Even the most successful online stores need to fine-tune and optimize each product launch, to determine the long-term success of not only the product but the brand itself. At the heart of almost every successful growth strategy is word of mouth (WOM). Do you offer multiple products with one being the clear hero? You can “seed” your product launch engagement by reaching out to anyone in your personal network and letting them know that you’ve gone live. Did you hit your funding goal in a matter of hours? But it’s far from it. You can nail your next product launch with the right market research and pre-launch planning. Once you've scoped out your audience, define it so that you're targeting the people most likely to have already had an experience with your products that exceeded their expectations. We wrote a full guide about how to run a website project, however, at this stage you’ll want to make sure you’re putting together the key elements: When you’re writing the copy for this page, you want to use everything you’ve learned from crafting your narrative, talking to customers, and digging into your own data. Planio offers a powerful solution for assigning and tracking bugs so they can be dealt with quickly and not take your product launch down with them. But when it comes to a successful launch, you need to become hyper focused on who that person really is. Go back to your pre-launch marketing spreadsheet and see what press and influencers you contacted before the launch and send them a note saying you’re live with a link to your marketing page and any other assets (videos, testimonials, demos, etc…). This could mean: Make a massive list of all the places your potential customers might find you or hear about you and start outlining what you can do to get in front of them. Brian shared a quote from the founders of TBH, a social quiz app for teens that was acquired by Facebook, that briefly explains how they were able to do this: “It's critical to design a process that allows you to launch vastly different product experiences within specific communities so your product can reach critical mass.”. How are they using your product in their daily lives? In the resolution, the hero has conquered their problems (with your product) and the world is a better place for it. If churn outpaces growth, then WOM isn’t strong enough to support your business on its own. Reach out to influencers, mentors, and contacts to amplify your reach, 18. The only way you can ensure your launch is a success is by knowing for certain the product you’re making is valuable to the people you want to buy it. With most of the heavy lifting done, there are just a few things you need to do to keep the momentum going and squeeze the last bits of success out of this monumental effort. As Hoover explains: “If you start doing things that you’re passionate about, you’ll find and attract people who are just as passionate. Sounds simple. It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A product launch plan consists of strategies and procedures a company may use to … Founder & CEO of ProfitWell, the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies, as well as providing free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 20,000 companies. The goal of most businesses is to launch something and get as much growth and traction as possible in a short time. This ensures every member of your team has access to the same, most up-to-date information and resources. Start by defining your target audience. Next, get in front of these people. Rather than simply looking at a wide demographic—like saying your product is for 18–35-year olds—your product launch will be so much more impactful with a clear audience in mind. One place to start is with a list of your competitors and a SWOT analysis (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat). Research the market and turn your ideas into strategy, 4. Just like your customers, journalists care about a story. Who are your partners or complementary companies you can connect with? Brian used the analogy of a fuel tank that can be filled with all the items users want. What is a Product Launch Plan? The standard product launch strategy is holding you back, How to Construct a Customer Success Strategy with Clearly-Defined Personas, Customer Journeys, and Success Metrics, Product Line Pricing Examples, Definitions, and Strategies, ProfitWell Engagement: Free Product Usage Analytics, Accounting & Finance Teams Become Heroes: ProfitWell Recognized, Leverage your signals for the next user group. Find your mix of tactics, tools, and processes that will get you to attract more of the right users and retain them for longer. Think of WOM as a loop that looks something like this: New users sign up to use a product, they use the product and realize that it exceeds their expectations in comparison to other alternatives, and in turn tell other people about it. Access the Product launch playbook Without segmenting your audience, this, too, can result in a slow validation process. If you’re building a community, you’ll have to be engaged with them. As Steve Jobs famously said: The last place to look and get insights for your product is from the market itself. Set ambitious, “if-everything-goes-perfect” goals, 14. Feedback from the entire user base (in gray) drowns out the feedback from your target segment (in blue). You’ll use this information to tailor each press outreach message to the individual writer. An example of a company making this five-step approach work is Superhuman, a fast, new email service provider. The issues you are personally facing that drove you to look for a solution. Any marketing strategies that ended up on the “nice to have” list that you want to experiment with now that things have settled down? Did you hit the number of sales/sign ups/subscribers you were aiming for? Product launches are stressful, resource and attention-heavy, and add that element of uncertainty that can drive you crazy. I couldn’t find anything comprehensive on the internet about how best to launch your digital “thing,” so I … Back in the day, companies used to invest insane amounts of time and money into a “Big Bang” launch. Brian explained that, at this point, you control “the audience coming in and what the audience experience is.”