Updating and building a product that customers will love can be a fulfilling experience. But all your hard work will go to waste if you have no clue how to promote your upcoming product to your target customer.
That’s why you must follow a product launch checklist to ensure you’re not missing any essential steps of your launch strategy. It helps you understand the big picture of your product launch, prepare yourself for potential obstacles in your journey, and align your vision with your entire team.
With so many factors that go into launching a new product, it’s not always easy knowing where to start. Here’s our product launch checklist you can follow to make sure that your product launch is on the right track:
Preparing the Product Launch
Before you even get started releasing your product, there are a few prerequisites to take care of first in your product launch checklist. Here’s how you can set the base for your launch before you even think about setting up your strategy:
- Identify Your Target Audience: Do research on your ideal customer, their specific needs and wants, and how your product helps you meet their expectations. For example, what are their demographics (age, gender, etc.)? What are their biggest challenges?
- Study the Competition: Get an idea of who your competitors are, such as their differentiators and strengths and weaknesses. What can you learn from their strategy? What are customers saying about their service?
- Review Your Budget and Resources: Ensure that you have adequate resources and bandwidth for your upcoming product launch. For example, do you have enough people on your team to build the new product? Are you missing a vital skill set that could make or break your product roadmap?
- Set Up Product Launch Goals: Define specific goals you want to achieve with your product launch. Is it to boost brand awareness? Drive new users? Improve your user engagement and customer lifetime value?
Creating Your Product Launch Plan
Next, it’s time to align with your team and start outlining your upcoming product launch. Some of the key components of this creative process include:
- Run Beta Testing for Your New Product: To see if there’s a genuine need in the market for the new release, offer your target audience a beta test version of your upcoming product. Make sure to collect the beta users’ feedback after their product experience via surveys or Net Promoter Score (NPS).
- Create Your Go-to-Market Strategy: Create the step-by-step plan you’ll be following to succeed in your market. It’s going to include outlining your market strategy, defining your pricing, and aligning with your sales and customer service team.
- Identify Key Metrics: What product metrics will you be using to measure success? Examples of vital metrics include churn rate, conversion rate, and customer lifetime value.
- Write Your Press Release: Create your press release to let the media and the public know about your upcoming product launch. You can pitch the press release to platforms such as Newswire, PRWeb, and PR Fire for more exposure.
- Choose a Product Launch Date: Identify the date you plan to release the new product to your target audience. Also, make sure to identify milestones and goals to reach for different team departments before the release date.
Collaborating With Your Team
Creating a successful product launch consists of teamwork with other departments. Each department has something to offer regarding insights about your customers and what’s best for your company. Here’s what effectively collaborating with your team looks like:
- Pitch Your Product Idea to Stakeholders: Make sure to get executives' buy-in before releasing your new product. During your pitch, show them the potential impact of your release with forecasted numbers and how it aligns with your product vision.
- Create and Share Your Product Roadmap With Different Team Departments: Keep everyone on your team aligned by sharing your product roadmap and the specific steps you’ll take to create the new product. Make sure to include which features you’ll prioritize and assign tasks, so each department understands their role in the launch.
- Develop Your Marketing and Promotional Content: Work with marketing to ensure all of your promotional material is ready for the launch. That can consist of education blog posts or webinars you’ll be hosting to promote the new release.
- Provide Sales and Customer Service With Support Documentation: Since your sales and customer service teams are at the forefront of customer interaction, ensure they have all the documentation they need to solve customer requests during your product launch. For example, provide them with ready-made answers for any common questions or objections from customers.
- Prepare All Your Legal Documents for the Product Launch: Work with your legal team to prepare any legal documents required. These documents can include terms and conditions and customer contracts, which also need to be compliant with any customer protection regulations such as the GDPR (if you have users in the EU).
Marketing and Launching the Product
Now that your product launch is all ready, it’s time to prepare your entire team for the release and let the whole world know about your exciting new product. In your product launch checklist, here’s what you can do to maximize your product experience on the launch date:
- Fix Any Technical Issues Before the Launch: Launch your product internally first to make sure it doesn’t have bugs or technical issues before it reaches your customers. It will help your target customers avoid getting unpleasant surprises when using your new product for the first time.
- Adopt an Omnichannel Strategy: To boost awareness and reach, let users know about the upcoming product launch through different channels. For example, that can include social media, your website, email campaigns, or influencer partnerships.
- Offer Rewards to Early Users: As a reward for their early engagement, you can offer users perks such as a discount on their membership or free content. It gives users an incentive to sign up for your product so they can eventually become a paying customer.
- Find Lessons From Your Product Launch: Take a look at your data, wins, and failures from your product launch to identify lessons for future releases. It’s going to help you find areas of improvement and improve your product launch strategy.
Stay on Top of Your Product Launch Checklist for a Successful Launch
By following our product launch checklist, you’ll have a clear idea of how you can take your upcoming release to success. You can say goodbye to guessing which step to take next or missing any essential element to your strategy.
Once the launch is over, make sure to frequently launch new releases or update your product so you can continuously adapt to the changing needs of your audience. It will be vital to staying on top of your game and boosting your customer lifetime value, so users are always hungry for more.
