Effective Product Launch plan - The Ultimate step by step Guide

Effective Product Launch plan: The Ultimate step by step Guide

• Effective Product Launch plan: The Ultimate step by step Guide
• What is a Product Launch, and how is it different from a Go-To-Market Strategy?
• What is a Product Launch Plan?
  • Types of Product Launch
• Why is the Product Launch Plan essential?
• What do you need to get started for a successful product launch?
  • Ensure Go-To-Market Strategy is in Place

The feeling of success is worth every ounce when you successfully launch your company’s newest venture into customers’ hands. Seeing people delighted and receiving value from what was once just a simple idea makes all the work worthwhile. You’re going into this knowing that there are deadlines and goals, but when they’re met? It feels so satisfying; nothing can compare in terms of excitement or pride about how far everyone has come together towards one goal: delivering happiness through our work

Launching a new product is no easy feat. There are many different aspects that need attention, not only in engineering but also marketing and sales strategies to name just three key stakeholders involved with this process - you’re at the epicenter of it all! As someone who works closely alongside our company’s vision-driven leaders day after day; one thing I know about creating seamless launches comes naturally when handling such complex tasks on your own time or as part of an internal team effort: understanding what needs doing from start (defining features) through finish line

In this blog post we will walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to launch your product like a pro! We’ll cover everything from market research to creating a launch plan, so you can make sure your product hits the ground running.

What is a Product Launch, and how is it different from a Go-To-Market Strategy?

Before we delve deep into Product Launch, let us clearly distinguish between Product Launch and Go To Market Strategy.

Many people use the terms “go-to-market (GTM) strategy” and “product launch” interchangeably.

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a package of measures businesses take to bring a new product or service to market. A typical GTM approach includes target audience profiles, a marketing plan, and a concrete sales and distribution plan to minimize the risk of bringing a new product to market. Understanding the difference between a product launch and a GTM strategy is vital for product marketers. And making sure that everyone in your company understands it can help them better understand the function of product marketing.

The product launch strategy is the segment of a GTM strategy exclusively focused on releasing the completed product to the public. To make sure your target audience hears about your new product, a successful launch employs multiple departments, from marketing and sales to customer support, customer success, and documentation teams, to disseminate information engagingly.

This blog assumes you have done your market research, know your competitive landscape, and have a go-to-market (GTM)  strategy.

What is a Product Launch Plan?

A successful product launch strategy aims to ensure that your business stakeholders and everyone in your distribution channels know about the new launch. As a result, the above product launch stakeholders are equipped with information to take advantage of this opportunity for revenue generation. Further, your potential customers in the lower end of the funnel understand the Unique selling proposition, Value proposition, and how that benefits their lives.

Types of Product Launch

1. A brand new product or a major (or Tier 1) release:  includes net new functionality that will be significant for the top of your funnel (i.e., announcing an entirely new feature set that is fundamental to your product’s value proposition). This might be the first time you validate your market research
2. Minor Release  (or Tier 2): To ensure your customer retention by providing minor features and bug fixes reported by them. Products and services of all kinds (not just consumer goods) must maintain value. Therefore, product marketers must constantly adjust what they offer while staying competitive in ever-changing markets like e-commerce or tech. This might be a soft launch unlike the tier 1 launch which is usually a hard launch.
3. Updates or Patch releases(or Tier 3):  are designed to support the product platform’s stability and security to ensure it is compliant with the latest standards defined within your organization. These updates would mostly be within the company unless there is a significant vulnerability, and every customer has to be updated to avoid any security breach. The customer success team notifies the respective customers.

The template I’ve developed and shared below is geared toward a major or a new launch (Tier 1 launch) since these are the ones that need the most planning, coordination, and effort. The template includes all the techniques a product marketing team may utilize to launch this scale and the necessary timeframes for executing each.

Why is the Product Launch Plan essential?

Creating Cohesion and Clarity in the Team: A  Product launch plan typically involves anywhere from 20-50 stakeholders. Lack of clarity can quickly derail the launch in terms of time, money, and effort. However, with a solid Product Launch Plan, everyone is up to speed on what the goal and metrics of the  launch are, consequently what the priorities are,  what their contribution is going to be, how it will impact the downstream launch activities, and the end goal, their deadlines and whom to reach out to for help and collaboration when required.  

Reducing costs: With a solid product launch strategy, you can keep marketing expenditures low by determining the right promotional channels with the greatest return on investment (ROI) and creating positioning, marketing messaging, and, consequently, content that will resonate with your target audience in the chosen channels. With a clear goal and timeframe, it is also possible to trim the fat of infinite activity and stick to those tasks that will add to the goal’s success in mind!

