Course table of contents
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We spend the resources of internal teams, money and time on the development of each release and each new product. Therefore, no version should be released quietly and unnoticed. One of the tasks of the product manager is to coordinate the launch so that the release of the new version brings the company maximum profit, leads and market awareness.
In the scheme recommended by the Software Product Management framework , a product launch should go through the following 6 stages:
- A. Internal communication - Internal communication
- B. Formal approval - Formal approval
- C. External communication - External communications
- D. Training - Training
- E. Launch impact analysis - Analysis of the conducted launch
- F. Sales and Marketing support - Sales and Marketing Support
Stage A. Internal communications
Internal communications before the launch are needed in order to inform all stakeholders within the company that a release is being prepared. You can launch an email campaign or create a messenger message to tell all stakeholders about the release date, product changes and new features developed. Typically, such a message includes a link to download the software, dates of trainings and other useful information. Such communication can be done 1-4 weeks before the public launch. The exact time depends on your development cycle - the longer it is, the longer it takes to notify internal employees about the planned release.
Stage B. Formal agreement
Formal approval is needed to ensure the highest quality release. Before bringing something to market, it is imperative that all teams and leaders give the green light to the product. The fulfillment of this item allows you to avoid minor troubles associated with the fact that someone was “not in the know” and did not complete something. This agreement includes both the technical part and the marketing part - R&D team leads are "signed" that all the features are ready; QA leads assure that all functionality is tested and works as it should; technical writers notify that the documentation is ready; the web team informs that the content has been prepared for updating the website; the sales department informs that employees are ready to sell the new version; etc.
Stage C. External communications
External communications in many respects repeat the internal ones, with a slight difference in presentation. This time, your partners and main customers receive the newsletter. This mailing most often happens on the day of release, or one or two days in advance to create excitement and a sense of anticipation. You inform recipients of major changes, release date, provide a link to the product download page, announce the dates of trainings and webinars, and so on.
Stage D. Training
Trainings are needed to ensure that the transition to the new version is smooth, so that all interested parties understand how to use the new features, know what their advantages are. Usually, both internal services, including technical support and developers, and external users - partners and customers, take part in trainings.
A quality product launch requires both technical and marketing training. For example, the support department needs to know all the details about how the features work, and the operations department (DevOps, Data Center team) needs to know the specifics of product deployment. Sales and marketing teams must clearly know what business problems the new version solves and how to position the product correctly.
Stage E. Analysis of the conducted launch
An analysis of the launch is needed in order to assess whether the release made sense, what technical and financial advantages it gave. At this stage, costs and profits are compared, the number of calls to technical support is analyzed and other parameters are assessed in order to draw conclusions for the future.
Among the metrics that can be assessed are clicks on links and user responses, geography of interest for the new version, reactions to “call to action”, contacting support for the new version, increased traffic to the data center for SaaS products and, of course, sales / revenue.
Stage F. Sales and marketing support
Marketing and PR support is very important. After launching a product, you need to make sure that external statements about it are correct, that they reflect the company's vision and strategy, and that public information is targeted at the right target audience and is served under the “right sauce”.
At this stage, you need to make sure that all important documents about your product have been updated (or created) and are consistent with the release parameters. Presentations, specifications, sections of sites and so on are subject to revision.
As already mentioned, marketing is a very important activity for a software company. Products today are not “sold by themselves because they are good,” and the cost of promotion must match the cost of R&D. In other words, if a startup spends 500 thousand rubles a month on development, then a comparable amount should be provided for marketing and sales, otherwise you risk being left with a product that is good in quality and functionality, but unknown to anyone.
Product Awareness
Product Awareness is the path to long-term product and company success! You can say that you have a good level of Product Awareness if people in the industry know about your product and understand the purpose for which it was created. At the same time, not only the users themselves can know about the product, but also those who do not use your product now.
For example, whether you have a car or not, you've certainly heard about the Audi brand. In general, there is an opinion that Audi cars are quite reliable, and you know about this, even if you have a car of a different brand and you do not plan to buy an Audi yet. This effect is achieved through careful and painstaking work to build product awareness.
By the way, launching a new version of a product is a great way to raise Product awareness, and therefore it is important to spread the word about the new product as widely as possible, remind about yourself or form a primary image. The rest of the time, when you are not releasing new versions, blogs and social media accounts help to keep Product awareness constant by publishing stories and news about the product, company and industry. It is also useful to maintain mention in the media, to talk about your expertise. After all, Product awareness is a natural trigger for generating leads, which later become sales and bring money to the company.
Release commands
From the inside, from the side of the developers, it may seem that working with the product release is their prerogative. But in fact, with a systematic approach, EVERY department of the company works with each release!
- Quality Assurance (QA)
- DevOps / DataCenter operations SaaS
- Support ,
- Security ,
- Technical Writers ,
- Localization team
- Product Marketing
- Legal ,
- Content/Designers , , .
- Sales Managers , , ,
- Sales Engineers / Solution Architects
- Professional Services
- Finance ,
- PR and Media Product Awareness
Thus, almost the entire company is involved in one way or another in preparing for the launch of the product or its version.
