Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » launch checklist

10 Steps to Take Before Your Product Launch

Rick Braddy — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:30:23 +0000

The effectiveness of a product launch is determined by the steps taken before launch day arrives. The more time invested in planning and preparation, the smoother the launch will go and the more impressive the results will be.

Here are 10 important product launch checklist items to consider in preparation for your launch.

1. Survey your audience and ensure you know what they want

One of the most important things you can do to ensure success is to be tuned in to what your customers and prospects want and then give it to them. The odds of getting this step right without listening carefully to those in your market aren’t good. Things are always changing, more rapidly than ever today, so what worked last year may not work well or at all this year.

Survey your the audience you are able to connect with directly (e.g., your in-house list subscribers and customers) and be certain you are familiar with their current priorities and what’s most important to them within 90 days of your launch to test and validate your beliefs and assumptions – the ones that must be true for your launch to be a big success.

2. Implement your Launch Blog and develop your social media base early

Another great way to stay close to your market is through social media, like a blog and social media (e.g., LinkedIn and Twitter). A blog is a great way to let those who are closest to you (e.g., your existing customers) know what’s coming down the pike in the next 90 days or so. Blog also provide a place to have multi-way conversations about the key issues that face your customers and get direct feedback on and gather new ideas you can use during the launch.

Social media is a great way to network with key influencers you can make use of during your launch. It’s very important to establish these relationships well ahead of your launch. If you are entering a new market, you will need extra lead time to locate the influential bloggers, partners and affiliates. It takes time to develop a relationship with these folks, so be sure to start early.

3. Preview and validate your product

One of the most critical aspects of a successful launch is having social proof and testimonials endorsing your product. Providing a limited number of existing and potential customers with early access to a “preview” or “beta” version of your upcoming product is a great way to get the feedback you need to ensure the product hits the mark, as well as gather testimonials before the product launches. And when those involved in the preview program discuss their findings (both good and bad) on your blog, it creates social proof for everyone to see.

And the fact that some weaknesses are discovered isn’t a bad thing; after all, it’s a pre-release product, so some issues are expected. By having both the positive and negative comments openly discussed, it adds credibility to the entire discussion, and shows how transparent you are being about making sure you get the product right before it launches.

Of course, it’s important to address the issues that are found before the actual launch and validate your product is truly ready for market.

4. Develop, refine and test your U.S.P.

Identifying your Unique Selling Proposition is one of the most important things you can do to ensure success. A strong U.S.P. will clearly differentiate your product vs. the customer’s other alternatives, making your product the clear winning and best choice. Here’s a nice article on How to Create Your Unique Selling Proposition.

Today, you can refine, test and validate your U.S.P. using Google Adwords and Twitter. Use AdWords to place a text ad with your U.S.P. and measure the click-through rates of variations of your U.S.P. Timothy Ferris used this approach to finalize his best-selling “4-Hour Workweek” book title. You can also use Twitter to test click-throughs and retweets to see which ones resonate and attract the most action.

5. Identify the Big Idea for your launch event

Once you have chosen your U.S.P., it’s helpful to develop a “Big Idea” that provides you with a launch platform. The launch platform is bigger than your product. Unless you are Apple, Microsoft or one of the big brands, chances are nobody cares about the fact you are launching a new product.

Instead of concentrating your early launch efforts on your product, it’s often more effective to begin with a discussion around a big idea – a concept or well-recognized set of issues or hot topics that matter to your target audience and buyers. By keeping the initial pre-launch focus away from your product, it avoids creating sales resistance and turning people off.

By focusing on issues that are important to potential buyers, it opens the door for you to provide useful information, educating your audience before introducing your product. There will be plenty of time to discuss the specifics of your product during the launch, so save that as “dry powder” to use later. By discussing the issues instead of your product early on, your Big Idea pre-positions your product favorably, since your chosen product and company U.S.P. is the foundation of the Big Idea in the first place.

For example, if you were Federal Express (some years back) your Big Idea would be “overnight package delivery”, a completely new concept at the time it was introduced. When discussing this Big Idea, we would concentrate on the situations and circumstances that arise where the ability to ship something overnight would make all the difference. As launch day grows closer, more details about how this revolutionary new service can be accomplished is disclosed, taking what began as a concept discussion into an emerging new reality that’s about to become available.

6. Develop your pre-launch content plan

In the weeks leading up to launch day, it is important to provide your launch audience with the right information and in the proper order. This content is used to educate the audience and build trust in you as an authority and subject matter expert.

It’s most effective to provide pre-launch content in various formats, including text, video and audio. People learn in different ways. Some people prefer to read and absorb written material well. Others aren’t great readers, so they learn better from watching a video or listening to an audio presentation.