Reducing time to market: More and more product teams in the tech space have started with agile development. With the proper planning and coordination, the Product marketing team should be able to get an early demo and start planning for some of the materials like positioning and messaging before going to market.

What do you need to get started for a successful product launch?

Ensure Go-To-Market Strategy is in Place

You should hopefully have a wealth of information at your fingertips. In the best-case scenario, you should have interviewed multiple customers and dug into the interviews for fresh insights to put together the following.

• an informed value proposition and positioning foundation
• segmentation to know who you’re selling to
• your buyers’ personas are clearly defined[b][c]
• The customer journey mapping out how they buy

 If there’s anything left undone before the launch, then take some time to prep yourself, so you are all set for the successful launch.

Possible Stakeholders, their Roles & Responsibilities

Executing a successful product launch requires involving all the right people. In most cases, that will include but is not limited to the below departments::

Product Marketing: The marketing team is usually at the forefront of launching a new product. They work with other departments to craft an engaging strategy and connect those who are involved in it all along the way

Product team: Throughout the product life cycle, the product marketing and the product management team have to work hand in hand to be on the same page with the release deliverables. Hence the people designing the product are a crucial part of the launch team. They have a profound understanding of their work and can make improvements based on early feedback from other stakeholders!

Sales: Your sales team is vital in helping you understand the audience you want to reach, identifying the best people to contact for beta testing, and getting your first customers to buy. Also, the PMM team will be working with them to develop sales enablement updates for the specific released features.

Marketing: After creating a public announcement, your digital marketing team will work with the PR department or agency to get the right media coverage. They’ll also help you change your message based on how well it’s received at first. The marketing plan is owned by this team.

Documentation Team: Your documentation team has a crucial role in onboarding your users smoothly and painlessly to the new version and helping them utilize the value provided by the improvements you bring to the table. Usually, this will be covered by the product management, but having them as a stakeholder will help you have clarity on the current status and enable a faster iteration cycle.  

Partners Team: If you have a Partners Services Team (like integration partners, marketing partners, distribution partners), they usually have to release their addons/integrations in tandem. So, they must be at the table and part of the conversation.

Customer Service: If you have a  customer service team, ensure they are part of these stakeholders. They should be looped in early and provided all the product information they need to do their jobs effectively.   They will have to

•    Ensure customers have a positive experience with our new release.
•    Be prepared to field questions and provide support about the  product/release,
•    know where to direct random questions and feedback.

Customer Support/Customer Success Team: Like the customer service team, the customer success team should be involved early and give all the information, a demo deep dive, and training. They usually

• Try the use cases their customers use and see if there are any changes in the usability that the customer has to be notified of or if it has to be fixed in the product.
• identify which of their assigned customers will reap benefits from the new changes and effectively present them to them.
• By communicating the exact benefits each customer can obtain, they can effectively generate interest around the launch among existing customers. This sets the stage for further increasing the number of seats or upselling and cross-selling.

Executives - Their buy-in is crucial for the success of every launch. They will also be heavily involved in setting the goal and metrics for the launch.

Set Product Launch Goals

It ultimately boils down to revenue. However, revenue consists of a lot of moving parameters. You can’t measure revenue if you’re in an industry that releases new products frequently, so it’s best to focus on current launch metrics like retention rates and changes in TOFU/MOFU/BOFU

Some metrics for retention can be changes in parameters like Are the users able to use the new features in question effectively (Product Engagement), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer Retention Rate (CRR) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score. User retention is a cost-effective strategy for any business looking to grow their bottom line. Keeping your customers happy not only helps you keep more of them, but also increases the overall value in both old and new clients by keeping all parties satisfied with each other’s service or product offerings!

top-of-funnel(ToFu) content that gets the most attention is the content that resonates with the customers. This is the content that is likely to be shared and talked about. When you do this, you can help to create a buzz around your brand. This will help to build awareness for your brand.

Middle-of Funnel(MoFu) content is designed to educate the audience and move them from awareness, through consideration, into conversion. Some of this material may be positioned for people who want more information on an actionable item like making a purchase or signing up with your email list; these should help quantifiable metrics such as return visitors/social media followers that indicate potential customer interest in progressing further along those paths

Bottom-of Funnel metrics measure the success of your marketing campaign by tracking conversions from users who land on an online page. These can include details such as sales, repeat purchases and demo requests to see how satisfied customers are with their purchase or experience before converting them into SQLs (someone that’s made a real decision). One of the ways to measure is to see the ratio of people who convert from MQL to SQL.

