The Ultimate Product Announcement Checklist for SaaS Startups
Execute these, and you might just make the earth shake
A product announcement checklist only becomes useful when you have an effective product announcement framework and prioritization method in place.
Assuming that’s taken care of, product launches and announcements have a lot of moving parts.
It can quickly become overwhelming making sure everything is executed according to plan and in its rightful place on launch day.
So without further ado, here’s a comprehensive checklist to for your product announcements and product launches.
Note that no single launch or announcement will require all of these.
This is meant to be comprehensive — use your judgement to know what you should implement, and leave off, for each announcement.
PRE-LAUNCH
- Mock press release to get the story right
- Product/feature name finalized and approved
- Media outreach and pitching
- Analyst relations and briefing
- Pricing and packaging defined and clear
- Product is ready and field tested with customers
- Customer problem, value, use-cases well-understood via interviews, resaearch, beta testing, etc.
- 1–2 Customer testimonial quotes secured
- Target audience and market persona defined and clear
- Launch goal/metric is defined
- Brainstorming of all launch marketing tactics that could be used for the launch
INTERNAL PREPARATION DOCUMENTS TO CREATE
- Problem statement/solution story (product management will often do this one)
- Buyer persona use case and jobs-to-be-done matrix
- Competitive analysis framework
- Positioning guide
- Messaging map/one-pager
INTERNAL CONTENT TO CREATE FOR LAUNCH DAY
- Product demo/demo scripts
- Product battlecard
- Sales talking points / content kit
EXTERNAL CONTENT TO CREATE FOR LAUNCH DAY
- Product screenshots/GIFs
- Knowledge base content
- Blog content
- In-App message copy
- Email announcement copy
- Product video
- Landing page / product page
- 1–2 customer quotes and testimonials
- Sales deck
- Data sheet(s)
- Social media status copy (to use for company profiles)
- Social media status copy (for employee individual use)
- Sales email template to send to prospects
- Customer success email template
- SDR email template
- FAQ page
- Press release
PRE-LAUNCH INTERNAL TRAINING & COMMUNICATION
- Teach out positioning and messaging to customer facing teams
- Sales training: positioning, messaging, tools, content, enablement
- CS training: positioning, messaging, tools, content, enablement
- Customer support readiness (updated help center articles, talk track for reps)
- Team launch meeting
- Training content / decks / handouts
- Communications team / PR positioning prep meeting
PRE-LAUNCH LOGISTIC / EXECUTION
- Calendar invite sent internally
- Website update in staging
- Schedule of events for launch day outlined and communicated, as Derek Pando outlined in this thread
LAUNCH DAY EXECUTION
- Website updates deployed to production including home page scroll bar
- Deploy landing page/product page/FAQ
- Send email announcement
- Ensure PR piece is published (if you’ve secured media)
- Publish press release
- Ensure customer-facing teams have access to all content and tools
- Publish knowledge base content
- Publish blog content
- Deploy In-App message
- Ensure video is functional
- Ensure company profile social media updates are published across all channels (w/paid promotion if necessary)
- Send social media update copy to employees to use
- Send email template copy to internal teams
- Get everyone in the company to add hero video to email signature
- Monitor results
- Have celebratory beer (easily the most important checklist item…)
Okay, that’s all for now folks! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
And be sure to tell me what I missed, if anything!
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