What are the pillars of a successful post-product-launch strategy?

So, you’re close to launching a new product. For months or years, you and your team have worked on the next big thing, and you’ve made many challenging strategic decisions along the way. But now that you finally have a set product launch strategy in place, is it time to kick back and celebrate?

The answer is…not quite.

First off, it’s important to keep in mind that an effective product launch doesn’t just revolve around a single event.

After all, product positioning is essentially a race to carve out a lasting impression in people’s minds – and since perceptions evolve, staying ahead requires flexibility.

To keep your momentum going and prevent your success from fading, a well-crafted post-launch strategy is crucial.

This article dives into why such a strategy is essential and details the key elements of an effective one.

Why is a post-product-launch strategy necessary?

You might notice that many product marketers tend to focus heavily on product launches. In fact, a quick Google search on ‘how to successfully launch a new product’ brings up over 40,000,000 results.

However, the real secret to sustained success lies beyond the launch event. Many organizations fall into the trap of merely extending their launch promotions throughout the product’s lifecycle, but this approach misses a crucial point: the needs of your target personas evolve from pre-launch to post-launch.

The key reason a post-launch strategy is crucial? It helps you maintain your product positioning. Your product’s initial launch helps set the stage, but it’s the ongoing engagement that cements your place in the market.

A post-launch strategy ensures that your product continues to resonate with your audience in a contextually relevant and timely manner. This not only reinforces your product’s positioning but also drives faster growth and improves your sales pipeline.

Without a robust post-launch plan, you risk losing momentum. Your initial success may give way to stagnation if you don’t adapt. Instead of doubling down on what no longer works, a clear post-launch action plan allows you to pivot effectively and optimize your approach. This foresight ensures that your product remains competitive and appealing, setting a solid foundation for future launches and ongoing market success.

Pillars of successful post-product-launch strategies

Post-product-launch strategies can vary greatly depending on factors like the nature of the product, organizational resources, and so on. However, there are certain essential pillars that all successful strategies have.

Persuasive and timely content

An important pillar of any post-launch strategy is content that educates and persuades your audience to see the value of your new product. The last thing you’d want to do after releasing your product is to go silent on all your marketing channels!

In the weeks following your launch, it is key that you shift the focus from what your product is to how and why your target personas should use it over other alternatives. Consider the risks from their perspective. Even if they’ve already heard about your new product (and have a favourable view of it), they may still have the remaining concerns:

• What if the product doesn’t work or function as intended?
• What if I don’t get my money’s worth (or my return on investment)?
• What if I waste unnecessary time trying to switch or get used to the product?

The post-launch stage is your opportunity to address these concerns. This is especially important in a B2B context because the buying process requires a higher level of psychological involvement from not one, but multiple decision-makers. Not to mention, organizations typically take time to adapt to new products.

One way of alleviating the perceived risks of your offering is by getting into the specifics. If your product is software, you may choose to create eGuides, webinar decks and articles to resolve underlying questions and demonstrate how potential buyers can use your product to advance their goals. A good example would be Hubspot; every year, the company publishes a comprehensive series of informative assets that go live after INBOUND, their annual product launch event.

How to get started: Make sure your organization has a content calendar first. This will help you and your team organise content ideas and decide when to publish assets, so they have maximum impact. It’s also important to have a content scheduling tool in place. Things can slip away quickly otherwise.

Engagement with feedback

One critical aspect that sets the post-launch stage apart from the pre-launch phase is the nature of qualitative feedback. Before launching, you operate on a set of assumptions and hypotheses about why your product matters to target customers, informed by audience research and beta testing. However, it’s only after the product goes live that you gain a clearer, more accurate picture.

Post-launch, companies have a unique opportunity to gather unfiltered qualitative feedback on a much larger scale. This feedback is crucial for maintaining and refining your product positioning. Whether positive or negative, all feedback must be meticulously monitored and analyzed. At this stage, the breadth of feedback is key.

As user feedback starts to flow in, categorize the sentiments to engage with them proactively and meaningfully. Positive feedback should be leveraged as social proof. Initial product users are often innovators and early adopters—a small but influential segment of your potential customer base. To persuade the early and late majority, as well as laggards, you need real evidence from these early users.