How to collect Metrics

Identifying which metrics you’ll need to use to measure your product launch’s success is essential. Here are examples of metrics to look out for:

• Top of the funnel(ToFU) metrics can be as below

• Using metrics can help you better understand your customer’s behavior towards your product. This information will help you determine what is leading them towards your product.
• There are many tools you can use to measure how your website is doing. Some of them include Google Analytics,  LinkedIn Insight Tag  and Google AdWords.
• If you are looking for how to boost the conversion rate, you need to look at the bounce rate. The use of analytics to gain knowledge about your audience allows you to understand more about your demographic, geographical location, and what kind of users are using your app / website.
• track click through rate from Google searches. Analytics is useful in helping you understand how people are engaging with your content so that you can optimize for the best engagement. It’s useful for understanding where your audience lives, what they’re interested in, etc. Further you can google cohort analysis to understand their behavior to optimize your site.

• Some of the content which converts at this stage are

• Blog posts, Videos, Podcasts
• Guides, Ebooks,

• Infographics

• Some of the metrics you can measure

• Number of public-facing content uploaded Blog posts, Infographics, Videos, Podcasts, Guides and Ebooks.
• Avg visitors
• Clickthrough rate from google
• Number of newsletter subscription

• Number of downloads for guides and ebooks

• Middle of the funnel(MoFU) metics

• Metrics at this stage is to understand what is working for your customers and identify which content is not optimal. In other words, what converts to the next stage of the funnel. Your focus should be on repeat visitors, engagement rates for the content you have created. Finally there’s social media sharing data which shows whether consumers are taking time out of their day to share something via Facebook.

• Some of the content which converts at this stage are

• Case studies, Original research and reports
• Templates, Checklists, Product tips and tutorials

• Events, Webinars

• Some of the metrics you can measure

• Repeat visitors
• Engagement rate vs bounce rate
• Clickthrough rate.
• Number of people registering/attending events and webinars.
• Conversion rate for prospects who attended the events and webinar
• Conversion rate from the emails obtained from the newsletter.

• Number of social media shares for specific content. You can use a url shortener like bit.ly or Sites like sharedcount.com provide you with such information.

• Bottom of the funnel(BoFU) metics

• At this stage the metrics should help you understand how to improve sales and revenue. If your metrics show that the majority of customers are satisfied, but not engaged enough to make a purchase or convert into leads for you then there might be something going on in terms of how they’re using the product. If you offer a service, are there repeat customers, if not how to improve it.  Monitor the conversion rate of demos turned into purchases.

• Some of the content which converts at this stage are

• Product demos by sales
• Product tutorials, Video product walk-throughs, Product webinars
• Detailed case studies
• Calculators, Free Tools

• Comparison charts

• Some of the metrics you can measure

• Win/loss rate
• Number of Signups or trials
• User Retention: How will the launch impact your user retention and customer lifetime value?
• Churn Rate: Will your product launch reduce the number of people who leave your platform?
• Customer Satisfaction Score: Do surveys show people are happy with the new product features?

These are just a few examples of metrics you can use to measure the success of your product launch. By tracking these numbers, you’ll see your launch’s success and what areas need improvement.

Launch Sequence

Pre-launch steps:

Finalize the product

Make sure to finalize  on the features/improved product that will be shipped on the day of the launch. Coordinate with the product team to identify the feature list and a probable date when the feature is frozen for the release with a date for the demo for the rest of the stakeholders you will identify next.

Identify your stakeholders

Once you have a list of features from product team, the next step is to prepare a list of stakeholders and their responsibilities

 The stakeholder can be from different departments like marketing, product, sales, documentation, customer service, customer success, etc.

Once you’ve gathered the right information, you can schedule a kick off meeting with stakeholders. This will help you to have a common understanding about your product.

Kick-Off Meeting

• The kickoff meeting agenda could have the following

• A quick presentation or a read-out of the list of features which will be launched with this product.

• This will align the stakeholders and what can be expected out of this launch.

• See if you can talk about the positioning or messaging to be used for this launch. This information can also be passed on at a later meeting if you wish so.

• Read out the responsibility of each stakeholder, this might involve a specific set of deliverables from his/her team.

• Create a product launch checklist to make sure you identify dependencies and what order you need to perform tasks

• Get the delivery date for each of the items to be delivered by them.

• PMM Role is very loose and is very different in each organization. So, make sure your role in this launch schedule clearly so that you set expectations up front.

