new product launch assignment

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New Product Launch: The Perfect Marketing Plan (With Examples)

No one is better at building anticipation ahead of a launch than Apple. New product launches trigger publicized spec leaks and reveal events draw crowds in the millions (over 2.7 million people watched the iPhone 12 presentation live). 

In the iPhone 13’s first quarter, it generated $71.6 billion in revenue (despite parts shortages and a global pandemic).

You don’t have to create Apple-level hype to see a successful new product launch. Trading app Robinhood launched with almost one million users thanks to a pinpointed market need and waitlist pre-launch campaign.

Unfortunately, many product launches take a “build it and they will come approach,” failing to gain traction and eventually fizzling out. These launches lack the key component of promotion and acquisition.

In this article, you’ll learn how to design an effective new product launch plan to avoid this pitfall and generate demand.

Before starting on your new product launch plan, make sure you’ve crafted a product launch strategy. This’ll help you inform and execute the tactical aspects of your product launch plan.

Pre-launch: Paving the way for a successful product launch 

The pre-launch stage is often the busiest and most impactful stage of a new product launch. Rushed or poorly planned product launches will flop.

Activities during this phase focus on building brand awareness and anticipation, developing product messaging , identifying key marketing channels , and driving demand for your new product to ensure a successful launch.

1. Challenge yourself to become a product expert 

Some marketers stop learning about their product after the initial research and strategy development. In reality, you’ll be learning and adapting your product and strategy as you gain more insights from your customers.

Through the entire product lifecycle , the product marketing manager (PMM) and their team should be the masters of the new product. Using the product marketing strategy you’ve developed, your product marketing team must know:

• What the product does;
• Why it exists;
• Who it serves;
• How it helps them, and;
• Why it’s the best option.

You’ll continually develop this expertise by working closely with other departments. Learn from marketing, sales, and customer success what customers are raving and ranting about.

Interview product managers and engineers to gain a technical understanding of the product. Or better yet, use the product yourself. Tie challenges back to your product benefits.

Slite , a digital workplace for async teams, connects their customers’ challenges to their product benefits on their ”Discussions” feature landing page .

Slite found that a common frustration around a competitor’s tool is communication getting lost in Slack threads.

Instead of dancing around the topic, they called it out on the landing page: 

• “A place for more focused discussions.”
• “Tired of endless Slack threads?”
• “Slack isn’t cutting it, and it’s about time for a better alternative.”

Learn all you can from market research and by interacting with other teams. Then tie your customers’ challenges to benefits in the clearest way possible.

2. Generate excitement and buy-in with an internal press release 

Create an internal press release to communicate your positioning with your entire team.

Having a single source of truth document ensures clarity and consistency across marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams. It also builds internal excitement for the new product launch.

Amazon’s former director, Ian McAllister, describes a framework he uses for internal press releases :

“ Heading: Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand. Subheading: Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title. Summary: Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good. Problem: Describe the problem your product solves. Solution: Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem. Quote from You: A quote from a spokesperson in your company. How to Get Started: Describe how easy it is to get started. Customer Quote: Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit. Closing and Call to Action: Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next.”

Keep it short and simple (under a page and a half), and avoid overly corporate or technical language. McAllister revealed his trick for communicating the product’s unique positioning and messaging is to pretend you’re talking to Oprah:

“Imagine you’re sitting on Oprah’s couch and have just explained the product to her, and then you listen as she explains it to her audience.’”

The press release should help shape every aspect of product development. The product team can refer back to the document, asking at all times if what they’re developing meets the brief.

Doing so will keep the product team focused on customer benefits and help them avoid wasting resources on features that aren’t important.

3. Building genuinely useful marketing personas 

Often, marketing personas are empty, unrealistic imitations of who marketers hope their customers are. This happens when the persona development process is top-down instead of bottom-up. 

Rand Fishkin, founder and CEO of SparkToro explains his experience with the typical user persona :

“Build personas → Make sure they get used across the company → Create product and marketing initiatives to employ the personas → Get no benefit at all → Doh!”

Fishkin recommends a five-step approach to creating genuinely useful buyer personas:

• List out the applications your personas are solving for. Who’s doing what with your product? What information might they require to do that work effectively?
• Audit and cull. Identify realistic elements that can be tested and proved through data-gathering exercises.
• Substantiate with data. Leverage internal customer data from social accounts, web analytics, email subscribers, and current product usage data. Scrape insights from market research, industry statistics, and competitor press releases. 

Interview your customers , your prospects, and your lost deals to understand real-life needs and challenges. Access audience intelligence from tools like SparkToro , Brandwatch , and Helixa to gather quantitative data at scale.

• Segment your personas. Use the data you’ve gathered to establish the characteristics that separate one group from another. If two or more sets of your market share overlapping behaviors and characters, group them under one persona. 
• Settle on a presentation format. Present your personas in a way that makes sense for your team to digest. That might be a Google Doc with a few bullet points, an infographic-style design, or a short video.

HubSpot offers a free tool that creates personas like this:

4. Determine which channels you’ll capitalize on 

Your product marketing strategy should inform the channels you’ll use to reach your audience (leading up to and including launch day).

Build a list of the specific channels you’re going to use. Then consider:

• What you’re going to share in which locations;
• When you’re going to share it;
• Who is responsible for executing and monitoring each task.

Here are four common channels to build hype and reach before you launch and on launch day.

Consider which channels you’ll allocate ad spend. Your next steps will depend on the channels you use.

For example, will you run Google Ads? You’ll need to determine the key search phrases you’ll target. 

Considering a publisher network? You’ll need to identify where your audience is most engaged and ensure your budget is going to the right places.

No matter your chosen channel, ensure messaging and creative tie back to your product marketing strategy .

Customers who want your new product may come to you through various organic channels, like search and social media. 

If you want to encourage organic traffic by investing in content marketing, you’ll need to identify the topics most relevant to your new product users. 

You’ll also want to consider how your website needs to change to reflect the new product. Will you need to create a new landing page, feature the product on your homepage, create new content on your blog, etc.?

Take Later , an Instagram marketing platform.

When it dropped a new product feature (first comment scheduling), Later knew it could reach its existing audience on Instagram. 

The platform designed an informative video to demonstrate exactly how the new product works, and published it on Instagram where their target users are.

If you have existing relationships with media (newspapers, magazines, radio, online publications), use them to broadcast your launch. 

If not, where do opportunities exist to form new relationships?

Develop a strategy for media outreach. Develop easy-access content that journalists, PR, and other media professionals can use (e.g., press releases and brand kits).

Take Happsy , an organic mattress retailer.

When launching its new product, Happsy leveraged PRNewswire’s large reach to promote a press release announcing its certified organic bed-in-a-box.

Take advantage of relevant media outlets and include an exclusive offer to entice readers:

Traditional press releases can only take you so far. Happsy leveraged media outlets they had relationships with and issued a press release.

To make a real splash, you have to be where your audience is most active and give them content they’re looking for. 

For example, AI video editing software Kamua launched on Product Hunt , where tech-minded individuals learn about new tools.

Their launch campaign on a site targeting their user base gained them so much engagement, they rose to the third “most hunted” product on the site in a day.

Leverage digital PR by showing up where your audience is active and engaging with them on launch day.

Influencers

Think about how you’ll leverage third parties, like thought leaders and other brands, to promote your product and spread your message. 

Mention is a platform where you can find influencers and track their activity once employed to see how it’s impacting your reach. 

Consequently, Mention put this to good use when marketing its new product . It created an influencer marketing microsite and got other marketing influencers involved to help capture more attention.

There are many ways to use influencer marketing . Consider:

• Whether you’ll use a partner channel;
• Whether you’re involved in any communities that you might engage; 
• If you can leverage online forums like Reddit to maximize reach and conversation; 
• Whether you’ll use more formal influencer relationships to promote the new product launch.

Millennials don’t want to be advertised to , which is why many businesses are using influencers instead. Learn your audience’s preferences, then fit your channels to your audience.

5. Increase organic visibility to boost brand awareness and demand

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial growth driver for B2B product launches.

Because organic content can take time to reap traffic rewards, publish before launch. This allows time for pages to be indexed, spark conversation, and rank.

Create high-value, intent-focused long-form content to attract top-of-funnel prospects, based on both product-driven and problem-driven topics.

Take sales CRM Pipedrive . One of their target markets is real estate agents.

Pipedrive uses concise, informative, search-optimized descriptions to win top positions, like this featured snippet for the keyword “real estate CRM.”

Pipedrive also focuses on developing top-of-funnel, problem-driven content to attract real estate agents struggling with cold-calling and lead generation.

Prioritize topics that have a higher likelihood of ranking.

For example, take these two search phrases “top real estate CRM” and “best CRM for real estate investors.”

Both keywords have similar monthly search volume, but one has a keyword difficulty of 39% and the other has a difficulty of 63% (according to SEMrush).

Having identified which key search phrases provide the best opportunities, use a tool like Airtable to build out a content calendar, detailing for each piece:

• Project status;
• Writers and editors responsible;
• Distribution channels.

6. Debug website issues and improve user experience 

Most of your product launch campaign activities will direct traffic back to your website. So, before launch day, make sure your site is prepared to handle traffic spikes.

OrangeValley found that if their site was just one second slower, their conversion rate dropped by 25% .

Ensure that your site:

• Has a healthy load speed;
• Is not bogged down by excessive code;
• Doesn’t have any 404 warnings or dead links;
• Is easily navigable;
• Is mobile-responsive;
• Doesn’t host any duplicate content;
• Is secure and uses HTTPS;
• Has an XML sitemap to help search engines crawl and index pages.

Find tools and learn how to fix these issues to prepare your website for traffic and growth in CXL’s article on technical SEO .

7. Collaborate to develop initial messaging 

Develop your product messaging in the pre-launch phase, but be prepared to adapt it as you collect customer feedback during and post-launch.

Morgan Molnar, Director of Product Marketing at Momentive , shares a template for developing initial product messaging in her CXL course on product launches .

Use this template to write a short description of your product. Detail key value propositions and the features that deliver them.

Share your product messaging with other teams across marketing, sales, product development, and customer success to gather important feedback. 

For example, sales representatives may be able to identify common phrases or language your target audience uses to describe their pain points.

8. Test your message before it gets to your customers 

Use message testing products like Wynter to understand how your customers see your product and messaging before bringing the product to market.

Build your target audience using Wynter’s proprietary B2B panel, set up the test creative (e.g., your new landing page), and customize your test questions.

Use this feedback to amend your product messaging where appropriate, and run a second test to validate changes.

9. Create shareable pre-launch content to generate hype

Prepare for launch day by creating shareable content. This will help generate discussion around your new product.

The more people you have sharing and interacting with your product, the more likely it is to land in front of people who need it and want to buy it.

For example, Rand Fishkin, co-founder at SparkToro , created pre-launch content detailing their funding journey.

Marker.io also launched in public, transparently narrating the entire process along the way. Hotjar describes Marker.io’s launch in their case study :

“Gary Gaspar and his team launched Marker.io , a visual communication tool, back in 2015. Being featured on Product Hunt within a month made them think they had ‘arrived’, but they were far from it: they attracted about 20 upvotes and 2 comments (…one of which was Gary’s). For the second Product Hunt launch, the team worked relentlessly. They made a very detailed action plan, sharpened their product visuals and copy, built shareable documentation that included a demo video—and only then did the hard work pay off: Marker received 600 upvotes and around 3,000 new signups over the course of one month.” 

Marker.io even made their Product Hunt launch plan publicly available in a Trello board:

Leading up to your new product launch, focus on creating highly-shareable content like this to build awareness and stimulate conversation.

Launch day: Deploying your new product launch plan 

Launch day is all about coordination. Without coordination, your chances of reaching the right audiences (and even virality) are lower.

Enable sales and marketing teams to spread the word about your new product, and have a clear plan for doing this.

Advocates and influencers should be prepared to push your message to their own audiences to further your impact.

All parties must understand how the product works, where it brings value to your audience, and why competitors’ customers should second-guess their choice. Luckily, you’ve covered this in pre-launch.

Here’s how to bring everything together on launch day.

10. Develop a coordinated plan of attack 

Coordinate sales and marketing teams to have the right activities ready to go at the right time:

• Who is available to book product demo meetings?
• Will you be running live streams, webinars, giveaways, etc.? Who owns these tasks, and when and how will they take place?
• What emails will you send? How will they be scheduled? Who’ll be responsible for handling responses, and what kind of responses can you anticipate?
• If you have a sales team, who is making phone calls? To whom? When? 
• Who is responsible for inbound calls?

Prepare your teams by having step-by-step plays ready to go (when X happens, we do Y). You won’t anticipate every customer challenge, but you can help your team operate autonomously by preparing as much as you can.

Leaders (particularly those with established audiences), should also be prepared to push the message out and engage with the community.

Let’s revisit Rand Fishkin. 

On launch day, Fishkin engaged consistently with his Twitter audience, answering questions, demonstrating use cases, and helping the community get the most out of SparkToro.

Use your collaborative work platform to organize your plan so everyone knows where they’re meant to be and what they should be doing on launch day.

11. Share relevant content across your primary channels 

Share a formal product announcement message along with other communications on launch day.

You’ve determined which channels you’ll rely most heavily on during the pre-launch phase; now’s the time to act on that plan:

• Roll out new product landing pages;
• Publish and share new blog posts and how-to articles;
• Schedule social media posts throughout the day that promote your product’s value props;
• Encourage discussions with your audience when they engage with your content;
• Coordinate media and PR releases to drop on the same day and link back to your main launch platform (such as the new product landing page).

The best way to communicate your new product launch is to show potential customers exactly how your product is going to solve their problem.

Take CRM platform monday.com .

When they released their new product workdocs (a collaborative document editor similar to Google Docs), monday.com used a short, informative video to demonstrate the product’s value and key competitive differentiators.

The video featured a face-to-face comparison with existing word document editors demonstrating workdocs’ speed and collaboration abilities, showing their audience exactly why they should choose workdocs over a competitor product.

12. Galvanize your advocates for sharing launch-day content 

Leverage any influencers you have a relationship with—without “buying” them. 

Ensure that your influencer partner sincerely backs what you’re selling and that it’s helpful to their audience.

Engage your advocates to upvote your new product on Product Hunt , and to share content on relevant social media platforms.

To maximize engagement (and to allow influencers to retain authenticity), have advocates publish unique content rather than simply retweeting your existing posts.

Take Ashley R. Cummings , freelance writer, and SparkToro advocate.

Rather than simply retweeting one of Fishkin’s product videos Cummings shares a quick tip on using SparkToro to find interview sources.

Fishkin then leverages this user-generated content by sharing this insight and product advocacy with his own audience.

13. Use a referral program to turn your customers into advocates 

Referral schemes are an important part of long-term product marketing strategy , generating a near-passive stream for customer acquisition.

Take Airtable, a low-code platform for building collaborative apps.

Airtable encourages users to invite their network by offering $10 worth of credits for each person invited.

Use a compelling referral offer to grow your customer base quickly at launch.

For example, you could offer a “first month free” initiative for both the inviter and invitee. Offer this incentive for a limited time to boost initial launch sign-ups before reverting to your long-term referral scheme offer.

Post-launch: Conducting a post-mortem 

Focus areas for the post-launch phase are retention of your new, hard-won customers, and KPI tracking. Consider:

• How do we retain the customers we’ve attracted at launch? How can we convert trial users into paid ones? What tactics do we have in play to upsell and increase customer lifetime value (CLV) ?
• What KPIs are we tracking? How does our performance stack up against expectations? What are the underlying causes behind low performance (if applicable), and what will we do about it?
• What lessons can we learn from this experience to apply to future product launches? What insights have we gained that might apply to product development in the next life cycle ?

The launch isn’t over at midnight on launch day. Here’s what to do next.

14. Execute your customer retention strategy 

Your product launch tactics were successful. You’ve attracted a group of prospects and converted them into users.

Now it’s time to keep them from switching to the competition.

• Use customer-facing webinars to show existing customers how to get the most out of your product and to demonstrate specific applications.
• Leverage email marketing campaigns to introduce users to product features step-by-step. 
• Send out product updates when resolving bugs or adding new features.
• Encourage customers to follow your social media pages, and post insightful, shareable guides to using your product in a real-life context.

Make your customer retention strategy a two-way conversation by encouraging customers to give feedback on your product. Ask those who switched from a competitor what drove them to leave. 

Alex Turnbull of GrooveHQ shares a simple email template for capturing customer feedback .

Analyze customer service data and support logs to identify areas of friction. Review email performance to understand what actions take place (or don’t) when you send out retention-focused emails. 

15. Conduct a post-mortem and analyze results 

Start by evaluating your performance on metrics that measure the success of your product launch. Track metrics like:

• Content engagement metrics such as time on page, bounce rate, and page views;
• Click-through rates for ads and organic content;
• Volume-based KPIs like the number of new trials, new customers, referrals, sales qualified leads;
• Total revenue from customers acquired through online marketing; 
• Cost Per Lead segmented by acquisition channel, and;
• Average Customer Value .

Compare your actual metrics against your forecasts and goals, and ask:

• Which goals did we achieve?
• Which goals did we not achieve?
• In either case, why?

Try not to make assumptions about the reasons behind meeting (or not meeting) your goals. 

Engage with your customers (and non-customers) to understand how your marketing efforts impacted performance against benchmarks.

If you hit your goal for sales qualified leads, but fell short of the KPI for the number of new customers, this may indicate a breakdown somewhere in the sales process.

Analyze sales pipeline data to understand drop-off rates at each stage. Meet with sales reps to find out how customers respond to your messaging and word tracks. Set up interviews with missed opportunities, and ask them why they chose not to sign up.

16. Share key learnings with internal departments 

Don’t make the mistake of keeping your post-mortem insights to yourself. Sales, marketing, product, and customer success teams can all learn from your findings. They may be able to provide additional insights into what worked and what didn’t.

Use these questions to deconstruct the results of your new product launch marketing plan, and share your answers with all relevant departments:

• What lessons can go toward the next product launch?
• What could sales have communicated better?
• What new issues are being presented to the support team?
• What assets could optimize your marketing campaigns?
• What demos could ease customers into the new product?
• What does our product usage data tell us about the usefulness of the new product?

Post-launch insights can also prove invaluable for informing the product roadmap, so make sure to share key learnings with the product team as well.

Take Wonderflow, ​​a voice of customer analytics company.

Wonderflow was working with a client who produced an innovative new baby monitor. Unfortunately, the product launch didn’t go as planned, and the client wasn’t gaining a lot of traction.

The post-launch feedback analysis identified the problem: the monitor remained silent if there was nothing to report, but parents wanted a regular update, problem or not.

The product team used this feedback to change the monitor’s update sequence, the product marketing team adjusted their messaging and marketing collateral, and sales communicated the updated feature to prospects.

Conclusion  

New product launches are a core aspect of product marketing. They require careful collaboration and coordination of sales, marketing, product, and customer success teams to execute effectively.

The majority of your new product launch plan activities take place pre-launch, but don’t discount the importance of a post-launch analysis of your new product’s impact, and subsequent changes to your product marketing strategy. Master new product launch planning to start getting revenue out the gate with CXL’s Product Marketing Minidegree .

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Josh Krissansen

Josh is a Content Specialist at Grizzle, a content marketing & SEO agency, and a freelance content writer for B2B clients in the SaaS space.

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New Product Development - The 7-Step Process Explained

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Delivering innovative products can help you gain a competitive advantage, but maintaining that advantage requires continuously delivering new products that keep pace with your customers' evolving needs. New product development is the key to building and keeping market share and customer loyalty.

What is new product development?

New product development is the end-to-end process of creating a product that has never been brought to market—from idea to concept, prototyping, developing, testing, and launch. It involves building a product strategy and roadmap to successfully guide cross-functional teams and stakeholders through the entire process.

Unlike product enhancements and upgrades that modify and improve existing products, new product development addresses the unique challenges of designing and delivering brand-new products. This article discusses the seven stages of new product development, some challenges Agile teams face along the way, and how you can succeed.

The 7 stages of new product development

Successful Agile software development takes careful planning and good project management practices . The seven stages of new product development guide you through the process by breaking the work into stages or steps.

1. Generating ideas

Every new product begins with a problem and ideas to solve it. Ideas may come from within the company, such as the customer service team, or from outside via customer and market research. In this phase, it's important to gather all ideas without discrimination. The more ideas you can brainstorm, the better.

Products such as Jira Product Discovery help product teams structure the chaos of prolific ideas. Ideas can be supported by data, customer feedback, sales input, support tickets, and more to help shape what the product team should focus on, creating ongoing feedback loops. Idea generation is most effective as a team activity with the outcome of developing the essential elements for a new product. 

To help you prioritize ideas, methods such as a SWOT or Competitive analysis take the guess-work out of the process. When generating ideas, having a clear understanding of where opportunities exist and knowing how the competition stacks up can lead to brainstorming disruptive and game-changing ideas.

2. Screening ideas

Agile teams can use Jira Product Discovery matrixes to view a large number of ideas, using criteria such as impact, effort, and confidence level before scoring and selecting which ideas to move into the next phase. Gathering and organizing product ideas in a centralized tool makes it easier for product teams to prioritize which ideas or features will drive the most impact.

Scoring ideas by product development effort versus the overall impact of the solution is an excellent way to focus on those with the most impact. The SWOT and competitive analysis templates from step 1 can provide the foundation for where to place priorities. 

You can also identify good ideas that are simply not right for this new product but may be suitable for future products and the goals of the team. Screening ideas can be difficult, but aligning each good idea to your goals and comparing its impact to other ideas will help identify the most impactful opportunities.

3. Creating a product strategy

After selecting ideas to develop into a new product, it's time to create your product strategy. This is a concise definition of the need that the new product meets. A good product strategy includes the vision, target market or user, position in the industry, features and benefits, and the value the new product brings to the business. This phase involves creating a clear definition of the requirements.

Confluence offers a strategic plan template that can help you refine your strategy messaging, remove ambiguity, and clearly communicate the goal. From here, the Confluence requirements template walks you through the process of outlining your objectives and success metrics, listing assumptions and options to address them, and adding supporting documentation. These efforts include prototyping and validating with customers, ensuring the product being built will be something that customers actually want.

4. Building a product roadmap

A product roadmap is an action plan. It outlines product functionality and release schedules and helps you manage new product development. Think of the roadmap as the core communication tool for short- and long-term efforts that align with your business goals. It's a shared source of truth for a product’s vision, direction, priorities, and progress over time. Creating a great product roadmap keeps your entire team working together and moving in the same direction (try our product roadmap template ). They also make it easy to check in on the work at any time throughout the product development life cycle.

Product teams using Jira Product Discovery can then share their product strategy using always-up-to-date, custom roadmaps to present which ideas will be built, when, and why.

5. Prototyping

Time to market is critical for new product development, and your ability to rapidly prototype and develop products ensures viable solutions. Jira Product Discovery’s integration with software development tools like Jira  makes it easy to seamlessly connect your entire software delivery lifecycle.

Defects and change requests are simply a fact of new product development, but concise tracking and issue management keep everyone on your team informed, organized, and on schedule. Testing can span both internal quality assurance (QA) teams as well as customers and end users engaged in alpha, beta, or user acceptance testing. Jira  is the leading tool that Agile teams use for testing, in part because it optimizes the QA workflow by writing and managing test scripts, tracking test cases, and managing defects. 

The product roadmap template from the previous step, along with other Confluence project planning templates , also inform testing and help ensure you miss nothing.

7. Product launch

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and launching a new product requires careful planning and delivery. Every step in the process is a building block to a successful launch. Confluence’s product launch template helps ensure a smooth launch.

Additionally, sales and marketing, HR, and legal teams are already using your product strategy and roadmap to align messaging, identify opportunities, and ensure regulatory compliance. Using Jira , they can seamlessly connect their work with the product team’s. It provides a streamlined UI and integrations with the tools they use daily, such as Gantt charts and spreadsheets.

4 main types of product development

There are four types of product development, including:

• New product development : These are products that haven’t been released in the market before, such as software applications that solve new or novel customer problems. 
• New product categories : These products may not be new to the marketplace, but they are new to the company developing them. For example, a software company may expand their offering to include products within the category they currently develop, such as adding tax accounting to their portfolio of personal finance applications. 
• Product line extensions : These expand the products offered within the organization’s existing range of products, such as adding new industries within a category. For example, a company may develop accounting software for the construction industry and decide to extend their accounting software to the airline industry.
• Product enhancements : These are new features and capabilities within existing products. Companies generally design them to provide customers with new or added value. Enhancements respond to changes in the market, performance issues, or new competitive products. 

Example of new product development

Whether creating a new product that hasn’t been seen in the market before, or expanding an existing application to address new geographic locations, understanding the time it will take to develop is essential. 

Jira insights help teams make data-driven decisions based on their own historical progress. Insights can come from every aspect of the product development process and provide continuous improvement opportunities with each new product development project.  

