Are You Ready for a Product Launch?

It might be tempting to skip this step but trust us when we say that this first step is important.

Sure, there are many advantages to doing a launch, but many entrepreneurs overlook the huge investment needed to pull it off.

Startups will pour huge amounts of time, energy, and resources into a product launch that was doomed to fail from the start, for reasons ranging from lacking a defined market, to the company being unable to handle the sudden rapid growth.

The majority of these problems could be avoided before you even begin preparing for the launch, all by simply asking yourself, “am I ready/willing/able to do this?”

Even Jeff Walker, the man behind the product launch formula, advises startups to be patient and cautious. “I think a big part of it is the ability to delay gratification—being willing to put in the work now, knowing it’s not going to pay off for three months or six months or two years,” he says.

Let’s take it back to the basics to make sure you are ready to launch.

The Basics: Anatomy of a Product Launch

By definition, a product launch is when a company launches, or in our case re-launches, a product into the market. It sounds fairly simple, right?

Done correctly, however, there are many steps that go into creating a successful product launch.

In our experience, there are five distinct phases:

1. Product development: This is when you make sure that you have a great product in the first place. When it comes to your online course, planning is vital. It won’t matter unless you have something worth launching.
2. Planning: When you put together your product launch team and figure out the essentials and how it is you’re going to move forward. This includes working out details like what your story is going to look like and what the launch sequence is going to be. This can take months before everyone fully agrees on what the right steps are and how to proceed. We saved ourselves a lot of time in the planning process by using the Jeff Walker approach. This is possibly the most important phase of any product launch, since how well you prepare and plan greatly determines how your launch is going to go.
3. Pre-Launch: The third phase of a launch is when you begin putting all your planning into action. This is when you need to start thinking about generating hype and as many warm leads as possible. That means everything from bolstering your email list and creating launch-related content to reaching out to influencers to work with. Your pre-launch period starts from when you first start putting it all together to your actual launch date, meaning that this phase can take anywhere from a month to well over a year depending on how big you want your launch to be.
4. Launch: Crunch time. When everything finally comes together and all your months of planning and preparation finally come together. This is usually a period that doesn’t go on any longer than a week or so where you really push your live product as much as possible. This phase includes activities like Facebook campaigns and making sure that you have proper onboarding practices. Some startups skip straight to this phase when they do their first product launch, only to realize that there is a lot of work they should have done ahead of time. Don’t make that mistake.
5. Review: The final phase is sometimes known as the post-mortem, depending on how morbid you’re feeling. When the dust has settled and everything is done, take stock of what went great and what could have gone better, so next time you can do an even more epic product launch!