Developing quality content takes time, so it is important to develop a plan ahead of time and ensure you have enough time and the proper resources and budget available to do a quality job developing this content.

7. Implement and verify your e-commerce and other order-processing systems

Closing sales, performing up-sells and ensuring your partners get properly credited for affiliate sales is critically important to your success. Ensuring your e-commerce, visitor tracking and affiliate infrastructure is in place and fully tested well ahead of launch day is very important.

Make certain you have someone (aside from you) doing final testing of all these systems before launch day.

8. Identify and recruit launch partners and affiliates

Partners and affiliates provide your launch with much-needed credibility and scale. Since these folks are independent parties, they bring credibility with their audiences to your launch. They are able to reach and influence people you cannot, so they deserve an appropriate amount of attention and investment.

Because launches are so time-consuming and resource-intensive, there’s a tendency to get bogged down dealing with all the things we must do to properly execute our launch. Make sure you have someone who can focus on recruiting and motivating your launch partners and your launch.

9. Optimize your Launch Landing Page

Your Launch Landing Page is like the “front door” to your launch. If this page converts qualified traffic properly, then you have a huge Launch List full of potential buyers who are interested in your launch. If this page’s conversion rate is marginal, then your launch results will also be margin.

Get your Launch Landing Page in place early and ensure you use proper A/B split-testing and/or multi-variate testing to maximize this page’s conversions. There’s lots of information available on landing page optimization, so there’s really no excuse for not investing the time to optimize what is arguably the 2nd most important Web page associated with your launch (your sales page is the most important).

10. Create your Launch Plan and Project Schedule

Launches are typically complex projects. There are many dozens of things to do and often multiple people required to get everything done properly. Like any project, having a proper plan and turning that plan into a detailed project schedule is very important.

I typically use Microsoft Project to create a launch project plan and schedule. The schedule includes all of the tasks that must be accomplished, along with who is assigned primary responsibility or ownership of each task. It’s also very helpful to identify task “dependencies” (which tasks must be completed in order for other tasks to be started), which leads to identifying the “critical path” items.

Next, the project plan and schedule is reviewed with all launch team members, to ensure everyone sees the same big picture, and each person responsible for a task as a part of the launch team commits to delivering their part on time.

For more information on modern product launch strategies, be sure to grab your copy of The New Rules of Launch(no registration required)

Product Launch 3.0 Sales Process

Rick Braddy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:31:51 +0000

The objective of any launch is to successfully introduce the product, company, website or whatever you’re selling – then make the sale!

The Launch 3.0 sales process includes development of a “purpose-built” launch community and list of interested launch participants. This launch process significantly increases early sales success, revenue and effectiveness of the launch.

The following diagram depicts a typical Launch 3.0 sales process. It all begins with the launch canvassing programs, which bring traffic to the launch landing page, as shown below.

Canvassing Programs attract traffic to the launch Landing Page, where visitors can register to receive more information about the launch. Money magnet offers, such as free giveaway items provide users with strong incentives to register.

These offers include e-books, videos, reports and other items of great interest to the target audience. These are used to attract more launch prospects to join the Launch List. The Launch List keeps track of the prospects, providing a convenient way to communicate with these folks; e.g., an email auto-responder or CRM system.

During the pre-launch stage, a series of emails and related content are provided to everyone on the Launch List. This series of content is called the Pre-launch Sequence. This sequence is designed to develop a relationship with those on the Launch List and begin to form the Launch Community.

One of the keys to creating this community is to initiate discussions on the Launch Blog (not shown). The Launch Blog provides a convenient way for launch participants to share comments, insights, opinions and perspectives with each other.

This creates social proof that the launch is a happening thing that is worthwhile, provides increased transparency and builds trust.

A range of content is posted to the Launch Blog during the pre-launch, including:

Spy videos that provide an inside look at the upcoming product (or whatever is being launched)
Useful “money magnet” giveaways that provide value, build trust and move prospects closer to buying
Video and audio interviews with key employees, experts and 3^rd parties discussing the big idea and product
Free webinars including experts discussing relevant, useful topics (and not selling the product)
Stories that enable the audience to learn by example
Conditioning emails and videos designed to answer questions and overcome potential sales objections
Proof points and evidence, such as that gathered from preview customers who have tested the product
Testimonials from preview customers who have early access to the product.

The pre-launch sequence also involves driving partners, resellers and affiliates to make their own major canvassing push, both early on and immediately prior to commencement of the the launch stage. Pre-launch prepares, educates and energizes the launch community, building buzz, anticipation and excitement.

This creates pent-up demand for the product, increasing the market’s curiosity, interest and appetite for it.