3 challenges teams encounter in the new product development process

Great tools can help alleviate the challenges of new product development. Understanding these challenges and how to address them can keep your team on track for a successful launch.

1. Defining clear requirements

When speed is important, the requirements often become an ironclad set of instructions. While clear requirements are necessary, Agile teams must have a shared understanding of and empathy for the customer. Include various members of your team in requirements-gathering activities, such as customer interviews. When designers, developers, and QA share an understanding of user stories, they can produce results more quickly and accurately without maintaining rigid rules.

Confluence’s requirements template gives you the power to capture and update assumptions, use cases, UX design, and scope together.

2. Estimating the development effort

Working with realistic project timelines is essential for bringing new products to market and gaining a competitive advantage. However, product development tasks are notoriously difficult to estimate, and new product development can be even harder. Break work into smaller tasks for more accurate estimates. In addition to giving you more flexibility with resource assignments, smaller tasks minimize the impact on your overall project when something takes longer than expected.

Many Agile teams have switched from traditional estimates to story points—units that measure the effort teams require to fully implement a user story. A user story is an informed explanation of a feature from the user's perspective. With Jira, Agile teams track story points, reflect, and quickly recalibrate estimates.

3. Siloed tools

Collaboration is a critical component in your team's success and the success of their products. Development teams use a variety of specialized tools, such as visual design tools for creating mock-ups and instant messaging apps for hosting team discussions. No single tool can provide the specialized functionality for all the needs of the development team. Jira Product Discovery and Jira integrate with a wide range of specialized development tools to easily collect and incorporate important information.

How long does new product development take?

The time to develop a new product can vary widely based on the complexity of that product. For example, developing an application that securely processes credit card payments may take magnitudes longer than developing software to track exercise statistics. But a few tips can help reduce the time to market while maintaining quality. 

Expert tips from Atlassian for new product development

Understand the customer.

Begin with the customer’s needs in mind. The time you spend early, interviewing customers and gathering input, helps create a clear product strategy. The entire team should understand the problem they are solving for the customer. It will keep the team on track when they make decisions during development. 

Foster team collaboration

When the team has the tools for seamless collaboration, generating ideas, prioritizing issues, and solving problems is much easier. Today’s product development teams include a wide range of cross-functional roles. The best way to prevent silos and keep the team working together is with collaboration, respect, and genuine appreciation for each other’s contributions. Centralized tools such as Jira Product Discovery and Jira help foster this.

Define the requirements

A good product specification outlines the purpose, what the client needs the product to do, the technical and functional requirements to achieve that, design mockups, and even release plans. This foundational document takes time to create, but it helps teams refine and clarify fuzzy requirements and align on the scope of the project. 

Optimize resource allocation

Resource allocation is among the hardest aspects of new product development, so the roadmap must be well-defined before you begin. Understand the tasks included in the project, their dependencies, and the resources required. Visual workflows can help teams identify when you underutilize or overcommit resources. They can also highlight bottlenecks and roadblocks to allow teams to quickly adjust and stay on track. 

Jira makes new product development easier

Jira  provides success tools for new product development teams to collaborate on and manage work from idea to product launch. Agile teams have made Jira the leading solution for new product development.

Jira Product Discovery is a dedicated tool that aids teams in crucial stages of product development. It helps Agile teams gather and prioritize ideas and align everyone with product roadmaps. 

With Jira Product Discovery matrixes and criteria, you can easily select which ideas to move ahead with, enhancing the experience of product development.

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How to Create a Product Launch Roadmap: 10 Tactics & Examples

Learn how to use a product launch plan to get your teams on the same page, communicate with users, and realize your product goals.

The launch of a new product or feature is a stressful time for a company, particularly for Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers. You want a successful launch that acts as a springboard for new deals and helps the sales team move leads into the pipeline. For that to happen, your team needs to decide which strategies to execute and which to ditch.

How to create an effective product launch plan? We’re about to walk you through the actionable steps that will help you prepare for the launch and keep your whole team on the same page.

Start with customer research – ask your existing users or potential customers for their feedback. Understand their needs and pain points before you go into planning a launch strategy.

Create actionable goals for your product launch. Instead of focusing on one end goal, break it into smaller goals for each phase.

Visualize your product launch on a timeline . Depending on the scope of your launch, you can prepare customer journey maps, product roadmap, launch plan or a roadmap, and more assets as needed. See the examples and templates below 👇

Define roles and responsibilities for everyone on your team, and keep communication clear across teams within your org.  

Use a product launch checklist to break bigger tasks into actionable steps and make sure all relevant steps are covered.

Keep your launch plan flexible to be able to quickly address all the changes along the way, especially if you work in an agile environment.

What is a product launch plan all about?

A product launch plan is a document that details the tasks and timelines behind getting users to interact with your new product or a new feature. It is an essential part of any marketing strategy behind a new product.

Creating a solid product launch plan will make it easier to identify your goals, set out your strategy, and designate tasks for different teams and members. It sounds like this one document has a lot to cover, but with a good online roadmap maker , you can design a roadmap that will help you implement your launch strategy and get your whole organization aligned around a single source of truth.

10 tactics to create the product launch plan that your new release deserves

When in the planning process for your next product launch, you need to ensure that all bases are covered. Start from customer and UX research then progress steadily through all other key actions, like adding milestones and checklists. Here are our top tips for product management team success with their product launch plans.

1. Start with customer research

Your product roadmap is focused on a specific goal: the launch of your product. But getting there requires high-level feedback from the target audience of your launch, and the chief among them are your customers.

Though this may seem like a labor-intensive task, product launches will not be complete without asking your customers for their thoughts on product features you have produced so far, and what they wish you would do differently.

Here at Chameleon , we add beta users of new products and features to our Slack channels to have a direct line of communication for support, bug hunting, and—as a great end result—improving feature adoption among beta users.

👉 Check out this interactive demo to explore how Chameleon Microsurveys help streamline in-app feedback.

Have you had customers who weren’t happy with how a product worked? Find out before creating your roadmap. Applying firmographic segmentation strategies to shape your ideal customer profiles and knowing what makes customers happy will help you map out the customer journey , organize your launch, and streamline the further development of your product.

The above example of a customer journey map outlines what the process for customers is now and how it can be changed in the future. A chart like this could be the starting point for creating a plan for your new product launch.

Depending on your customer journeys, you can decide the scope of your launch and iterate your product roadmap. Also, don't forget to validate it with your users first .

🎬 Webinar: Validating Product Roadmaps With Your Users

Learn how to validate new product ideas and solutions with user feedback in this webinar with Maze

2. Create actionable product launch goals

With customer research complete, you also need to think about what kinds of goals you have to outline to complete your product launch formula . But, more importantly, you need to decide what does and doesn’t impact your overall goal.

💡 Take a look at the series of best practices on how to announce a new feature , along with a specific framework to make this section even easier.

A little bit of analysis is needed for this phase of your roadmap. Dive into your product analytics to find which product goals, marketing goals, and sales goals to achieve. Then, list out the key performance indicators (KPIs) for each goal. What resources do you need, and how much effort and man-hours are required?

Once you have the answers to these questions, then understand what launch activities you have to undertake to achieve your goals.

3. Organize your product roadmap template

Using a roadmap template can help you visualize your product strategy and save time. For example, you can start with Roadmunk's roadmap templates with a swimlane or a timeline view.

Once you have chosen a roadmap format that suits your needs, you can add your brand identity. According to the latest branding statistics , high-level branding is a necessity for both external and internal company communications. And, it's particularly important for launches since they often involve both employees and customers.

With your branding in place, you should be looking at choosing a select set of icons as a visual reference in your launch roadmap. Icons are a simple, yet poignant tool for sharing and organizing information effectively. Icons also remove the need for adding long paragraphs to explain a subject, as you can see in the example below.

4. Expand your roadmap color palette

Visuals like icons help better with recall, as do colors. Using a set of contrasting colors in your roadmap will make information stand out and lead to people remembering points better. Using a unique color palette is also an effective way to add personality to your brand . You can also use colors to demarcate sections or phases of the product launch. This will make it easier for your team members to access the section most relevant to them.

Alongside a varied color palette, you should also use shades of colors, especially if you only have access to a limited color palette. You can see in the roadmap below how shades of a single color have been used to create sections.

By using shades of the same color, you can expand the number of colors you can use, while still remaining minimalist.

5. Create a product launch plan index

An index provides a brief description of what your plan is all about and which ideas you are looking to implement. It also outlines the various phases of the launch. You can choose to show this in a variety of ways: as a standard index, a timeline, a mind map, a graph, or a table.

For anyone reading your plan, an index will ease them into the project and give them the lay of the land before they begin working.

6. Add milestone highlights

A product roadmap, especially one for a significant new product or feature launch, is likely to cover a lot of information no matter which roadmap format your choose. If you want to hold your teammates' attention, make sure the document is skimmable.

The modern human is increasingly busier and more overloaded with information than ever, and our attention spans have decreased as a result. We're used to skimming over headlines in our social media feeds, and quickly scanning through any articles we do click on.

Add visual hierarchy to your roadmap by pinpointing the salient points you need team members to focus on and highlighting them. You can achieve this in a number of ways - you can use bold or italics, break sections down to include more subheadings, or underline key phrases so they are immediately noticeable, as you can see in the example below.

What you will also have noticed is that these highlights don’t only extend to headings or subheadings; you could emphasize different words and phrases within the body text of your product roadmap. This will ensure that your teammates know exactly what is the most pertinent information they need to get from that section.

7. Add calls to action

Product roadmaps have sections that are relevant to some staff members, but not others. But you don’t want the team members who aren’t involved in every step of the product launch to miss key deadlines or deliverables, which is why you need to include calls to action across your roadmap.

Instead of focusing on one end goal—the launch of the actual product—break down your phases into smaller goals and include a call to action for each of them.

For every phase of the project, include a section about what needs to be achieved or produced by the end of it. Use the aforementioned ways of highlighting text to make this call to action stand out to the reader.

Including calls to action, every step of the way will make the end goal feel more achievable, while also making your roadmap relevant to those who may not be involved in every aspect of the new product launch.

8. Visualize your product launch timelines

A great way to structure your roadmap is by creating a timeline. Using a simple timeline maker tool or taking advantage of timeline infographic templates , you can design a timeline that shows every step of your product launch with the amount of time required for each phase. You can also include what needs to be achieved within each phase.

You can see in this timeline roadmap below how each step towards the goal has been clearly outlined.

A timeline is a great way to show a project at a high level so everyone has a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved and by when.

9. Use a checklist

Aside from timelines, checklists are also one of the great product management tools to use in your product roadmap planning. Checklists break down a massive project, like a product launch, into smaller actionable tasks that can be achieved and marked off when completed.

This will help you ensure none of the important steps are missed. For example, as you prepare for your new product release, make sure that your Product Marketers are working along to prepare product announcements for different channels, including emails , blog posts, and in-app messages .

A checklist will require some work to create as it needs bigger goals to be broken down into its minutest components. But once that part is decided, the checklist will make it so much easier for everyone involved in the project to manage their workload.

Look at this checklist below which breaks down a marketing campaign into smaller, achievable tasks.

Checklists also make the Product Manager’s job better; they will no longer need to keep following up with colleagues about whether or not tasks have been completed. A quick glance at the checklist will tell you everything you need to know, so you can move on to the next task. Using a specialized tool like ProductPlan also makes sharing a roadmap overview an easy task.

10. Include dates to be updated

A project as big as a product launch will require many hands to be involved from different departments. Not everyone will be privy to changes or updates made to the plan—and we all know that plans are constantly subject to change. You don’t want someone to be working off of redundant information, but you can hardly email every single person about every slight change on your way to the big launch date.

This is why a successful product launch roadmap needs to have a section that includes the date it was last updated. This doesn’t need to be overly large or interfere with your design. You can choose to tuck it away in a corner—but make it visible enough that everyone can easily notice it when they look at the roadmap. And, of course, keep your roadmap flexible to be able to quickly address all the changes along the way, especially if you work in an agile environment.

Also, the important thing to remember is that everyone is looking to this one document for their workflow so they need to know when things have changed. A key aspect of product management skills is ensuring that everyone is on board and in the know at all times.

Adding a small note about the date it was last updated will make it easier for everyone to work, and save you the hassle of coordinating endless email exchanges. This will also help you manage your product launch email campaign.

Wrapping up product launch planning

With a few key tactics, you can create a product launch plan that is succinct, informative, and goal-oriented .

You need to do a little bit of research, make sure that your roadmap is easy to skim through without losing out on the salient features of the project, and keep in mind that the ever-changing nature of a live project needs to be reflected.

Incorporate the building blocks of your plan into a roadmap for a successful product launch. And don't forget to prepare positioning messages and in-app messages that will help your users realize the value of your new product quickly.

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This article is written by Ronita Mohan, content marketer at Venngage , the online infographic and design platform. Ronita specializes in writing about visual content, online engagement, and digital marketing. All images in the article are sourced from Venngage.

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Product Launch Checklist: How to Launch a Product, According to HubSpot's Experts

Published: November 02, 2023

Like a tree falling in the woods, if you plan a product launch without spreading the word — will anyone use it? Will anyone even want it?

Probably not. Whether you‘re launching something huge, something small, or you’re updating a current offering, you'll want to start your preparation well in advance of the launch date with a product launch checklist.

Because there are so many moving parts in this process, bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky. To help you, we've come up with a step-by-step checklist for a successful product launch and gathered the best product launch tips from a HubSpot Product Marketer.

What is a product launch?

A product launch is the process of introducing a brand new product or service to the world. It involves various marketing and promotional activities aimed at creating buzz and demand around your new offering. The ultimate goal is to get customers excited and eager to buy the new product.

Product launches require a lot of planning. You can’t just drop a new product out of the blue and expect everyone to buy in — well, unless you’re Beyoncé . Luckily, our product launch checklist can help ensure that all your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted before your official launch date.

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Product Launch Checklist

• Learn about your customer.
• Write a positioning statement.
• Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.
• Develop product branding.
• Plan your go-to-market strategy.
• Set a goal for the launch.
• Create promotional content.
• Test and gather feedback.
• Set up distribution channels.
• Prepare your team.
• Launch the product.
• See how well you did in achieving your goals.

1. Learn about your customer.

Whether you call it “market research,” or “customer development” it's key to learn about what drives your customer. Identifying their goals, motivations, and pain points could lead you to developing and marketing a valuable solution.

You don't need to perform years of intense research to learn about your customer. In fact, we suggest just talking to 12 to 15 current or prospective customers.

When speaking to them, pay extra attention when they start sentences with “I wish a product did this function…” or “Why can‘t products do this?” When they give these statements, respond with questions that go deeper, like “Can you get more specific about that?" If they don’t bring up any pain points, ask them a few specific questions that will encourage them to give deeper answers.

These conversations will give you a solid idea of what their biggest pain points are and how you can market a solution to them. Once you learn these key details about your customers, you can develop a buyer persona that your team can focus on serving.

2. Write a positioning statement.

When launching a new product, you must be able to clearly explain how it fills a need in the market. That’s where a positioning statement comes in. It helps you communicate the unique value proposition and key benefits that differentiate your product from others.

Write out a statement that can clearly and concisely answer these three questions:

• Who is the product for?
• What does the product do?
• Why is it different from other products out there?

If you'd like to go even deeper, create a statement that answers the following questions:

• What is your target audience?
• What segment of the target audience is most likely to buy the product?
• What brand name will you give your product or service?
• What product or service category does your product lie in?
• How is it different from competitors in the same category?
• What evidence or proof do you have to prove that your product is different?

Still need more guidance on how to write a positioning statement? Check out this template.

3. Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.

Once you've established your positioning statement, present it to stakeholders in your company so they are all on the same page.

When doing this, you’ll want to emphasize how your new product aligns with your overall business strategy, customer needs, market trends, and revenue potential. Use concrete examples, stories, or data to make your pitch more persuasive.

You’ll also want to think proactively about potential questions or objections they might have. Prepare thoughtful responses to address concerns around market viability, competition, target audience, or feasibility.

If your employees have a hard time buying into the product, your customers might as well. If your team loves it, that might be a great sign that the product launch will go well.

4. Develop product branding.

Take the information you gathered while conducting your market research and writing your positioning statement and let it inspire you as you craft your product brand identity .

During this step, you’ll develop all the elements needed to create a consistent and memorable brand, including:

• Product name, logo, and tagline
• Color palette, typography, and imagery
• Key brand, communications, and marketing guidelines

Product branding is a little different than company branding because it focuses on creating a distinct identity for a specific product, rather than an entire organization. However, they are both still interconnected and should be aligned.

5. Plan your go-to-market strategy.

This is the strategy that you will use to launch and promote your product. While some businesses prefer to build a funnel strategy, others prefer the flywheel approach.

Regardless of which method you choose, this process contains many moving parts. To create an organized strategy for launching your product, it can be helpful to use a template, like this one.

As you create the strategy, also start considering which type of content you‘ll use to attract a prospective customer’s attention during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage . You'll need to produce this content in the next step.

6. Set a goal for the launch.

Before you get started on implementing your strategy, make sure you write down your goals for the launch.

Alex Girard, a Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “Create specific goals for the launch's success. Keeping these goals in mind will help you focus your efforts on launch tactics that will help you achieve those goals.”

For example, the goals of your product launch could be to effectively establish a new product name, build awareness, or create sales opportunities.

One of the best ways to set goals for your launch team is to write them out like SMART goals . A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Once you have your goals in mind, you can start thinking about what KPIs you want to track, such as:

• Sales revenue
• Customer acquisition
• Conversion rate
• Website traffic and engagement
• Social media engagement

Identifying these metrics ahead of time will make it easier to assess whether or not you met your goals after the product is launched.

7. Create promotional content.

After planning out your go-to-market strategy and writing your SMART goals, start producing content that will support and align with those promotional efforts.

This can include:

• Blog posts related to your product or industry
• Demos and tutorials
• Email campaigns
• Social media posts
• Landing pages

Our go-to-market template will also help you determine which content you should create for each phase of your prospective customer‘s buyer’s journey.

8. Test and gather feedback.

Before you officially launch your new product, it’s important to test it out to ensure your final product is the best it can be.

By testing the product in different scenarios with real users, potential bugs, usability problems, or functional issues can be discovered and resolved early on. Fixing these problems before launching your product ensures a smoother user experience and helps maintain customer satisfaction.

Gathering feedback from users also allows for product improvement. By listening to the opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of users, you can gain insight into what features are working well and which ones need improvement. This feedback-driven approach can help you make informed decisions on enhancing the product's functionality, usability, and performance.

9. Set up distribution channels.

Before you officially launch, you’ll need to set up your distribution channels. This step is important because it determines how and where customers can purchase your product, be it online platforms, brick-and-mortar stores, or other distribution partners.

Well-planned distribution channels help accelerate the product's time to market. By proactively setting up channels ahead of the launch, you can quickly distribute the product once it becomes available, minimizing delays and maximizing opportunities to capture early adopters and gain market share.

If you can successfully position your product in prominent retail locations or online marketplaces, it increases visibility and boosts your chances of capturing customer attention and outperforming competitors.

It also provides a foundation for future growth and scalability. As your business expands and introduces new products, you can leverage existing channel relationships and infrastructure to efficiently launch and distribute new offerings.

10. Prepare your team.

Be sure that your company and key stakeholders are ready for you to launch and begin marketing the product.

Before the big launch day, consider doing the following:

• Offer your team early access to the product so they can familiarize themselves with it firsthand.
• Provide training sessions to help your team understand the product inside out.
• Develop sales enablement materials such as presentations, product sheets, FAQs, and objection handling guides.
• Conduct role-playing exercises to simulate real customer scenarios with the product.

During this process, it’s essential that all stakeholders are on the same page. Communicate with the company through internal presentations, Slack, or email to keep your company updated on your launch plan.

11. Launch the product.

Once you've completed all the above steps, you can launch the product. Here are some last-minute things to check over on launch day:

• Double-check all the necessary details, materials, and arrangements to ensure that everything is ready and working correctly.
• Conduct a brief team meeting to align everyone and address any last-minute questions or concerns.
• Keep an eye on social media channels to gauge customer reactions, respond to inquiries, and engage with potential customers.
• Ensure that your website and any systems related to the product launch, such as landing pages or checkout processes, are functioning smoothly.

Most importantly, you should take the time to celebrate the launch and the efforts of your team. This can be in the form of a team lunch, virtual celebration, or any other creative way to acknowledge everyone’s hard work.

12. See how well you did in achieving your goals.

After you launch your product, track how the go-to-market strategy is performing. Be prepared to pivot or adjust aspects of your plan if they aren't going smoothly.

Additionally, don't forget about the goals you set before the launch. Take the time to review the KPI targets you set ahead of the launch and assess how well you did in achieving those goals.

For instance, did you exceed your sales projections, or did you fall short? If the launch didn't meet expectations, you can rethink your go-to-market strategy and adjust from there.

How much money do you need to launch a new product?

Launching a product can cost anywhere from $10,000 to over $10 million — but for most cases, the range is somewhere between $20,000 to $500,000. However, the cost of launching a new product varies significantly depending on the type of product, industry, competition, and the goals you're hoping to achieve.

The cost of launching a new product varies significantly. For instance, an entrepreneur will see vastly different costs for launching a product on Amazon than an enterprise company might see for launching a product in a million-dollar market.

Let's consider two examples to explore this more closely.

Entrepreneur Product Launch Example

In the first example, let‘s say you’re an entrepreneur who has invented a design app you're hoping to sell online. You might conduct market research to determine which marketing strategies work best for your goals, which messaging resonates best with your audience, and which design elements appeal to your desired prospects. If you use a few focus groups to determine these answers, you might expect to spend roughly $5,000.

When you‘re bringing a new app to the market, you’ll need to choose the best go-to marketing strategy for your needs. Regardless of the strategy you choose, they all cost money. For instance, product branding could cost roughly $1,000 if you‘re paying a designer to help you out, and website design could cost anywhere from $500-$3,000 if you’re paying a web designer a one-off fee.

These fees don‘t include the cost you need to pay yourself and any employees if this is a full-time job. It also doesn’t include the costs of hiring an engineer to update the app's features and ensure the app is running smoothly.

With this simplified example, you're looking at roughly $8,000. Of course, you can cut some costs if you choose to do any of these tasks yourself, but you might risk creating a subpar customer experience.

Enterprise Product Launch Example

On the other end of the spectrum, let‘s consider a large enterprise company that is launching a new product. Here, you’ll likely pay upwards of $30,000 - $50,000 for market research.

Perhaps you'll spend $15,000 on brand positioning and the marketing materials necessary to differentiate yourself against competitors, and you might pay upwards of $30,000 for all the product design and brand packaging. Finally, your marketing team could need a budget of roughly $20,000 for SEO, paid advertising, social, content creation, etc.

All said and done, launching a product against other enterprise competitors‘ could cost roughly $125,000. Again, that doesn’t include the costs you'll pay your marketing, product development, and engineering teams.

How to Launch a Product Online

To launch your product online, you‘ll want to ensure you’ve followed the steps above. However, there are a few additional steps you'll want to follow to gain traction primarily online.

1. Figure out the story you want to tell regarding your product's bigger purpose.

What story do you want to tell across social platforms, landing pages, and email? This is similar to your positioning statement but needs to be geared entirely toward your target audience. Ask questions like, Why should they purchase your product? And How will your product or service make their lives better?

Communicating cross-functionally ensures the communication materials you use across various online channels align — which is key when it comes to establishing a new product in the marketplace.

Consider, for instance, how Living Proof announced its new product, Advanced Clean Dry Shampoo, on its Instagram page. The story revolves around a simple nuisance common with most other dry shampoos — How consumers still want that just-washed feeling, even when using a dry shampoo.

Originating in 2011 as a website called donothingfor2minutes.com, Calm is a mobile app that provides various resources and tools for meditation, sleep, relaxation, and mindfulness. Although Headspace was the leading meditation app at the time of its launch, it didn’t take long for Calm to dominate the market.

Calm found success largely because of its content marketing and SEO strategy. According to Foundation’s research , Calm has attracted over 8 million backlinks and uses blog content and YouTube content to organically attract and engage prospects.

The company also partners with celebrities to create unique content and engaging ad campaigns. Some of Calm’s most famous collaborators include Lebron James, Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey, and Camila Cabello.

Calm’s celebrity partnerships have given them a leg up compared to their competitors. Not only their celebrity-read Sleep Stories garner millions of views, but they also boost the brand’s visibility and authority.

Poppi is a “prebiotic soda,” which is a beverage that combines the fizziness and taste of a traditional soda with fruit juice, prebiotics, and apple cider vinegar. It comes in flavors such as Classic Cola, Root Beer, Orange, and Cherry Limeade.