• Identify a regular cadence for meeting with the stakeholders.  Call this a product launch status meeting

• As the team wishes it could be mail communication initially and probably close to a launch, it could be a short 10 min face to face status meeting to get all of them on the same page.
• During the meeting talk about the progress made for the week and what to expect next week.

• Also do a round table to understand what each one of the stakeholders is working on(if they have a deliverable). If they have any bottlenecks. If there are any bottlenecks escalate it to the appropriate people to get it resolved.

• The most critical parameters of the launch and get team buy in
• Create a product launch checklist to make sure you identify dependencies and what order you need to perform tasks

 Workout the messaging and positioning around the product

Sometimes, the messaging and positioning might not change much and must be massaged a little to accommodate the new product. However, in other cases where new features make significant contributions to value, the product marketing team will have the joy of coming up with new messaging and positioning to introduce the customers to the powerful value proposition the product brings to the market.

Product Packaging

Price: Adding new features often changes the balance of value and price. In this case, the product price might have to be adjusted. Usually, existing customers will be given advanced communication about changes, or they will be grandfathered into the old plan, and new customers will be provided with the new plan

Product/Website Changes

Landing Page: The product’s landing pages, pricing, and feature pages will have to be revamped. Often the focus of the pages changes to the new features being launched.

In-Product Tours, Guides, and Hints: Many software products nowadays take advantage of workflow-aligned hints and guides to introduce customers to new features, help them learn how to use a product interactively, and increase engagement. It is crucial to ensure these hints and guides are adapted appropriately for the workflow of new and existing customers

Make sure the website’s look and feel align with any positioning changes. Also, check for screenshots and other product-related resources that are updated.

Create an Engaging Pitch Deck

• To persuade stakeholders and executives, you’ll need to create a detailed pitch deck that covers everything the launch will entail. The deck’s purpose is to help explain your vision and strategy behind the product launch plan so that people will want to invest in it. Here are some tips for creating an engaging pitch deck:

• Goal of this product launch, why it was chosen, and how it connected to the company’s overall GTM strategy.

• Check if there is any feedback from the stakeholders on the goal.

• Talk about how the launch will add value to the Value proposition and how this is going to be messaged to the users and prospects
• Talk about the benefits of the features released during this launch.
• Communicate Visually: Work with the launch team to set a date and time for the launch and communicate it to stakeholders. Using a timeline diagram to communicate visually can bring greater clarity
• Leverage Tools Such as Canva: You can craft a beautiful pitch deck without being a design expert. To streamline the process, consider using tools like Canva that include templates specifically for pitch decks.
• Projections of Forecasted Revenue and Results: Executives love data, so your pitch should include projected revenue and results. This way, they can understand how launching your product will impact revenue and company growth.
• 4-8 Slides: Keep your pitch deck short- only 4 to 8 slides. This will make it more digestible for your audience.

Based on the positioning and the promotional channels you plan to engage with for the latest feature/benefits to create a buzz, have a detailed plan worked out for generating the content, script, and other materials required to make things like blog posts, videos, infographics, and other resources. You may have to do this yourself or work with the respective teams to get this ready ahead of the launch date. Define tasks for each item and have a deadline associated with each item.

The above content might have to be published before the launch to create awareness. So have a calendar of events when each resource is posted on the respective social media channels. You may have to do this yourself or work with the respective teams to get this ready ahead of the launch date.

Identify the PR agency you will work with or if you plan to do it yourself. Identify the platforms where your users/prospects hang out and work with these platforms to do media coverage of the product. You may want to create an announcement that will be used for media coverage and publish it on your website. For example, there are many press release platforms, such as producthunt.com, newswire.com, presswire.com, and service.prweb.com, where you can spread the word about your release and draw the attention of potential users

Identify the list of blogs that need to be in place during the launch, which talks about the use cases that will be implemented as part of this launch.

• Perform keyword research to see what aspects you need to cover as part of the blog so that you can drive organic traffic.
• Identify a title that answers the questions your customer usually wants answers to.
• In the recent past, more than long-form content, users have looked for a short visual representation of ideas. So check if the same content can be converted into an infographic so that it can be shared on Twitter,  linked, Facebook and Instagram.

If your potential users are on social media, then it would be ideal to gain momentum using social media influencers. At best, you can set up some interviews with them so that you reach the whole set audience

• identify influencers in your product area and see if they can become your Brand advocates.

• Here are some tools that will help you find the right influencers for your market segment upfluence.com, www.creatoriq.com, aspire.io, dovetale.com, and others.

