This is my first post in quite some time, on the eve of Windows 7 making its official debut.  Is there a Windows 7 launch happening?  It’s kinda hard to tell sometimes…

Anyway, we’ve been heads down working on a number of innovative new products that will begin to hit the street over the coming weeks and months.  As you may have noticed from other product launch posts this year, I’ve been involved in a number a product launch-related projects.

If you’ve been involved in product launches that go well, generate lots of early adoption and revenue, and that lead to successful ongoing product growth after the launch, you probably realize just how much work goes into proper:

• Launch planning, scheduling, funding and resourcing
• Preparation of launch materials of all kinds
• Education – both internally and externally
• Field-readiness and training
• Market validation of the product, pricing, positioning (basically, the 5 P’s of Marketing)
• Briefings of analysts, press, strategic partners and customers
• Marketing collateral development
• Pre-launch campaigns that create awareness and build buzz and excitement about what’s coming
• Ramping up of channel partners, affiliates, website sales processes and sales teams
• Actually getting the product ready for delivery to the market with proper support

It’s no wonder so many companies fall short with their product launches.  It’s a LOT of work and it’s incredibly time-consuming.  Most small businesses don’t have the funding, manpower or even the skills to pull off a major launch.  Many large corporations could muster it up, yet often fail to do so.

One of the biggest reasons new product launches aren’t fully-funded and resourced is it’s simply too expensive and too time-consuming.  And product marketers are often understaffed and underfunded (in larger corporations), and small to medium business suffer from the same lack of resources.

Instead, most of the typical project’s funding goes toward product development, with little left over for the launch.  And marketing often sees a tiny fraction of the funding needed for product marketing, so everyone does the best they can in the limited time available, then it’s on to the next product and next launch.

Sound familiar?  It’s something I’ve seen repeated so many times I’ve lost count.  Yet so much is invested in a product’s development – often many millions to tens of millions in R&D, with so little allocated to actually taking that product to market properly.

Well, I wish I could say that I’ve solved all those problems, but I haven’t.  The funding allocation and resource limitations are probably here to stay; however, product marketers and business owners need and deserve to be able to do their jobs well, support their product teams with respectable launches and to be more productive.  I mean, everyone else seems to have software productivity tools, right?

In a nutshell, it became clear a few years back that this gap represented an opportunity to step up and help out by automating many of the product marketer’s tasks.

WinningWare is preparing to unveil a product line in a new category we’ll be calling “Product Launch Power Tools™”.  These launch power tools will do for product launches what the hand-held power drill has done to old-fashioned screwdrivers – automate and expedite a common, important job at hand – making it far easier, faster and more convenient to get the job done right in record time, and without the hassles and soreness that used to occur.

The product line of launch power tools will be dubbed “WinningWare QuickLaunch™”. The first product is WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator™, the world’s first product launch automation power tool.

WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator does pretty much what the name implies – it enables a marketer to quickly generate just about everything needed to launch a product properly – and to do so in record time, with very little effort.  The product is a Web-based software service (SaaS), accessible from any Web browser securely over the Internet.

Here’s a screenshot of the Launch Control Center™ that’s nearing development completion, where all the generated marketing collaterals are accessed, along with overall status of each phase of the launch project:

The product walks a marketer through a series of wizard question/answer panels, where information about the product launch is gathered, including product information, launch goals and objectives, audience targets, marketing messaging and offers.  The wizard is a simple, step-by-step process that typically takes no more than 30 to 45 minutes to use the first time through (and much less after that).

Then after completing the wizard steps, as the name implies, the software automatically “generates” what’s needed for the product launch project, including:

• Launch Plans
• Launch Schedule
• Launch Strategy and How-To Guide
• Launch Playbook™, a step-by-step instruction guide
• Launch Email Sequence with draft email content
• Launch Blog Sequence with draft blog content for blogs, Facebook and Twitter
• Landing Page for launch subscriber opt-in list creation
• Launch Checklists
• PR Guide and Press Release drafts
• Marketing Source Document
• Product Data Sheet draft

The entire process start to finish typically takes less than an hour the first time – from the time a new customer actually signs up for the service until all of the above launch-related materials are in the customer’s hands.

And anytime something changes (like the product name , messaging, positioning or other aspects of the product or plan during the launch process), it’s a simple matter of updating the project parameters in WinningWare QuickLaunch, and moments later, presto – all the launch materials are automatically re-generated and up-to-date once again.

Clearly this solution doesn’t address every launch-related challenge that product marketers and small business owners face during a launch; however, it automates many of the most tedious and time-consuming tasks facing every launch manager and marketer involved in a product launch; e.g., planning and plan development, launch project scheduling, gaining internal buy-in for the proposed launch plan, schedule, communicating the plan internally and externally, and creating all the launch collaterals listed above.

Of course, there’s still plenty more left for the marketer to do… like having more time to do blogging, meet with partners, affiliates and customers… developing top-quality landing page and HTML email templates to put the final launch emails in, queuing up those emails for release in the auto-responder, and actually managing the launch project. And did I mention, more time to play golf?

Anyway, we’ll be releasing a WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator “spy video” soon, so you can see it in action first hand.  The product is nearing the end of its initial development cycle, so a lot more information will begin to flow as we head into the Holidays.

So, if you’re interested in automating your next product launch, stay tuned.  There’s a lot more good news coming soon on the product launch front.

Meanwhile, best of luck with your Windows 7 upgrades

Related posts

• The 3C’s of Product Launch (1)
• Product Launch 3.0 Sales Process (2)
• WinningWare QuickLaunch – Product Launch Automation Software (9)
• Product Launch Software – Independent Blogger Review (3)
• Product Launch Automation Software with Free Trial Available (3)
• 10 Steps to Take Before Your Product Launch (9)
• WinningWare QuickLaunch(tm) Update, 2/24/2010 (1)
• The New Rules of Launch (11)
• How to Launch a Product using Social Networks (3)
• Top 5 Product Launch Success Factors (and Pitfalls to avoid) (10)