It’s 3 in the morning. You and your team are dog-tired and drained from being stuck in a meeting in your office that ran for about 4 hours. You then whisper to yourself, “That was the meeting that ended all meetings.” Now that your product is on its final phase, all that’s left for you to do is to tie the loose ends, and—voilà! You can finally release your product to the market. While you and your team can feel a sense of relief from having completed your product, there is that nagging feeling from within everyone that no one can explain: the “what-ifs…”
What if the product launch turns out to be a total disaster?
Considering how critical the success of product launches are to a newly formed company’s survival, you can’t help but be anxious about the outcome of the fated day that your product goes public. After all, you and your team have spent countless hours developing a stunning product, for all of it to go to waste just because you didn’t carefully prepare for your product launch would be such a shame.
If you feel that you’re about to experience something very similar to what I described above (in near future), then let’s remedy that right now. Allow me to share with you x things that will help you achieve a successful product launch.
- Offer free trials, demos, or product videos to make it easier for your audience to learn and understand your product.
Depending on how revolutionary your product is, you may need to run an extensive educational campaign. The thing is, if your audience couldn’t grasp how to use your product right away, your product launch is bound to go downhill.
So here’s what you can do. You can offer free demos, trials, and product videos. That way, you can educate your audience accordingly about how your product works. When your audience gets a clear idea about how your product works, they’ll be able to put two-and-two together and realize how they can benefit from it.
- Create intrigue even before launching your product by using “leaks”.
Using intrigue to arouse your audience’s interest is quite possibly one of the best strategies that you can employ to have a successful product launch.
It draws people in. It keeps them excited. And it also builds up the atmosphere.
When you have these three elements going for you, your audience is bound to stay glued to your updates giving your product launch their utmost attention.
When there are leaks about your product, it stirs people’s minds up. There is a chance that bloggers would write about the leak, or people would outright share it on their social media profiles.
Of course, you shouldn’t reveal everything about your product in your leaks, otherwise, it’ll just kill the excitement. Give them a tiny bit of info about your new product. Just enough to make them curious about it.
- Consider timing when finalizing a date for your product launch.
The last thing that you want to do is to schedule your product launch on dates where your audience is on vacation, or on holidays. Take the Thanksgiving day for example. Most of us (your clients included) would just like to relax and spend time with our families during this time of the year. Can you imagine what would happen if you’ll schedule your product launch on the same date? Not only will people miss your product launch, but they might also think of your company as one that does not value family relationships.
Make sure that your product launches’ timing is aligned to your customers’ needs. If your product is something that your audience can use as a gift to their loved ones, you can schedule it a couple of days (maybe weeks) before the holidays, that way, your product will remain fresh to your audience’s’ minds when they come shopping for gifts.
- Establish a core team that is committed to see the product become a success.
“Hiring the wrong people is the fastest way to undermine a sustainable business.” – Kevin J. Donaldson
I don’t know about you, but I think Kevin hit the nail on the head with what he said about hiring the wrong people. More than just giving us an insight on what would happen to our business if we hired the wrong people, his quote also gives us a good perspective on what would happen on the flip side of the coin; that is, if we hired the right people.
People makes businesses. That’s why it is of utmost importance that you establish a team that is committed to making your product a success. These are the people who are willing to burn the midnight candle just make things happen. These are the very people who will value not only your product, but also your customers because they recognize how without the customers, your business won’t amount to anything.
- Make sure that the product is REALLY ready.
When Microsoft launched its Windows operating system, Vista, it still lacked numerous testing and had several bugs.
The result? The product failed.
The product still failed despite Microsoft running a massive marketing campaign to aid the product launch. At this point, you should already realize the dangers of prematurely launching a product. Not only will your marketing efforts and resources go to waste, but the damage it can also do to your brand’s image can be catastrophic.
- Use a landing page with a compelling copy, and an opt-in form.
The quality of your landing page can spell the difference between your audience clicking your “Buy Now” buttons and reaching out to their wallets, OR them giving you the dread “meh” reaction.
That’s how powerful landing pages are. If you’d like to get the most out of your landing pages, you need to make sure that it is optimized for conversion. These are some of the things that can help optimize your landing page:
- As much as possible, focus on 1 call-to-action only per page.
- Capture your audience’s email address by using opt-in forms.
- Talk about your audience’s problems then rub it to their faces. This makes them emotional making it easier for you to influence them to take action.
- Sprinkle your call-to-action on areas where you’ve provided massive benefit.
- Use videos.
These are just some of the basic, yet highly effective elements that you can add on your landing page that will help improve your conversion rate. Wordstream published a guide that goes more in depth about this topic. If you’d like to learn more about this, check out their guide.
What’s next?
I’m not about to tell you that this guide is the end-all and be-all guide for having a successful product launch. However, the tips shared on this guide will surely help get better results one way or the other.
If there are tips that you’d like to share that isn’t included in the list above, please share them in the comments section below. Cheers!