• Reach out to them to check their availability, and they are willing to promote your brand.
• Check if they are open for an interview after your launch date.
• Plan/prepare the questionnaire/script which will be used for the interview

Create resources to be consumed by your customers and prospects. The assumption is that you have a go-to-market(GTM) plan in place and a product roadmap that adheres to it. This means that before deciding on the feature set, you have already worked with the product management team to perform a user analysis to validate your priority items needed by customers and competitive gaps to be filled. From this perspective,

• Work with the product team to develop the benefits for each feature with respect to the positioning decided in GTM.
• Based on the above, identify if there are any messaging changes to be done
• Work with the sales team and update the battle cards with the latest features. Update the gaps it fixes, and the value customers will get from the latest features.

Create demos for sales that accommodate the new features and benefits.

• From the product team, understand the data required to showcase the new features implemented.
• Request them for a demo setup with the required data.
• Come up with a demo/presentation script that will showcase the value created by the product.
• Setup your product with appro
• Based

Plan for Sales enablement training sessions.

• Based on the demo content, showcase the workflow to demonstrate the feature. If you are not a technical person, work with the product person to make this demo happen.
• In some organizations, there might be an on-demand demo environment for sales demos and trial customers. Update the prerequisite data in these environments so that the feature is demonstrable in those environments

Demo for Customer support and Customer success. (These can be combined with sales enablement demos if planned accordingly)

• Work with customer support/success teams to identify the first few customers who might be adopting these new features.
• From this list of work, customer success can identify prospective customers who would offer testimonials—plan to capture these testimonials on your website.
• In some cases, the feature might not be publicly available yet. In those cases, there might be a need to find beta testers or early adopter programs. In addition, you might have to work with customer support/success to identify potential candidates and check if they are interested.

Identify email content that must be sent to the customers on the launch day. It should have links to all resources about the launch like

• Documentation for the new features
• demo video of the new features,
• If they want to have an in-person demo on how to register for it,
• Bugs that got fixed and Known bugs(if this is permitted in your industry)
• how to report a bug if a feature is not working as expected

Identify email content, reach outs, and documentation required for partners. The first step is identifying the type of reach or documentation necessary for each partner. For example, an influencer may need different information than an integration partner. This will help ensure the communication is tailored to the specific partner and their needs. Some of your potential partners could be

• Influencers
• Integration Partners
• Products and Extensions built on your API
• Co promoters
• Distributors
• Affiliates

Plan your awareness ad campaigns and social media outreach programs

• Content, graphics, and videos should be in place before the campaign.
• Plan for an appropriate call to action for these programs. It could be signing up for your newsletters, following your social media handles, etc
• Some of these awareness campaigns might have to be done before the launch, so plan accordingly.
• If this is the first time you are doing this, then you need to set up your social media accounts the right way so that your handle looks like an authoritative one for people to sign up for.

Launch Day

• Day before the launch, conduct a Go/No-Go meeting with all the stakeholders to see if we are all set.
• On the day of launch, coordinate with the stakeholders to perform the sequence of activities, from releasing the doc and actual product to the public to whatever you have identified.
• verify if the trial workflow, product, or addon download workflow works as expected before you start any of the campaigns
• Inform the stakeholders about the release in the slack channel
• Make a company-wide announcement about the release, so everyone is on the same page.
• Additionally, keep track of the launch’s data, such as the number of inquiries received, total sales made, and the number of returns processed.

Post-launch

• Retarget prospects who expressed interest but didn’t convert.
• Solicit user feedback and testimonials on your website  to use for future promotion
• Make efforts to have customers tell others about your new product release by word of mouth. Prospects trust the opinions of their friends, making it an effective method for gaining more consumers through referrals.

• plan to have a webinar for your customers to showcase the latest features and benefits and get feedback from them.

• Talk about early adoption programs in this webinar to get interested customers.

• Evaluate how the launch went by comparing your findings to your objectives. Examine how well the launch succeeded based on your data and the previous metrics you’ve gathered before it.
• Post-launch, conduct a retrospective meeting to understand from the team if any improvements can be implemented before the next product launch.
• Inform the stakeholders about the release in the slack channel

Conclusion

A product launch is not about driving traffic for sales. It is a well-coordinated, cohesive force between various cross-functional teams. Giving transparency and clarity among the multiple stakeholders who help you clearly articulate the value delivered by your product to your users and prospects.

 Content or the right part of the funnel will lead to success by making the users happy.

As Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world .”Product launch is a fulcrum; having all cross-functional teams coordinate their effort towards this will deliver tremendous success.