Originally called “Mother Beverage,” Poppi was originally created when co-founder Allison Ellsworth wanted to create a drink that was both healthy and tasted good. Not only does Poppi stand out from other beverages because of its health benefits, it also has a unique and colorful brand personality that attracts customers.

According to Allison, “We had this really fun and vibrant brand and a product that people could relate to. People love it and it was created with ingredients that people knew to be effective and beneficial to their body.”

Poppi was originally slated for a retail launch in March of 2020. However, those plans changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fortunately, they were able to pivot to launch as a DTC product, selling on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Additionally, they used this opportunity to invest in social media marketing on Instagram and TikTok , where they gained popularity amongst Gen Z consumers.

3. HubSpot Operations Hub

In 2021, HubSpot launched Operations Hub as part of its CRM platform. The product is designed to help businesses streamline their operational processes, improve data quality and accuracy, and enable cross-team collaboration. This allows businesses to run more smoothly and scale more effectively.

One of the reasons why this launch was successful was because it solved a problem that many customers faced.

According to HubSpot’s research , “over 60% of operations professionals have to do duplicative work because of a lack of alignment between teams.” This happens because operations professionals get hired into separate departments and get siloed and overwhelmed with tasks as their companies scale.

In response, HubSpot introduced Operations Hub so operations employees could work together out of a shared system and remove friction from their day-to-day workflows.

Goodles is a noodle brand that takes boxed mac-and-cheese to the next level. This product differentiates itself by providing more nutritional value than the standard dry noodles, with 10g of protein and 7g of fiber with prebiotics in every serving.

“The pasta aisle is overflowing with golden, al dente pasta options that provide very little nutrition. There's also an 'alt-pasta' section with green, brown, orange, mushy, foamy noodles that offer more nutrition but little 'yum',” co-founder and CEO Jen Zeszut said in a press release . “Why should you have to choose between taste and nutrition?”

Aside from its positioning as a delicious and nutritious alternative to boxed mac-and-cheese, Goodles also stands out with its vibrant and fun branding. While other noodle brands have neutral-colored packaging, Goodles uses a bold color palette, a nostalgic typeface, and cheeky product names, like Shella Good and Here Comes Truffle, to attract consumers in the grocery aisle.

Product Launch Tips

To learn the best practices for a successful product launch, I talked to Alex Girard again.

The HubSpot Product Marketing Manager said he had three main tips for a successful product launch:

• Your product positioning should reflect a shift you're seeing in the world, and how your product helps your customers take advantage of that shift.
• Create a recurring schedule for you and the core stakeholders for the launch to check in and ensure you're all on the same page.
• Make sure you keep the product team in the loop on your marketing plans. The product team could have insights that inform your overall marketing campaign.

However, sometimes, external factors might impact your ability to launch a product. When that happens, you might need to delay your launch.

How to Know When to Delay a Product Launch

To understand when, and why, you might hold off on a product launch, Girard told me there are three key reasons why you might want to delay a product launch, including:

• When your product itself isn't ready and you need to change your timeline to create the best customer experience possible.
• If a situation occurs where your current customers are having a less-than-optimal experience with one of your current products. Before launching and promoting a new product, you should make sure your current customers are satisfied with your existing product offering.
• If something occurs on an international, national, state, or local level that requires your audience to readjust their priorities and shift focus away from your company and its product launch. Make sure that when the time comes to launch, your target audience is ready to learn about your new product.

If you‘re looking for templates to coordinate your team efforts and align your company around your new product’s messaging, download our free product marketing kit below.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Free planning and communication templates align your team for your next product launch.

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The Beginner’s Guide to a Product Launch

• Table of Contents
• The Product Launch
• Kickoff the Product Launch
• Product Development and the Product Launch
• The Role of the Roadmap in the Product Launch
• Cross-Departmental Engagement
• Set the Stage for Product Launch Success

Product Launch Metrics

• Hone Your Product Launch Pitch
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We’ll be discussing the term “product launch” plenty of times throughout this guide. It’s important that we’re aligned on the definition before diving in. A product launch refers to a company’s planned and coordinated effort to debut a new product to the market and make that product generally available for purchase. Product launches help organizations build anticipation for their product, gather valuable feedback from early users, and create momentum and industry recognition for the company.

Start with the end in mind

Before you get too deep in the trenches of building your product launch, it’s valuable to determine what you’d like to achieve. Just building the product and shipping it is not a success in itself. If you’re building a minimum valuable product (MVP) for example, think about the type of product and business you want to be five or ten years down the line. How are you going to get there? This is the product vision—every product manager needs to have one.

By defining a high-level product vision, you can get the executive team, marketing, support, engineering, and the rest of the organization onboard with the product launch strategy.

Product launch goals:

As you read through this guide, always keep in mind the goals of your product launch. What does your product team hope to achieve? Good goals are clear, measurable, and have an expected time frame.

Goals that businesses are typically hoping to accomplish with a product launch, range from:

• Find a product-market fit
• Capture new customers
• Increase in revenue
• Build product awareness
• Build the company’s reputation in the industry

Who needs to be in your product launch kickoff?

The upcoming product launch activities will include the involvement of representatives from most departments in your organization. Although they may not be assigned any tasks until the final stages of the launch, it’s essential to have every stakeholder identified and included upfront at the product launch kickoff. Not all teams need to be involved/represented in the product launch kickoff, but there should be clear communication regardless.

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1 http://mediafiles.pragmaticmarketing.com/Framework-Files/LeadersGuide_1307.pdf

Product launch kickoff meetings can run longer than other meetings. When you’re ready to schedule a meeting, 90 minutes will be enough to do everything while leaving time for any housekeeping items.

When everyone is all together, the first thing to do is inform each representative that they’re speaking on behalf of their department. Once you get confirmation that each individual represents their department, select someone to take notes throughout the meeting. A visual of how each department will contribute to the launch can be a great asset at this stage t.

When everyone is onboard from day one , no one can claim they were unaware of things further down the road. It also offers them an opportunity to chime in with ideas and opinions earlier in the process instead of second-guessing things further down the line. By inviting them into the feature launch kickoff process, they know they’re valued and have something to contribute.

Ensure all attendees know what the product kickoff meeting is for and what the ideal outcomes should be before leaving the room. Then address everyone’s roles, what they are actively responsible for, and how you anticipate everyone working together.

Kickoff communication

Before the meeting wraps up, let everyone know how you’ll be communicating any future next steps, whether in meetings, online video chat, in the roadmap, or notes. Some product launch kickoffs can occur months or even years out from the eventual product launch, so you’ll want to set up a good system for future communication.

Remember, you don’t want to alienate anyone in the meeting. The fastest way to estrange anyone is by speaking in the terminology they don’t understand. Try to be conscientious of not over-using your favorite acronyms. It adds a tiny bit of extra work for you to be inclusive but will help you leaps and bounds later on. Take the time to explain the concept and state that it will be a recurring topic. This cues the opportunity for questions and makes it clear that you aren’t just throwing acronyms out there for the sake of it.

Emphasize the value of the product

At this early stage, your product launch kickoff should focus entirely on the new product’s value (or the next version) will deliver to customers. The details are likely to change, so it’s better to avoid confusing functionalities with overarching value.

During the kickoff, harken back to the vision, themes, and goals of the product. These should become the emphasis for a successful launch. This conversation will drive messaging, channels, activities, and target audiences.

The kickoff conversations should answer the following questions for meeting members.

• What problems is the product solving?
• How does this align with the company vision?
• What pain points is it addressing?
• Whom is it helping?
• Why are we building this?

At the same time, it’s a good idea to come to terms right away because your product won’t be all things to all people.

Getting too aggressive with your goals from the get-go usually leads to product failure and disappointment. While your organization can have lofty goals of world domination, an individual product release can only do so much. Accepting that this product will not be all things to all people upfront helps temper organizational expectations.

Delay the product details

Launch kickoffs can be months or years before the actual product launch. As such, avoid getting deep into any specifics. With so much time between now and when the product ultimately is released, there are bound to be tweaks and changes along the way.

Couching the product strategy in themes gets people out of the habit of focusing on specific functionality and back to primary objectives. The goal is to communicate the why more than the what . Work with your team to understand the why and the jobs to be done before development begins to commit time and resources.

You should still deliver something solid in terms of commitment, though. That commitment can sound like, “When delivered, our customers will be able to x,y, and z.”

The early stages are more about roles and responsibilities and less about the details of implementation and execution. For instance, avoid conversations around pixels and buttons. Because you’ve got such a head start, there will be plenty of opportunities to flesh out those topics at a later date.

Then, conduct a product launch pre-mortem where your product launch kickoff team thinks through possible missteps that could hurt your product launch and prepare plans of action in advance. Knowing there are strategies in place (understood by others, not just you) relieves pressure for if/when something goes awry.

Demonstrating the value this product will bring to the business, and its customers can be undervalued in product development . But it’s as essential as ensuring sales and marketing comprehend these things.

Product development has an enormous responsibility in this phase of the product launch to implement the vision. That weight means they’ll rebuff following orders blindly and would rather understand what it is they’re trying to build and why.

Product development ownership

Instill a sense of development ownership. If they feel like they’re part of the process, they’ll help you identify compromises and opportunities. For example, they’ll let you know if there are better technologies that may solve the problem faster.

Why is this outcome so crucial? Uninformed equals unengaged. Developers have to make hundreds of decisions during a project, all of which can impact that project’s scope and impact. When they get what you’re trying to do and the broader context, they’re far more likely to code conscientiously and consider their decisions’ long-term ramifications.

Innovation springs forth when engineers and designers feel like they’re part of the team. They’re then able to accurately judge compromises and opportunities based on their impact on the end goal.

Roadmaps aren’t just helpful in product management. They’re useful for a myriad of different roles and departments, including the product launch.

Your product roadmap serves as your guiding strategic document, communicating transparency, and where you want to take your product eventually for your entire company. The roadmap will notify everyone of any shifts in your product launch strategy.

Various departments will be interested in the different phases and functions of the product launch. So keep the roadmap as updated as your one source-of-truth to increase curiosity, engagement, and efficiency.

You may need to create different versions with varying levels of detail for different cohorts of stakeholders. Because some of your stakeholders will need to be attuned to changes down to the sprint level, but other departments may just need to know by quarter.

Don’t over-communicate dates early on in the project, but provide enough context to keep stakeholders engaged and confident.

Jumpstart the Product Feedback Process

Product launches for software products typically happen only after several levels of testing have been completed.

“Regular” employees often don’t get their hands on products until after they’ve been through a formal QA process, have proven capable, and have moved into alpha testing.

Alpha testing is a product’s first round of end-to-end testing, usually done by its employees. When the product clears this level, it’s ready for beta testing, which involves real users but is still before the product’s official commercial release.

But that delay between QA and alpha is precious time. As much usage as possible by your employees will uncover more bugs, reveal enhancement opportunities, and test the product’s scalability. By not waiting until it’s passed acceptance testing, you’ll get the rest of the company more familiar with exactly how the product works.

Additionally, this serves as an opportunity to confirm the product does what it was intended to do. Employee testing verifies the product is heading in the right direction, solving the problems it was designed to address, and adding value for future customers.

Different parts of the organization need different things to prepare for launch. Carve out time with each department, pursuing a specific agenda each time. This agenda provides them with the information they need and ensures those departments will complete their deliverables on time and accurately.

You may need to set aside more time than anticipated, given that these departments are not ones that you engage with on a daily or even weekly basis. Alignment in engineering and development can often occur naturally and often because of the extreme overlap; however, this may not be the case for marketing, sales, and support.

Every new product launch needs people outside of your internal team to:

• Be aware of the product launch.
• Understand the value the launch provides.
• When to expect the official product launch.

All those things won’t happen unless the marketing team is involved. Marketing will craft compelling messages and talking points that speak to the product’s unique value proposition. To ensure accuracy, it needs to be done in collaboration with product management .

Don’t make a mistake and put off talking with marketing until you’re ready to speak to sales. The role of marketing, particularly product marketing, comes into the product launch process much earlier. Marketing sets the stage and initiates the processes that will make the sales team successful.

Give a clear priority to marketing when you’re developing the value proposition. The team must understand users and buyer personas and how the product fits into the competitive landscape to generate compelling, on-point materials and execute successful campaigns for the new product. If they don’t have that solid foundation to build on, things can go wrong very quickly.

Product management should have the opportunity to review everything for accuracy early enough that they can catch and correct any errors. If looping in marketing happens late, though, this crucial opportunity can be taken away in the interest of shipping messaging and positioning for the sake of the launch.

Training up the sales team is essential to bring in the revenue your strategy was built to generate.

Before getting into the product itself, the sales team requires some foundational education—train sales on the product’s value proposition, benefits, and ideal customer profile. Explain how the product you designed and built offers specific benefits to a particular target audience. Set some parameters around what makes for a good prospect and realistic use cases for the product.

Without conveying this information to sales, there’s no telling whom they’ll try to sell it to and what promises they’ll make. Left to their own devices, you risk getting inundated with square peg-round hole scenarios if there isn’t a match.

Sales Collateral

Consistency across the sales team is crucial. This consistency is where assets like slide decks, collateral, and sell sheets come in. There should be a robust catalog of resources, tailorable for different target segments, and follow-up materials for each sales funnel stage. Ensure sales has the quality and comprehensive sales tools that you’ve verified for accuracy and quality.

Sales Demos

Almost every customer will want to see the product in action before buying it, which means you’ll be swamped with requests to provide customer demos. It’s not a particularly scalable solution. Train sales on the product, so they’re comfortable and knowledgeable enough to give their own demos.

Please don’t underestimate the time it takes to become enough of a product expert to demonstrate its value and confidently sell it to prospects. It’s particularly challenging if the product is breaking new ground or requires pre-existing technical acumen.

Of course, those demos and presentations will inevitably lead to questions from prospects. You’ll want to prepare sales for when things go off-script as well—arms sales with FAQs, talking points, and responses to common objections.

While some things can be anticipated ahead of the launch, others need to be added based on real-world experiences in the field.

Support (or customer service or customer success) is instrumental in successfully adopting and utilizing your product. If the support team feels lost or stuck, you can bet your customers will feel even more confused. Don’t leave your dedicated support crew in the dust in your excitement to move the product along.

Your future self will thank you for thinking far enough ahead and making the support team product experts. When other departments or customers have questions, support can be the go-to, and you’ll only be called in when things require escalation.

You’ll also want to develop an escalation and feedback process for more difficult product issues (or more difficult customers). A process should be in place to document all contact your support team has with users.

Decide how to unleash your product

At this point, product development is wrapping up their work. It’s time to think about unleashing this fantastic offering upon the world. Work with your marketing team to create a PR and go-to-market campaign. That includes establishing a prepared way to explain the product’s pricing structure.

Don’t overlook this step just because it falls outside of strategic product planning and product development. It’s your job to not only create a great product but to make it a successful one.

Heavily mine beta data.

Consider the public beta your “soft” launch. A “soft” launch is an opportunity to gather massive amounts of feedback. You can tweak as many things as you want without an official product launch’s constraints and responsibilities.

But remember, you never get a second chance at a first impression, and the beta is making first impressions. They’re the early adopters and influencers that could pour cold water on your release before it’s even out the door if things seem shaky.

Your beta-launch’s goal isn’t to offer up perfection; it’s to generate feedback and spot potential problems. Better to push out a beta that needs some adjustments than to delay it for so long that you won’t have enough time left to do much with the feedback you receive.

Make the most of your dress rehearsal so the final product reaches its full potential.

Implement effortless onboarding

In most cases, you won’t be personally shepherding each prospect through the discovery, trial, and purchase phases. You’ll need to put a scalable onboarding solution into place. The goal here is to move prospects as quickly as possible to that moment when they realize the value proposition is real, and the product is helping them do their job or live their lives better.

You can minimize setup time with pre-set defaults. But asking people to check a bunch of boxes and flip a bunch of switches before they’ve even started using the product is both off-putting and misguided. How will they know what they want until they’ve got some experience?

Instead, give them a robust and common starting point and then let them tweak it themselves after they’re more familiar with the product and see how it applies to their particular needs.

When a product has a steep learning curve, many new users will bail out before realizing any value. Acknowledging that users need a little education to be successful is essential.

Train the Trainers

Sometimes onboarding a user requires an internal team member’s personal touch. In those cases, your peers across the organization will need to be trained on the product. An efficient approach is to train your trainers. The trainers are your peers across the organization, such as a sales engineer, that can train others rather than relying solely on the product team. Making sure those people are ready before the product launch is key.

Training users

Training doesn’t necessarily mean a week-long class or a giant user manual. It can be as simple as short how-to videos for specific tasks or interactive webinar walkthroughs. Just make them easy to access and discover, with a mix of self-service and full-service options.

If your product is digital, you can build some onboarding capabilities directly into your product. Identify which behaviors are crucial to converting trialers into adopters. You can proactively nudge them toward those actions with helpful prompts in the user experience. Also, make sure there are implemented means for users to offer direct feedback about the product experience.

Whatever your research has indicated as key moments that generate customer delight, do everything possible to usher users there. On-screen pop-ups and highlights, helpful hints, and in-app walkthroughs are things you can do to decrease the time-to-value.

No matter how intuitive your product may be, people will still have questions about using it. Make it easy for them to overcome obstacles and complete tasks. Make sure support documentation has been developed, reviewed, and made easily accessible.

This documentation could include FAQs on your website, a help section built into your product itself, or a printed product owner’s manual (if you’re selling a physical product).

If things go great, you may soon find yourself overwhelmed with new users, all clamoring for help and guidance to make the most of your product. All the new users mean it’s time to create a strategy for scalability.

When the masses descend, a lone product manager can’t be onboarding and training hundreds or thousands of customers each week. Support will play a crucial role in training customers. It’s Customer Support’s time to shine.

Otherwise, turn to self-service or broadcast methods to get users up to speed. Save personalized support for strategic customers.

Nature vs. nurture

Once a user gets hooked on your product, your job isn’t done. You’ll need to prevent complacency from kicking in after that initial rush of success.

Craft a strategy for maintaining momentum, such as new assets, for the long-run. Once you’ve established an initial user community, continue to offer them additional tidbits to encourage usage and adoption. These can highlight other features glossed over at launch, provide more in-depth training or tutorials, and include case studies demonstrating how real customers realize the value in various ways from the product.

The communication strategy should leverage notifications, emails, and prompts. Ideally, base these on programmatic triggers keyed off user behaviors in the product (or a lack thereof).

With your product about to hit the market, everyone will be dying to know how it performs. You need to get the whole organization on the same page about what matters. Revisit the strategic goals for the product that were proposed before and during the product launch kickoff, and create consensus on concrete success metrics.

Sales, revenue, new users, page views, and adoption make a sizable metric pool. However, many metrics are entirely irrelevant if they don’t align with the organization’s KPIs. There are many dangers in using such vanity metrics to taint the lens of viewing your product, so don’t fall prey to this. Metrics that answer questions about the overall product strategy should always be the focus.

Beyond purely figuring out if you’re achieving your goals, you’ll also want to establish additional measures to track early on. Develop your plan for what key metrics to track that is most important for your team.

Identify Product KPIs

Identify those product KPIs and automate data collection and reporting. These include the red flags to watch out for (such as high churn and abandonment) and positive trends (such as repeat users and conversions from trials to paying customers).

You’ll want to regularly check these figures, so make sure it’s not an overly manual process to get your hands on them. By tracking this data right away weekly or on a schedule you’ve predetermined, you’ll be able to spot hiccups early on. You can then intervene before problems fester and damage the momentum of your launch.

Over time you may need to augment the KPIs you looked at on day one as you learn more about what moves the needle and matters most.

After spending so much time obsessing over every detail of your product, you’re going to be excited to talk about it publicly, finally. You could ramble on for hours about every nuance and impressive feature. But most people aren’t going to give you very much time to grab their attention. If you’ve only got two minutes to pitch about your product launch, what would you say?

Work with your marketing team to place these limits on yourself. It forces you to figure out what the most important and compelling points are.

You’re going up against short attention spans and busy schedules. Convey the value, the solution, and give justice to the dedication involved in producing this product.

You never know under what circumstances you’ll need to discuss the product, its reason for being, its main benefits, who its main competitors are, and who it’s for, to name a few.

A prospective customer at a conference might have a full minute or even longer. But you may only have a few seconds with a CEO. Be ready to make your case in both instances.

Make Some Noise

Your launch date is set, and you’ve communicated to everyone throughout your organization who needs to know. Now it’s time to let customers and prospects know what’s coming officially. The big reveal is an exciting step, but it’s also a high risk-high reward moment in your product launch process.

While you’d love to expound for hours on everything the product can do, nobody has patience for that. Briefly articulate your value proposition. Share the elevator pitch that you developed in the last step. Remember, features and functionality are irrelevant. What matters are the beneficial outcomes it provides to customers.

Map out the most relevant and resonating use cases and focus your follow-up announcement on those. There will be plenty of time later to highlight all the other things your product can do.

Parse out the news

You can’t talk about everything all at once. Work with marketing to implement a staged messaging campaign highlighting other remarkable capabilities and benefits post-launch. You’ll maintain momentum and win over holdouts that didn’t connect with your initial messaging focus.

Check back in with your target market and choose when the target market is most apt to be receptive and responsive to your messaging.

Research your buyer personas and identify where and how they prefer to gather their news and updates.

Meet prospects where they are by leveraging channels they’re already using. Depending on the product and target audience, that could range from snagging a featured review in The New York Times to advertising on a Twitch stream.

Then, identify an ideal launch date. It might be timed to coincide with a related event, industry conference, or even a holiday. While you might feel impatient sitting on a finished product for a few weeks, you only get to launch once, so make the most of it.

The Real, Deal Product Launch

You’ve done your work and shepherded this from conception through birth. Now it’s time for the big debut and a round of congratulations. We don’t get many moments in life where we can pat ourselves on the back, but this is one of them. However, you didn’t get here alone. Take time to celebrate and acknowledge the contributions of others on your team.

Read more in the Anatomy of a Product Launch, below.

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How to launch a new product with 5 strategies to help you succeed

Launching a new product can be as daunting as it is exciting. With the number of MarTech tools alone increasing by nearly 25% year-on-year , it’s easy for your product to get lost in the noise if you don’t get your launch right.

Due to the unique challenges facing new product launches in today’s market, in-depth planning is crucial for your product to be successful.

In this article, we’ll describe what a product launch is, then we’ll give you a new product launch checklist that covers the essential steps for a successful launch.

After that, we’ll provide some high-level strategies you can use to build anticipation for your product and drive sales at launch

What is a product launch?

A product launch is a coordinated attempt to bring a new product to market. More than just a single event, a product launch involves everything from developing marketing and sales strategies to optimizing your product.

Each product launch will differ depending on the industry, type of product and target market. Depending on these factors, a company may decide on different degrees of launch.

For example, a soft launch is when a product enters the market with very little publicity. Often, companies take this approach to seek early feedback or when the product is highly targeted.

By comparison, a full-scale launch is when you try to draw as much attention as possible to the product when it enters the market.

A product launch is split into three broad steps: pre-launch, launch and post-launch. In the following section, we’ll discuss each of the key actions that should make up these steps to increase your chances of a successful product launch.

9 steps to improve your chance of success at launch

For a product launch to be successful, you need to plan it strategically and well in advance. A launch involves the marketing team, product managers, sales, customer support, finance and, especially in large-scale launches, several other departments.

Due to the number of moving parts and people involved, seamless coordination and communication are key. With that in mind, here’s a new product launch checklist to keep your teams on track.

Step 1. Know the problem you’re solving

The first step is to define your product and begin working on your product positioning. You have to get to know your product as well as possible and determine how it can solve your customer’s problem.

Write a brief description of two to three paragraphs that describes what your product is, its main features and how it fills a market need. This is your brand positioning statement , and it may take some work to perfect it.

Next, consider your value proposition . This should describe your customer’s problem and why they would choose your product to solve it over a competitor’s.

Slack’s value proposition is a great example of this, and as the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever , you know that it’s effective. Their proposition is that they save users time by simplifying how teams communicate:

To gain insight for your positioning statement and value proposition, ask yourself the following questions:

What are the major customer pain points that my product addresses?

How does my product solve these problems?

How is my product unique?

How does my product create value for my customers?

What are the core attributes of my product or brand that I want customers to focus on?

Step 2. Deeply understand the audience you’re selling to

To be able to define your product and sell it successfully, you need to get to know your target audience. You have to understand who they are, how they think, why they need your product and how you can communicate this need to them.

The customer data you collect will be vital at this stage because it determines the messaging and channels you use to reach them effectively.

First, define your target markets and create an ideal buyer persona . This is a hypothetical person with the characteristics you’re looking for in a customer and helps ensure that your products align with your audience’s preferences and needs.

Social listening (tracking mentions of your brand or your competitors’ solutions) is a great tool to find out more about your target market. Bain & Company found that launch leaders are 2.4 times more likely to utilize social listening data to guide their new product launch strategy.

