What is a product launch?

A product launch is an organized effort to debut a new product to the market, making that product available for general use by consumers. Product launches involve many coordinated steps from multiple stakeholders in order to successfully develop, market, and release a product.

How do you launch a product?

• The product’s launch is amongst the most important stages of the product life cycle and requires involvement from all stakeholders involved in the creation of the project roadmap.

By creating an effective roadmap that includes details about customer personas, target audiences, the product’s ultimate goal, and the value it will provide to users, a product launch can occur in a streamlined manner.

Besides having a minimum viable product, the most important part of a product launch is the go-to-market strategy, which is a plan coordinated during roadmapping that takes the product’s value, customer needs, and market trends into account. It does this to formulate a marketing strategy to put the product in front of the right users. The product marketing strategy should include some combination of elements like SEO, email marketing, content marketing, search advertising, social media marketing, PR, or display advertising, depending on the best way to reach the target audience.

What is included in a product launch?

• Product launches must include a viable product with a defined go-to-market strategy in order to reach the right audiences.

Product launches must be coordinated and require buy-in from multiple stakeholders in order to produce a successful product with a high adoption rate. Most importantly, the product must be functional, viable and provide compelling value to customers, either replacing a product they were already using or providing a new product that fills a market gap. 

A go-to-market plan is also crucial and lays out a set of guidelines for who the product is meant for, what it is meant to accomplish, and how it should be positioned in order to be successful. Sales and customer support involvement is also crucial to ensure lead generation and adoption issues can be easily solved. Several marketing methods should be utilized, particularly email marketing, search marketing and other forms of digital marketing. Finally, having defined metrics for measuring success and a plan for how the product will grow over time are all required within a product launch.

What are the six steps of a product launch plan?

• Six steps that should be taken when launching a product include ensuring the product matches its vision, training sales teams and more.

Product launches require the involvement of stakeholders from throughout the organization in an organized manner to ensure a successful product launch. Six steps one could follow to ensure a successful launch include:

• Ensuring that the product matches its intended vision
• Training sales teams on selling the product
• Training customer support teams on using the product
• Creating marketing materials and product support material
• Having a formulated customer journey
• Formulating success metrics for the product’s life cycle.

In order for a product to be effective and successful, it must match its product vision and provide value to customers. Sales teams must be trained on this vision and the product’s value proposition in order to generate leads that result in high product adoption rates. Additionally, customer support teams should be well-versed on how the product functions and potential pain points in order to guide user experience on the platform. Marketing materials and technical documents about the product’s functionality should be created to build anticipation and facilitate ease of use. The customer journey must also be well defined so anomalies in user experience can be identified. Finally, metrics for measuring success must be decided upon to communicate the product’s effectiveness for users.