The Product Launch Playbook Part 2: Everything You Need to Do on and After your Launch Day

Where to post, what to say, and how to track the success of your product launch

Published in

The Startup

9 min readApr 10, 2018

What you do on launch day and how successful you are will largely depend on how well you stick to the first part of this guide (which you can check out here).

But that doesn’t mean you get to go on autopilot once you’ve pushed your site or app live.

Launch day (and the week around it), is all about executing on your strategy plan. Everyone should know what they need to do, have the assets they need, and be able to work like a well-oiled machine getting your product out there and in front of the right people.

Check out part 1 of this post where I run through 25 steps to follow leading up to your big day to ensure your launch is a success.

1. Post your launch announcement on the right platforms

With your ideal customer profile, you should have figured out where the right people for your product launch hang out. Now’s the time to jump in there and let them know the big day has come.

A lot of these announcements can be pre-written or follow the narrative you developed during the pre-launch phase.

But remember to tailor them to the platform you’re on. Copy/paste doesn’t work when you’re trying to differentiate yourself. And if you’ve put in the work to be heard by the right people, being spammy can sink your launch and even kill your brand.

One big mistake a lot of product makers fall into is thinking they have to be everywhere with their launch. This can pull your attention in too many places, and waste time by talking to the wrong audience.

Instead, pick one platform for your anchor announcement. This is where you know your audience is and where you’re going to put the most effort in driving people to.

For example, a lot of tech companies choose Product Hunt as it already has a massive built-in audience of people looking for the latest tech releases. Use this as your main announcement and use social, posts, email, and paid ads to get people there and drive awareness of your launch.

2. Host a webinar, AMA, or other event to get people involved

Getting customers involved in your launch is one of the quickest ways to amplify your reach. And while you’re probably not throwing a Steve Jobs-era product launch party, creating that same sense of excitement and personal connection around your launch is important.

Host a webinar where you run current and prospective clients through the product. Or host an AMA (ask me anything) on a relevant platform where you can engage directly with your users. These sorts of events are low cost and drive organic shares and word of mouth by helping your customers feel like they’re a part of something bigger.

You can “seed” your product launch engagement by reaching out to anyone in your personal network and letting them know that you’ve gone live.

While it might seem a little awkward emailing mom about your new product, the more people you can reach out to personally, the better chance you have of amplifying your reach.

Before your launch day, make a list of everyone you can think of who would be even slightly interested in your product (or in your success). Family, friends, colleagues, mentors, teachers, etc…

On the day, send each of them a personal note explaining what you’re launching, why you’re excited about it, and thanking them for anything they can do to help spread the word.

A successful product launch is full of moving parts and requires your whole team to be on the same page. Use a tool like Planio to track your progress and guide your team from pre-launch to the after party.

3. Follow up with journalists, bloggers, and other press you sent pre-launch materials

Go back to your pre-launch marketing spreadsheet and see what press and influencers you contacted before the launch and send them a note saying you’re live with a link to your marketing page and any other assets (videos, testimonials, demos, etc…).

It’s also a great idea to add in social proof or metrics to these messages. Timeliness (the answer to “why now?”) is a requirement for most press coverage. So if you can show you’re building excitement and gaining users, it can help your cause.

A good rule of thumb here is to give priority to people who responded to you or ran a pre-launch story on your product. Building relationships with press takes time, and if someone gives you coverage you should try to reciprocate by reaching out to them first.

4. Share your launch with current users and ask them to spread the word in emails and on key pages

If you have current users, not only should you tell them about your new product, but you should also ask them to help spread the word. If you’ve been providing them value already, they most likely won’t have a problem doing this.

One powerful strategy is to ask for shares on follow-up emails or key pages. When you send an email to your users on launch day, give them a pre-written tweet they can one-click share. Or, when people sign up for your service, send them to a confirmation page with another opportunity to share the news to their social networks.

5. Use milestones to reach out to current users (but don’t overload them)

You can also take advantage of major milestones during your launch to reach out to existing users and influencers. Did you get coverage in a major publication? Did you hit your funding goal in a matter of hours? Did Elon Musk tweet about how you’re his new favorite product?