Use tools like Sprout Social to discover the most relevant problems your product addresses or to learn about the flaws in a competitor’s product, then apply the insights to refine your launch strategy, messaging and offerings to become the best fit for prospects.

Step 3. Conduct in-depth market research

Once you’ve determined the market segments to target, it’s time to research your competitors. A competitor is any company whose product solves the same problem(s) as yours.

In-depth competitor analysis helps you to:

Learn from their mistakes and successes and apply this knowledge to your strategies

See what competitor products look like and how yours can be unique

Develop a clear picture of the competitor landscape

Determine where your product fits among your competitors

Determine how likely your product is to be profitable

The first step is to do some preliminary research and create a list of companies that compete in your target market. Next, analyze their product, brand and strategies and develop a competitor landscape to visualize any gaps where you can succeed.

Your competitor analysis targets might look something like this ( click here to download an editable PDF version):

This is the final step in determining your product positioning, which helps you differentiate your product from your competitors. Here, you should work out your pricing (e.g. whether it’s more affordable or a high-quality, luxury alternative) and how your product can outcompete your competitors.

Step 4. Test your idea

Before moving forward with the launch, you need to get some early responses to gauge how people react to your product.

For example, software will often go through several rounds of testing before launch. This includes alpha testing (done in-house) and beta testing, which involves a small group of preliminary users.

The same goes for physical products. Testing helps to improve your product in a few ways. Firstly, it will discover any defective or improvable qualities. Secondly, you’ll be able to use the tester’s reactions to inform your marketing campaign and sales approach.

If your testers respond well, you’ve likely chosen to target the right market with the right positioning. If you uncover issues, you’ll want to involve the key stakeholders and update your product (e.g. UX designers for usability issues or copywriters if testers don’t feel connected to the messaging).

You should begin testing your product before launch, but it doesn’t end there. Most products will go through several changes before and after launch as the competitive landscape shifts.

Step 5. Create a go-to-market strategy

A go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive new product launch marketing plan that details each step for a successful launch. It combines all of the information you learned in the previous steps into a detailed roadmap.

A go-to-market strategy helps to generate demand for your product and mitigate risks involved with the launch. Check out our guide on how to create a go-to-market strategy for your new product.

Along with a product launch plan, it’s a good idea to think about:

A marketing strategy. Any new product will need a marketing strategy, even for established brands. Have your marketing plan outlined before launch to focus on key issues and goals that go beyond launch day.

SWOT analysis. Evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relating to your new product or brand can help you to perfect your positioning. Pay attention to evolving customer preferences and technological changes that could disrupt your position in the market.

Predict your ROI. You can get a better idea of your potential ROI by considering the size and value of your target market. Find out how many people make up your target market and how much on average they spend on products like yours every year. From this, you can gauge their tendency to buy and get an idea of when your product may become profitable.

Decide how you will measure success. Develop a list of milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) that tell you if your launch was successful. For instance, key marketing metrics (e.g., leads generated, traffic and news coverage) will tell you which strategies are working and which you need to tweak.

Your go-to-market strategy should include an overall timeline for your launch, including your launch date. Once you have this, it’s time to get started with promotional content marketing .

Step 6. Generate buzz with promotional content

For your product to be a success, you need to create a buzz ahead of its launch. With great marketing, you can build anticipation for your product and get customers on board early.

Pre-marketing efforts are only successful if they’re planned well in advance. Since your marketing team will be coordinating their efforts across several channels, it’s vital that you perfect your content before you begin.

Here are several things you can do to drive anticipation for your product:

Create a landing page for your new product . The landing page is where customers can find out key information about your product, drawing attention to its attributes and driving interest. You should also include a consumer-focused CTA (e.g. requesting their email address so you can email them about its launch).

Develop a great email campaign. If your company already has related products and a great email list full of engaged customers, you’ll find this part easy. If not, you’ll have to do some groundwork to build up your email list . Include a CTA that encourages users to sign-up and receive more information, along with a link to the product page.

Check out Apple’s simple yet elegant iPad Pro launch email. It dives into the price and new features of the iPad, with two CTAs to either purchase or read more about the iPad. It’s well-designed and provides customers with all the information they need to make a purchase decision.

Use social media . Tease your product on your own social media platforms and consider reaching out to key influencers to create content and build awareness. Don’t forget bloggers, journalists and others in your industry who have an audience waiting to hear about your new product.

Inform the press. Create an embargoed press release and share it with as many media outlets as possible so that on the key date, they’ll all be talking about it. An engaging press release is one of the most effective promotional tools and can help generate wider awareness of your product.

Consider an ad campaign. Well-targeted ads can be incredibly effective at building awareness and generating leads. If your budget allows, you should advertise on as many of the key channels you identified while creating your go-to-market strategy.

Boost sales with a pre-order strategy. Pre-order strategies can build momentum for your product, driving early sales, which can help fund continuing marketing campaigns. They also help you to gauge the market demand for your product early on.

Step 7. Keep the team in sync

Everyone involved in a product launch needs to be in the same boat, from marketing to sales to customer service. This means that to be effective, every team member needs to know exactly what to do at each stage of the launch.

For example:

The marketing team needs to understand key promotional activities and when to release them

The sales team needs to know pricing details and have access to sales enablement content

The customer service teams should know how the product works and what features it has

Keeping the entire company on the same page throughout the launch process ensures that your customers will have a consistent, enjoyable experience as they interact with you.

Step 8. Launch your product

When the launch day comes, it’s time to let loose your promotional content, email campaigns and social media. Make sure you try to gather the public’s attention on the channels you decided on above. The more attention your product gets, the better.

During and immediately after launch, you will need to work with your sales and service teams to ensure they have all the resources they need. You should be present to answer any questions and coordinate your teams as the day goes by.

The key is to be prepared for the worst to happen. As part of your go-to-market strategy , develop a contingency plan for each risk so that you can act quickly to mitigate problems as they come up.

Step 9. Integrate feedback to improve your product

The product journey doesn’t end with the launch. In the months after launch, customer and market feedback will provide you with several opportunities to refine and improve your product, sales and marketing strategy.

You may also find that you can position your product to target other markets or that you’ll have greater success in a completely different market.

As you move forward, you’ll gain your customers’ loyalty as a brand that wants to provide the best possible experience for its customers. Plan future versions of your product before you launch. This way, you have a direction in mind, with milestones and ways to measure your success already in place.

5 product launch strategies to drive anticipation and stay on track

Launching a new product is incredibly complex, and there’s no guarantee your product will be successful. However, there are several things you can do to improve your chances.

Here are five high-level strategies you can use to increase your likelihood of success at launch.

1. Focus on the story

Your messaging should focus on the people you’re trying to sell to rather than the product itself. While it’s great to list your product’s key features, what really grabs a customer’s attention is how the product will change their lives for the better.

For this reason, it’s often better to create a story around your product. How does it solve your customer’s problems? How will it make them feel? The goal is to create a story that your target customers relate to and engage with.

To create the story, consider the journey you (and your product) have gone through to get to this point. Think about why you created the product in the first place and how that ties in with the customer’s journey.

It may take a few rewrites to perfect your story. The goal is to be relatable and lead your customer to the “aha” moment where they realize that you had the same problems and that your product is the solution.

2. Keep all stakeholders in the loop

Launching a product is complicated, and there are many moving pieces. Each team’s role will change as the product moves from development to launch and beyond. Further, you need to keep stakeholders up-to-date to ensure their continued support for the project.

This is why optimized internal communications are vital to a successful launch.

Each team will have unique contributions to your product launch, and great communication will ensure that there are no gaps in your launch strategy.

Efficient communication is also essential in the case of delays. A launch might be pushed back for several reasons (Gartner found that only 55% of launches take place on schedule ). This may be due to hitches in product development, supply problems or planning delays, but in the case of a delay, everyone must remain clear on their roles going forward.

3. Listen to the market

If you assume that everything will go well with your launch, you’re setting yourself up for failure. This is why it’s important to analyze and listen to the market before, during and after your launch.

Making course corrections quickly can be the difference between a launch failure and a launch success.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you prepare to launch:

Is it the right time to launch? Think about market factors and whether your product will be more successful if you wait. For instance, if a well-known competitor is launching a product at a similar time, you probably want to either beat them to it or wait until their buzz has died down.

Are you launching into the right market? You may find after receiving feedback that your target market isn’t responding how you thought it would. Instead of going ahead with the launch anyway, consider other potential customers and markets that may be more suitable.

Do you need to adjust your strategy? Before and after launch, you should monitor all of your marketing channels for engagement metrics. If you find certain platforms aren’t performing, adjust your content and strategy. It’s also a good idea to check out new product launch examples that can help guide you through this process.

The Google Glass launch is a great example of a company not listening to market cues when releasing a new product. With privacy on the front of everyone’s mind, concerns were raised about the Glass being able to capture photos at any time. To make matters worse, the Glass was launched at a price of around $1,500, far more than consumers were willing to pay.

Despite these and other concerns, Google launched Google Glass to an unreceptive market – and the product flopped. Had Google listened to the market more and targeted the Glass toward specific user needs, the story might have turned out differently.

4. Draw out the suspense

Suspense amplifies anticipation and can help grow a core following for your product before anyone knows much (or anything) about it.

Apple’s marketing is a great example of this. They keep key details about their newest products a secret, creating an air of mystery around them. In the past, this has resulted in endless speculation about their products before they’re even announced.

To draw out the suspense, hint about your product early. As time goes by, drip-feed exciting information about your product to key people. Build a narrative around these leaks that gets people emotionally invested in your product.

Consider how Amazon marketed the Echo in 2016. Coming up to the Super Bowl, they released short commercial teasers that generated significant excitement. While Super Bowl commercials are out-of-budget for most product launches, the idea is the same. Release snippets about your upcoming product to get people interested and talking about it ahead of launch.

The key to creating suspense is to live up to expectations. If you create too much hype around your product and fail to match it, customers will negatively perceive your brand as “all talk”.

5. Make your launch an event

Launch events are a great way to build hype around your product and generate early sales.

Strive for an in-person event to show off your new product and build excitement. Invite customers, influencers and the press to “test drive” your product in a face-to-face environment. If an in-person event isn’t in your budget, you can affordably host an online launch event.

You can also have a series of teaser events leading up to the launch that gradually tease features and key dates for your product. This can help pull early customers in and generate a buzz about your product way before it’s available for purchase.

The goal of a product launch is to make a big deal about your product and reach as many potential customers as possible, and an event showcasing your product is the perfect way to do so.

Final thoughts

For many, it’s as exciting as it is daunting to launch a new product. Give yourself the best chance of success with excellent communication and a detailed strategy. Use these tips and strategies to cut through the noise and make a splash with your next launch.

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New Product Launch Checklist: How to Plan a Successful Launch

13 min read

Every new product launch is equal parts intimidating and exciting. As the market becomes increasingly saturated with similar SaaS products, your product launch can easily get lost in the noise.

Therefore, you need a solid product launch plan to ensure your product isn’t among the 95% of new products that fail each year.

In this article, we take a deep dive into the technicalities of a product launch. We provide a product launch checklist to ensure you launch successfully and consider examples of successful SaaS product launches.

• A product launch refers to all of a company’s coordinated marketing efforts to bring a new product to the market.
• A new product launch should be planned well in advance of the launch day. A typical launch plan includes everything from the ideation phase to the conceptualization and testing of your ideas.

An effective product launch checklist includes the following:

• Define your target audience and build out your user personas.
• Conduct market research to identify competitors and determine avenues for product differentiation.
• Craft your product positioning statement.
• Create and release your MVP with only core product features.
• Create a targeted go-to-market strategy for your launch plan.
• Choose the appropriate marketing channels to reach your target markets.
• Launch coordinated product marketing campaigns to reach your audience.
• Ensure your teams are aware of your goals and their roles in them.
• Launch your product.
• Measure the success of your launch by tracking relevant product metrics.
• Collect user feedback and see how well your product was received.
• For your launch to be successful, you must carefully identify the best time to launch, build hype around the launch event, leverage social proof to drive marketing, and work with a detailed checklist.
• Userpilot empowers SaaS your product team to run in-app marketing campaigns, collect customer feedback, and analyze users’ interactions with your product. Book a demo to learn how it works.

What is a product launch?

A product launch is a company’s coordinated attempt to bring a new product to the market.

It includes every action and event designed to build awareness and excitement around a new product and ensure it achieves early success.

When should you start working on your product launch plan?

A successful product launch is planned ahead of time, in coordination with the product, marketing, and sales teams. In fact, we can divide every product launch into three stages: pre-launch, launch , and post-launch.

Pre-launch activities precede the actual launch date, often including product ideation , proof of concepts, and testing. It may also include a soft launch designed to seek early feedback from pilot users.

Apple’s product launches, for instance, often include publicized leaks of the product specs and a well-advertized launch event that attracts attendances in the millions.

How to plan a successful product launch strategy?

Every product launch comes with its own unique set of challenges. However, following the right product launch checklist can provide the structure and direction needed for success:

Define your target audience

To successfully market your product, you must know your target audience. You need to know your audience’s preferences, who they are, how they think, and why they need your product.

Thankfully, you can get all the data you need by speaking to your existing customers or those of your competition.

Then, use the data you acquire to create your ideal user persona . These personas should capture the customer’s demographics, pain points , and how your product aims to help them.

Conduct market research

Now that you know your customers, it’s time to research your competitors. First, you need to identify all the companies (or, at least, the major ones) whose products solve the same problem as your product.

Next, analyze their product, brand, and marketing strategy. A thorough market research should reveal:

• The overall competitor landscape.
• What each company offers and their different prices/pricing plans.
• The mistakes and successes of each company’s business strategy.
• How you can differentiate your product from the competition.
• Your unique value proposition.

Put simply, your goal at this step is to understand what your competitors sell, how they sell it, and how you can outmaneuver them in the market.

Decide on your product positioning statement

Armed with the information from your market research, you’re now ready to craft your positioning statement.

Your statement should identify who needs your product, what it does, and what differentiates it from other products in the market.

Good product positioning helps the customer understand your product and how it satisfies their needs. It creates the right setting for your product, delivering crucial information about the product to attract the ideal customer.

Create your MVP

Before launching your product, it’s important that you first get some responses to gauge how it will be received in the market. This is where your minimum viable product (MVP) comes in.

An MVP is essentially a prototype of your product, with a minimum subset of the features required to demonstrate your product’s primary use case.

Because it is a lightweight version of the final product, MVPs allow you to test and validate your product ideas before committing precious time and resources.

This testing will help you discover defects/strengths in your idea and build on them. It can also reveal whether you’ve chosen the right target audience for your product and how best to align your marketing efforts with their needs.

Create your go-to-market strategy

A go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive roadmap for bringing your product to prospective customers. It details all that you’ll do to lay the groundwork for a successful business well beyond launch day.

Your go-to-market (GTM) strategy will combine all of the information you’ve learned in the previous steps into a robust market entry roadmap. This roadmap should generate demand for your product and mitigate any product launch risks.

A good GTM plan spells out your chosen product launch strategy, value proposition, and when/how you intend to bring the product to the customer.

It should propose an overall timeline for your launch, up to the launch date, and highlight what “success” means for you and how you will measure it.

Choose your marketing channels

The success of any new product launch lies in how much buzz you can generate pre-launch. Thus, the final piece of your GTM strategy is the selection of the most effective channels for promoting your product.

Use everything you’ve learned about your customer in the steps above to determine where they are located and how you can reach them effectively. Also, ensure you diversify your marketing efforts to reach different customer segments.

Promote your product with marketing campaigns

It’s now time to set your product launch marketing plan in motion. This is the time for your marketing teams to step in and produce content that will support and align your pre-defined marketing strategy.

Of course, there are many different things you can do at this stage to generate the required buzz. This includes:

• Social media posts: Use your social media platforms to tease your new product and its features. You can also reach out to influencers, journalists, and others in the industry with large followers to spread the word.
• Press releases: Create and share an embargoed press release with as many media outlets as possible so that they’re all talking about your new release on launch day.
• Email campaigns : Use captivating emails with compelling CTAs to nudge your email list to check out the new product. Good email campaigns use a combination of a catchy subject, visually appealing body content, and compelling call-to-action to get users to sign up for the new product.

• Ad campaign: Ads are expensive, but they can also be very rewarding. If your budget allows it, create ads for the key channels you identified while crafting your GTM strategy.

Make sure your teams are aligned with your goals

Successful product launches are the result of coordinated teamwork. For that to happen, your goal must be clearly spelled out, with everyone’s role at each stage of the launch properly defined.

For example, your marketing team needs to know when to release the different promotional materials they’ve created. Likewise, your customer service team should work with your product team to understand the product’s features and how it works.

Use memos, presentations, and emails to keep different internal teams up-to-date on their role in the launch process.

Launch your product

Finally, it’s launch day! It’s time to generate as much excitement as possible and gather as much attention as possible for your product. This is the time for your press releases and promotional content to fly.

To be successful on launch day, you must equip your sales and marketing teams to spread the word about the product. They should understand the value the product brings and be prepared to share that message with their audience.

The customer service team must also be on high alert. They should understand how the product works and be equipped with the resources to answer any questions customers throw their way.

Measure the success of your product launch

Your work doesn’t end after launch day. With the day behind you, it’s time to take stock and track your performance. Your goal here is to understand whether your marketing efforts were successful or not.

So, look back at your goals and see how well you did. How many people…

• Saw your promotional posts and messaging?
• Signed up for a free trial ?
• Reached out to your sales team?

If the launch didn’t meet your expectations, try to track down what went wrong and adjust your go-to-market strategy accordingly. The data you gather will also be helpful in future product launches.

Collect customer feedback post-launch date to improve your product

The final part of your post-launch strategy should be to hear what users think of the product itself. Customer feedback is an invaluable ingredient for continued long-term growth.

Collect customer feedback from users with email and in-app surveys , using their responses to improve your product.

The feedback you receive from users will tell you what features they need, the challenges they face with the product, and how you can improve the product to match their expectations.

You may also find that there are other market segments where your product may enjoy even greater success, or learn of better ways to position your product.

Best practices when launching a new product

Now that you know what your launch process should look like, you can ensure it’s effective by keeping to the following best practices:

Listen to the market to identify the best time to launch your product

There is a science to determining your new product launch date. To have a successful launch, you must pay attention to every possible market factor.

For example, you don’t want to launch your product on the same day a well-known competitor is launching a product. Instead, you need to either launch before them or wait for the buzz around their launch to die down.

Despite its mega success over the years, Google learned the importance of paying attention to market factors the hard way when releasing Google Glass. With privacy as a major concern at the time, spectacles with cameras didn’t feel right. At $1,500, it was also too pricey for most.

The result? Google Glass was very poorly received. Despite its many futuristic features, the product failed spectacularly and was finally killed for good earlier this year.

Display social proof to frame your new product positively

Consumers love to see that others have succeeded after taking the risk to purchase your product. Thus, the use of social proof on your landing page is a necessity as it gives others the confidence to trust you.

Thankfully, getting social proof isn’t a complex process. As part of your pre-launch phase, beta-test your product with existing customers or others who have shown interest.

Have them use the product for a while and share their insights with you. As they do, collect their positive feedback and showcase them in your product launch marketing campaign.

Build hype pre-launch date

Build up anticipation within your target audience by creating an air of suspense and mystery around your product. You can do this by teasing about the product early without going into detail.

This is what makes every Apple new product launch so exciting. They keep key details about the product secret, sending users into an overdrive of speculation long before the product is even announced.

Apple is also great at using little “leaks” to keep anticipation for new products high before launch. In addition to teasing your product’s core features, you can also use influencers to test out the product and build up the hype around it.

However, always ensure that the hype doesn’t become bigger than the product, or your brand may never recover from the resultant negative market perception.

Have a checklist to monitor the product launch process

Finally, always work with a checklist to ensure you don’t miss anything. For instance, your pre-launch checklist may look like this:

• Are all team members meeting their milestones and deadlines?
• Have you tested the product with target customers in a controlled setting?
• Have you acted on the feedback from your tests?
• What product launch event type will you use?
• Is everyone aware of the launch date?
• Have you trained internal teams on the new product?
• Are all marketing materials ready and distributed to the teams that need them?
• What metrics will you use to measure success?
• When will you begin analyzing product metrics results and who will be in charge of it?
• How will information flow to the right people and departments through the launch?
• Have you gone over the final launch itinerary and timelines with the team?

Examples of successful product launches from various industries

Thankfully, there are several product launch examples you can look to for ideas. Consider a few:

OpenAI released a demo of ChatGPT on November 20, 2022. Although this was the third iteration of the GPT (GPT-1 was released in June 2018), it was only with this release that GPT went truly viral.

ChatGPT enabled users to interact with the AI and test out its capabilities for themselves. Users quickly began sharing what it could do – article writing, poems, coding, etc. on social media. In just five days, ChatGPT had attracted over a million users.

The secret? A masterful launch strategy that got influencers to try out the product, speak about it, and get others to try it out, too. It also helped that the chatbot was very impressive.

On February 22, 2023, digital workspace provider, Notion, announced the release of the highly anticipated Notion AI. At the time of its release, nearly two million people had already signed up for the alpha waitlist ten weeks prior.

How did Notion achieve such success? Like OpenAI, it created a buzz ahead of time. Notion leveraged social media channels to build anticipation around the integrated generative AI.

But it didn’t stop there. Notion leveraged in-app modals and email campaigns to introduce the feature to its already large user base. With anticipation at an all-time high, the product was released with great success.

Userpilot’s AI writing assistant

On May 2, 2023, Userpilot email subscribers received a mail announcing the launch of a new feature – Userpilot AI Writing Assistant. But users were already in anticipation of it.

The feature was first introduced in-app and released to beta testers to provide market feedback and insights. Once it was ready, the product was teased on social media before it was released on Product Hunt.

Social media posts directed users to the Product Hunt announcement where they caught a glimpse of the product and could leave upvotes. The writing assistant is also featured in Userpilot’s onboarding, ensuring new users know how to get the most out of it.

The commission-free stock trading platform, RobinHood, acquired almost a million users before it launched.

The secret? A masterclass in product launches and referral marketing. First, the app landing page clinically displayed its unique selling point – $0 commission trading!

Next, RobinHood ensured the signup process was seamless – gain early access by providing your email address. Finally, those who signed up were incentivized with a shorter wait time to refer others.

How Userpilot can help you with your new product launch strategy

With Userpilot, creating your new product launch doesn’t have to be tedious. Userpilot helps you to:

Build product marketing campaigns with different UI patterns

Userpilot enables you to build and launch complete in-app product marketing campaigns without writing code.

You can create a slideout, modal, banner , or tooltip to inform users about new features or key changes to existing features. In addition to text content, you can embed videos and images to demo the feature.

Collect customer feedback in-app

Learn what users think of your new features with automatically triggered in-app surveys .

From user experience surveys to product research and customer satisfaction surveys, Userpilot provides a variety of templates to help you feel your users’ pulse. Or, you can design one from scratch, code-free.

You can choose when and where each survey appears and customize everything, including its appearance and content.

Analyze customer interactions and identify friction points

Go beyond what users say and watch how they interact with the new feature. Are they using it often? Does it work as it should?

Analyzing users’ in-app interactions can reveal a lot about how the feature is received. It can also help you identify and fix any friction points early.

Every product or new feature launch is a big deal that only happens once. This is your one chance to ensure your product hits the ground running, and with the right launch strategy, you can do just that.

If you would like to learn more about how Userpilot can simplify this process for you, book a demo today !

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What is a Product Launch? Stages, Strategy, & Tools

Bring your product to market with a strategic product launch plan that encourages product adoption and customer satisfaction.

A product launch is a company’s coordinated effort to bring new or updated products to market. Well-planned and well-performed launches announce a product to the world after building substantial buzz. They also align members of a product team with other departments to ensure the entire business is unified in its approach to supporting the new product.

Planning a thorough product launch requires investing a great deal of labor and time. However, product-centric companies will find these commitments worth the effort. A successful launch can attract the right kind of customers to a new product. This increases the rate of product adoption and allows a company to see a quicker return in their investment in the product’s development .

Key takeaways

• A product launch is the process a company undertakes to bring its new or updated products to market.
• Focusing on the customer experience
• Using your product data to inform strategy
• Creating a product launch checklist
• Launching early and tweaking as you go
• The success of a product launch can be measured quantitatively through tracking KPIs and qualitatively through internal and external feedback.

What is a product launch?

A launch is more than just posting “We’re open!” on a social channel. It’s a dedicated effort to get the product workable ahead of a deadline and then to appropriately market the product across channels. It’s an extensive project that requires collaboration through various teams and departments within a business.

63% of customers enjoy when companies bring new products to market . Customers are often more excited about and engaged with an offering when it’s new. Releasing a great product without properly preparing the world for its arrival is a good way to miss capturing your target audience at the peak of their interest.

