Creating a product launch campaign

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A year ago a client of mine launched a product to their audience they’d been building for a couple of years. Without much planning and strategy, sales spiked the first day before trickling off to zero pretty quickly.

Six months ago they decided to create and launch a second, similar product — this time enlisting my help to create a more strategised launch campaign.

Honesty hour — I hadn’t had much experience launching things before. I’d read countless books, taken courses and listened to podcasts on how to create a successful launch, however had never gotten my own hands dirty (apart from my podcast). I was excited for the opportunity to put my learnings into practice and work with a client creating a product I believed in.

After discussing the project goals we got to work planning and creating a launch campaign. We mutually agreed that we needed to create some momentum and buzz around the product before it launched. This would give us time to gauge and leverage interest while allowing potential customers time to learn about the product without pressure to buy.

Here’s what we did:

1. Chose a launch date — The beauty about deadlines is that it allows to plan in advance. Announcing your deadlines publicly gives you accountability. We knew that the first step was to set a launch date and announce it. Choosing a date encouraged us to work backwards, making sure we had everything lined up in time. This helped us plan the timing of the emails, landing page and also gave us a deadline for when final edits to the product had to be made.
2. Set up a stripe account — For their previous product launch the client only accepted manual bank transfers. This meant that for each purchase she would manually send the customer the bank details and trist they’d transfer the money. This time we created a Stripe account and connected it to the Squarespace site. This allowed payments to happen seamlessly and granted us the ability to focus on other tasks.
3. Launched a landing Page — A few weeks prior to the launch we published a landing page with some information about the upcoming toolkit. People take time when it comes to purchasing decision-making and so it was important to us to provide potential customers with time to learn about the product and think about whether they’ll purchase come launch day.
4. Collect interest — The landing page included a form where those interested could register to stay informed about progress and updates to the product. Those that registered to this list would receive early bird pricing later on.
5. Created an email launch campaign — The email campaign was sent to those who registered their interest in the toolkit. Emails were sent 10, 7 and 1 day before launch, as well as on launch day. In these emails we asked what the subscriber’s current biggest challenge was — their responses will contribute towards future products. We also included informal updates about the progress of the toolkit while encouraging them to share the landing page with their peers and colleagues. Closer to the time of launch we shared what the toolkit will include while informing them about the discount code.
6. Early bird pricing — We offered subscribers 20% off the toolkit for the first 48 hours of the launch. This provided not only an incentive to buy but was our way of thanking these early subscribers. Emails were sent on launch day as well as a day later to warn them of the offer expiring in 24 hours.
7. Collected testimonials — A few testimonials were collected from past customers and used to help sell the product to future customers.
8. Launched to entire mailing list at full price — Those on the existing main mailing list (who didn’t register their early interest) were offered the product at full price, after the early bird pricing had ended.

Overall the launch was a success. Here’s some quick stats:

• 16% of those who registered purchased on launch day
• 28% of total sales used the early-bird discount
• 14% of the mailing list made a purchase, with some purchasing multiple copies

What’s next?

It’s been a month since the product was launched. While the launch campaign went well, something we’re looking to explore and learn more about for next time is what to do as a post-launch campaign. How do you keep sales, interest and momentum going after you launch?

This is something I hope to learn more about soon — stay tuned.

About the author

Hi I’m Femke — a designer, writer and podcaster who overlaps between a day job, freelancing and side projects. I love to help other creatives be the best version of themselves. I’d love to get to know you more, say hi on Twitter 👋