. The result is more accurate, less noisy qualitative and quantitative signals that give a stronger indication of whether you've achieved product/market fit. Highly secure firewalls.SSL encryption.Daily backups. This was followed by a manual follow-up email meant to clarify one of the answers from the survey. And keeping it all together and moving smoothly is a huge task. Traditional press conferences have been replaced by new formats and experiences: social media platforms, influencers and other multimedia channels which spread images rapidly and amplify the impact of every collection or product. You need to be able to give specifics. Keep in touch by following us on Twitter, Google and on Facebook. “Psych,” Brian explained, is defined as “a unit of measurement of user motivation or attention.”. Who are your early adopters? You need to show them that your product has the potential to get people excited and reading. Access all the content Recur has to offer, straight in your inbox. If your entire plan goes off without a hitch, what would you expect to happen? In Planio, you can set estimated time for tasks and measure it against how long they actually took, giving you an accurate view of what took the most time during your launch. What are people going to talk about during your launch? This includes product spec sheets, video demos, blog posts, website content and media pitches. There’s nothing more depressing than a crowdfunding campaign with $0 pledged, and the same goes for your pre-sales page. In the “good old days,” you could hire a PR agency to craft a press release and set up a press tour. Did you get coverage in a major publication? This can pull your attention in too many places, and waste time by talking to the wrong audience. Your product marketing launch plan should include details about your product launch strategy—like what your product messaging is, what channels you’ll be using, and what your goals are. While it might seem a little awkward emailing mom about your new product, the more people you can reach out to personally, the better chance you have of amplifying your reach. This means there’s a lot of pressure to make it visually compelling, have strong copy, and be easy to use. So don’t forget about them. Asking questions like the size of their company, buying cycle, pain points, and more is a good place to start (Or, check out this ideal customer template for more in-depth questions). Developing your customized, repeatable launch process takes trial and error because tactics that work for one company may not necessarily work for you. All too often, product launch strategies show the same promotional material to the entire audience and expect users to want to share it. She enjoys social media marketing, content writing, + marketing strategy. This is where your project management skills are going to come in handy. We’d love to tell you more. And if you’re being public about your “limited supply” of products to build hype, you better work hard to make them sell. These goals should be something your entire team can rally around and work towards. You can call a product strategy to be the vision of the product. In other words, before we put hard-earned money down on a product we want to know that you understand us, our problems, and have a solution that works. But where he excelled wasn’t in just telling the story of the product itself, but of the people using it. What you do on launch day and how successful you are will largely depend on how well you stick to the first part of this guide. They are linear and focus on sharing a new product or feature with the entire user base via email campaigns, regular notifications, posts on platforms like Product Hunt, and general press. Many of the same digital marketing strategies work at launch time, no matter what you’re launching — a startup, blog, ecommerce store, small business, web property, mobile application, etc. No installation.No set-up costs.No long-term commitments. With your ideal customer profile, you should have figured out where the right people for your product launch hang out. The five-step, repeatable launch process works and is a quicker path to validating questions and assumptions. To have a successful product launch, you need to have a clear vision of what success looks like. When you’re in the thick of your launch, it can be easy to forget about all the other people involved in your success. It considers all the tasks, their timeframe, and their dependencies. So if you can show you’re building excitement and gaining users, it can help your cause. The perfect product launch strategy includes ten critical steps your company should take, from defining your audience, to delivering a superb customer experience. The people you want to focus on are those you’ll meet at Step 2 — it’s the segment of users who are most likely to have already had their expectations met and will be most likely to tell everyone about a new product or feature. And having a reliable and well thought out launch plan and schedule will help you organize everything that needs to be done across the varied teams that are working on it. Launch a product using RACE planning to structure your marketing activities. If they build the schedule, it’ll be more realistic, and they’ll be more likely to live by it. Dependencies are especially important as you’re coordinating cross-functional teams who might not be used to working together. Reforge thinks about their sustainable growth strategy as a qualitative growth model grounded in strong communication. Research each one and find relevant reporters or editors who are more likely to write