A launch can be divided into three stages:

1. Planning

This is the stage where product teams set goals, research their audience and competition, align expectations, and establish the marketing strategy. The launch team also works closely with product developers to establish a timeline for a launch date and identify key marketable components of the product.

2. Execution

This is the window of time during which the product is formally released. This includes the actual day of release and the subsequent marketing efforts to maintain buzz throughout the following weeks. During this time, product and marketing data is collected that will eventually help determine the success of the launch.

3. Analysis

Eventually, marketing efforts will wind down as the product transitions from the “launch” stage into the “growth ” stage of the product life cycle. Product teams compare data collected during the release window and determine whether KPIs and other goals were met as a result of the launch.

Tips for building a successful product launch strategy

Every product launch comes with its own unique challenges because every product is unique. Even the release of a new version of an existing product will require a different blueprint than the initial launch. That said, there are a few best practices companies should follow with every product launch strategy to create a strong foundation for their product launches:

1. Focus on the customer experience

Most successful teams perform product discovery before brainstorming a new product. This process forces companies to ask why their new product should exist in the first place and identify which problem it’s solving for potential customers.

Your product launch team should answer these questions for prospective customers:

• Why customers use the type of product you’re building
• The specific pain points your product addresses
• What your product does better than any other

Understanding these points requires research. First, you should gather feedback from your customers in the form of market research. This allows you to ask customers directly about what features they’re most excited about or issues they’ve experienced with similar products in the past.

This research should then be compared against what you know about your competition to identify the best way to position your product against what’s already out there. Products that provide solutions to problems that don’t exist don’t excite customers. Customers are also unimpressed by products that don’t bring anything new to the table. It’s important to identify a way to communicate how your product solves customer pain points in a unique way.

2. Use your product data to inform strategy

Beta testing creates valuable product data that sheds light on how customers engage with your product. A data analytics solution like Amplitude can help businesses analyze the data beta testers generate so they can be used to craft a product strategy for the upcoming product launch.

For instance, a glance through beta testing data reveals the extensive use of the “recommendations” feature of your ecommerce product. What’s more, the beta testers who use this feature stay more engaged with your product than those who do not. It would make sense for your marketing messaging to focus heavily on the recommendations feature to attract customers with a higher likelihood for engagement from the get-go.

3. Create a product launch checklist

A running checklist is an essential facet of any product launch. Product launches involve product teams, marketing teams, sales teams, and more working together toward a common goal. It’s easy for even the most organized manager or team lead to lose track of what needs to get done while handling an ever-changing list of tasks.

Keeping a running list of all essential tasks ensures that nothing falls between the cracks as the launch day nears. Items should be checked off as they’re completed or added as new ideas or complications arise. Tasks should also be grouped by type or by the team responsible for performing each item.

Checklists vary from business to business and launch to launch, but common action items include:

• Creating a product launch timetable
• Identifying relevant KPIs
• Defining your target audience
• Choosing distribution channels
• Crafting marketing messaging
• Aligning internal teams, including sales, IT, and customer support

4. Launch early and tweak as you go

You should release your product as soon as its core features have been thoroughly tested. The sooner customers adopt your product, the sooner you can gather and analyze their valuable behavioral data to improve onboarding flows, identify churn points, and inform feature development.

Every day your product is in development is a day customers can’t use it. While you’re waiting a few months to finish polishing a non-essential feature, your potential customers are becoming disinterested or turning to competitors for their needs. Releasing a working version of your core product can appease early adopters, who in turn can advocate for your product while you work on touching up your offering.

What to expect from a product launch

A company’s first product launch is often their most difficult. Teams simply lack experience, which makes constructing and executing a launch plan especially daunting.

Planning for a product launch begins while the product itself is still in development. This means that features you intend on including in your messaging may fundamentally change or disappear completely. Furthermore, snags in the development process can change the timetable for release dramatically.

The best product launch plans have flexibility built-in. Development, collaboration, and testing are often iterative processes. Business leadership may decide to change the approach to marketing mid-way through the launch process. These changes and delays might derail more rigid plans. Only 55% of product launches are executed on schedule , which is why it’s essential to allot more time than you think you need for launch tasks.

The launch process takes several months, but even the formal release of your new product to the public spans longer than a single day. Marketing efforts like social media posts and email campaigns shouldn’t be focused on “just” the actual day your product is released, as information often takes time to spread. Instead, launch teams should focus on building buzz ahead of the launch and maintaining momentum in the days and weeks following an official launch day.

How to measure product launch success

Odds are that your most recent product launch will not be your last. This means it’s vital to analyze the good and the bad of a release so future launches are optimized for success. This can be achieved by the following:

1. Define relevant KPIs

Before your product launches, you need to define what a successful launch would look like. Success is likely defined differently for products in varying markets. For instance, an ecommerce website may have a new revenue goal in mind. Alternatively, they may view a launch as successful if a certain percentage of customers complete a second order.

Selecting several relevant KPIs to track alongside a North Star Metric will help give a clear account of how well your launch went. These KPIs should directly represent your end goals. They also need to be measurable. Common KPIs associated with product launches include:

• Web traffic
• Revenue gained
• Leads generated
• Customer usage and retention
• Trial subscribers signed up

Calculating your KPIs will allow you to designate whether your campaign exceeded or fell short of expectations. However, it’s important to scrutinize data sets beyond what can be directly attributed to profit and loss. Your broader collection of launch data may reveal surprises that lead to more effective marketing or the development of new features down the line.

2. Tracking and analyzing data

A successful launch is likely to yield a great volume of data. Marketing data from your website and behavioral data from your product will need to be sorted and analyzed to determine how well your KPI goals track with reality. This should be done post-launch to zero in on launch-specific results.

3. Gathering feedback

Many product metrics focus on quantity—that is, how many users were onboarded or how many products were sold. Soliciting feedback directly from customers gives you a sense of how well your product and messaging were received. Customer feedback is usually gained through:

• Customer interviews
• Focus groups

It’s also important to evaluate how well the product launch went within your company. Other teams may have identified points of friction in the rollout of internal processes your team wasn’t aware of. Additionally, departments such as IT or customer service likely interfaced with customers in meaningful ways during the product launch. They may have unique insights into issues or concerns that arose through the creation of help tickets or direct customer requests.

Tools for a successful new product launch

It’s hard to build anything useful with the wrong tools, and product launches are no different. Luckily, the digital product sphere is flourishing with tools to help you manage and fine-tune even the most complex product launch campaign.

When it comes to planning a product tour, it’s easy to overlook the strategic benefit of having an analytics tool like Amplitude at your disposal. The accessibility of product and marketing data is essential to companies looking to set goals, analyze customer behaviors, and measure the success of their launch.

Different teams throughout a business often use tools unique to their own department for data management. This leads to siloed data inaccessible to the teams they’re trying to collaborate with—a huge problem for a project as extensive as a product launch. Amplitude provides a way to bring various sources of data into one program that’s easy to use for even the least data-savvy employees.

Amplitude can:

• Unify data from your product, website, and other sources under a single umbrella
• Review beta testing data to see what features customers enjoy
• A/B test onboarding workflows to increase the likelihood of product adoption

Productboard

Productboard is a customer-driven product management system that empowers teams to get the right products to market, faster. Productboard can help create compelling roadmaps and dynamically prioritize features for the roadmaps. They can also centralize and organize market feedback and evidence to attach to the features on the roadmaps.

Amplitude’s new integration with Productboard will enable Amplitude customers that use Productboard to filter customer feedback based on cohorts created within Amplitude, and categorize the insights into themes that can inform the product roadmap and prioritization process. This will help product managers make better decisions about what to build and who it will impact when new features are shipped. Learn more about the Productboard integration .

Product Hunt

Product Hunt is a website specifically designed to facilitate product launches. Companies create postings for their new products to build buzz ahead of their launch. Users upvote products they find especially helpful or interesting, which, in turn, pushes them to a higher ranking. The best-ranking products display on the front page as one of the most popular products of the day.

The Product Hunt audience consists of promoters, prominent product managers, and investors who can help advocate for your product and promote it within their own channels. Pulling off a successful Product Hunt launch requires careful planning, but becoming the “Product of the Day” has paid dividends for companies like Hotjar, Slack, and Trello.

Speaking of Trello : your various team members are going to need a way to stay organized as they prepare for your next product launch. Trello is an app that enables teams to create Kanban-style boards for projects. Collaborators can create cards for specific tasks and organize them into categories such as “Pre-Launch,” “Launch,” and “Post-Launch.” These tasks can be assigned to members of the Trello board, who, in turn, can mark each card as “completed” once the task is finished.

• A 4-step Product Hunt launch guide to help you become “Product of the Day.” Appcues
• Gartner Survey Finds That 45% of Product Launches Are Delayed by at Least One Month. Business Wire.
• Looking to Achieve New Product Success? Listen to Your Customers. Nielsen.
• The case for product discovery: A 4-step guide to saving time and money. Appcues.
• The Kanban Way: How to Visualize Progress and Data in Trello. Trello.

Thinking about your next product launch? Make sure you’re defining the right KPIs to measure success by following our North Star Playbook .

About the Author

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How to Master Product Launch Promotion

Carlos González De Villaumbrosia

Updated: May 6, 2024 - 7 min read

You've successfully navigated the complexities of product development and created a stellar new product. Now comes the make-or-break moment: promoting your product launch like a pro . In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the art and science of effective product launch promotion. By the end of this blog post, you'll be armed with the strategies and tactics to master your next product launch so it receives the attention it deserves. Let’s go!

1. Understanding the Importance of Product Launch Promotion

Without effective promotion, even the best products can go unnoticed. Product launch promotion is your opportunity to create buzz, generate excitement, and ensure that your target audience knows about your offering. It's not just about showcasing your product; it's about building anticipation and generating demand.

Why is Promotion So Crucial?

Competition is Fierce: In today's crowded marketplace, countless products are launched every day. If you want to stand out, time and energy are needed for a solid promo strategy. 

Connecting with Your Audience: Promotion helps you establish a connection with your target audience, conveying how your product solves their problems or meets their needs. 

Building Brand Awareness: A successful launch promotion contributes to long-term brand recognition and trust.

Setting the Stage for Sales: An effective launch paves the way for a strong start in sales, helping you achieve your revenue goals.

2. Building a Solid Foundation for Promotion

Before diving into the specifics of promotion, it's essential to lay a strong foundation. Here's how you can prepare:

a. Understand Your Target Audience

​​Know your audience inside out. What problems does your product solve for them? How does it benefit them? How do they perceive your product compared to competitors? Crafting a compelling value proposition and messaging hinges on this understanding.

b. Set Clear Goals and Metrics

Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve with the product launch. Are you aiming to increase revenue, gain market share, or enhance brand awareness? Defining clear and measurable goals is essential along with establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you track the success of your product launch . Metrics like customer acquisition rate, conversion rate, and customer satisfaction are essential.

c. Time Your Launch Strategically 

When it comes to launching your product, timing is everything. Ensure that your product launch aligns with market demand, and conduct beta testing to identify and address potential issues before the official launch. Timing your release strategically can make a significant difference in how well your product is received by the target audience.

d. Ensure Your Team is Ready

All stakeholder teams, from product marketing to sales, support, PR, and marketing teams, should be well-prepared for the launch. Collaboration and alignment among these teams are key to success. By synchronizing your product launch with the market and ensuring your internal teams are ready to support it, you enhance your chances of a smooth and effective product launch.

e. Budget Wisely

Allocate resources for promotion. Your budget should encompass various aspects, including advertising, content creation, and event planning. Be sure to allocate enough funds to meet your goals effectively.

3. Crafting a Compelling Product Story

Your product's story is your most potent promotional tool. Craft a compelling narrative that not only highlights its features but also conveys its value and purpose. A compelling product story should:

Address Pain Points : Show how your product solves a problem or improves the user's life.

Create Emotional Connection: Appeal to your audience's emotions by showcasing the benefits and impact of your product.

Highlight Uniqueness: Emphasize what sets your product apart from competitors.

Engage with Storytelling: Use storytelling techniques to make your product memorable and relatable.

4. Leveraging Pre-Launch Teasers and Hype

Building anticipation is a crucial part of product launch promotion. Generate excitement and curiosity with pre-launch teasers and hype:

a. Teaser Campaigns

Release sneak peeks, teasers, and countdowns on social media and your website.

Use cryptic messages, images, or videos to pique interest and encourage speculation.

b. Exclusive Previews

Offer a select group of influencers or customers exclusive previews of your product.

Encourage them to share their experiences and generate buzz.

c. Email Marketing

Send teaser emails to your subscriber list, gradually revealing more about your product.

Create a sense of exclusivity by offering early access or special discounts.

5. Harnessing the Power of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a great tool for product launch promotion. Identify and collaborate with influencers who resonate with your target audience. Here's how to leverage their reach effectively:

a. Identify the Right Influencers

Look for influencers in your niche with an engaged and relevant following.

Evaluate their authenticity and alignment with your brand values.

b. Build Relationships

Approach influencers genuinely and build relationships before the launch.

Provide them with early access to your product and allow them creative freedom.

c. Co-create Content

Collaborate on content creation, including reviews, unboxing videos, and tutorials.

Encourage influencers to share their honest opinions and experiences.

6. Engaging Your Target Audience through Content Marketing

Content marketing is a cornerstone of any great promotion. Create valuable, informative, and engaging content to connect with your audience:

a. Blog Posts

Write in-depth blog posts about your product's features and benefits.

Address common questions and concerns your audience might have.

b. Social Media

Share behind-the-scenes content, product updates, and user-generated content.

Create a posting schedule to maintain consistency and engagement.

c. Video Marketing

Produce product demo videos, explainer videos, and customer testimonials.

Utilize platforms like YouTube and TikTok to reach a broader audience.

d. Webinars and Podcasts

Host webinars or guest appearances on podcasts to discuss industry topics and your product.

Engage with your audience in real time and answer their questions.

7. Hosting a Memorable Launch Event

A well-executed launch event can create a lasting impression. Whether virtual or in-person, here's how to make it memorable:

a. Choose the Right Format

Consider your target audience's preferences when deciding on a virtual or physical event.

Ensure your event aligns with your brand and product theme.

b. Create an Engaging Agenda

Plan engaging sessions, such as product demos, expert panels, or Q&A sessions.

Keep the event interactive and encourage audience participation.

c. Build Anticipation

Promote the event in advance through all your marketing channels.

Offer incentives like early access, exclusive content, or giveaways to boost attendance.

d. Post-Event Follow-up

Continue engagement after the event with post-event content and follow-up emails.

Collect feedback to improve future events.

8. Maximizing Post-Launch Momentum

Your product launch promotion doesn't end with the launch date. Maintain the momentum and sustain interest with these strategies:

a. Post-Launch Content

Share user-generated content, reviews, and success stories.

Highlight any updates or improvements to the product.

b. Offer Post-Launch Promotions

Continue to offer limited-time discounts or bundles to incentivize purchases.

Leverage seasonal events and holidays to run special promotions.

c. Gather and Showcase Testimonials

Encourage satisfied customers to provide testimonials or reviews.

Feature these testimonials prominently on your website and marketing materials.

9. Measuring and Analyzing Your Promotion Efforts

To ensure the effectiveness of your product launch promotion, you must track and analyze your efforts:

a. Key Metrics to Track

Website traffic, conversion rates, and bounce rates.

Social media engagement, reach, and click-through rates.

Email open rates, click rates, and subscription growth.

Sales numbers, revenue generated, and customer acquisition cost.

b. Use Analytics Tools

Utilize tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and email marketing platforms to track metrics.

Create custom dashboards to monitor your KPIs effectively.

c. Continual Optimization

Regularly review your performance data and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Experiment with different approaches to improve your results continually.

Remember, effective product launch promotion is not just about showcasing your product; it's about creating a compelling narrative, building anticipation, and engaging your target audience throughout the entire journey. With dedication and creativity, your product launch can truly make a splash in the market.

Now, go forth and promote your product launch with confidence and enthusiasm, you’ve got this! 

Ready to Master The Art of Product Launches?

Get an in-depth understanding of the critical elements that make a launch successful with our free Product Launches Micro-Certification (PRLC)™! Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting, this is your chance to dive deep into iconic launches, understand foundational elements, and craft exceptional go-to-market plans.

Updated: May 6, 2024

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How To Create a Product Launch Marketing Plan in 6 Steps

Learn how to create a strong product launch marketing plan for your new product. We cover the 6 key steps to take when developing a go-to-market product strategy.

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rom Cheeto-flavored lip balm to New Coke to Google+, new products flop all the time. 

Recent statistics suggest that of all new products launched by companies today, only 40% survive in the market , and of those, just 60% generate any revenue.

New products can fail for a variety of reasons. Having a strong go-to-market strategy, or a product-specific marketing plan, can help ensure your product launch goes well ‚Äì and sets you up to measure success and learn from missteps. 

Creating a marketing plan for a new product launch involves outlining the strategies, objectives, target market, budget, and tactics to achieve your company's goals. It typically includes a timeline, budget, key performance indicators, and other measurements to determine the success of the plan.

A successful product launch comprises six essential steps. As a small business owner, clearly understanding each of these product marketing elements will empower you to confidently launch a new product.

Step #1 - Target Market Analysis

Target market analysis focuses on understanding a company's most likely customer base. This can be brand-wide, but when it comes to a go-to-market strategy, the focus must be on one product's target market.

Target market analysis involves researching and analyzing the characteristics of the company's existing and potential customers, such as their age, gender, income level, geographical location, and purchasing habits.

With this information, businesses can create a marketing plan that tailors messaging around a new product to the needs of their target market.

Six steps to identifying and defining your target market

• Research : Conduct research to understand the potential customer base for the new product. This may involve analyzing existing customer data and sales trends, researching competitors and their customer bases, and understanding the needs of the market.
• Segmentation : Segment the potential customer base into smaller, more defined groups based on demographics, interests, and needs.
• Profiling : Create customer profiles based on the segmentation data. Include demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information.
• Prioritize : Prioritize the customer segments based on their potential to benefit from the new product.
• Define : Identify the most relevant customer segments and outline the ideal customer's characteristics.
• Test : Test the target market definition by conducting market research or focus groups with potential customers. Make adjustments to the target market definition, if necessary.

Target market analysis in action

Target market analysis is an ongoing process. For example, the Harman brothers originally marketed Mountain Dew to Appalachia's tough mountaineers. However, its target audience has evolved drastically over time. 

Starting in the 90s, it became the official beverage of extreme sports. Then, its demographic shifted again to gamers due to its high caffeine content. Currently, Mountain Dew is dedicating 40% of its budget to targeting gamers in need of an energy boost.

Step #2 - Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is a process of gathering and analyzing data about competitors and their strategies. It helps businesses identify their competitors' strengths and weaknesses, identify opportunities and threats in the market, and develop strategies to outperform the competition.

Tips for identifying and researching your competitors

• Use online search tools : Start by researching your competitors online. Use search engines to find out what content they're creating, what keywords they're targeting, what channels they're using, and so on.
• Follow their social media accounts : Follow your competitors' social media accounts to stay up to date on their products, services, and promotions.
• Subscribe to their email lists : Sign up for your competitors' email lists to get an inside look at their offers and strategies.
• Monitor online reviews : Stay on top of online reviews for your competitors' products and services. This can help you identify customer pain points and areas of improvement.

Note inspiration from strengths and opportunities in weaknesses

As you gather data on your competitors, make note of where they're succeeding and where they're failing. A competitor's strengths can inspire you because they can motivate you to strive to reach similar heights of success. Their successes can also give you insight into what strategies and tactics are working for them, which can help guide your own efforts. 

At the same time, their weaknesses provide an opportunity for you to capitalize on and potentially overtake them in the marketplace.

Competitive analysis in action

Brand names aren't exactly open with their competitive analysis data. But here's an example of how a bit of competitive analysis gave way to an entirely new industry.

Airbnb was founded in 2008 by roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia when a large design conference was coming to San Francisco. The two former Rhode Island School of Design students had an idea to rent out airbeds in their living room to attendees in need of a place to stay since local hotels couldn't keep up with demand. 

They created a website to advertise their loft, and within a week, they had three bookings. They realized that people were willing to pay for unique, authentic accommodation experiences not offered by hotels and that there was a potential for a business.

Step #3 - Product Analysis

Product analysis is a process used to evaluate a product's features, performance, and marketability. It may involve a review of the product's design, functionality, pricing, and target market. 

Product analysis can help you determine whether your product meets customer needs and expectations and provides a competitive advantage. Ultimately, product analysis can help guide product development and marketing decisions, including the details of a go-to-market strategy.

How to define the features and benefits of your new product

When developing a marketing plan for new product launches, a solid list of features and benefits starts the sales process. Here are some steps to extracting each talking point.

• Ask questions : Take time to ask questions about your new product. Consider the needs of your target market and the problems you're trying to solve with your product. List any unique benefits or features the product may have.
• Research competitors : Look at what other similar products are already on the market and what they offer. Identify areas where your product is superior.
• Talk to users : Ask potential buyers questions about what they like or dislike about similar products and what features or benefits they would find most attractive from yours.
• Prioritize : Once you have a list of benefits and features, prioritize them. Use the most important as the pillars for your go-to-market strategy.

Choose a pricing strategy

Consider your pricing strategy options when analyzing your product. Some of the most popular include:

• Cost-Plus Pricing : This is the most common pricing strategy for small businesses. It involves adding a markup to the cost of your product to determine the final price. 
• Value-Based Pricing : This pricing strategy is based on the customer's perceived value of your product. It takes into account the customer's needs and wants, as well as the competition in the market.
• Penetration Pricing : Penetration pricing involves setting a low price for an introductory period in order to capture market share quickly. 
• Bundle Pricing : Bundle pricing involves offering a group of products at a discounted rate. This strategy often encourages customers to purchase more than one item.
• Tiered Pricing : Tiered pricing is a strategy that involves offering different levels of pricing depending on the customer's purchase volume. This encourages customers to purchase more in order to get the best deal.

Developing the packaging and branding for the product

Your product's presentation is just as important as its price and features.

Before beginning the design process of packaging, start with an analysis of your brand to identify the mission, values, and desired message to customers. Consider the type of customer who will interact with the product packaging and how the design should reflect their values. For example, if your buyer persona appreciates green initiatives, use eco-friendly packaging. 

After brainstorming ideas, create a mood board with images, colors, and textures to create a clear vision. Finally, test the design with focus groups or customers to receive feedback.

Product analysis in action

Botanical Bakery's shortbread cookies were truly scrumptious - however, they were lost among the competition before the company gave itself a packaging rebrand. 

This rebranding effort proved to be incredibly successful, leading to a 300% increase in sales for the company. The project included a packaging redesign featuring bright colors, larger fonts, more vivid imagery, and an updated brand story to create a more personal connection with customers.

Once you have a good sense of your competitors' product offerings, your target consumer's needs, and your product's value, you can start to build out your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP will describe why your product or service beats the competition and how it's uniquely positioned to help your target customer. This value proposition should be included in all of your marketing materials.

Step #4 - Marketing Mix (4 Ps)

The marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps, refers to the four key elements of any successful marketing strategy: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. No go-to-market strategy is complete without a customized marketing mix.

By completing a thorough analysis of your product, you should have this element of the marketing mix handled. Here are some tips for turning all of that data into a landing page with high conversion potential.

• Create a landing page : Start by creating a dedicated landing page specifically designed to promote your product launch. This page should be designed to capture leads, so provide an easy way for visitors to sign up for more information or to purchase your product.
• Incorporate visuals : Images, videos, and GIFs of your product in action can be a great way to capture attention and make your product launch page more engaging.
• Use a call-to-action : Make sure your product launch page includes a clear call-to-action that encourages visitors to take the next step.
• Share customer stories : Use customer stories to show potential customers how your product has helped others. For example, if you release your product early to a select group of users before launching it to the general public, get feedback and reviews from early users to share across your marketing channels.
• Promote your page : Promote your product launch page on social media, in email campaigns, and across other marketing channels.

You should already have chosen a pricing strategy for your product. Now it's time to communicate it.

• Take the time to clearly define your pricing. Include the cost of your product or service, and any discounts, additional fees, and taxes. Make sure to be as transparent as possible.
• Using visuals, like charts, infographics, and illustrations can help to make pricing easier to understand. 
• Offer multiple payment options, like credit cards, PayPal, and other digital payment systems. This will make it easier for customers to pay for your product or service.

This part of the marketing mix process covers where and how customers can buy your product. It involves understanding customers' shopping habits, researching where your competition sells its products, and assessing the best buying experience and after-sales support that can be offered.

