Product managers may find product launches quite challenging. If there is no product launch roadmap or a poor and inefficient product launch roadmap to promote a product, there is not much chance for your product to survive in the highly competitive market. As a business owner, you should be aware that no matter how much money you put into producing a product, you will fail if you cannot sell it for at least half of what you imagined in the first place. In order for a product launch to be successful, you need to create a product launch roadmap that is based on effective strategies. Here in this post, we will tell you how to create a product launch roadmap that works.

What is a Product Launch?

A product launch is a well-thought-out strategy for bringing a new product to market for profitable sales. Launching a product requires marketing strategies to be successful. The higher your brand awareness, the more successful your product launch will be. Your target audience has to know you in advance in order to be aware of your product launch. You cannot simply bring a product into the market and expect a lot of sales. The prerequisite to high sales is that you work on your brand awareness. When that is done, you should announce your product launch so that everyone among your generated leads would know that you are launching a new product. We will explain further how you can do all this in the rest of the post. 

What is a Product Launch Roadmap?

A product launch roadmap is a visual representation of how a new product will be introduced to the market. It needs the cooperation of every team in your company, including the product team, software development team, marketing team, and sales team. It lays out all of the steps that must be completed in order for product launch strategies to be successful.

Remember that your product launch roadmap has to be in alignment with your company objectives. For instance, if your company aims at selling many products, you cannot create a product launch roadmap that does not involve effective marketing strategies or lacks the software development team’s cooperation because every team has to do its best to meet such an objective. 

Why a Product Launch Roadmap is Important?

Product marketing is the part that gets you to the end goal you set out to achieve at the start. You can maximize the profit from your sales if you have a solid product launch roadmap in place. As a result, taking it into account is quite vital.

A product launch roadmap is useful in other ways as well. Here are some of its benefits to your company:

• It helps in the identification of your target market and the creation of a realistic buyer persona.
• You can see where your competitors are and what they are doing to maintain their market share.
• It allows you to see if your marketing team is in alignment with your product and sales teams.
• The new product is aimed at a certain segment of the market where there is a demand of customers or product which results in a good amount of sales.
• Your company flourishes when it can increase sales and revenue.

How to Create a Product Launch Roadmap?

Now that you know what a product launch roadmap is and how important it is for elevating your business, it is time to create a product launch roadmap. To do this, you should learn effective product marketing strategies to promote your products. So, let’s get started with the steps that help you create a product launch roadmap. 

1. Carry Out Market Research

The first step to creating a product launch roadmap is to conduct comprehensive market research. You should have a clear understanding of the needs of your target audience. Your new product has to solve a problem that your target audience is already struggling with in any way. In economic terms, there should be demand in the market for your product. If you are unaware of the needs of your target audience, it is highly unlikely that your product launch is successful. 

2. Create a Buyer Persona

The next step to create a product launch roadmap is to create a buyer persona. Start by analyzing what type of audience may buy your product after its launch. You should describe who in your target market would be a good fit for your new product. This description will give you a profile that is known as a buyer persona. Think of interests, needs, age, sex, economic issues, geographical issues, demographics, etc. Your buyer persona can be different regarding your business and industry. It can also be different regarding whether your business is B2B or B2C. But in all cases, your buyer persona should include the needs and problems of your future customers or clients so that you set your product launch goals based on them. 

Why is it important to create a buyer persona? Because it makes your efforts more efficient. As a result, you send your product to a market where customers are waiting for it.

3. Set Goals

After having carried out careful market research and created your buyer persona, you should set goals for your product launch that are actionable and reasonable. For this stage of your plan, you still need to do some research. Investigate your product statistics to determine which product, marketing, and sales objectives should be met. Then, make a list of the key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the required resources, amount of work, type of tasks, etc. to achieve your goals.

Here are some of the things you should keep in mind when setting goals:

• Building a better relationship with your customers
• Fixating your brand image
• Attracting new leads
• Maximizing profits
• Increasing revenue

4. Determine Positioning and Messaging

Your target audience will not find your product valuable if it is not properly positioned. Proper positioning entails thinking about how your product differs from others on the market and how your target audience will find them appealing. To put it another way, you should consider why someone would choose your product over another similar one currently on the market.

​​Messaging, on the other hand, refers to how you tell your story to your target audience. It is all of the top content you create on all your channels to persuade your audience to buy your product. To persuade your audience, use language that is both encouraging and appealing. Additionally, select a tone that you are sure would match your brand. You are well aware that the tone of a beauty brand is different from a pipe-making business, for instance. 

5. Use Beta Testers

Beta testers are actual users who test a product or service in the testing set to evaluate it. If you want to use the beta testing strategy, make sure to communicate with those who are currently using the beta tool to test your product. Ask them to tell you about their experience, their thoughts on the evaluation, and their proof of your value proposition. With this strategy, you can put your message to the test and gather real-world evidence to back up your pitch with an audience that is eager to provide feedback.

6. Choose the Right Channels

Avoid channels with an audience that is not a good fit for you. Choose one major channel such as an event or a blog post, and support it with email marketing, social media contests, paid advertisement, etc.

The size of your marketing budget, as well as your search for the correct media, can help you determine which channel is best for your product. When you have decided on the best channel for your business, it is important to implement all of the marketing methods that are unique to that channel.

7. Activate Your Sales Team

Work with your sales staff to schedule meetings and outreach on the day of or shortly after the product launch. If you are organizing an event, make sure your sales team has time to talk to clients. This could entail providing an opportunity for them to meet with customers.

8. Promote Your Product Launch

You can always use different strategies to promote your product right after the product launch. Organizing open-air events, online events, webinars, online courses, Reddit AMAs, etc. can be a great marketing opportunity for your product. 

If you do not have budget limitations, you should also think about influencer marketing. Influencers can promote your product on social media platforms which can make your product launch a success. 

9. Consider Customer Retention

Customer retention is something to pay attention to from the start by choosing the right audience for your product. Marketing can play a larger role in attracting new users, but it is also crucial to collaborate with your product team to figure out how to keep those people coming back.

This entails additional ongoing education, such as post-launch product webinars, as well as publishing reviews, case studies, and success stories to demonstrate what your users can accomplish with your product.

10. Use a Project Management Tool

Remember how we said at the start of this post that an effective product launch roadmap necessitates strong collaboration between your teams?

As you must have understood, it takes a lot of communication and collaborations between your teams to create a product launch roadmap. If one of the teams does not do its tasks, the tasks of other teams would either be delayed or useless. Therefore, the most important thing when creating a product launch roadmap is to manage the communications between your teams. To do this, one recommendation can be to use a project management tool that would keep you and all other teams on the same page. This is valuable because in the end, no deadlines are missed and everything would go on smoothly.

Conclusion 

You can now create a product launch roadmap with high efficiency if you have followed the tips above. Depending on what your goals and objectives are, you should keep an eye on your product launch roadmap and adapt it to the changing circumstances. So, take good care of the process and stick to your goals. Wish you the best of luck!

Author Bio

Parichehr Parsi is an enthusiastic content creator. She currently writes for Nifty, which is a task management service provider. Being a travel addict and workaholic shows that she is quite well-balanced in living her one-time chance of life. She also loves music, reading, writing, and knitting.