Negative feedback, on the other hand, is invaluable for informing your next product update. For optimal post-launch results, maintain a clear list of desired attributes and features from your customers. This approach not only helps in refining your product but also in winning back customers more effectively.

By harnessing and acting on post-launch feedback, you strengthen your product positioning, ensuring it remains relevant and appealing to your target market.

How to get started: Set up a customer feedback database that automatically collects and categorises data from a wide variety of sources (including customer support tickets, social media mentions, email interactions, etc.). After your product has launched, it will save you from having to collate feedback manually, allowing you to focus on high-priority tasks. When engaging with feedback, pay close attention to opinions on how your product is priced and how well the product works in comparison to your competitors. Also, gauge the demand for features your product is missing.

Tracking and measurement

Measuring and tracking your initial product users’ end-to-end customer experience is crucial for maintaining strong product positioning. Quantitative data plays a vital role in this process, so it’s essential to have your organization’s tracking mechanisms and analytics in place.

Additionally, it’s important for different stakeholders and departments to agree on the most critical metrics. Your dashboard should include, but not be limited to, the following data points:

• Leads generated
• Revenue and market share
• Competitive win rate
• Number of product trials
• Customer acquisition and conversion rate
• Product adoption and retention rate
• Feature usage (% of unique feature users, avg. number of users/day, etc.)
• Customer support tickets
• Website or webpage views
• Promotional channel metrics
• PR coverage (Share of Voice, company mentions, etc.)

Setting up these dashboards before launch is crucial because it allows you to compare your post-launch metrics against your launch metrics effectively, which helps you maintain your product positioning.

How to get started: Decide on the analytics and CRM tools your organization will use. For example, if you choose Google Analytics, plan how you’ll set up your Goals and the monetary value assigned to them. To measure on-site user experiences, consider tools like Google Optimize and Hotjar. You might also use a marketing automation platform like HubSpot, which provides analytics and tracking capabilities.

Channel optimization

Collecting quantitative data is an essential task – but like qualitative feedback, it requires interpretation and analysis followed by action. Otherwise, it loses its value.

When you launch a new product and promote it, you’ll inevitably see varying levels of success across different channels and formats. Because of this, optimisation is key! If your carousel ads are doing much better than expected, you might want to add more money to your budget. Pay close attention to things like your channel ROI and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Similarly, if you see momentum picking up on a blog article, you might decide to double down and create more articles about a similar topic.

How to get started: Put together a checklist of goals, objectives and KPIs for each marketing channel. Make sure they’re all specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. The checklist will serve as a useful anchor for measuring performance after you launch your product, which will help you optimise much more easily.

Effective reporting

The most crucial pillar of post-product-launch strategies is effective reporting, which is essential for maintaining strong product positioning.

To interpret, analyze, and act on data efficiently, organizations need to develop clear closed-loop processes that keep all stakeholders aligned. This approach allows for objective and accurate judgments on whether your product marketing is heading in the right direction, reinforcing your product positioning.

When it comes to reporting, the importance of conciseness and brevity cannot be overstated. While it’s beneficial to track and measure a wide range of metrics, you should only report what’s truly important.

Avoid including interesting but unactionable metrics. Always ask: will these numbers help me decide how well my product is performing post-launch? This focus ensures that reports are straightforward and readable, helping to eliminate data silos and encourage cross-department collaboration.

How to get started: Have ideal report templates ready. Consistent report design saves time and effort and ensures readability across departments. Key metrics to report may include:

• Daily Active User/Monthly Active User (DAU/MAU) ratio
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Customer Churn Rate
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

By focusing on these core metrics and maintaining clear and concise reports, you ensure that your product positioning remains strong and that your organization can make informed, strategic decisions post-launch.

Final thoughts

The product launch is only a part of the journey – not the end goal. The post-launch stage is the ideal opportunity for CMOs to seize opportunities, avoid fast failures and ensure sustained success. This stage is where continual business intelligence becomes critical.

Continual business intelligence means constantly gathering, analyzing, and acting on data to keep your product positioning sharp and relevant. It’s not enough to rely on the insights gathered pre-launch; the market is always changing. Ongoing insights helps you stay ahead of these changes and adapt your positioning in real time.

This post has been updated on September 2nd, 2024. Originally published: May 24th, 2022