It is important to consider if sales reps are needed or if self-service is the best option. Additionally, weighing the cost of giving up revenue through particular distribution channels is important. Your options may include:

• Online Marketplace : Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other online marketplaces are popular places to sell products as a small business owner. 
• Social Media : Platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer a great way to reach a wide audience and increase sales.
• Retail Stores : You can sell your products in retail stores, either through a third party or by opening your own store.
• Wholesalers : Wholesalers are companies that buy products from manufacturers and then resell them to retailers.
• Trade Shows : Trade shows are great places to showcase and sell your products to a large number of potential buyers.
• OEM Distribution : OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) distribution is when a manufacturer sells products directly to end users, such as through a website or through a network of distributors.

Determining where your product or service is sold will help you choose the right marketing channels to maximize discoverability and conversion.

The promotion portion of a marketing plan for new product launches is where it all starts to come together. When advertising a new product, prioritize quality over quantity when deciding which channels to use. Make sure to customize your approach for each channel and audience segment, generate excitement before the launch, and continue marketing after the initial launch.

Choose your marketing channels

• Research the channels most populated by your target audience. This may include social media channels, websites, television, radio, or print. 
• Consider the type of product you're advertising. Different channels may be more effective for certain types of products. For example, retail products may be best suited for Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Campaigns for B2B products may perform better on LinkedIn.
• Consider the budget available for advertising. Different marketing channels may have different costs, so it is important to consider what channels will provide the most value for your budget.
• Prioritize channels that track and measure results. This will help determine which channels are most effective and should receive more of the budget.

Pre-launch buzz vs. post-launch promotion

Pre-launch buzz is a marketing strategy used to create excitement and anticipation for a product before it has been officially launched. It typically involves activities such as releasing teaser videos, creating websites, and conducting interviews to generate hype and attract potential customers.

Post-launch advertising is a type of marketing that focuses on promoting a product or service after it has already been launched. It typically involves activities such as developing campaigns, running ads, and creating content to attract new customers and increase sales. It can also be used to create brand awareness and loyalty and build relationships with customers.

Your go-to-market strategy should include plans for both pre-launch buzz and post-launch promotion.

Step #5 - Implementation

The goal of the implementation stage is to ensure that the marketing strategy is executed effectively and efficiently. The following tips can help you put your go-to-market strategy to work with minimal hurdles.

Get smart with your goals

SMART goals are a method for setting and achieving goals. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound:

• Specific goals are clear and unambiguous.
• Measurable goals have easily identifiable metrics for success.
• Attainable goals are realistic and achievable.
• Relevant goals are important and contribute to your overall objectives.
• Time-bound goals have a specific timeline for completion.

SMART goals are great for product launches because they help provide a clear and measurable plan for success. They are also easy to understand, which makes it easier for everyone involved in the project to stay on the same page. 

Establish a budget

Go-to-market strategies don't typically come with endless budgets. Before allocating funds, calculate the cost of each marketing activity, such as advertising, promotional materials, and event costs. Then, a realistic budget for product marketing can be set, with a buffer for unexpected costs. 

Monitor the results of each activity and make adjustments to the budget if necessary. If something is working well, consider increasing the budget for that particular activity.

Allocating resources

There are more than just financial resources to allocate in a go-to-market strategy. You should also outline processes, limits, and guidelines for:

• Human resources
• Material resources
• Time resources
• Technology resources
• Logistics resource
• Legal resources
• Marketing resources

Develop your timeline

Successful implementation of a marketing plan for new product launches relies on timelines that serve as references to track progress. We recommend creating an implementation schedule by working backward from your target launch date.

• Identify the tasks that need to be completed in order to reach the deadline. 
• Estimate the amount of time each task should take. 
• Work backward from the deadline, assigning each task a start and end date. 
• Make sure to account for any potential delays. 
• Reassess the schedule regularly to make sure you are staying on track.

Establish a system for monitoring progress

Monitoring progress after a new product launch is important because it helps identify areas of success and areas that need improvement. 

Companies can use A/B testing to measure the success of different marketing strategies and identify areas for improvement. 

Track key metrics like customer acquisition, customer retention, sales, revenue, website traffic, and user engagement to measure the ongoing success of your product launch.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best

Even with proper planning, a new product launch can fail. In a worst-case scenario, having a contingency plan for a failed product launch in place can help minimize the damage.

A contingency plan should include measures to help minimize potential losses and reposition the product for success. Additionally, offering incentives to customers who have already purchased the product, such as discounts or refunds, should be considered to help maintain customer loyalty and trust.

Reallocating resources to focus on other products or services to help offset any losses incurred from the failed launch may also be beneficial.

With the above tips in mind, you'll be able to ensure a smooth rollout of your marketing campaigns.

Step #6 - Post-Launch: Evaluation and Retention

Post-launch evaluation and retention in a go-to-market strategy is the process of assessing the success of a product launch and developing strategies to retain customers after the launch.

Measure success with a post-mortem review

A project post-mortem is a review process that takes place after a marketing project is completed. It's a time to evaluate what went well, what didn't, and what can be improved for future projects. 

During a post-mortem, you should review the project goals, resources, timeline, budget, and KPIs to identify what worked and what didn't. Make notes of process improvements you plan to make for future projects.

It is important to adjust your product marketing playbook based on data insights and post-mortem evaluations, but not necessary to start from scratch. Make changes to reflect the data and findings while keeping the overall structure and goals in mind.

Develop a retention plan

Developing a retention plan after launch is critical for any business to maintain customer loyalty, encourage additional purchases, and better understand its customer base. 

Suggested strategies include:

• Offer loyalty programs and rewards 
• Create a customer-only community
• Implement automated follow-up emails 
• Offer incentives for referrals

Final Takeaways

Crafting an effective and comprehensive go-to-market strategy requires a lot of thought and effort. Use this cheat sheet as a reference for each essential component.

• Target Market Analysis : Identifying and researching the target audience's characteristics, needs, and wants to create a tailored marketing strategy.
• Competitive Analysis : Analyze the current competition's strengths and weaknesses to identify areas of opportunity and solidify your value proposition.
• Product Analysis : Evaluate the product to ensure it meets customer needs and wants. Determine which features and messaging to emphasize in the marketing strategy.
• Marketing Mix : Develop a unique creative marketing strategy by considering the product, price, place, and promotion of the product.
• Implementation : Execute the go-to-market strategy and ensure all elements are in place for a smooth rollout.
• Post-Launch Evaluation and Retention : Measure the success of the launch, identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to keep customers engaged and loyal.

A well-thought-out marketing plan clears the runway to launch

Without a calculated marketing plan , a product launch could fail due to a lack of awareness and engagement with the target audience. This could be a costly mistake for small businesses that may not have the resources to recover from a failed launch. 

By implementing the six shared steps above, you can easily develop a marketing plan for new product launches, ensuring each launch is successful.

Novo Platform Inc. strives to provide accurate information but cannot guarantee that this content is correct, complete, or up-to-date. This page is for informational purposes only and is not financial or legal advice nor an endorsement of any third-party products or services. All products and services are presented without warranty. Novo Platform Inc. does not provide any financial or legal advice, and you should consult your own financial, legal, or tax advisors.

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12 Product Launch Success Strategies (+Examples)

A step-by-step process for propelling your product into the public eye.

Product launch success is a crucial component for every business. Regardless of your company size or industry, your new product has to build excitement, attract customers, and ring up sales. In order to design a successful product launch, first identify the right elements and strategies that your launch needs. Then consider what hurdles you might face. You can even use examples of other companies’ successful launches to design a plan that will help your new product thrive!

Elements Of A Successful Product Launch

Strategies for product launch success, examples of successful product launches.

Every successful SaaS product launch requires a plan. So, how do you start developing your launch strategy? To start, consider what makes a product launch successful and the mistakes that could impede that success. Then you can identify what metrics to track throughout the life of your product launch.

When you proactively avoid common product launch pitfalls, you set yourself up for a successful launch. And instead of spending time fixing mistakes, you can focus on measuring the success of your product launch.

A strong product launch strategy increases your brand awareness and your company’s bottom line. You want to cater both to existing customers and potential customers. From your product development marketing through tracking KPIs, you can design a strategy, establish a plan, and market to the right audience.

Here are 12 strategies for a successful product launch:

1. Establish A Product Launch Plan

One of the key elements to a successful product launch is careful product launch planning. From the design phase through sales tracking, you need a road map to help you stay on the right path.

The first step in establishing a product launch plan is to involve the right people. Launch success isn’t just up to product managers! Include your production department, marketing team, and salespeople in the planning. And ask the group some key questions to hone your launch strategy:

• Will your launch strategy—and the product itself—increase your brand awareness and bottom line?
• What marketing channels will you focus on to boost sales? This might include social media marketing, radio or television, ads, or product launch events like tradeshows leading up to your launch day.
• Which product marketing tools will your sales and marketing team need to succeed?
• How will you track your product launch success? In other words, what KPIs will you measure, and how will you alter your strategy if you’re falling short of your goals?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can finalize your launch plan and move on to marketing your new product.

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2. Perform Market Research 

Market research is essential to ensure your product is something people need or want. Make sure there’s a demand for your product and that you can sell it at a price that your customers are willing to spend. At this stage, you should seek to answer questions such as how you can serve various groups of customers and how many customers have an unmet need that your product can fill. 

3. Identify Your Target Market 

Know which demographics are likely to purchase your product—this will make all the difference in your marketing strategy and messaging. Being unaware of your target market or marketing to the wrong audience are missteps that will ruin any product launch. 

4. Identify Your Competitors

Don’t make the mistake of lacking insight into your competition. If you don’t identify your competitors, you won’t know what you have to do to earn more sales. Studying your competition’s product and marketing strategy positions you to take advantage of their weaknesses and get customers to favor your product over theirs. 

5. Develop A Marketing Strategy

Marketing drives sales. Every company needs an overall marketing strategy, and every new product needs a specific marketing strategy. Your marketing campaign needs to excite existing customers and attract potential customers. And once you’ve got your target audience’s attention, your marketing strategy should build a relationship with your buyers so that they keep coming back.

Design a marketing strategy to build excitement before the product launch and maintain that excitement throughout the product life cycle .

6. Plan Your Budget

Underestimating the budget needed for product design, production, and marketing is a common pitfall that undermines product launch success. Plan your budget carefully and anticipate any possible deviations from the product launch plan that may affect your spending. 

7. Set Measurable Goals And Benchmarks 

You can evaluate your product launch strategy by determining your overall goals and establishing trackable and attainable benchmarks throughout the launch. A few examples of these benchmarks are the quantity of social media posts about your new product, your website traffic, and your budget versus actual costs.

Keep in mind that you’ll need to constantly evaluate the metrics that you identify. And if you see that your strategy isn’t working as well as you’d hoped, you can always alter the plan.

8. Perform Extensive Product Testing

As a professional product manager, you’re likely aware of the steps to take for a successful product launch. However, human error is always a possibility. When you design your launch plan, be sure to avoid producing a poor-quality product.

A common hurdle that can hinder your success is a product launch controversy . You’ve seen failed product launches over the years because of cell phone batteries that explode, or high-end clothing that causes an allergic reaction. In order to avoid such a catastrophe, make sure your product goes through extensive testing and market research.

Related Read: Product Testing (with Erin Hess from Crema)

9. See What Worked—And Didn’t Work—For Other Companies

Successful product launches can teach a product manager valuable lessons. You can use other companies’ successes to boost your product launch performance. Try to figure out why a launch was successful. What was the company’s social media strategy ? Did they advertise on TV or radio? How did they attract both existing and potential customers?

You should also look at what didn’t work for a company. This will help you determine what to focus on and what to avoid. In other words, use recent successful product launches as resources and learning tools to help your launch succeed.

10. Measure The Success Of Your Product Launch 

You can measure the success of your product launch by tracking tangible metrics throughout the product life cycle . Determine whether your website traffic has increased due to excitement about the new product. Make sure you’re earning a high return on investment and profit margins for both the product itself and your advertising efforts.

Each product is unique, so be sure to identify and track KPIs that apply to your product. This will help you measure your successful product launch!

11. Support Your Team 

A new product launch is a big undertaking. Even with a team of skilled product managers and talented marketers, you might face challenges. 

Your marketing, sales, production, and customer service teams will need training on your new product in order to serve your customers and help your product launch performance. So give them the resources they need to succeed!

More Articles

Product strategy: what it is, and how to nail it, the top 10 ux design trends of 2024, 13 brainstorming techniques every product manager needs to know, 12. prepare to overcome product launch hurdles.

Hurdles and challenges are common pain points for all product launches. Fortunately, knowing what pitfalls you might face during your product launch can help you overcome them—or avoid them entirely.

You can overcome product launch hurdles with foresight and planning. First, involve the right people when you develop your launch strategy. Your launch needs to be a collaborative effort, and each team member can help you identify potential hurdles to avoid. Second, stick to the strategy! And if your launch performance isn’t as strong as you’d hoped, make a few tweaks. Try not to change things too much as this could confuse your audience and make the launch even worse.

Being prepared will help you avoid many hurdles and help you bounce back in case your product launch stumbles along the way.

As you design your product launch campaign, think about famous and successful brands. For example, what household brand names have had successful product launches? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Apple: They frequently launch new iPhones with great success.
• Amazon: Amazon Prime has helped the company grow from selling discounted books to one of the biggest retailers in the world.
• Netflix: Although Netflix started as a mail-based DVD delivery service, it really took off when it started offering online streaming.

Many of the most successful product launches in the last few years involve technology and convenience.

Technology is cool, and consumers love to integrate it into their daily lives. The invention and launch of the iPad changed the way people think about computers. Watches have evolved past timekeeping devices into resources that track your body metrics and can even act as smartphones. And televisions have abandoned their tube design for a sleeker profile with Wi-Fi capabilities.

Other recent successful product launches have focused on people’s desires to stay home and purchase goods and services online. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime and meal delivery services such as HelloFresh and Blue Apron are extremely popular. The more convenient a product is for the consumer, the easier it is to launch—and the more successful the launch can be.

Keep in mind that even if you’re not a giant corporation, you still have plenty of product management tools at your disposal to help your launch succeed.

Collaboration And Good Resources Leads To Product Launch Success

It takes a village to launch a new product. You have to collaborate with multiple team members to design and execute your launch strategy and use the resources available to you throughout your launch campaign.

Learn how to build better products with the help of The Product Manager’s community of product experts! Subscribe to our newsletter for fresh articles, podcasts, and tool reviews that can help you flourish in all aspects of business—including successfully launching your new product!

Make a Product Launch Presentation (+ Examples & Templates)

Master how to make a product launch presentation with our guide. Explore examples usable as templates to outshine competitors and captivate your audience.

9 minute read

helped business professionals at:

Short answer

What makes an effective product launch presentation?

An effective product launch presentation captivates with a clear value proposition, engages with compelling storytelling, and persuades with data-driven results.

It's visually appealing, audience-focused, and concludes with a strong call-to-action, setting the stage for market success.

Most new products fail - does yours have what it takes to succeed?

Think about this: every year, over 30,000 new products try to make their mark, yet 95% of them don't catch on.

Most new products fail to launch because they fail to grab attention with a compelling product launch presentation.

In a sea of competition, only the most compelling, clear, and persuasive presentations manage to break through the noise.

So, how do you make sure your product doesn't become just another statistic?

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through real, actionable strategies and examples to make your product launch presentation a hit.

Let’s get started!

What is the purpose of a product launch presentation?

Capture attention: Immediately engage your audience with a striking introduction that makes them want to learn more.

Highlight value: Directly address how your product solves a specific problem or fulfills a need, making it indispensable to your audience.

Drive action: Motivate your audience to take the next step, be it purchasing, subscribing, or sharing, by presenting a clear and compelling call to action.

How to structure a product launch presentation?

Introduction: Begin with an impactful opening that immediately captures interest. Use a compelling question, a relatable problem, or a striking statistic to draw your audience in and set the tone for what’s to come.

Problem statement: Articulate the specific problem or need your product addresses. This is where you connect with your audience by highlighting a universal challenge they face.

Solution presentation: Unveil your product as the solution to the problem identified. Detail its features and benefits, emphasizing how it offers a practical and innovative solution.

Market analysis: Provide an overview of the current market landscape. This includes trends, consumer behavior, and market needs, establishing the context in which your product enters the market.

Competitive analysis: Dive into how your product stands out from the competition. Discuss your product’s unique selling points (USPs) and how these differences position it as a superior choice.

Customer testimonials or case studies: Share success stories or endorsements from early users or beta testers. Real-world examples add credibility and illustrate the tangible impact of your product.

Pricing and packages: Provide clear, straightforward information about pricing and any packages or deals. Make it easy for your audience to understand what they're getting.

Marketing strategy: Before you call your audience to action, outline your marketing strategy. This shows how you plan to support the product post-launch, reassuring your audience of its longevity and value.

Call to Action (CTA): Conclude with a compelling CTA. Direct your audience towards a specific action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a demo, or following your brand for more updates.

Interactive product launch presentation templates

Starting from scratch on a product launch presentation can feel like a huge task, especially when so much depends on this one moment.

Interactive product launch presentation templates offer a structured starting point. They come packed with features that are optimized to engage and guide your audience through the story of your product.

Grab one and create your best deck yet.

What does a product launch presentation look like?

A product launch presentation is a dynamic and interactive deck that captivates your audience, making them feel like active participants rather than passive listeners. It does more than just share information; it creates an experience.

Here’s what a modern product launch presentation looks like:

What makes a successful product launch presentation?

Engaging storytelling: It starts with a story that resonates. This narrative weaves through the entire presentation, making the problem, solution, and benefits of your product felt on a personal level.

Visual impact: High-quality images, embedded videos, and data visualization components bring your product and its benefits to life. These elements work together to create a visual story that complements your spoken words.

Interactivity : Interactive elements like narrated design, surveys, and clickable demos involve the audience, transforming your presentation into a two-way conversation.

Strong Call to Action: The presentation ends with a clear and compelling call to action. Whether it's signing up for a trial, making a purchase, or simply learning more, the CTA is direct and easy for the audience to follow.

How to make a product launch presentation?

In a world where the majority of new products struggle to make an impact, your presentation is the golden ticket to standing out. Let's explore how to craft a product launch presentation that not only showcases your product but also makes it irresistible.

1) Know your audience

Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of a successful presentation. Dive deep into their world—what challenges do your ideal customers face? What solutions have they tried and found wanting?

Personalizing your presentation to address these specific concerns makes your audience feel seen and valued, significantly boosting the relevance and impact of your message.

2) Define your presentation goals

Clarity in your presentation's purpose is crucial. Are you aiming to ignite interest, drive pre-orders, or secure investment?

This goal will dictate your presentation's structure, content, and call to action. It acts as a guiding light, ensuring every element of your presentation is aligned with achieving this objective.

3) Start with a bang

Your first words are your first impression. Start with something that sticks—a startling statistic, a compelling story, a question that piques curiosity, or a bold statement that challenges conventional wisdom.

For example:

"In a world where every second counts, we've found a way to give you hours back."

piques curiosity and positions your product as a revolutionary solution from the outset.

4) Highlight the problem

David Ogilvy's insight, “More often new products fail because they are not new enough,” underscores the importance of highlighting a genuine problem.

Make your audience feel the pinch of the issue your product resolves, making your solution not just wanted, but needed.

Illuminate the problem your product solves in a way that your audience can feel the pain. This creates a context for your product's introduction and underscores its necessity. Remember, the more relatable the problem, the more desirable the solution.

It's about striking a balance—your product shouldn't be so ahead of its time that it's alien, nor should it be so familiar that it fails to excite.

Here's a great example of a problem slide:

5) Unveil the solution

When introducing your product, clarity and simplicity are key. Explain how it addresses the problem you've outlined, focusing on features that translate directly into benefits.

This is where your product moves from being a concept to a tangible solution in the minds of your audience.

6) Highlight the benefits

Features tell, but benefits sell. Articulate how your product enriches or simplifies life for your customer. Whether it's saving time, reducing costs, or enhancing well-being, benefits that resonate on an emotional level are incredibly compelling.

Here's a great example of solution and benefits slides:

7) Conduct solid research

Akio Morita once famously said:

“We don’t believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any.”

While this may have worked for Sony, today's market demands solid research. Understanding your market, competition, and consumer behavior is non-negotiable for crafting a presentation that hits home.

Here's a great market research slide:

8) Incorporate interactive elements

Enhancing your presentation with interactive elements can transform a standard pitch into an engaging, memorable experience.

For instance, embedding interactive charts allows your audience to explore data points relevant to your product's success in real-time.

Interactive timelines can illustrate your product's development journey or future roadmap in a visually dynamic way, inviting the audience to engage with your content at their own pace.

Additionally, incorporating clickable sections within your presentation can lead viewers to more detailed information, videos, or testimonials, enriching their understanding and appreciation of your product without overwhelming them with information all at once.

These interactive elements keep your audience engaged and provide a deeper, more personalized exploration of what your product has to offer.

Here's a great example of an interactive slide:

9) Demonstrate your product in action

A live demo or a well-crafted video demonstration can be incredibly persuasive. It offers proof of concept and allows your audience to see your product in action. This tangible experience can be the push your audience needs to move from interest to action.

10) Personalize your presentation

Personalization can significantly increase the impact of your presentation.

Tailoring content to reflect your audience's specific industry, interests, or challenges shows that you understand and care about their unique needs, making your product more relevant and appealing.

Here's how you can easily personalize your presentation using Storydoc:

11) Provide social proof

Incorporating social proof lends credibility to your product. It's the difference between taking your word for it and seeing evidence of your product's impact. This builds trust and can significantly influence decision-making.

For new products, traditional forms of social proof like user testimonials may not be readily available. However, you can leverage beta tester feedback, expert endorsements, or pilot study results as powerful forms of social proof.

By using influencer search tools you can engage with industry influencers to review your product or secure a seal of approval from a reputable authority within your field. This can also serve as compelling evidence of your product's value and effectiveness.

Even highlighting the number of pre-orders or waitlist signups can act as social proof, showcasing demand and anticipation for your product.

Example of a social proof slide:

12) Present your marketing strategy

When it comes to your product launch presentation, unveiling your marketing strategy is like showing the roadmap of how you plan to introduce your product to the world.

It's not just about the product itself but how you're going to make sure it reaches the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

This part of your presentation should clearly outline the channels you'll use, whether it's social media, email marketing, influencer partnerships, or traditional advertising.

Explain how each channel fits into your overall strategy and the role it plays in engaging your target audience. This is your chance to show that you've not only created a great product but that you also have a solid plan to ensure it's a success.

Here's a great example of a marketing strategy slide:

13) Create a compelling call to action

Your conclusion should be a clear, compelling invitation to take the next step—whether that's to learn more, sign up, or make a purchase. Make this action as simple and straightforward as possible, removing any barriers to engagement.

Here's a great example of a CTA slide:

Winning product launch presentation examples

When it comes to product launches, standing out is everything. A successful presentation goes beyond facts and figures; it captivates, convinces, and converts.

Let's dive into some product launch presentation examples that do just that, leveraging interactivity to outshine the competition.

Product launch proposal

This deck showcases how interactivity can elevate a product launch presentation from good to great, engaging the audience in a way that traditional slides simply can't match.

What makes this product launch presentation great:

Engaging and interactive: The presentation uses an interactive format, inviting the audience to actively participate in the journey of discovering the product.

Clear value proposition: It effectively communicates the unique selling points of the headphones, such as advanced noise cancellation and intuitive controls, making it clear why they set a new standard in audio excellence.

Compelling narrative: The presentation tells a story of innovation and passion, from the problem statement to the solution, and wraps up with a vision for the future, making it memorable and impactful.

Light mode product newsletter

This feature launch within the light mode product newsletter is a game-changer for businesses looking to deepen engagement and track the effectiveness of their communications.

Personalization using dynamic variables: It introduces the ability to personalize using dynamic variables. This means businesses can now tailor their messages to each recipient, making communications more relevant and engaging.

Access to analytics panel: With the panel, businesses gain real-time insights into how readers are interacting with their newsletters. It tracks opens, clicks, and engagement time on each slide, providing valuable data to optimize future decks.

Clickable links: You can incorporate clickable links throughout the presentation. These links offer the audience the opportunity to explore additional information, access detailed resources, or even sign up for product demos.

SaaS product demonstration presentation

This product demonstration presentation effectively communicates the value of the company’s solution, making a strong case for why businesses should consider their platform to revolutionize their operations.

Clean design: The presentation leverages a clean design with ample white space, making it easy for viewers to focus on key information without feeling overwhelmed.

The option to embed videos: The option to embed a product demo video directly into the deck allows potential customers to see the product in action within the context of the presentation.

Clear pricing package overview: The presentation includes a clear overview of pricing packages, making it easy for potential customers to understand their options and make informed decisions.

Physical product demo presentation

This product launch presentation aims to bridge the gap between traditional business processes and modern efficiency, highlighting a physical product's role in streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity.

Option to extract branding from a website: One of the standout features is the ability to extract branding elements directly from a website, ensuring that the presentation is consistent with the company's branding.

Access to analytics panel: The presentation includes access to an analytics panel that provides insights into how viewers are interacting with the deck.

