These are the big tasks for launching a product, but you may need to adjust for your product and your market.
- Product ready for launch. Be careful of launching too early before the product is ready.
- Packaging and pricing set. If you launch without a price, your prospective customers now have a second step…to ask you for the price, and as a result, you will lose a portion of your prospective customers
- Product messaging and positioning defined and shared broadly within your organization. If you don’t share, you will probably find different sales people and different parts of marketing sending out different messages about the product.
- The sales team is educated on how the product works as well as how to sell it and who to sell it to
- Sales systems are prepared to sell the new product. It’s a real problem if someone wants to buy and the order, for example, can not be placed.
- The sequence of events for launch day outlined and communicated. (ie. blog post at 6 am, social channels at 7 am, etc.)
- Customer support is ready. (Update help center articles, educate support staff and confirm their education)
- Promotion of launch set
- Public Relations is done before advertising including press release, analyst briefings, media tour, etc.
- Internal company promotion. Your employees are your best salespeople.
- Cross promotion to existing customers. It is easier to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones
- Website updated with the new product information
- War room reserved for launch day with key players to make changes and updates on the fly, since something always goes wrong. 🙂