New Product Launch
Product Launch is a crucial step and demands a well planned development, launching, scheduling and budgeting. The important aspects and milestones of the product launch includes clear objectives like initial sales goals; customer and market place awareness, and Industry and analyst awareness. The launch Plan generally involves tasks to grab attention and awareness of the new product / service into the market, and provide for a smooth and coordinated introduction.
Having stated above and the obvious, let me try to brief on some of the few high level critical steps which are imminent for a new product launch –
Research & Conceptualization -
o Identify a similar reference product to baseline the offerings
o Conduct Market Research on them – identify which type of customers are looking for such solution and why? What is their “User Journey”?
o User Research - Reach out to the existing customers and ascertain any useful and relevant data to further build the use case in your product
o Who are the target customers – who are likely to use the product and why?
o What do your customers like?
o What pain points does this product solve?
o Finalize MVP
Choke out a marketing plan – This is to create awareness in the market of such solution and further how it is solving target customers’ pain points.
o Make sure, that plan clearly stress on the benefits the product is going provide and not press on its feature offerings. This is important to capture the customer attention and seek for “early adapters”
o Limit content that talks specifically about your company
o Leverage customer testimonials (if any)
o Sign up industry newsletters and promote via email / social media campaigns
o Prepare a demo – video / script – to showcase to the customers
MVP Execution
o Inform Your Teams Throughout Product Development - Educate stakeholders on your go-to-market strategy including product specs, pricing, and why you're launching something new. This is to ascertain feedback from the outside of marketing, sales, and product. This is important to help steer a launch.
Define Product Success metrics
o E.g.: If the goal of the product is to attain revenue, then metrics can be customer acquisition, cross sales / up sales to existing customers
o E.g.: If the goal of the product is to brand company’s offering by providing a world class CRM product, then the metrics can be aligned to customer satisfaction – NPS score etc.
Pricing
o Do competitor research on pricing – research on the reference product as well
o As for MW, source of pricing can be based on purchase, subscription and maintenance or hybrid
Launching the product in the market
o Awareness in the social media
o Awareness in any relevant business forums - stress on the benefits, the product is going provide and limit on its feature offerings
o Email campaign to existing customers and overall SAM (serviceable area market)
o Benefits and the pricing @ high level can be showcased
Feature iteration – BETA test among company stakeholders
o Align stakeholders in your company to test the BETA release of your product – assess and collect contextual feedback from these beta testers
o Prioritize the feedback to incorporate them
Feature iteration – BETA test among external stakeholders
o Identify set of early adapters – current customers probably
o Ascertain feedback from these early adapters
o Prioritize the feedback to incorporate them
Sale of the Product to a customer
o Curate a well lucid and friendly subscription and maintenance agreements
Customer Acquisition Strategy
o In any B2B product launch, customer acquisition / engagement is requisite to sustain revenue, customer satisfaction, brand awareness
o Choke out a strategy to acquire new customers (as that will be the focus for the new product) – either to generate revenue or augment brand awareness and customer satisfaction
§ In B2B industry, word of mouth counts largely on the sale of the product to the next customers
§ Depending upon the strategy devised, latest version can be upgraded to the existing customers for free (this plan can be for a specific period) – marketing them the benefits and all
§ Based on the strategy, pricing and free up gradation or cross sale / up sell can be revised for a specific period