Option to edit details post-send: This presentation allows for the editing of details even after it has been sent. This ensures that the information remains up-to-date, reflecting any changes in the product, pricing, or other critical details.

Software demo presentation

Through a detailed walkthrough of the software's capabilities, this presentation aims to illustrate the seamless integration of tasks, the automation of workflows, and the facilitation of real-time collaboration, all designed to optimize performance and eliminate inefficiency.

Option to embed links to case studies: This feature allows viewers to explore in-depth examples of how your software has been successfully implemented in various businesses, providing tangible evidence of its effectiveness and versatility.

CRM integrations: The presentation leverages CRM integrations, enabling it to pull live data directly into the deck.

Responsive design: The presentation is designed with responsiveness in mind, ensuring that it looks and functions flawlessly across a variety of devices and screen sizes.

ERP software demo presentation

This product launch presentation is designed to showcase how the offered solution can revolutionize business operations by integrating various processes into a single, efficient system.

It aims to demonstrate the software's ability to streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and significantly improve operational efficiency across the board.

Quirky design: The presentation employs a quirky and engaging design that mirrors the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the ERP industry.

Use of grayed-out content to direct attention: Strategic use of grayed-out content effectively directs viewers' attention to the most critical information, ensuring that key features and benefits of the ERP software are highlighted.

Logo placeholders: The presentation includes customizable logo placeholders, empowered by a logo finder feature, allowing for seamless integration of your or partner branding directly into the presentation.

Modern product launch

This product launch presentation introduces a groundbreaking solution designed to revolutionize how companies operate. It promises to streamline operations and boost efficiency through innovative features tailored for the digital era.

Interactive approach: Using an interactive platform, the presentation engages the audience directly, making the exploration of the product an immersive experience.

Clear solution to a common problem: It effectively communicates how the product addresses the pressing needs of businesses looking to enhance collaboration and automate processes in a rapidly evolving corporate landscape.

Visionary and inspirational message: The presentation focuses on the product's features but also shares a compelling vision for the future, emphasizing the transformative impact on businesses and the industry as a whole.

Light mode product launch

This approach to the product launch educates the audience about the product's capabilities and gets them excited about the potential for transformation in their own operations.

User-centric design: The presentation emphasizes the product's user-friendly interface, showcasing how it simplifies complex processes for everyday users, making technology accessible to all levels of technical expertise.

Direct address of business needs: The presentation zeroes in on the specific challenges faced by companies today, demonstrating how the product directly solves these issues with innovative technology.

Scalability and integration: It highlights the product's ability to scale with business growth and seamlessly integrate with existing systems, ensuring a smooth transition and long-term utility.

Dark mode product launch

This striking dark mode-themed presentation unveils a product designed to captivate and cater to modern businesses. This launch introduces a groundbreaking product with a keen eye on user experience and market demands.

Comprehensive market analysis: It dives deep into market trends, consumer behaviors, and competitive landscapes. It provides a detailed view of where the product fits within the current market and how it's poised to meet emerging needs.

Segmented marketing strategies: The content is organized into tabs, each detailing strategies tailored to different segments of their target audience. This ensures that potential customers receive personalized and relevant information.

Multiple smart CTAs: The presentation features various smart Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons, guiding viewers through a journey from initial interest to taking actionable steps.

Versatile product launch presentation

In a market flooded with standard pitches, this deck sets a new standard. By leveraging the latest in presentation technology, it crafts a narrative that's not only about a product but about inviting the audience into a new ecosystem of efficiency and innovation.

Use of grayed-out content: It uses grayed-out content to subtly direct viewers' attention to key areas. This visual technique ensures that the focus is on the most important information, enhancing the audience's retention.

Embeddable videos: It comes with the option to embed videos that can be played directly within the deck. This allows you to showcase your product in action, providing an immersive experience that text and static images cannot achieve.

Data visualization components: The deck incorporates advanced data visualization components, enabling the presentation of complex data in an intuitive and easily digestible format.

Modern product demo presentation

By incorporating interactive features, this modern product demo presentation effectively captures the audience's attention and guides them through a compelling narrative, from identifying with the problem to seeing the offered product as the ideal solution.

Clear value proposition: The presentation effectively communicates the company’s value proposition, outlining how their SaaS product can transform business operations.

Problem-solution framework: The presentation is structured around a clear problem-solution framework, making it easy for the audience to understand the context and need for the offered product.

Option to embed multiple smart CTAs: The presentation enhances interactivity by incorporating the option to embed multiple smart CTAs (Calls to Action). This makes readers more likely to take the desired next step after viewing the deck.

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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What to Include in a New Product Launch Checklist [+Example to Get You Started]

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 6 min

You may be considered an expert product manager. You know your job well and have successfully launched dozens of products. You know what you’re doing and know how to get the job done. Do you really need a product launch checklist?

Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right , explains that mistakes will be made when professionals don’t consult checklists.

Even if you have been extensively involved in product launch planning, a checklist ensures that no task is overlooked. As your job description changes and you are given more responsibility, this tool can help you create a repeatable product launch process and reduce the probability of error. Learn what to include within your new product launch checklist.

Benefits of using a product launch checklist

Initially, a new product launch checklist may seem like just one more burden to be piled on top of all your other responsibilities. But take a look at the benefits it can provide for you and people across different teams. A product launch checklist can:

• Help you see both the big picture and the details of a product launch.
• Help you prepare for any situation, even possible mistakes.
• Make your plan available to your cross-functional product team to keep all team members on the same page and on track.
• Break your end goal into manageable tasks and establish dependencies to delegate work more easily.

7 basic steps of the product launch process

Although there are many moving parts and tasks involved with launching a new product, the process boils down to these few steps:

• Design and build the product.
• Ensure that you have the manufacturing, production, or delivery processes in place to meet demand for your product or service.
• Plan your go-to-market strategy, including a positioning statement .
• Create promotional materials and identify PR opportunities.
• Prepare your sales and support teams.
• Launch the product.

All of these phases should be addressed in your product launch checklist, including all of the necessary activities among cross-functional teams and departments. 

Not sure where to begin with product positioning? Take a look at our product positioning templates and additional tools for help.

What should a new product launch plan include?

Releasing a new product can be exciting and stressful. A successful product launch can bring in the revenue you need to hire more people and to develop new products. A disastrous product launch can put you out of business. 

To satisfy customers, sell the product, and grow your business, you need to follow a successful product rollout plan. 

The following example can give you a good idea of the elements that you should incorporate into your product launch checklist—but keep in mind that this is not a definitive list and should be customized based on your product and your type of business.

Product design and features

• Define the features that differentiate your products from the competition.
• Make sure that the engineering team has built the product as defined and that the product meets all design requirements, including the UX/UI design.
• Make sure new features and functions have been tested and deployed into production.
• Make sure you have all of the required regulatory certifications and approvals.
• Ensure that product packaging has the correct colors and branding for your product and company, including product photos or illustrations, logos, and fonts.

If you work in tech, create an agile release plan to ensure that important features come out on schedule.

Operations logistics

• Ensure that manufacturing plans and processes are in place.
• Ensure production workers have been trained.
• Make sure you have enough supply to meet demand.
• Ensure that your distribution channels are open.

Go-to-market plan

• Select a launch date that can feasibly be met to launch a quality product.
• Determine your branding, including fonts, colors, logos, and slogans that will give your product a voice.
• Decide how the product will be announced.
• Determine where the product will be marketed—on social media, blogs, TV and radio advertising, and so on.
• Develop promotional materials and sales materials.
• Ensure that packaging has been designed, approved, and ordered.
• Make sure the website is designed or updated and ready to accept customer orders.

Sales and support teams

• Ensure that sales reps have received the proper training to talk with customers about features and demo products as necessary.
• Provide sales team with updated sales collateral and update existing materials to include new features and functionality.
• Make sure the support team understands how new features work so they can help customers on the phone or in online chats.
• Provide customer success team with the necessary technical materials such as release notes, technical data sheets, and FAQs to more effectively help customers.

See why product training is critical for your sales and support teams.

Training documentation

• Ensure that user documentation, reference guides, installation, and maintenance manuals have been completed and reviewed.
• If you are selling your product in foreign markets, make sure applicable translated documentation materials are available.
• Include Quick Start guides where applicable.
• Ensure that training manuals, online education courses, and stand-up training classes are ready for customers who need training to use the product.
• Meet to discuss went well and what went wrong and determine how the process might go more smoothly next time.
• Revise processes as needed and begin planning the next version of the product.
• Identify tasks to be completed by various teams, such as engineering, testing, marketing, sales, production, and so on.
• Make sure all departments understand their roles and that they have enough resources to complete their tasks.

Pro tip for creating your new product checklist

When you have identified what works well, save it. Create a template for your product launch checklist. If you make them easily accessible from the cloud, everyone can follow your set standards. Each time your company decides to launch a new service or release new software features, you can pull up this documentation, or even create a new project within your project management software, to consistently cover all the tasks that lead to success.

Every product release is different, and you may find that you need to revise your checklist to reflect specific needs from release to release—but a template will give you a good start.

As part of your product rollout plan, you might want to create other documentation in addition to your checklist to make sure all team members are aware of the plan and its progress. Visuals, such as Gantt charts , Kanban boards , or dashboards , can keep your team more engaged than text-heavy documents. It will be easier for them to quickly scan and digest a large amount of data and assess what tasks still need to be completed.

With a new product launch checklist in hand, you’ll be able to be prepared, make customers excited about your new offerings, and grow your business.

Try one of the templates above to get your processes in order, or learn more about product positioning  before you launch.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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How to Plan a Successful Product Launch Event

The perfect product launch event idea goes beyond mere logistics; it is a carefully crafted experience that demonstrates your brand's innovation, expertise, and vision. Regardless of the event you’re planning for the final reveal, the key is to be organized and coordinated.

Abdul Wahab

After months of fine-tuning your product to perfection, building anticipation and hype through targeted marketing campaigns, and laying the groundwork for a positive brand image, it’s time for the big reveal.

Even the most revolutionary products won’t sell themselves. For a product launch to embody success, it must be powered by a well-organized launch event. A platform to showcase your latest offering to the world, capitalize on the pre-established hype, and convert your leads to sales.

The perfect product launch event idea goes beyond mere logistics; it is a carefully crafted experience that demonstrates your brand's innovation, expertise, and vision. Regardless of the event you’re planning for the final reveal, the key is to be organized and coordinated.

While your product development is underway and launch strategies are finalized, getting everyone aligned and motivated for the main event is challenging. We’ve set up a comprehensive guide to help you organize a successful launch event.

New Product Launch Event: An Overview

A product launch event is an organized occasion aimed at introducing a new product or service to the market. From a startup’s perspective, the event marks its official entry into the market space, enabling access to the general public and flaunting it to the mainstream media circuit.

Enticing the audience and generating sales isn’t a company’s only priority behind the launch event. In fact, it serves as a platform to establish relationships with industry experts, media personalities, influencers, and key stakeholders. The networking opportunities allow attendees to connect with learn from relevant media personalities.

Companies utilize various marketing channels, press releases, and influencer collaborations to generate buzz and create awareness before, during, and after the launch event. An overarching event amplifies the reach and impact of the product launch in attracting potential customers and propelling sales.

The Ideal Product Launch Event: In-Person, Hybrid, or Virtual?

While the event marks the completion of the pre-launch marketing campaigns , it sets the stage and builds momentum for future promotion activities. In most cases, the success of your product depends on how you organize the launch event and the manner in which you present it.

In recent times, in-person, hybrid, and virtual product launch events have gained significance, each offering unique advantages and considerations. Make sure your preferred mode of launch event aligns with your target audience, the nature of your product, and pre-identified launch goals.

In-Person Product Launch

Most established enterprises take on the traditional in-person approach to launching a new product . In-person events showcase your product's dynamic and tangible introduction to the audience, fostering deeper connections and engagement.

Such exclusive launches offer a unique opportunity for attendees to interact with the product physically. People who see, touch, and experience your product’s features firsthand are more inclined to convert into customers.

In-person launch events are often set at grand venues and incorporate live presentations and interaction sessions to develop excitement and anticipation for the product. Besides, face-to-face networking opportunities promote personal connections and potential business relationships with industry professionals and stakeholders.

Hybrid Product Launch

Hybrid launch events take an inclusive approach by combining the best in-person and virtual elements. In a hybrid launch, the audience has the autonomy to choose whether to participate in person or virtually attend the meeting, accommodating varying preferences.

By blending physical and virtual components, hybrid events provide expanded reach and accessibility to people who are unlikely to ensure in-person attendance. Hosting a hybrid product launch allows enhanced engagement, offering features such as live Q&A sessions, real-time polls, and networking opportunities for both physical and virtual attendees.

Virtual Product Launch

With global accessibility, virtual product events break down geographical barriers, allowing people from anywhere worldwide to participate without the need for travel. These events casually became popular during the Covid-19 epidemic when in-person meetings were restricted.

From a business standpoint, a virtual event provides valuable data analytics, allowing organizers to measure attendee engagement, track leads, and gather insights for future marketing efforts.

Attendees can participate from the comfort of their own homes or offices, accommodating diverse schedules and time zones. Zero venue rentals and travel expenses make virtual-oproduct launch events cost-effective for organizers and attendees.

Steps to Organize a Successful Product Launch Event

Regardless of the product or service you’re launching or the extent of your logistics budget, planning for a product launch is a complex process that requires mutual planning and coordination.

If all goes well, you’ll be bestowed with a high influx of customers storming in on your landing pag e. But with a slight mishap or shortcoming in arrangement, you may end up with a possible product launch failure .

Whether you’re preparing for an intimate dinner with the VIPs and stakeholders or arranging a multi-day conference, organize a launch event your product deserves. Follow these five steps to stay on track with your deadline.

Pre-Event Planning and Preparation

Most companies initiate their event planning while the product is under development. Setting a pre-launch campaign checklist ensures efficient resource allocation and establishes clear objectives and strategies for the main event. Pre-event planning formally includes the following tasks:

Outline the Business Objectives

Establishing key business objectives and milestones beforehand enable event organizers to plan and execute the product launch in a manner that supports these overarching goals. With a clear focus and direction, product marketing teams can determine desired outcomes, target audiences, and messaging that must be conveyed during the event.

Well-defined business objectives ensure effective measurement and evaluation of the event's success. Track KPIs aligned with the objective, like user engagement, website traffic, and leads generated, to ensure the event’s impact in better brand recognition.

Set a Budget and Allocate Resources

Organizations can manage their finances by determining the necessary expenses upfront and avoid overspending. The process involves identifying required staff members, classifying equipment and event technology, and planning marketing efforts.

Budgeting helps businesses identify potential risks associated with the product launch and allocate resources to mitigate the negative impacts.

Establish a Timeline

A timeline provides a structured framework to plan and coordinate all the necessary tasks and activities leading up to the event. The framework assists management staff in venue booking, content creation, logistics coordination, and team assignments by the time product is released.

With a deadline in effect, companies can impose accountability on their staff to keep them on track for a timely launch. This avoids last-minute rushes and allows for ample time to address any unexpected challenges or revisions that may arise during the planning process.

Create a Cross-Functional Launch Team

A cross-functional launch team harbors individuals from various departments and disciplines within an organization, directing them toward a unified objective. This diversity of expertise derives a holistic approach, incorporating insights from marketing, sales, product development, and operations staff.

Involve stakeholders from different areas of the organization to identify and address potential risks and challenges early on. Qualified team players contribute to a more robust risk assessment process and develop contingency plans to avoid discrepancies that might derail the launch event.

Event Management and Logistics

With pre-event planning taken care of, the success and credibility of your product launch come down to the management and logistics. The genre encompasses the planning, coordination, and execution of activities involved in carrying out a promising event. Let’s review every task extensively for better understanding.

Select the Perfect Venue

When debuting in a competitive market space, your venue could play a decisive role in guaranteeing the success of your upcoming product. Select a venue that aligns with the theme of your launch event and reflects your brand's image and values.

Whether you’re proposing a VIP dinner with stakeholders and investors or an elaborate presentation focused on potential customers, consider your target audience’s preferences and inclinations.

Sometimes you need to think outside the box - beyond the conventional hot spots and public auditoriums. To create a persona that lives up to your brand, consider renting local museums, libraries, and even private residences.

Choose a venue that's captivating and immersive for your audience to associate your brand with and amplifies the impact of your launch. But it must never outshine your product. If your guests are too busy admiring the venue, they’re least likely to be focused or interested in buying your product.

Determine the Event Format

Audience loves attention. Setting your launch event's tone, layout, and format to the attendees' preferences and behavior ensures a higher engagement and lead conversion. To give your audience a personalized experience, incorporate the following tactics into your launch program:

• Define the key message you want to convey to your audience. Do you want to educate, inspire, or entertain? The event format should align with these goals and effectively communicate your message to attendees .
• Determine the level of engagement you want to achieve with your audience. A keynote presentation effectively shares important information, while a panel discussion or workshop encourages audience participation and engagement .
• Figure out your content delivery tactics . Will it be through presentations, demonstrations, hands-on experiences, or a combination of different formats? Opt for the best approach to compellingly showcase your product's features, benefits, and USPs.
• If you have a limited timeframe, a concise and focused format, such as a keynote or product demo, may be appropriate. For longer events, incorporate multiple elements like interactive sessions and networking opportunities.
• Is your audience more inclined towards formal, professional settings or prefer interactive environments? Align the event format with your brand's identity that best caters to the preferences and expectations of your audience.

Promotion and Marketing

What most entrepreneurs fear about a product launch event is launching to crickets - not building enough hype and anticipation in the audience ahead of the launch. As a marketer, your primary agenda is enticing and preparing an audience about an upcoming launch and ensuring their attendance. Equip yourself with the most effective marketing tactics to build the hype around your launch event.

Create Compelling Event Messaging

In a competitive market, event messaging helps differentiate your product from others. It allows you to highlight the unique selling points and advantages that set your product apart. By effectively communicating these USPs, you can create a compelling case for customers to choose your offering over competitors.

Craft your messaging in a way that establishes an emotional connection with the audience, sparks their curiosity on the subject, and compels them to purchase. Keep your messaging consistent across all channels to reinforce your brand’s personality and values to the target audience.

Leverage Social Media for Campaigns

With billions of active users and the highest user engagement ratio, social media makes the ideal marketing channel to promote your upcoming product launch event. Incorporate these tips to harness the power of social media marketing and drive attendance around your product launch:

• Develop engaging and informative content highlighting your product's key features and benefits using text, images, videos, and infographics.
• Plan and schedule your social media posts in advance to maintain a consistent flow of content leading up to the event.
• Research and use relevant hashtags related to your product, event, or industry to increase your content's discoverability and help you reach a wider audience.
• Respond to your audience's comments , messages, and mentions to show genuine interest and build bountiful relationships with them.
• Leverage live streaming features on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube while delivering keynote speeches and offering product demonstrations.
• Allocate a portion of your budget to paid social media advertising . Invest in sponsored posts, targeted ads, or boosted content to increase the reach of your launch event.

Collaborate with Influencers and Celebrities

Startups and businesses often collaborate with social media influencers and mainstream celebrities to expand their reach and enhance credibility. Influencers have established trust and a loyal fanbase within their niche, making them powerful advocates for your brand.

When reaching out to influencers, highlight the mutual benefits of collaboration. Emphasize what they would achieve with the partnership. Encourage them to create sponsored posts, product reviews, and giveaways to create buzz around your launch.

Event-Day Content Creation

Enticing your target audience to your product launch event is only part of the process. What truly matters is keeping them engaged throughout the event and eventually converting them into early adopters. The idea is to capture and share real-time content engaging attendees and creating lasting impressions.

Devise Compelling Presentations

Storytelling has been growing phenomenally as a marketing tactic over the years. Marketers nowadays weave a compelling narrative around their product launch that captures the audience’s attention, bridges the emotional gap, and urge them to stay on track with you.

While you outline the product USPs, give your audience a glimpse of the backstage storyline. Incorporate multimedia elements to make your presentation dynamic and engaging. Make sure you add customer testimonials, case studies, and anecdotes that back your story regarding the product’s real-life impacts.

Showcase the Product Prototype

Instead of simply talking about your product and laying out its benefits, consider showing it in action, allowing attendees to interact with it firsthand. Demonstrations and prototypes help your audience visualize how your product solves their pain points or meets their needs.

Seeing is believing. Showcasing a working prototype establishes your credibility as a developer. A tangible representation of your product builds trust and confidence among your audience.

Encourage Audience Participation

Here are a few ways to promote audience participation in a product launch event:

• Allocate time for interactive Q&A sessions where attendees can ask questions about your product.
• Utilize live polling or survey tools to gather real-time feedback and opinions from the audience.
• Create an event hashtag and encourage attendees to share their experiences, thoughts, and questions on social media.
• Include quizzes, contests, or challenges related to your product or industry to make the event interactive and fun.
• Ask the audience for their opinions on specific topics concerning future product developments.

Post-Event Follow-up Activities

A product launch isn’t limited to the launch day; rather, its impacts linger beyond. Companies instate post-event follow-up activities to maintain and leverage the event’s momentum and strengthen customer relationships.

Gather Feedback from Attendees

Audience response serves as a secondhand opinion on the effectiveness and success of the product launch. Organizers review feedback to understand attendees' experiences and suggestions to gauge the event's credibility and impact.

The process involves conducting surveys and distributing questionnaires to the attendees, requesting their input on various launch elements. Analyze their response to identify areas for improvement and enhance future events.

Share Event Highlights on Social Media

Sharing launch event highlights on your social media accounts helps amplify your reach and impact beyond the physical or virtual gathering. While it increases your visibility to a broader audience, you can actively engage with participants to reinforce your brand’s credibility and general perception of the public.

Highlighting key moments, exciting announcements, or captivating visuals from the event can create a sense of FOMO among those who didn't attend your event. This can spur interest and curiosity, generating buzz around your product and encouraging people to learn more.

Plan Ongoing Marketing Efforts

Reviewing attendee feedback, performance indicators , and pre-determined launch metrics enable marketers to assess the impact of their launch strategy. Focus your ongoing marketing efforts on the established momentum and leverage it to spread your message to a broader audience.

Based on this analysis, you can develop a content marketing plan that includes blog posts, whitepapers, and case studies focusing on product benefits for the next event. Or you can leverage your relationships with attendees and media partners during the event to generate press coverage and endorsements.

Ending Note

A launch event is merely the face of your product launch. Understanding market dynamics, learning audience behavior, and devising marketing strategies to reach them - a lot goes into planning and executing an unforgettable product launch event.

Based on how well the attendees receive, your launch event offers insight into your marketing efforts. Whether you’re inbound for long-lasting sales and continued brand recognition or the event success will end up in smoke.

With so much at stake, you can’t risk your launch event with ineffective planning and consideration. From defining your pre-launch marketing policy to securing the ideal venue and sending out exclusive invitations, Prefinery.com can assist you at every step of your product launch event.

What to consider when organizing a product launch event?

When planning a launch event for your product, consider your business objectives, the type of launch you’re aiming for, securing a proper venue, and finalizing your event format.

When should I start planning a product launch event?

The ideal time to start planning for a product launch event is at least 3 - 6 months in advance. This is enough time to devise a timeline, secure a venue, and accomplish your marketing objectives.

How can I measure the success of a product launch event?

Measuring the success of a product launch event involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as attendee satisfaction, media coverage, lead generation, sales conversions, and social media engagement. Gather feedback from event participants, conduct post-event surveys, and analyze data to assess the event's impact and determine its success in meeting pre-identified goals. Use the feedback to fine-tune launch ideas for your next product launch event.

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3 product launch marketing plan examples

Mastering the art of the product launch: 3 product launch examples plus our recommended process and templates for a successful product launch

You are working during one of the most entrepreneurial eras in history. Thanks to digital media, launching a product to a global audience has never been so manageable.

Equally, competition has never been as fierce. To successfully launch your product online, you need a winning product launch marketing plan. For a successful launch, product marketers need to work with marketing communications experts so that the benefits of the new product are carefully positioned and then, the best online reach channels are selected to reach your audience. We'll show how you can use the RACE framework to review the different media options and build a funnel to maximize interest and sales in your new product.

By using this type of strategic planning and following best practices for using digital channels, product marketers can avoid common product launch pitfalls such as targeting the wrong audience, using the wrong type of content and not optimizing the right customer journeys.

Within new product development (NPD), marketing can make or break the launch. That's why we recommend utilizing our tried and tested marketing processes and templates, to acquire and retain high-value customers from the off.

The RACE Framework

We created the RACE Framework as a structure for marketers and managers to plan, manage and optimize their customer journeys across all the key customer touchpoints  - including digital media and experiences.

This visual shows all the potential interactions that can be used during a product launch campaign. You can use it as a visual checklist of what’s required. Keep reading to the end to see examples of it in practice.

