Learn the basic steps of a product launch, use a template to streamline your activities.
How to Plan a Successful Product Launch
Product launch is a crucial moment for every team — on the one hand, the product is a few steps from entering the market, and on the other hand, the big leap forward still has to be made.
The product launch process can be divided into three groups: Pre-launch, Launch, and Post-launch.
Pre-launch
Pre-launch initiatives are a solid foundation for the product’s success. Be very attentive at this step — it affects the whole process. The pre-launch requires the analysis of your product features (strengths and pain-points), defining the target audience, competitor analysis, and market research.
To ensure the success of your product launch, the following steps might help:
1/ Conduct your product testing one more time, to ensure that it’s ready to be launched.
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2/ Check your marketing strategy and align it with your team.
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3/ Gather a group of beta testers to get their feedback on your product. You know, it’s always better to check twice.
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4/ Make sure your teams are prepared and informed about their upcoming tasks. You all must to be on the same page.
5/ Check if you are ready for the high demand for your product and that everything is prepared for shipping/distribution.
6/ Ensure that your social media campaigns are prepared to reach your customers and strengthen product awareness.
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7/ If you want to couple your launch date with some event or a party to celebrate, get ready for everything that is needed.
Launch
During the launch, you have to set time frames and budget for your launch campaign and decide, how long it will last. Besides, track the launch data, adjust your audience and keyword targeting, if needed.
Make sure your sales and support teams are ready — at this step, they will be the ones to smooth out any potential bumps. Make sure that these teams are trained enough to answer customers’ questions and demonstrate the product in the right way.
Post-launch
Once your product has been launched, your next target is likely to be maintaining a relationship with the customers.
Here’s what you can do:
Invite them to your newsletter
Offer discounts
Offer free trials
Let your sales team contact them
Promote your product on Social Media channels
After you have gone through all the steps of the product launch, don’t forget to assess your efforts. You can do this by collecting feedback and analyzing your key performance metrics.
How to manage all
product launch activities?
We have discussed the possible phases of your product launch. There is a lot to deal with! Think about how you’re going to manage it. The right product launch roadmap might be exactly what you need. It is a visual communication tool that illustrates how a new product will hit the market and compete in it.
It illustrates your entire go-to-market strategy, from pre- to post-launch. Managers or business owners use roadmaps to communicate product strategies, tools, and initiatives across different teams and external stakeholders.
Why to choose the product
launch roadmap?
A clear visual roadmap is a powerful communication tool, as visual information is proven to be captured a lot faster than textual. Certainly, a roadmap includes colors, symbols and visual cues, which makes it so easy to perceive. A beautiful and clear product launch timeline will be a great substitute for numerous spreadsheets, slides, and calendars. Another reason why it is highly advisable to track a product launch on a roadmap, is the ease of keeping it up-to-date and the possibility of immediate sharing.
Roadmapping tools can streamline the whole process of product launch
and development, allowing to quickly edit the tasks, adding visual information
and collaborating with your team.
Whenever you plan a breakthrough product launch,
you might find our Product Launch Roadmap template handy
It provides an example of a product launch project, which you can easily adjust to your needs.
How to use this template?
Create a new project and choose the Product Launch Roadmap template to start. All Infolio templates include some demo content. Feel free to remove it once you've familiarized yourself with the concept.
The tasks are organized by the phases of product launch: "General", "Pre-launch", "Launch",
and "Post Launch". Example tasks provide general guidance, but you don't have to be too strict
about it.
Group tasks by Status to see the task pipeline ("Open", "In progress", "In discussion", "Unsettled", "Done"). In this view you can easily add new statuses to your workflow or rearrange existing ones. Change the status of any task by dragging and dropping it to the corresponding column.
To see how tasks are distributed within your team, group the project by Assignee. In this view you can reassign tasks quickly by dragging and dropping them between columns.
If you need any further help or if you have suggestions about how to improve
this template, don't hesitate to let us know!
