Companies are constantly seeking the next groundbreaking product to introduce to the market. Your company might be in the process of creating a new product right now. While perfecting your product is essential, it’s equally important to have a plan to launch the product to market.
All the time, resources, and money invested into your product must translate into consumer excitement and ultimately sales. It’s crucial to recognize that there are various elements of a successful product launch, and you can't simply hope that your product will sell itself. In the following, we have carefully crafted 14 tips to help you with a successful product launch.
1) Set Goals
Goals provide direction and a means to track success. Before launching your product, you must set clear and measurable goals. A SMART goal template will allow you to set realistic and trackable objectives.
Your goals should serve as benchmarks that you want to reach. This will allow you to track the success of your product launch as it goes on. Goals could relate to your sales, website traffic, social media clicks, and more. Setting measurable goals enables you to determine when your launch is on track or when adjustments are needed due to underperformance.
2) Conduct Market Research
Before you finalize and launch your product, conduct thorough research to understand the space, consumers, existing problems, and more. Ensure there is sufficient demand and that your product meets consumer needs. This research will also allow you to understand your target market.
You will seek to answer questions such as how people talk about this product category, potential obstacles to launch, consumer preferences and dislikes, how your product compares to competitors, and more. Comprehensive research will allow you to prepare for the market and ensure a more effective strategy given your increased understanding.
3) Develop Buyer Personas
The key to a successful product launch is understanding your target market. Without a clear target market, your launch plan may not effectively reach your potential audience. You need to know their demographics, preferences, problems, and how you can meet their needs.
Your market research will help you to answer some of these questions. Once you know your audience, develop a buyer persona to clearly outline all the details and characteristics of these potential consumers.
4) Conduct a Competitive Analysis
An important factor to consider when entering any market is the current competition. It can be challenging to enter a new market especially if a dominant company already has a loyal consumer base. Thus, conducting a competitive analysis in advance is crucial to understanding who you are up against. Research your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and adjust your strategy to position yourself uniquely to attract customers.
While competitors can pose challenges to your product launch, they also offer valuable insights and act as a guide, having already navigated the market. Investigate which social media channels they used, their marketing strategies, and any factors that negatively impacted their sales. Incorporate these findings into your plan to ensure success. Remember, this serves as a guide, not a step-by-step playbook. What works for one company may not work for another, so carefully evaluate each strategy before integrating it into your plan.
5) Establish a Marketing Strategy
Once you have your product and a plan to launch, you will also need a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote your product and attract attention. Every company needs a marketing strategy to build excitement and retain customers throughout the product life cycle.
This strategy should be detailed and encompass all aspects of your promotional efforts. It should include the appropriate marketing channels, creative content, posting schedules, press releases, and more.
6) Budget
Of course, you want to put your all into this product launch but there are always limitations. Budget can be one of these limitations as you must be mindful of what your company can afford. The first step, even before product development, would be establishing a clear budget. Decide how much you want to spend on product development, marketing, production, and other areas.
Throughout the process, ensure you are meeting your budget and make adjustments as needed. This will help you manage the amount of money invested in the product. While it's important to have a successful launch, you also want to avoid draining your financial resources in the process.
7) Messaging Strategy
Your messaging strategy is how your brand communicates its key messages to consumers. It’s your tone of voice, your vision, mission, values, story and much more. Your messaging is very important for your launch as you need to captivate the attention of your audience. It needs to be simple and persuasive, and communicate why a consumer should choose your product.
One effective strategy to get more attention is to start a podcast for your business. You can even delegate it to a B2B Podcast Partner who can handle the entire process for you, from finding your ideal client to network with as a podcast guest on your show, to building an audience of your ideal customer niche. They can help you host, manage, and create written SEO, audio, and video content from each episode to help grow your business and create a successful product launch.
It’s important to remember that messaging can change over time. Test out your messaging and find what works best for you. Once you do, you can make the necessary adjustments.
8) Utilize Beta Testing
It can be daunting to launch your product to the world without knowing how they’ll react. That is why beta testing is such a useful tool. Beta testing will allow you to see the type of feedback you might get from your target audience before an official release.
Beta testers are individuals who will test and provide feedback for your product in exchange for early access. Make sure to communicate with these individuals. Take the time to understand their stories and needs, understand their performance review, and collect all their feedback. You can also share your messaging with beta testers to understand the effectiveness of your promotional plans. Based on this, you can make adjustments before launch to increase the success of your product.
9) Create a Product Launch Plan
We have discussed various elements of your product launch, and all these components will come together in a product launch plan. This plan needs to be established before any steps are taken to launch the product. It will outline all aspects of the launch in a clear, concise, and easily shareable format. This will be a roadmap and central information source for all parties collaborating on this project. A plan will provide clear direction and ensure you stay on the right path.
The product launch plan will outline information such as market research, competitive analysis, pricing, marketing channels, KPIs, and much more.
10) Host an Event
Hosting a product launch event is a great way of creating buzz around your product. You can invite influencers or notable personalities in the space to come to the event and try your product. In exchange, they can post content to promote the product. This will allow you to interact with potential customers and get feedback. It is also an outlet for great content to contribute to your promotional material.
Even if you can’t have an in-person launch event, you can consider alternatives such as a live stream, inviting people to your office to demo the product, hosting a webinar, and much more. Any type of event surrounding the product will help to build interest even if it’s a virtual event.
11) Track the Success of Your Product Launch
Now that you have launched your product, the work is still not done. You must continuously track and measure the success of the launch. Make sure to identify KPIs and monitor these throughout your launch. As you track the launch, you will see if adjustments need to be made throughout the product life cycle. By tracking the numbers, you might be able to prevent a plummet in your launch plan if you detect signs of failure early and take the proper corrective actions.
12) Be Flexible
With any product launch, nothing will go exactly as planned. There are changes constantly being made and adaptations based on feedback and responses from the market.
It’s important to stay flexible and adapt to these changes. If you are too set on the original plan, you may cause the failure of your launch. That is why tracking success and beta testing are key as it allows you to see the potential for necessary changes.
13) Communicate and Collaborate
A product launch is no easy task. It involves a multitude of teams from marketing, sales, production, customer services, management, and much more. Ensuring the collaboration of all parties will ensure a smooth launch.
Have regular meetings and check-ins between teams so they can understand all the different parts going into this launch. Provide them with the support and resources they need to execute this plan. Finally, communicate with them consistently. You never know when someone will have an idea or opinion that can make a difference. You also want to ensure everyone is in the loop so they don’t miss any critical information about the launch.
14) Focus on Retention
After a successful product launch, the work isn’t complete. You now must ask the question of how you will retain these customers. You must continue to use marketing to retain interest in your product. You can demonstrate new ways to use it, provide on-going education, or even release new editions/versions.
Conclusion
You have taken extensive time to develop an exceptional product, now you must take the time to ensure the product will be a success. Many elements come into play in a product launch strategy. It will take time and the collaboration of many teams. It will be a learning process so use your resources and support from those around you to successfully launch your product.
Written by Kaitlin Duong
-
Jony Studios is a client-focused media production studio offering audio/video production, B2B podcasting, and audiobook services. They have worked with a wide range of clients from small businesses to larger organizations such as Penguin Random House, Amazon, University of Waterloo, Freakonomics Radio and many others.
