Creating a product launch strategy 📣

‍For most companies, product and feature launches are always a top priority, inducing tension and stress in the company because of how influential it can be.

If successful a new launch can make new users flock to your company, if not, you risk damaging your company and the trust you built with your users.

What:

A product launch strategy is a strategy that aims at getting a product ready to launch on a market. It aims for user adoption and brand growth. The main focus on such a strategy is communication, making sure everyone knows about the new product and features you are offering.

 This can happen through notifications, email campaigns, billboards and the general press.

The aim of a successful launch is to create a sustainable growth strategy in the long term. It’s tempting to do a massive media push on launch and sure that should get your product going. However, you could benefit more from enduring growth. Orders get spread out and you leave an impression in the customer’s mind.

An effective launch strategy also acts on customer retention, you might have the best strategy in hand, if it doesn’t bring you lasting customers, you’ll find yourself constantly having to push your market to sell it.

If done correctly, the launch strategy should give the initial push to your product, as customers discover it and realize how useful its features are, the product should sell itself with word-of-mouth.

Why:

Without a carefully thought out strategy, launching a product in the open will be extremely detrimental to your business. Communication  is almost always as important as the technology behind it. Without it, how are users going to find out? People rarely come to you asking if you have a specific tool.

Instead you reach out to a potential customer or someone mentions the product to them, making your users realize how valuable your product could be.

How:

Pitfalls

First, let’s go over what you should avoid. Here are the most common reasons why products fail at launch:

• Wrong market evaluation
• Wrong timing
• Wrong pricing
• Limited promotion

By carefully planning your strategy, you study the industry, this helps understand what the dynamics are. Is the demand for your product growing, decreasing, is it an entirely new product ? These factors influence your entire strategy and planning things out can only be beneficial for your launch.

Take great care when choosing the timing, is your target audience ready for such a product ? If you don’t execute the launch at the right time, your company will take a loss. If the timing is wrong, customers won’t be influenced at all by your launch. Renault for example came out with its new car, the Kwid, however it already had a similar car in its products. The Kwid completely failed as the demand for such a car had already been filled by the similar design.

Pricing is also a major aspect, customers tend to compare the features offered for a certain price, it's the ratio of the features compared to the price it sells that matters. Your product may be fabulous, if the price is too high, only a select group of tech enthusiasts will buy your product, if it's too cheap, you of course sacrifice your profit.

A great promotion for your product means that it shows what your product is capable of, it highlights its main features and gives the proper idea about your product to the right customers.

Launch

On the contrary, here’s what you should actually do to prepare your product launch strategy:

• Market analysis. This is a must, the objective is to understand who you’re selling to, that part should be carried out while product development so as to adapt the design of your product to your target audience.

• Competitor offering. It’s important to know what your competitors are selling and how they’re selling it because that’s exactly what your customers are going to do. Try and figure out what the competition is doing wrong or what their products lack so you can implement it and grab their customers.

• Target customer. Your product should answer a customer’s needs, for that reason, it's important to first understand who you’re selling to to tailor your creation.If you do it correctly, there’s no reason why your product couldn’t become a hit success.

• Beta customer. Having beta customers can be precious as they allow you to test your ideas. If they make good use of it, they will make mouth publicity of your product, a critical element of a successful product launch.

• Measure your success. While executing your strategy, keep a grid that shows different measurements such as number of users reached, customer inquiries, sales and return rates.This will help you understand how effective your strategy is and if any adjustments are required.

• Press plan. Coordinating the press will result in free publicity which assists you in the overall launch and promotion effort. As an example, the iPhone launched while competition between smartphones was high, the press gave Apple free publicity and amplified the user’s opinion of the product which led to a successful launch.

‍As you work on developing your product and define its features, always keep in mind the end user. Who are you going to sell to, for what price ? These questions are necessary to create a launch strategy and are defined in the creative phase, when the features for your device are decided upon. Communication and promotion doesn’t solely predict how well your product will sell but it might just be as, if not more, important than the features of the device itself.