Product launch stages
In preparation for a product launch, each department gradually joins in on the product. For example, product managers come into play first . Based on the analysis of the market, competitors, potential users and industry, they initiate work on a new release. They are responsible for the transition from the “Not started” stage to the collection and formalization of development requirements.
This is followed by the involvement of developers who evaluate features in a scope, design the architecture, write code and autotests, release beta versions, and then release candidate.
At the end of this stage, each new feature of the product should be ready for review by the product manager, and engineers should prepare a demo stand with the new version of the product so that they can take screenshots, prepare documentation, marketing content and conduct demos.
The testing department sets up a Quality Rating (QR) to determine whether a feature is ready for release. It may turn out that some functionality is not ready for release and will have to be excluded from marketing materials. QA is also responsible for load, integration and other types of testing, as well as verifies the correctness of updating the product from the very first version to the latest.
Security Departmentchecks attack vectors, identifies vulnerabilities, tests storage systems, makes sure that the product does not have APIs that work without authorization and other security gaps. If necessary, certification is carried out for compliance with IS regulations.
After completing all the technical stages, we first receive the Ready-to-market (RTM) version, and the legal , financial and marketing departments are connected to the work .
Lawyers develop End-user license agreement (EULA), describe licensing types, prepare or amend contracts with partners, as well as new parameters in the Service Level Agreement (SLA). Also, often a new release implies a change in the terms of the End of Life product.
The finance department is required to draw up a financial plan for new features. Specifically, they consider how new features affect current goals, how sales should change to justify development costs, and how new features affect company costs. The finance department is clarifying whether the new functionality may require additional resources and whether the price list needs to be revised when a new version is released.
On the shoulders of marketing falls the choice of the release date, based not only on technical readiness, but also on the elaboration of the site, content and marketing materials (read about them below). And only after completing all these tasks, we get the finished product in the General Available (GA) stage.
Checklists
In order not to forget anything when coordinating a product launch, it is necessary to keep checklists. The technical checklist includes checking the product's readiness for release from a technical point of view. The marketing checklist includes the entire set of marketing and content activities, planned communications. It is possible to release a product only when the “ticks” are placed in front of all the items on these lists.
Stages of the technical checklist:
- All release features are developed, tested and meet quality requirements
- Load and stress testing passed
- Documentation written, proofreading, localization ready
- The product build is ready and uploaded to the repository
- Security audit passed
- Release notes prepared
A marketing checklist may include:
- Preparation of White papers
- Datasheets preparation
- Publishing content on the site
- Development of texts with SEO (search engine optimization)
- Press release writing
- Create product presentations
- Preparing "Battle cards"
- Writing blog posts
- Organization of communications (mailing e-mail, articles)
- Hosting webinars
- Organization of trainings
Marketing materials
Preparing marketing materials is a big and painstaking job that needs to be done very carefully. Experienced PR managers and marketers know exactly how to present information so that the target audience hears and remembers the main messages.
Here are the main forms of marketing materials that are used when releasing a software product release:
Datasheet
This is a short document of 1-3 pages in which we reveal the purpose of the product, describe its characteristics, scope and benefits. Literally translated from English, Datasheet means “data sheet”, so it only needs basic quantitative characteristics, as well as diagrams and screenshots.
White paper
White Paper is already a detailed technical document of 10-20 pages that tells how your product can solve real problems of users. Facts, technical evidence, comparisons and rationales are welcome. The purpose of the White Paper is to offer the reader a ready-made solution with a description of its application. It may also provide detailed performance data or describe product integration patterns for specific applications.
Competitive Battle Cards
A very useful internal document for marketing and sales departments . Battle Cards describe the positioning of a product in relation to each specific competitor. Comparison has one short guide slide. The cards highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor, and provide a well-founded argument for the strengths of your product.
Case Study
Success stories demonstrate the consistency of your product. This short 1-2 page document should provide information on how the product is used by a real customer. Such a text is prepared jointly with the client, includes a description of the problem and its solution using the product. The advantages of a Case Study are the presence of quotes and subjective (of course, positive) assessments of the client.
Active position
If you have a new version of the product ready, you have checked its operability and you are sure of the readiness of internal teams, do not wait for the product to sell itself. Connect with media, bloggers, influencers. Do not forget to post everything important and interesting on social networks, for example, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit. It is also very good if you use feedback from earlier adopters for your PR purposes.
Conferences, meetups, exhibitions, hackathons - all these are great platforms for promoting a new product or new version. Try to conduct live product demos, distribute your materials. Webinars are very popular today, so you can run your own as well as participate in partnerships. By the way, the topic of partnerships is very important for a product manager, and in the next post we will just talk about partnerships and distribution channels for your developments.
→ Video recording of all lectures of the course is available on YouTube.Lecture
about release preparation and product launch:
Want to analyze your product for launch readiness? Need help putting together a checklist? Looking for specialists to cover the areas where your hands are missing? Write in a personal, we will discuss.