5 myths about product launch that prevented us from launching earlier

You are a creator. You build stuff and hope that one day, strangers start using your beautiful creations… and yet, you have so many excuses to postpone your launch. That is me. My excuses for delaying the launch of Online Marketing Wizard were based on a lot of myths and assumptions.

Launching is a big deal for me. I code. A lot of my side projects die quietly in the dark corners or my laptop because even thinking about “launching” it makes me panic.

I was fortunate enough to talk to people who actually launched products. Some went up to become million dollar ventures and some just got lost in the hundreds of products that wind up every month.

And this is what I learned from them:

There is ZERO risk in launching the product early.

Even if your product is something like building nuclear reactors or a cure for cancer which has a very strict and regulated launch process, you should still introduce your idea to your audience as soon as you can.

So, here you go, the myths in no particular order:

Myth 1: Product launch is a big deal

One of the main reasons why we procrastinate launches is because we believe that launching a product is a very big deal. It is the day for which your team has been working hard and the day for which you have been spending all those sleepless nights. Somehow, after the product launch, things will change magically.

Almost everybody who has launched a product agrees, that is not so.

Product launch is a special day… but special as in your birthday kind of special. You feel good (or bad depending on who you are) but it is just another day for the rest of the world.

When you are building your product you discuss your ideas and concepts with your teammates, after launch, you start involving your users, getting their feedback and working in a more focused way to improve your product.

The purpose of product launch is two folds… you want to introduce your idea to the world and you want to start listening to your users and see what they want, so you know what to build next in the product.

Product launch is just another step (perhaps the most important one) in the product’s life cycle. Just do it.

Myth 2: Your product has to launch with a big-budget bang

When a lot of us think about product launches, we look at the Apples and Googles of the world with big conferences, massive ads in newspapers, billboards and the internet, media buzzes, press releases, celebrities coming on the stage and give hugs to the founders/speakers and so on.

Unfortunately no, that is not how 99% of us launch the product. It usually starts by making the product/app live (if you have an app, publish it on the app store, if it is a website or blog, just make the domain point to your app) and wait for somebody to signup or download. You can increase your chances of somebody discovering your product by mentioning it on the forums/platforms where your users hang out, putting out some ads on relevant platforms and cold emailing relevant emails to influencers and potential users. If you have done your homework during the pre-launch, and if you are really lucky, you will get a bunch of users who start using your app.

If that happens, you leave everything that you are doing and start observing your users and start listening to them.

Myth 3: You just need one super-awesome launch to make your product successful

A lot of us postpone the launch because for us, product launch is like the last big heist shown in movies where somebody wants to go for the last big heist that will involve so much money that they do not have to live a life of crime again. For us, if we do our launch properly, that is the end of all our worries.

Unfortunately no. All the successful (and failed) product owners agree that launch is just one factor of the product that makes it awesome. The most important thing is that your product should solve a genuine problem. And then it should solve is in a way that makes sense for your users. In short, your product has to be awesome.

And then you need to continuously launch new features, bug fixes, marketing activities etc… anything to keep your users excited and the buzz alive.

Myth 4: Your product has to be perfect when it is first introduced to your users

One of the biggest fear of making our products public is - what if it does not have everything that my users want. What if I am not able to meet the expectations of my users. The myth is that if a user stops using my app, I have lost that user forever.

Let me reiterate what you already know. You will never be able to make all your users happy with your product. Not when it launches, not 10 years after that. There are a lot of people who don’t like an iPhone now and there were a lot of people who did not like iPhone when it was first launched. Yet, iPhones are one of the most used smartphones today.

Your focus is to try to get a handful of people who are very happy with your product. Some founders say that just get 5 people who are passionate about your product and you have a good launch.

If your product fails miserably at launch, you get an opportunity to identify gaps in your product and/or your message that you can fix and launch again.

Myth 5: If you have a great product, users will come automatically

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who consider product launch and marketing a very trivial activity. For them, there are two kinds of activities that you have to do… build stuff and sell stuff. Selling is a lowly non-creative activity usually reserved for snake oil salesmen. (Ok, I might have exaggerated there but you get the idea).

This is so wrong at so many levels. Every product needs to be brought in front of the right users in the right way. You will have to customize the product’s value proposition for each user type or user persona so that it is relevant and valuable for each of them. The way you pitch Gmail to individuals and corporate users would be different. Or the way you introduce Facebook to somebody who is there to find her friends would be different from introducing Facebook to somebody who wants to sell her hand-made jewellery. Somebody has to do that. Somebody has to tell your users why your product is better, faster, cheaper than the competition and that my friend, is a dedicated job that you have to do.

Bonus Myth: Product launch is a very time consuming and effort-intensive task

I guess this is an extension of the myth about blockbuster launches. You worry about a lot of things when it comes to product launch. You have to worry about communicating with your customers, managing issue reporting, feature requests and so on. Good news is that you can automate a lot of these things. My product (shameless plug) Online Marketing Wizard handles all these but you do have a lot of services on the internet that does all these for you. You do not have to build them. You just signup and start using them. One of the benefits of using Online Marketing Wizard is that it is being built with product launches in mind. It lets you do all these from a single location.

I will conclude by saying… just do it, dude. Just do it. And if you do do it, share your product details in the comment below and I will spread the word in my network :) If you need any help or support or ideas for launching your product, I will be happy to help.

If you liked it, you might also like my article on “10 things I wish I knew before I launched my last product” and also “Simplest product launch checklist”

I am learning to market my product “Online Marketing Wizard”. I believe that the best way to learn something is to share my knowledge with others. Do follow me as I share whatever I learn through these short and simple articles.