Now that you've completed the Launch course, it's time to turn your knowledge into skills by mapping your Launch Strategy.
A successful product launch begins with a solid strategy, as it sets the foundation for balancing goals, segments, budget, and timelines while coordinating cross-functional teams. Remember, a product launch is a business decision, not just a technical one, and detailed planning is essential to ensure your tactics align with your overarching objectives.
Initial Components of Your Launch Strategy:
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Set Goals: Define what success looks like with clear metrics, amounts, and timeframes (e.g., $10M revenue in 9 months). Ensure goals are trackable, approved by leadership, and understood across the organization.
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Target Market Segments: Launches are most successful when they focus on multiple but not all segments. Focus on specific segments that offer the most direct path to your goals, considering customers, competitors’ customers, potentials, and evaluators.
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Find Your Audience: Within each segment, identify audiences with unique urgency, needs, and communication networks to concentrate your marketing efforts with precision.
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Determine Category Life Cycle: Understand the life cycle stage of the overall product category (e.g., introduction, growth, mature, decline) to guide your strategy.
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Select Your Launch Approach: Evaluate a launch strategy based on your goals, segment, audience, and category life cycle. Consider strategies like Retention, Share of Wallet, Migration, Wedge, Displacement, Mindshare, and Breakthrough. Use Compass for guidance/examples on each approach.
Bring It Together:
Consolidate your assessments and decisions from the above steps into the 90-Second Launch Worksheet. Once confident in your inputs, translate them into a clear 90-Second Launch Strategy to communicate with and align stakeholders. For major launches, you may need to create a full Launch Plan to provide additional details.
Take the first step confidently, knowing that with careful planning and strategic focus, you're well-equipped to lead a powerful and effective product launch. Let's make it happen!