Once launch day arrives, the doors open and a major push to convert sales begins. As initial sales pour in, information about how well the product is selling is shared, creating social proof. Other techniques (including scarcity) create even more pressure to buy in early to take advantage of limited-time bonuses and other offers tied to the launch.

Discussions in the blogosphere, news and social networks appear, where people’s experiences with the product surfaces more frequently. Assuming these discussions are favorable, this provides further buzz and interest in the product that just launched, fueling further sales growth.

Most of the effort at this point is aimed at getting prospects on the Launch List to visit the Online Sales page, where selling takes place. The launch sequence is designed to drive traffic into the selling processes. It also builds interest in the product using social proof, proof and scarcity. It’s also time to make a big push to energize partners to invest in marketing and selling the product.

If a traditional sales force is used, then the Launch List is a big pile of unqualified leads. The online nurturing and conditioning processes act as a pre-sales automation tool, preparing those in the Launch Community to become qualified leads and ultimately to buy the product.

These leads are further qualified, in terms of timing and budget (for more complex sales), before being passed on to Sales to sell and close. This is commonly accomplished by a tele-sales team.

One way to do this is simply email the Launch List, providing a link to an appropriate web page enabling qualified prospects to provide more information about their needs and then request someone to contact them directly, or refer the prospect to a reseller or outlet near them. Companies with established sales processes qualify leads flowing into their sales funnel and channel as usual.

Everyone’s e-commerce and back-end sales processes will vary somewhat, based upon what’s being launched, the level of awareness and understanding the market already has about the big idea and product and the desired selling motion the launch needs to generate. For example, there may also be several up-sell steps in the customer checkout process.

The great news is, a properly executed Launch 3.0 campaign typically generates hundreds to many thousands of sales within the first few hours and days, perhaps doubling or tripling that over the first week. For small businesses, it’s common to see hundreds to a few thousand sales generated in the first week. For larger companies, the quantities can be much larger due to the huge list assets, partner leverage and market reach these companies enjoy.

In the past, launches were focused on getting the word out, preparing the sales force for the product and making the marketplace generally aware that a new product is available. The reality is, today most everyone is too busy to care.

Instead of concentrating on a broad, diffuse “get the word out” marketing program, the Launch 3.0 process limits those outreach activities to Canvassing and focuses the majority of effort instead on building and nurturing a community of those who are genuinely interested.

The launch community provides a powerful springboard for driving early success, significant sales and revenue, and building a solid foundation for ongoing growth. So the goal of Launch 3.0 is not only to get the word out, but to start the sales engines and drive a profit from day one.

Design Your Launch to Drive a Profit from Day One

Get all the details on Launch 3.0 in The New Rules of Launch (a free e-book).

The 3C’s of Product Launch

Rick Braddy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:46:19 +0000

I recently learned that doing things in three’s is extremely powerful, because people are able to learn and remember 3 things easier than any more (or less). So, I decided to boil product launches down into the 3 most important things one must do. And the new rules of launch involve a simple, three-step process I call the three C’s of launch:

1. Canvassing – in this step, we use all available venues to spread the word about the launch and attract participants who are interested in our launch. Using standard permission marketing and relatively new emerging social networking techniques, we build a list of interested prospects (aka “leads”). We call this our “Launch List”.

2. Conditioning – once we have our Launch List underway, we go through a series of moves called a “pre-launch sequence”, which is specifically designed to educating and condition those on our launch list and take them on an interesting “learning journey” with us. During this learning journey, we will become closer to our buyers, uncover what they want most and then do our best to provide it to them via videos, articles and other useful content.

In addition, we’ll expose them to social proof, actual proof and answers to their common questions and objections. These are all key parts of the pre-sales cycle portion of the new rules of launch process (which is covred in more detail in the free e-book). We develop what starts out as a list of individuals into a launch community - a group of buyers, advocates and influencers who provide both initial sales and a foundation for sustained growth beyond the launch.

3. Closing and Cashing-in – once launch day arrives, it’s time to cash in on all the preparation and hard work that led up to the big day. Immediately prior to launch day, we ramp up the communications level, creating increased anticipation, buzz and excitement – so much so that people are chomping at the bit to snag our product and sink their teeth into it.We also begin applying certain kinds of pressure that often leads to a stampede of buying as soon as the product becomes available for sale; e.g., scarcity. Then we follow with a “launch sequence” involving the sharing of social proof, proof and success stories that continue fueling the launch momentum and driving increased sales results from fence-sitters.

Explore the 3C’s of launch in greater detail in my new, free e-book entitled “The New Rules of Launch – How to Launch a Product, Company or Anything Else via the Internet”.

Read more…

Product launch automation software on the horizon

Rick Braddy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:40:30 +0000

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

Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » launch checklist

10 Steps to Take Before Your Product Launch

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