about you. Brian suggested asking yourself two questions: The problem is that a lot of time and energy goes into thinking about launches and little time goes into making sure the strategy behind them leads to medium- and long-term growth. You’re smarter than that. But the results show that this company has more WOM promotion than most new companies. Offering different versions of your product at different price points can attract and retain customers with any budget. If you’re launching a consumer product, or something more visual, another option is to build a following on Instagram or Pinterest. Launching is a team sport. To learn how to market a product, you must first understand your target audience so you can tailor your promotional strategies — social media campaigns, blog posts, launch parties — around your ideal client. Your best insights will come from actual users. Does customer support know to expect a big influx of customers and are they ready to help? If not, can you figure out why? But that doesn’t mean you get to go on autopilot once you’ve pushed your site live. Now, you just need to be able to tell them exactly why you’re the horse they should bet on. Plan Your Content Marketing Activities: You will need a variety of content marketing materials to support your product launch marketing activities. Once you have your audience's attention, find the users most likely to appreciate and understand the beta version of your product or feature. Press coverage can blow up your product launch and be a huge multiplier for its success. When you’re crafting your own product launch narrative, you need to remember to focus on the people, not the product. If you’ve been providing them value already, they most likely won’t have a problem doing this. If you’re offering discounts or special offers, you can’t drop the ball on them. You spent months grueling to build a product you think your customers will love. Start building your community and audience, 6. +1 (212) 498-9577 or +49 (30) 577 00 00-0 from Europe. Timeliness (the answer to “why now?”) is a requirement for most press coverage. But remember to tailor them to the platform you’re on. A common template used by everyone from Jobs to Hollywood screenwriters is to follow the 3-act structure: Setup, Confrontation, Resolution. Jobs’ stories made you feel like you had to have their latest product, which is why Apple users are such a devout group. In fact, a successful product launch comes down to just two factors: Getting the right product in from of the right people. How do you, as a business, improve that person’s day to day life?”. Which is why it’s so important to identify them early on. A good product launch doc is more than just to-do lists. And if you’ve put in the work to be heard by the right people, being spammy can sinky your launch and even kill your brand. Yes, there are billions of people online every day. If a company launches a product, then it has a vision of where the product will reach. This includes information you gather from sales and support conversations if you're launching a feature within an existing product. It takes time to release a product or feature, so the goal should be to introduce it to a new layer of users as you go until it's eventually exposed to your entire user base. But just like with your data, you need to use this information as a source of inspiration, not a guidebook. There is more work required up front in your pre-launch phase, but this pays off in the end with a higher retention curve. If you’ve put your blood, sweat, and tears into making a product you believe in, why stop now where you’re at 98%? Instead of the standard product launch strategy, use a more detailed, five-part loop based on TBH's approach to growth: Launch a vastly different product experience to specific communities in order to reach critical mass. Shifting from product development to product launch can complicate who owns what and when. Customer success is all about making a customer or user feel like they have the tools needed to succeed when using your products. One great example is Lululemon. Are you working with an outside PR or marketing firm? One powerful strategy is to ask for shares on follow-up emails or key pages. Brian shared a quote from the founders of TBH, a social quiz app for teens that was acquired by Facebook, that briefly explains how they were able to do this: Those people still need nurturing in order to convert them into full blown customers. Have you seen a drop in usage or sales while your competitors are killing it? To analyze this phenomenon, wed like to focus on 3 very-interesting fashion brand launches. Make note of any similar products they’ve covered or common angles they take. This offers good friction and helps you find your target audience. As your product launch winds down, you’ll want to do a last minute check through your strategy doc. Start with your own business data. Stop launching to the masses and start small. Here is what it looks like: According to the Marketing Research Association, only 40% of developed products ever make it to market. To avoid this scenario for your next product launch, we'll give you a step-by-step playbook for successful product launches. These key differentiators are the backbone of your product launch strategy. But they don’t have to be hard. We already spoke about creating your press release and a spreadsheet for who to target at each publication. Jobs was a master storyteller when it came to product launches. These sorts of events are low cost and drive organic shares and word of mouth by helping your customers feel like they’re a part of something bigger. It's in your best interest to be protective of their experiences and avoid bombarding them with irrelevant messages that test their patience. Why Prepare a Product Launch Marketing Plan? Use milestones to reach out to current users (but don’t overload them), 21. 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