🚀 How to Prepare for a Product Launch
Set your product up for success
Hi there, Product People! It’s Carlos again, talking about the scariest and most exciting moment of the product process: Product Launch.
Whether you’re looking to start a new career as a Product Manager or you’re an experienced veteran of a thousand launches, launch is always a critical moment. It's the exciting culmination of joint effort – weeks or even months of work – and it's a also the moment where you lose absolute control over your product.
Just as how a piece of art becomes something else when it's viewed by someone other than the artist, a product becomes something else when the users actually use it. Users behave in unpredictable ways, and there are almost always bugs to fix and adjustments to make. No amount of user and market research can help you predict exactly how your product will perform when it leaves your Product Team's hands.
A launch has the potential to be one of the most embarrassing moments for a company if things start to fall apart, as more of the public eye is turned to your product. You can't know exactly what will happen, but you can prepare as much as possible!
Why do You Need to Prepare for a Launch?
I always advocate for Product Launch checklists. Checklists can feel silly, but they make sure nothing falls through the cracks. They're a powerful tool used by highly trained professionals such as pilots and surgeons to reduce human error. Although (most likely) there are no lives on the line with your product launch, a Product Launch checklist can be just as helpful for Product Managers.
As a Product Manager, you are the conductor of an orchestra at this stage, and checklists are similar to making sure the instruments are all going to play in the same key.
There is no guaranteed success method for the perfect product launch because every product is unique and has a different target audience of its own. However, having a well-crafted plan to follow for launching a product can help avoid failure.
Preparing for Launch: Step-by-Step
Step 1 - Market Research and Positioning
The fundamental and maybe most important step to start with. Because positioning in the market will be the decision-making factor of the entire marketing strategy: Defining the target audience and where to reach them, the copy of the website, onboarding materials, messaging…
Step 2 - Defining Buyer Personas
Research your target audience and find their pain points. Then, divide them into segments with relevant data based on demographics, what they want to achieve with such a product, etc.
Step 3 - Get in Sync With Other Teams
Once your launch is live, your sales team is your front-line troop. Make sure they have been trained to use the product, give demonstrations, answer questions, and make the sale with your various buyer personas. On the other hand, to deliver a great customer experience, run over the FAQs to ensure these are accurate, go over protocol for problematic cases, and test product tutorials with the customer service team.
Step 4 - Beta Stage
Find people that will be really interested in the product you’ve built, and ask if they’d like to join the beta testing. Analyze their behavior and keep talking to them. They might be your most loyal customers, and you’ll get tons of valuable feedback.
Step 5 -Prepare a Press Kit
On the launch day, you should announce your product on various product listing websites (such as Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, BetaList, Capterra, etc.), and they should all send the same message. That’s why it’s essential to have your copy and visuals ready before the launch.
Step 6 - Build The Infrastructure To Gain Insights
Get your tools ready before launch so that you have everything recorded for later analysis. Use FullStory to watch how your first users are using your product, Amplitude to track and analyze user actions, and Google Analytics to observe the traffic source and track goals.
Step 7 - Prepare a Follow-up Plan
The product is ready to launch, but your work is not done yet. Remember to prepare a market strategy to follow after you have launched the product, saying how the product will be updated going forwards. Making these plans beforehand will help you in times of crisis.
Step 8 - Create a Launch Tracker
Now that you have all of your product’s launch information detailed, it’s time to organize everything into a shared planner with our following templates.
If you need reference for a detailed tracker, check out this Product Launch checklist template. Good luck!
Check out some of the previous issues:
What Product Managers Can Learn From Marketers
Hi Carlos, thank you for the great list!
And as further reading, I recommend how to sunset a feature or product: https://www.leadinginproduct.com/p/how-to-communicate-a-feature-sunset