5 Things to Consider Before Launching a New Product to Make Sure It Doesn’t Flop

As a founder, nothing can be more stressful but exciting for you than launching your new product(s). You probably have spent uncountable nights watching the game get played, and now you’re all set to go all in.

Unfortunately, betting on the best odds can lead to catastrophic ending especially if you’re not equipped with a full-proof product launch plan.

If you’re one of those who is planning to launch your new product in the market, then you’ve landed in the right place.

In this post, we’ll be learning about the things that you need to do before you launch your new product in the market successfully.

So without any further ado, let’s begin.

Pre-launch Plan Checklist to Make Sure Your Product Doesn’t Flop

Back in the day, enterprises used to invest heft amounts of money and time into product launch. They would just go in the stealth mode, design their product, build it, build and design a new product page and marketing funnels, and set an outstanding PR plan.

That’s a lot of investment, still their massive launches turned into huge flops.

Today, product launch is a small event and it doesn’t call for such huge investments. The only way to successfully launch your product is to start early and try to obtain as much customer feedback as possible before the launch of your new product in the market.

Here’s a list of things you must do before launching your new product(s)

Share your product with a small group of users

You launch a product when you know it won’t fail. But that doesn’t mean you create a product and immediately launch it in the market.

Don’t even think about doing that. The best idea to go about it is to test with users well before launching it in the marketplace. As soon as the first version of your product is ready, send it to a small group of users for testing and get their valuable feedback on it.

This can take a few days, or months, or a couple of years, but that totally depends upon your product. Ask them how useful your new product is and how you can improve its quality (if needed).

Your earliest users can be your family, friends, team mates, or business connections. If you want unbiased reviews, you can list your product on tools like Product Hunt Ship.

Many founders often tend to offer the early version of their new product for free because they think it’s not fully-functional.

That’s fine but your ultimate goal should be to build a minimum viable product, and look for the people who’re willing to pay for it. In this way, you’ll be able to get more meaningful user feedback.

In this way, when you’ll make your product available for masses, you already know people will simply love it.

Ask for product and marketing feedback

One of the most important things you must look for before launching your product is Feedback. By feedback we don’t only mean asking about the product feedback like UX issues or bugs.

We know these are essential but, there’s a lot more you can when talking to your users, like:

• How they describe your product, their choice of words.
• If the product brings any significant change in their lives.
• What other distinctive needs they do have.

This sort of feedback can be really helpful for your marketing team as well as it gives a clear idea what your users are thinking about your product and what steps you need to take in order to refine it.

While you’re preparing for product launch, use all the acquired information into your product as well as marketing pages. Create different versions of your eCommerce landing page and test each of them to find out what resonates the most.

Keep your ego aside

Usually business owners keep their ego in the front. That might be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.

Usually, you prefer to select a group of users who will love your product. We understand the process of launching a new product is vulnerable but if you want your product to succeed in the market, you should be ready to acknowledge the rawest, harsh, and most honest feedback.

While testing out your product and marketing, you should ask yourself a few questions:

• Did you test your product on a group of users who were too willing to like your product? If you cherry-pick customers or companies who cannot say ‘no’ to you, it means you are going to get worthless feedback. They’ll probably try your product and give feedback, but they will never purchase it.

• Did you influence users through your pitch? Being a founder, you must be a really passionate person. But at the moment, it’s your product that should stand out alone. If you’re just focusing on influencing users through your pitches, believe us you’re just creating a reality distortion field.

• Are you asking the relevant questions? Often founders ask questions like, “do you like the product?” Don’t ask such generic questions. Instead, ask them if they use it every day or how beneficial it is. Making your customer should be your goal but the ultimate goal is to make your product launch successful.

Choose your top platform

In most of the cases, founders choose a single platform when focusing on product launch. Your platform is the channel through which you’ll be sending users messages, collecting feedback, and measuring your product success.

Just remember, whatever platform you choose, you need to play your A game on it before the launch.

However, today there are plenty of channels available such as, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Product Hunt, LinkedIn, to name a few. You can use anyone or all of them simultaneously to launch your product.

Create a product launch plan checklist

Last but not the least, don’t forget to create a product launch plan checklist. Creating this checklist is essential because it will help you to stay ahead and keep everything in order. Launch days can be pretty stressful and there’s a chance you might miss out on small but important things.

Make your list a few weeks before the product launch so you can go through it and keep everything in order when launching your product.

Final Thoughts

As a founder, you must have a lot of things on your plate to finish and things can get pretty stressful. If you don’t want your product to flop in the market, follow our guidelines and learn those important things you must do for the successful launch of your product in the market.