a classic example. It’s been around for nearly a decade, but most small businesses don’t know that their FI offers it or that it even exists. A comprehensive market plan will make sure your staff members are actively promoting new products, and it will educate and create interest in your customers/members.

A few weeks ago Cachet hosted a webinar, where I shared many of the tips and insights we’ve learned while working with our clients to implement their RDC programs. The webinar was very popular and we’ve received a lot of feedback on the four steps I presented:

1. Planning
2. Training
3. Promotion
4. Measuring

These four components form the basis for any successful new product launch, and skipping any of the steps is likely to jeopardize the success of your launch and overall program.

Due to the popularity of the event, I’d like to dig into each of these areas more thoroughly over the next few weeks in a series of blog entries, starting today with the first step:

Planning

The planning phase is the most obvious stage, but because planning can be time intensive and encompass so many different elements – it’s easy to want to skip ahead and hope you can figure it out as you go. This is not a good idea. RDC is a sophisticated product and it requires a sophisticated plan of action, which starts with a solid foundation. The planning stage is that foundation, and I promise, it’s not as hard as it looks.

Rather than inundate you with a lengthy post about how to plan for your RDC program, which makes it look like a long and arduous process – I’m providing a quick and convenient visual representation of the key elements of the planning stage: market research, target market, goals and objectives, and pricing.

By breaking up the planning into manageable chunks, you can take it one step at a time. But make sure to start early, you want to have everything ready to go on launch day!

If you are interested in learning more about building a marketing plan you can sign up to receive blog updates as I work through the series, and you can register for our white paper which dives further into each of the topics I’m going to cover. And along the way, feel free to ask any questions in the comments or provide your own tips on launching new products.