Is your product launch flawless and ready for you and your customers?
No matter how excited you are to announce the release of your new product, always, always remember: It’s better to test and delay than to launch and flop. Your customers will forgive you for launching late, but they won’t forgive you for a catastrophic launch.
There are a number of things that can go wrong during a product launch. If you’re selling online, your order form might not be optimized for mobile. If your product is difficult to use, you might receive an unexpected number of support requests.
If listing all the ways your launch could fail is giving you horrible premonitions, take a deep breath and remember that these kinds of scenarios can almost always be prevented with smart planning. Here’s a few things you can do to make sure that your nightmares don’t come true, and that your product launch is flawless for you and your customers.
Make Contingency Plans
Despite careful planning, you have to accept the possibility that something could go wrong during your launch. It’s incredibly important to come up with back-up plans to make sure that your launch can still move forward even if something doesn’t go according to plan. Think about potential issues that could arise and complicate your sales, fulfillment, or support efforts. For example, a payment gateway could fail, leaving you with no way to sell your product on that awesome sales page you made. Since it takes days or even weeks to set up a new one, you can set up a backup payment gateway in advance and you’ll be covered! What if your website’s server goes down during the launch? You’ll want to have contact info for your web tech or hosting provider on hand in case this happens. If you’re going to be shipping a physical product, make sure that your shipping provider will be able to deliver all the orders on schedule, even if you get more orders than you anticipate. It couldn’t hurt to even have backup arrangements with another shipping company just in case.
Research Your Product-Market Match Obsessively
Nothing feels worse than launching a product that nobody buys. You can prevent this tragedy by doing your homework in advance. Understand who your target market is. Understand their demographics, their tastes, their habits, their likes and dislikes, and the types of messages they respond to. Before finalizing your product, test it by releasing it to a small group of influencers who are in your target market and see how they feel about it. Take their feedback seriously and be willing to modify your product or service based on what they say. Everything about a product-launch must be customer-centric. It’s crucial to make sure that your product or service is what your market wants.
Get Your Messaging Clear
One of the most horrifying ways for a product to fail is by completely disappointing the customers who were most excited about it. This can happen because a company over-promised on their launch, they missed the mark with messaging, or because they didn’t clearly communicate what their product was and its benefit to the market. These are all issues that can be fixed by clear, consistent messaging. Being honest is the best strategy to get your messaging right. Think about creating a press kit to disseminate to anyone interested in your launch — press, fans, investors etc. Lay out the facts and set the tone of the conversation before there’s a chance for anyone to misunderstand.
Even though things might not go off without a hitch, you can still have a successful product launch if you plan ahead and do what you can to prepare. To make sure you don’t miss anything, download ONTRAPORT’s new Ultimate Product Launch Guide. Included with the guide is a Product Launch checklist of everything you need for a successful launch. Get advice on how to remove unnecessary complications from your plan, create a crystal-clear map and timeline, and what to track to make your next launch more successful.
Download the free guide here and make sure that your next launch is a wild success.