You don’t want to overload your user base, but a personalized message sharing a big achievement like this is a great way to boost shares.

6. Work with your sales team to convert leads

Launch day isn’t just about marketing. If your product launch is sending traffic and leads to your sales team, you’ll want to make sure they have all the support they need to close deals.

When you’re in the thick of your launch, it can be easy to forget about all the other people involved in your success. But as we said before, launching is a team sport. These people are integral to your success. So don’t forget about them.

Post-launch: Putting the finishing touches on your launch

We’re almost there!

With most of the heavy lifting done, there are just a few things you need to do to keep the momentum going and squeeze the last bits of success out of this monumental effort.

7. Compare your success metrics to real data and make adjustments

With launch day behind you, the first big question is: How did you do?

Look back at your “if everything goes perfect” goals in your project management software and see how your actual results stacked up.

Did you hit the number of sales/sign ups/subscribers you were aiming for? If not, can you figure out why? This will all come down to your personal goals, but some key metrics to check out include:

Top referring domains: Is this who you thought it would be? Were there any surprising sources of traffic?
Results from affiliates and partnerships: Who brought in the best results? Can you figure out why?
Email open and click-through rates: What worked or didn’t? Did your narrative hit home?
Views and conversions from blog posts: What messaging or platforms worked best for telling your story?
Marketing page conversions: Did your marketing page do as you expected? Look at conversions as well as time on page, bounce and exit rates, as well as where people went next on your site (Which can tell you what questions weren’t answered well enough.)

This is powerful information for not only adjusting your marketing campaigns as you keep pushing your new product, but helping you plan your next launch.

8. Keep momentum and follow up with customers who “weren’t quite ready”

Remember how we said that most customers need 6–8 “touches” before they’re ready to buy?

Well, for a lot of people, your massive launch might have only been touch number two or three. Those people still need nurturing in order to convert them into full blown customers.

If you captured emails for people interested in the product, this is where you can put together an automated series of follow ups with more social proof and feature-heavy emails. If not, think about running remarketing ads on Facebook and Google to stay top of mind.

This is also a good opportunity to talk to new customers and see why they chose to purchase. What was it about your messaging or product that really stuck with them? You can use this information to help push those people who “weren’t quite ready” over the edge.

9. Have a system in place to handle bugs or issues

No matter how much testing you did before your launch you’re inevitably going to end up with a few unresolved issues. You need to have a good system in place to handle these and make sure little bugs don’t turn into epidemics.

Planio offers a powerful solution for assigning and tracking bugs so they can be dealt with quickly and not take your product launch down with them.

10. Debrief your go-to-market strategy

As your product launch winds down, you’ll want to do a last minute check through your strategy doc. Was there anything you missed? Any marketing strategies that ended up on the “nice to have” list that you want to experiment with now that things have settled down?

Just like you want to track your successes, look for things that went wrong or took longer than you expected. In Planio, you can set estimated time for tasks and measure it against how long they actually took, giving you an accurate view of what took the most time during your launch.

Finally: Pop the bubbly

If you made it to this point without too many major headaches then it’s time to pop a bottle (or two). You deserve it!

Product launches are stressful, resource and attention-heavy, and add that element of uncertainty that can drive you crazy. But they’re also a cause for celebration. You built something awesome and put it out into the world.

There will always be something else you could be doing, so make sure to take a moment and celebrate the win.

Product launches are massive beasts (if the length of this post tells you anything).

They start before your product is even live and end only when the next one comes around. But they’re also one of the most exciting things you and your company will get to experience.

Take the time to follow this guide and you’ll give yourself the best chance of having a product that thrives out in the wild.

And remember, a great product launch starts months before anything is ready to go live. Check out part 1 of this post where I run through everything you need to do beforehand to ensure your launch day is a success.

Hey, I’m Jory!

I help companies and interesting people tell their stories through smart and focused writing. Want to work together? Email me at hello@jorymackay.com

A version of this post was originally published on the Planio blog. Check it out for more essays and actionable tips on project management, building a remote team, and thriving as a startup.