Our 3rd part of the Startup Series, which educates you about what it takes to launch a product...

1. PLANNING A PRODUCT
LAUNCH
The message, the audience, and the product
Presenter: Tarun Gaur
CEO, tringapps, Inc.

2. the recap …

3. develop personas
understanding your customers is the key to developing a
product that will work

4. a prioritized feature list
conduct a feature scrub and prioritize the feature list
(refer to - Idea to MVP deck)

5. create wireframes
think thru the experience for your product, get to a
visual concept; from features to screens and interfaces

6. get to a visual design
from greyscale to colors; refer to color psychology to create
a brand identity and appeal

7. interactive prototype
adding interactive elements to a visual design is always
helpful, it makes things real

8. develop the product
this is where engineering and software development comes
in; SDLC or Agile or Scrum - suit yourself but get to an MVP

9. test the product
use internal testing teams (if you have one); or work with
beta customers to test features

10. release a public beta
reach out to the early adopters and ask for help; product
testing continues …

11. THE SOFT LAUNCH
A large number of startups go for the soft launch as they
are not funded adequately to think through a multi-
channel launch

12. plan micro-releases
once the “early adopter” feedback starts to trickle in, release
updates early and often

13. engage early adopters
continuously reach out to early adopters and don’t hesitate
to ask for help; get feedback on features

14. LET’S HOPE TO GO VIRAL
The product appeals to the early adopters, and they
push it along, they need a motivation to keep doing this.
What is the hook?

15. time to regroup
you need a product marketing plan, that starts with a
product launch plan and continues thru the sales cycle

16. startup or shutdown?
continue to pray to your respective gods, and hope to go viral,
reach out to a few everyday with a hope that tooth fairy will help

17. THE RE-LAUNCH
If you are a startup, that hoped to grow organically, then
you need to regroup and rethink your marketing
strategy, starting with product launch

18. analyse and pivot
You can launch as many times as you want, till your
product hits the mark

19. importance of pivoting
the features, the audience, the plan

20. THE LAUNCH GOAL
maximize the reach, with brand recall for early adopters

21. your customers
Target the early adopters, understand their user journeys

22. user journeys
understand how the customer will engage with your
product; once they discover it

23. PHASE 1
Initial Planning

24. identify the objectives
• Get more revenue from the existing customers
• Target a new market
• Leverage a new technology

25. identify the personas
• Lock in on the early adopters
• Identify the features most likely to intrigue them
• What will they do with those features

26. a positioning statement
TO parents, QuikShare.com is a content platform that
they can use to find community verified child-safe
content, reliably aggregated by parents themselves
- with love from mom!

27. PHASE 2
Pre-Launch Activities

28. the marketing calendar
Launch is not an isolated activity, it is one of the events
on your marketing calendar, get an events calendar in
place, if you don’t have one

29. the distribution plan
It is important to carefully list out the distribution
channels that you plan to target, each channel should
be qualified to establish it’s reach (at a given cost)

30. the pitch material
develop the sales material for your entire team, in a startup,
everyone is a sales person. They should understand the
message, pitch deck and how to sell

31. the buzz plan
the buzz plan is different from the sales activities, for a
startup, its a combination of social outreach + organized PR
+ wacky activities (disruptive actions)

32. tech launch checklists
Deploying a software to a distribution channel is a small subset
of product launch activities. The technology team needs to work
in tandem with product team to line up the release per
marketing team’s requirements

33. PHASE 3
The Launch day

34. the event
The event is generally for the partners, sales channels and
your team. If you have a partner ecosystem, you need to
convince them that they can make money selling your product

35. the PR machine
Public Relations, reaching out to the press, planting stories
about your product, should coincide with your product launch
with an objective to drive traffic to the product landing pages

36. monitor the buzz
The person responsible for PR needs to monitor the buzz from
PR, subscriber acquisition numbers and other related metrics
important for your product

37. product demos
Plan for live product demos for the partners, press and the
event attendees with special attention paid to press

38. PHASE 4
Post-Launch Activities

39. collect feedback
TAP Partners, Resellers and people present at your launch
event are mostly part of early adopters, their feedback is
critical for the pivot

40. engage!
You will lose your early gains, if your team is not in a habit of
creating “product chatter”.

41. lead generation plan
continue to execute on your lead generation plan, address
each customer segment with a focused positioning message

42. REVISITING DISTRIBUTION
CHANNELS
Go where the customers go!

43. viral videos
YouTube, Vimeo, AOL Videos, Telecoms, Facebook, Twitter

44. organic social
facebook, twitter, watsapp

45. paid search
Google, Bing, Affiliate Marketing

46. aim for brand recall
product sell or a context sell, either case carve out a message
that helps brand recall

47. careful with your ads
Ads are products themselves, treat them so!

48. UNDERSTANDING SALES
AND MARKETING
Go where the customers go!

49. customer acquisition
A strategy to acquire customers

50. customer engagement
A strategy to engage customers, with an intent to keep them
coming back to your product, incentivize the early adopters
to create brand affinity

51. the sales cycle
from the time a customer discovers you or you discover the
customer to the time the customer buys the product

52. customer relationship
CRM starts where “the sales cycle” ends. Once you get the
customer, try to keep it by building a relationship.

53. marketing
Anyone who wants to market without selling is STUPID.
Marketing is a tool that helps in sales and it’s effectiveness
can easily be quantified with increased or decreased sales

54. QUESTIONS
keep them simple please, won’t answer
difficult ones just because .. I get bored
don’t forget to smile, if you din’t get the joke, just do .. ha ha ha.