Why do you need a product launch marketing plan?

Creating a product launch marketing plan helps you take a structured approach to exploring potential opportunities for your launch, defining your aims, and preparing your launch timeline. This applies to all product marketing activity relating to your launch:

• Post-launch

Planning your product launch empowers you to prioritize resources in a logical and effective order.  With a product launch campaign, as with so many issues related to business, whilst you can plan for most eventualities, you should also plan for the unexpected. That's why we recommend using an actionable framework to structure your marketing, and make adjustments.

In this blog, we'll cover the fundamentals of planning for your launch, plus examples of product marketing in action, and advice to help you get your launch over the line.

If you're looking for new marketing solutions tools to streamline your marketing activities and boost your performance, did you know Smart Insights offers both free and paid membership options? Find out more about marketing tools, templates, and memberships , integrated across RACE, and chose the right plan for your business.

How to structure your marketing plans with RACE

You may know the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework, integrated across 5 essential outcomes of any marketing or digital marketing plan:

The RACE Framework gives marketers and managers quick access to practical, actionable data about their customers' experiences of your product. That's why we recommend using RACE to plan your product launch campaign.

How do you create a marketing plan for a product launch?

Product marketing is a unique area of marketing. Product marketers work with a critical focus on their products and how customers perceive and utilize them, as shown in this definition by the Product Marketing Alliance .

"Product marketing is the driving force behind getting products to market - and keeping them there. Product marketers are the overarching voices of the customer, masterminds of messaging, enablers of sales, and accelerators of adoption."

That's why, when planning your product launch, it's essential that you chose a customer-focused framework.

Our internationally acclaimed RACE Framework breaks down your product launch campaign plan through a simple customer-focused experience funnel. We recommend these 5 steps to guide you from initial planning to customer sales activation and long-term brand building and advocacy.

A simple 5-step product launch plan based on RACE.

• PLAN. Plan your launch - your product launch marketing plan Research, benchmark, and set objectives against your planned, focused investment in branded content to promote your product. We recommend creating forecasts of how many you will reach and convert using our conversion funnel spreadsheets which estimate the number of people you will be able to reach and convert for each marketing channel you invest in. This will also help set expectations of what is achievable given the launch budgets you have available.
• REACH. Create awareness in your market - your product launch campaign plan Here you define how you will use your selected paid, owned, and earned media campaigns to attract your target audiences to discover your product. See our article How to structure an effective campaign plan to win more customers for details of each stage of creating the campaign plan. Key paid media techniques to consider include Google Ads  Paid social (for example using LinkedIn or Meta platforms). Given the cost of these media and particularly if your launch category has low search intent, Digital PR including influencer marketing and co-marketing are recommended to be your main focus for earned media to reach your audience most cost-effectively.
• ACT. Influence user interaction - your content marketing plan Here you are looking to engage your audience who has shown interest in your product. Content marketing is particularly important here, with using rich media and video key techniques to invest in to get cut through. Developing clear landing pages explaining features and benefits are hygiene factors today. You need to provide WOW. Use content ideation to select the right types of content to engage your audience to entertain, inspire, educate, and convince them of your product.  Use our content marketing matrix to brainstorm the best content formats to use for your product launch.
• CONVERT. Convert interest to customers. This is the vital part of achieving your commercial targets by winning more online and offline sales. To achieve this you need a contact strategy which starts with how you will acquire leads through using the right lead magnets to gain engagement and then nurture this interest through email marketing and ad retargeting.
• ENGAGE. Encourage post-purchase engagement and recommendations. This is often forgotten, but turning early adopter customers into loyal advocates is particularly important with product launches to encourage others to buy. So make sure you build this into your customer onboarding plan.

For each of these stages, we recommend specific actions to take and resources and tools in our guide. You can download your copy of our RACE marketing plan below, which is applicable to both B2B and B2C markets as you'll see below. But first, read our top tips on how to create a successful product launch marketing plan.

Free marketing plan template download

Use our simple three-page Microsoft Word template if you work for a small business who needs to quickly create a simple, practical marketing plan quickly. It's structured in three sections of steps using the acclaimed RACE Growth System for improving marketing results

Access the Free marketing plan template

New product launch marketing plan examples

It can be difficult to start from scratch. Included below are some consumer and business product launch examples:

Example – B2C product launch objective: Gaming

To become the bestselling maze-building gaming app.

"Every maze is based on highly accurate maps of some of the world’s most popular actual mazes."

Example – B2C product launch plan

• Conduct market research, analyze competitors, and understand gaming app industry trends.
• Develop the maze-building gaming app with accurate maps and perform extensive testing for functionality and performance.
• Create a unique brand identity, define key attributes, messaging, and positioning that highlight the app's features and realistic maze experiences.
• Design a comprehensive marketing strategy using social media, influencers, app store optimization, and targeted advertising.
• Optimize the app's presence on app stores through keywords, descriptions, screenshots, and icons using ASO techniques.
• Implement user acquisition campaigns, offer incentives, rewards, and updates to engage and retain users.
• Track KPIs, analyze data for improvement, gather user feedback, and iterate the app to enhance user satisfaction.

Example – B2C product launch objective: Security

To become the go-to smart home security system for residential households.

"Our smart home security system provides advanced features such as facial recognition, real-time alerts, and seamless integration with other smart devices."

Example – B2C product launch plan:

•  Conduct market research to understand the target audience and competition.
• Develop a user-friendly and secure smart home security system with advanced features.
• Create a compelling brand identity and messaging that highlights the system's benefits.
• Design a comprehensive marketing strategy using online and offline channels to generate awareness and interest.
• Establish partnerships with retailers, e-commerce platforms, and influencers to expand distribution.
• Provide customer education, support, and user-friendly documentation.
• Continuously gather customer feedback and update the system to meet evolving needs, leveraging positive experiences to build trust and credibility.

Example – B2B product launch objective: SaaS

To become the most trusted online small business accounts software platform you can buy.

"Our software package has been developed in partnership with each of USA’s top three small business accountancy practices."

Example – B2B product launch plan

• Conduct in-depth market research to understand the needs and preferences of small businesses seeking online accounting software.
• Collaborate with small business accountancy practices to develop a comprehensive and reliable online small business accounts software package.
• Create a strong brand identity and positioning that emphasizes trustworthiness, reliability, and expertise in small business accounting.
• Design a targeted marketing and communication strategy to reach small businesses, highlighting the software's benefits, ease of use, and industry partnerships.
• Establish sales channels, partnerships, and online platforms to ensure widespread availability and easy access to the software for small businesses.
• Provide seamless onboarding processes, comprehensive training materials, and responsive customer support to assist small businesses in adopting and utilizing the software effectively.
• Regularly collect customer feedback to identify areas for improvement, prioritize updates, and enhance the software based on the evolving needs of small business owners.

As you can see, a new product launch is no mean feat. It's likely you'll need a variety of marketing solutions to help bring your plan to fruition. That's where we come in, as Smart Insights has marketing solutions structured across 20 marketing toolkits , including lifecycle marketing, digital experience, and sector technology.

Expert advice for optimizing your product launch marketing plan

We hope you have found these examples useful. Keep reading for expert advice on optimizing your own product launch marketing plan.

"Plan for the worst"

With so many variables, it would be foolish to suggest you can always be fully prepared for anything. However, by reviewing the risks and defining steps to mitigate them you will be able to remain in control of each stage of your launch, even if the unexpected happens, you’ll be ready to respond to it coolly, rather than react on the spur-of-the-moment.

Smart Insights Business Members can track internal and external factors at play within their NPD eco-system, and adapt accordingly with solutions such as our SWOT/TOWS template , PESTLE analysis template , and Customer journey mapping template .

"Define your product vision and how to reach it"

Depending on your intended market, you will need to develop a clear all-encompassing vision. Each aspect of your product launch vision is supported by a substantiating statement.

Geoffry Moore offers a simple template for drafting a vision statement , based on a fill-in-the-blank approach.

"For [our target customer], who [customer’s need], the [product] is a [product category or description] that [unique benefits and selling points]. Unlike [competitors or current methods], our product [main differentiators]."

Our Digital Experience Learning Path module, Define Digital Value Proposition , helps product and brand marketers craft a powerful DVP, using tools such as the 6Cs of customer motivation and benchmarking.

"Identify your early adopters"

You are intimately familiar with every aspect of your new product.  However, the same cannot be said for your prospective markets and audience.

Initially the most important of these markets are ‘early adopters’, particularly where you are launching into a relatively new product category.

During the first phase of your planning, beyond simply considering what your product is, think about how and where it fits on the ‘radar’ of your early adopter marketplace.  This is crucial.

Not only does it help ensure the features and benefits of your product are understood, but importantly, it sends out a signal that helps early adopters distinguish your offering against competitors who may produce a similar product.

You can download our product launch playbook to find out more about how to build a marketing plan for each stage of your product launch, across B2B and B2C industries, with examples.

"Create a product launch campaign plan"

Draw up a timeline covering the build-up, launch, and post-launch, mapping each stage against benefit messages aimed at specific markets, along with benchmarks against which you can explain any value propositions against competitors.

When developing your campaign plan, consider how you can work with potential influencers early on. Online, this has far-reaching implications that extend to how and where you promote your product. For example, which influencer blogs should you have in your sights? How about podcasts and trusted journalist reviews?

Smart Insights Business Members can use our marketing campaign plan template to structure their product launch timeline across campaign goals, target audience and targeting, key messages, media plan and budget, campaign assets, execution, and tracking.

"Use tracking KPIs to review audience engagement"

When launching a new product, as with any campaign, you will want to define success criteria, but it’s particularly important for a new product launch campaign since uncertainty means you will need to adjust your approach.

Key performance indicators include:

• Video downloads.
• Infographic downloads.
• Brochure downloads.
• Click Through Rates
• Volume-based KPIs
• Total revenue from customers acquired through online marketing.
• Cost Per Lead.
• Customer value.

Break down your KPIs by channel to measure and compare your results . Metrics here could include:

• Social media traffic and conversion rates.
• Email traffic - including benchmarking segmented lists.
• Organic traffic, bounce rates, pages per session.
• Landing page conversion rates, desktop and mobile.

Finally, don't forget that building the option to update or upgrade a product over time can enhance your income revenue stream. Engagement is a key feature of successful RACE product launch marketing plans, don't undo all your hard work by failing to keep customers engaged post-purchase.

'Engage' is the final stage of our RACE funnel and one that can be overlooked by marketers who don't have a strategic approach to their marketing. But there are so many advantages both interaction and engagement that can boost conversion. Find out more about how to boost your customer engagement and all the other parts of our purchase funnel when you download your free guide today.

Free digital marketing plan template

Our popular marketing planning template is structured across the Smart Insights RACE Framework. Join Smart Insights as a Free Member to download our digital marketing plan template today

Access the Free digital marketing plan template

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here . Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice . In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary . Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question .

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Marketing Management Assignment: A New Product Launch By Unilever

• Present a critical assessment of the organization’s current internal organizational environment and its external market environment and the potential impacts on your chosen organization’s future marketing strategies.
• Critically examine Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning Analysis for the product or services launched by the organization and formulate the strategic marketing plan for the new product/service.
• In the light of the above findings and employing as appropriate, state and justify Marketing Performance targets for each of the next 3 years for sales volume, sales value and organizational profit contribution.
• Based on the targets that you have set for your organization. Undertake a Marketing Mix analysis (either 4 or 7 Ps) to develop and critically discuss an action plan to deliver these performance targets over the next 3 years.
• Within the action plan (as mentioned in 4), include a brand building strategy. Justify your choices of plans and strategies

Executive Summary The following marketing management assignment entails a detailed overview of the British company Unilever and the launch of their new product, non-dairy ice cream. The environments, in which the business operates, both internal and external, have been studied. SWOT analysis and Ansoff Matrix are used for these purposes. It also contains details regarding the product mix and the performance it wishes to achieve. The report ends with a justification of the strategies undertaken to ensure the success of the business’s new product.

1.0 Introduction Unilever plc is a multinational company dealing with consumer goods and is based out of London in the United Kingdom. The company has a diverse range of products available for manufacture and selling. Their product lines span over items like energy drinks, candies, food items, baby food, frozen goods, juices, beauty products, soft drinks, ice-creams, bottled water, and even toothpaste to name a few (Unilever global, 2018). The company has a turnover of greater than 50 billion and is regarded as the largest manufacturer of body soap in the world.

The current product in question is a new addition to the company’s dairy-free range of ice-creams under its Magnum brand. They plan to introduce this new flavour, i.e. Sea Salt Caramel soon.

Environmental Analysis Assessment of the External Environment

Assessment of the Internal Environment

Critical Evaluation In the case of the external environment analysis, the following points can be noted. Political: The Company operated across a wide range of countries, and most of them are politically stable. This eases business functions and boosts performance (Bessière et al., 2019).

Economic: The Company operates in two forms of countries, developed and developing. IN the case of the former, economic Stability is prevalent, and the company can enjoy a significant market share. On the other hand, in developing countries, even if the market share is presently low, the growth rate of expansion policies is tremendous (Bessière et al., 2019). Both these boost business performance.

Social: There is a palpable shift in global consumer behaviour from regular products to those which focus on environmental conservation and wellness of health (Pant and Ramachandran, 2017).

Technological: The operating costs of businesses are going down globally due to the advancements in the field of automation and robotic (Goryakin et al., 2015).

Environmental: There is a growing thought amongst consumers to align themselves with businesses that promote environmental conservation and green practices. Since the brand already operates on this forte, they can tap into this demand (Rao-Nicholson, Khan, and Marinova, 2018).

In the case of the SWOT Analysis The business is quite strong along these lines. They have an established presence in almost all countries of repute like America, Germany, India, Britain, Ireland, etc. (Zhang and Fan, 2020). The FMCG sector in which Unilever operates is a highly competitive global battlefield that is dominated by several big players (Nwagwu, 2020). The business should focus on optimizing its global consumer base to promote co-creation and brand loyalty to derive the maximum value possible. The current economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus is a very real threat to the drivers of the business. Its effect has touched all industries and countries, and the business needs to optimize itself accordingly to make it out (Carvalho, 2020).

Influence on External Environmental Factors towards the Future Marketing Activities

Influence on Internal Environmental Factors towards the Future Marketing Activities

2.1 Proposed Segmentation Plan There is a definitive demand in the market for non-dairy items. People who prefer these types of products come from all ages, geography, and income demographics (Bali and Singh, 2015). This means that the key point where the segments are split is that of the consumer’s rationale and customer psyche (Bali and Singh, 2015).

By splitting the prospective consumer base along the psychographic lines, the business can better decide just whom to cater their products for. In the case of psychographic demarcations, the best-suited segments for this non-dairy form of ice-cream are vegans, lactose-intolerant individuals, and other health-conscious individuals who wish to cut out dairy (foodbusinessnews, 2019). The choice to adopt veganism rests completely upon an individual, and hence they are willing to pay more for their preferred product (foodbusinessnews, 2019). This has created a generous amount of demand in the market that the company can penetrate by proper segmentation. Subsequently, the company will also move towards converting lactose intolerant individuals who stay away from dairy into loyal consumers (foodbusinessnews, 2019).

2.2 Proposed Target Market The target market for Unilever is not restricted by any geographical boundaries. This is because of their dedicated global supply chain and international presence. Their target market also isn’t restricted by age groups (Taylor-West et al., 2018). The key point of their target market is that they are ‘conscious customers’. This means that the company is targeting individuals and groups who are sustainability inclined and prefer products that represent the same. The company has undertaken its share of research and has found out that over 53% of individuals in a random survey sample size prefer sustainable products (Chan, 2019). Their marketing and advertisement campaigns have evolved into a more detailed view of the positive impact of the product on society rather than the product itself. By a combination of correct segmentation and targeting strategies, the company can easily win over customers from all strata on a global scale.

2.3 Proposed Positioning Strategy The company has always promoted sustainability, quality, and utility in its positioning strategies. Going forward, the company has decided to go for a positioning strategy with the concept of ‘vitality’ at the centre (Unilever global, 2020.). This means that the company has identified the shift in global trend from traditional lifestyles to an alternative healthy lifestyle. The top management of the company has claimed that the positioning strategy with Vitality will include a renewed focus on how all their product lines can be made more sustainable and healthy for their consumers. The brand Unilever anywhere in the globe, the first thought they should have is that this company makes healthy products of high quality (Ren et al., 2020).

3.1 Identification of the Strategy Direction The strategic direction that the company should look towards as per the Ansoff Matrix is Market Development and Diversification Strategies. This means that the company is looking to introduce its current product portfolio in new markets (Hallam, Thomas, and Beach, 2018). The company is also opting for a diversification strategy, which means that they are developing new products for new markets as well. For e.g. Neem and Turmeric based toothpaste for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc. By employing a mix of these two strategies, the company already has a significantly widespread product range. In the future, their drive for innovation, quality, and sustainability is sure to give rise to some exciting items. Hence the strategic direction can be proposed to be Product Diversification (Fan et al., 2015).

3.2 Proposed Performance Targets for Next 3 Years Proposed performance targets for the next three years of the business can be

Specific: The targets are specific. Based on organizational strategies and present global scenarios, the targets have been set to represent fixed quantitative amounts (Ren et al., 2020).

Measurable: The goals are measurable as growth in sales volume has been taken as 20%. This means that calculations can be done easily with the real data whenever available to see if the business performance targets are being met (Ren et al., 2020).

Attainable: The goals are quite attainable for a company like Unilever. A 20% growth rate in new markets is a prudent estimate for small companies, so one with the financial resources and operational expertise of Unilever should not have any problem in attaining the mentioned targets (Ren et al., 2020).

Realistic: For a company with the resources and expertise of Unilever, these are quite realistic goals. There is a very low chance of the product failing in the market as the company does its fair share of market research before the development of a new product (Ren et al., 2020).

Timely: The goals are timely in the sense that they relate to specific operating cycles of the business (Ren et al., 2020). This means that each financial year can be taken as one unit and the business processes remain ongoing throughout the given period.

• It is a non-dairy form of icecream that is targeted towards vegans, lactose intolerant individuals, and others (Fan et al., 2015).
• The product is to be launched under the banner of Magnum. This is their premium range of icecream, which uses high-quality Belgium chocolate.
• The flavour is an offbeat variation of what is normally available in shops. It is a caramel and sea salt variety (Fan et al., 2015). This makes it a niche and interesting flavour that is guaranteed to entice customers.

Figure 1 Non Dairy Ice cream Source: (Godairy, 2020)

• Since the product is a new and innovative variation of what is existing in the market, there is a high chance that it will become popular in the market and increase the units sold (Bocken et al., 2016).
• Units sold per geographical location will give feedback on market demand.
• Since the product is only available in the form of a big family size tub with a comparatively higher price, the sales volume in units will reflect directly into high sales amounts.
• Higher sales through the years signify consistent buying behavior (Bocken et al., 2016).
• The profits of the business will be quite lucrative because this is not a new product that they are developing.
• The company already has a preexisting production and supply chain for both dairy and non-dairy ice cream (Bocken et al., 2016). This means the company already enjoys cost-efficiency and economies of scale, which will drive up the profits.

4.2 Pricing Decisions 4.2.1 Pricing Strategy The proposed pricing strategy for the product can be a value-based pricing strategy. Under this strategy, the business fixes the price of the goods based on the value they are giving to their consumers. Since this is a premium brand that offers offbeat ingredients to a niche set of customers, the pricing will be kept on the higher side (Tao et al., 2017). It should be noted, however, that the business will not charge significantly more than what they charge for their dairy-based varieties as this may provoke customers about price discrimination (Tao et al., 2017).

Brand price Source: (Robertson 2019).

• Keeping the price of the non-dairy variant similar or close to the dairy variants will ensure that the products are being sold regularly and in high quantities.
• Low prices for a premium product will result in high sales.
• Since the magnum brand is priced at the premium level, the sales amount will reflect it.
• The sales amount will rise since it’s a premium-priced good.
• The premium pricing and the low costs will ensure stable profitability for the business.
• Profits will be rising through the years as business achieves more efficiency.

4.3 Place Decisions 4.3.1 Place Strategy The company will decide to use their entire supply chain to distribute the commodity globally. If they do not, it would be the improper utilization of company resources. The psychographic segment which the business is targeting is prevalent all across the globe so the company should rise and meet the demand.

Place strategy Source: Author

• Ensuring global distribution will ensure that the number of products sold will increase dramatically.
• Optimizing distribution channels will ensure that the product reaches the customer on time.
• The product characteristics and the price levels will provide enough sales revenue globally for the company.
• Sales amount trends will provide input on global market demand.
• The profitability of the business will also rise dramatically with global sales revenue.
• Profitability may vary across geographical areas due to exchange rates.
• The promotional strategy of the company will be centered on proper advertisement activities.
• The company should focus on highlighting g their sustainability and green initiatives. Along with the superior features of the product and its high quality.
• The units sold will be directly dependent on the success of the advertisement campaigns undertaken by the company. Brand awareness is necessary to boost sales.
• There should be a general buzz about the product post-launch. The more people are excited and curious about the product, the more they will be enticed to buy it.
• There will be a proper reflection of the positive effect of advertisement campaigns upon the sales amount. Seasonal trends can also be established from this data.
• Significant sales will also be achieved when the customers buy the products. An increase in subsequent years can be attributed to customers turning loyal to the brand.
• The business profitability will not be hampered by the expenses made on advertising because this will directly translate to a greater amount of sales both in units and in revenue.
• A cost-benefit analysis will always give a positive result as more sales to make the profits stable and rising.
• The company has decided to target the psychographic segment in relation to healthy and alternative minded individuals.
• The target audiences can be from any age or geographical segment (Beer and Loeprick, 2017).
• The values that the company wish to convey to their customers is that of health, Vitality, and sustainability. They should clearly communicate this to the necessary people (Beer and Loeprick, 2017).
• The advertisement strategy that the company will choose to adopt should also convey the same message. This will create organic goodwill in the market.
• The competitors in the same non-dairy industry should be researched and analyzed to understand pricing, flavours, and ad strategies (Beer and Loeprick, 2017).
• Other companies in the FMCG sector should be analyzed to understand distribution channels, supply chains, procurement costs, etc.
• Unilever should focus on creating a unique environment in the mind of its consumers. The company has already the image of a sustainable and green company that deals in a superior quality of products. They should utilize this.
• Their product is already focused on a healthy lifestyle. The value proposed should be Vitality so that consumers identify the product with concepts like veganism. Providing happiness to those who cannot enjoy dairy is also a unique feature to be highlighted (Beer and Loeprick, 2017).
• The company should decide upon specific guidelines on which agendas to support as a brand. While they choose to support environmental conservation, they may remain silent on political issues.
• Guidelines regarding flavours and packaging should also be set up. This is to ensure that the brand gets enough time to properly cement themselves in the mind of the consumers.
• The brand will be developed by following the above steps. This will ensure that the company forms a robust brand that holds a special place in the consumer psyche.

5.2 Justification for the achievement of the action plan 5.2.1 Achievement of the performance targets The performance targets will prove successful across all verticals. Primarily, the forecasts haven’t been made that steep. This prudent approach towards going into business will ensure that the company can properly realign themselves in case of a below expectations performance. This is, however, not expected as the business will prove successful across all dimensions (Agostini et al., 2015). In the case of sales quantity, a globalized supply chain to reach consumers in time will help the sales quantity improve. The sales amount will generally be rising along with the sales quantity. The product is priced at a premium level, and thus the sales amount will reflect a healthy stream of revenue (Agostini et al., 2015). This will increase through the years because customers will turn into loyal followers of the brand due to their salient features and superior quality. The profits of the business can be attributed to their well-managed supply chain and distribution network. This ensures that the logistics and manufacturing costs are kept at a minimum and profits are boosted. Through the years as the business gets more proficient, the profits also increase (Homburg, Schwemmle and Kuehnl, 2015).

5.2.2 Achievement of the marketing mix The marketing mix is bound to be successful in creating a perfect setting for the product. The product itself is a very thoughtful and elegant product. It is a non-dairy caramel and sea salt flavoured icecream which has bits of white chocolate in it (Moon, Park and Kim, 2016). Ice-cream already has mass appeal, for those whom it was not an option, e.g. vegans, lactose intolerants etc. this is an enticing and new offering in the market. The price of the commodity has also been kept quite low. This indicates that more customers will be enticed to buy the product (Moon, Park and Kim, 2016). Since the company already exists globally, there are very good reasons for them to make the provide available worldwide. There has already been established that the demand for a non-dairy healthier alternative is being felt worldwide. More and more people are choosing to shift to an alternative lifestyle (Veiga and Weyl, 2016).

CONCLUSION In conclusion, it can be stated that the product of the company Unilever will be successful in the market. By mobilizing all the available resources, they possess the company can penetrate the global market beautifully. Overall there are very few reasons the product may fail upon launch. Great success is anticipated.

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