What Is a Launch Strategy?

Your product launch strategy delineates the approach you plan to take in getting your product to market. You can start ruminating over what to include in your launch strategy as early as the conception phase. However, what you initially plan must evolve as a more details emerge in the later stages of product development.

Ultimately, your strategy needs to cover all assumptions about sales and marketing for the product launch. It should lead to creation of a solid estimate of the scope, resources needed, and budget required to give the product a strong start. When a new product is involved, launch costs can occasionally exceed the cost of product development.

When your strategy is complete, you should have a clear idea of all activities to pursue in launching the product, their costs, and the initial timeline for deployment.

Four Key Points to Include

1 – Who are your top priority audiences for the product?

2 – What are the main ways you will try to reach these priority audiences?

3 – What are the key messages you need to communicate?

4 – What are your objectives? What do you plan to achieve?

What Are the Specifics to Include in Your Launch Strategy?

• Targeted sales channels – Will you use TV, radio, word-of-mouth, demonstrations, Internet or something else?

• Marketing Collateral – What support materials will be needed?

• Sales tools, demos, and training requirements – How will you equip your sales force to clearly communicate your product’s value and uses?

• Advertising and demand generation activities – What will you use to create a desire to buy?

• Sales promotions – What initiatives will you launch to get the word out?

• Public relations, industry, and social media initiatives – What can you do to build buzz through press releases, industry buzz, and social media posts?

You’ll also want to consider tradeshow and event needs; your field testing strategy; your sales forecast by the various channels; your measurable launch objectives; and high-level timeline, milestones, and budget.

The Completed Launch Strategy

Please remember: your initial ideas aren’t cast in stone. Your assumptions and plans will morph through various stages. When you finally get to the point of crafting a solid launch strategy your document should have eight characteristics:

1 – It must identify the audience(s) and competitive targets

2 – Your messaging must be solidly developed

3 – Your launch plans must align with the overall product strategy and development plan

4 – You must prioritize go-to-market activities to focus on the most important

5 – Develop measureable short and long-term criteria for assessing the success of the launch

6 – Earmark any emerging activities or capabilities that must be sourced or developed

7 – Align your plan with your company’s marketing and distributions strengths

8 – Make sure the plan provides for input and support from targeted channels

A lot goes into creating a launch strategy that really delivers. Follow these ideas and you’ll be ready to make a strong start.

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What Does an MRD Look Like?

Your MRD can take many forms. It can be a simple document, a wiki, a spreadsheet, a unique software tool, or something else you devise to fulfill this important step in your process. The potential of the project will dictate the form your MRD should take.

The Core of the Market Requirements Document

There are essentially two things at the core of your MRD:

1 – A clear definition of your target market. This is basically a vivid picture of your potential buyer and user profiles. What are the key reasons someone would use the product?

2 – Defined problem scenarios – What are the main challenges your users face that will cause them to turn to your product. These likely will vary between buyers and end users. You’ll want to develop problem scenarios for each.

Functional and Non-Functional Requirements

Requirements that must be dealt with in the Market Requirements Document fall into two categories: function and non-functional. Here’s the difference.

Functional requirements cover capabilities that have interactivity with the user. They deal with specific high-level functions a user may want to perform.

Non-functional requirements are concerned with design restrictions and performance factors involved with the product. Performance factors cover how well a product must perform. Design restrictions revolve around how much a product must support.

Common Non-Functional Requirement Categories

There are many different categories of non-functional requirements including many that are industry specific. Here are some of the most common categories:

• Physical requirement – Maximum and minimum dimensions, weight, packaging, sturdiness, etc.
• Environmental requirements – the environment in which a product must be operated or stored.
• Performance requirements – This category can include such things as expected speed for specific operations, what are the lifetime expectations for use, etc.
• International requirements – where the product will be sold and used. What are the language, currency, power supply, and specific localized needs?
• Compatibility Requirements – How does the product need to work with other products?
• Documentation requirements – What are the types, formats, and delivery methods for documentation?
• Support requirements – What must be available to customers to help them with installation, repairs, operation, payments, maintenance, and disposal of the product?
• Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance requirements – What laws, rules, and government or agency-related requirements impact the product?
• Distribution and Packaging – What is required to distribute the product and how does it need to be packaged?

What to Include in a Successful MRD

There are essentially six key elements of a successful MRD.

1. As mentioned above: You must include a definition of your target market, a vivid picture of your potential buyer and user profiles.
2. A comprehensive list of market requirements the solution will need to fulfill.
3. Suggested quantitative measures of success for each requirement.
4. A prioritized list of requirements from your market’s point of view.
5. A clear focus on the market problem you are trying to solve, not on your planned solution.
6. A timeframe for product introduction and a supporting rationale.

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The post What is a Market Requirements Document (MRD)? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Questions Your Product Concept Must Answer

There are 11 questions your product concept document must answer:

1. What is the market problem you are addressing?
2. How big is the opportunity?
3. Who are the potential buyers and users? Who needs this product?
4. How does the product benefit the customer? How does it benefit your organization?
5. Do we have evidence that we understand the problem and that the prospect will buy our solution?
6. What is the window of opportunity in the market?
7. Which competitors will our product face?
8. What are the main features of the product and the key success factors?
9. How is our product different from the competition?
10. How would we market our creation?
11. What metrics should be considered in determining the product’s success?

The real objective of developing a product concept is to provide enough information about the market needs to justify pursuing further investigation at a deeper level.

5 Things a Good Product Concept Includes

1. Enough research into the market to document the current situation and actual need for the product
2. An understanding of the competition in the market and why the need for your product exists
3. A conceptual solution that aligns with your company’s capabilities and objectives
4. An explanation of how the new product will be an advancement and added value over what competitors offer
5. An indication of the financial and long-term benefits your company can anticipate from the product

Looking Ahead

In my next post, we’ll take a look at the Idea Prioritization Matrix, a popular tool to use when evaluating different product concepts.

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In case you didn’t immediately see it, TOWS stands for Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Strengths. To show how the SWOT and TOWS matrices complement each other, I’ve included both below.

Consider Possible Strategies

The left column of the TOWS chart identifies possible strategies you can leverage to take advantage of opportunities and avert threats identified in SWOT. For example, if your organization is particularly strong in its development processes, you should consider how you could use this strength to make the most of newly opened opportunities.

Strategic Options

The right column in the TOWS matrix reveals strategic options your team can take to neutralize threats and maximize your opportunities. For example, if you can seize a growth opportunity by utilizing your product line, you may offset a weakness in a declining market.

Your product team has a full set of options for addressing threats and opportunities.  The ones you pursue first should make the most of your strengths and reduce weaknesses.

Four Things A Good TOWS Analysis Has

1. A full view of your external environment, major factors that impact your business, and projected threats and opportunities.
2. A realistic assessment of your internal strengths and weakness in relation to the threats and opportunities identified.
3. Strategy options that leverage strengths and diminish weaknesses for each identified threat and opportunity.
4. A prioritized roll-up of the strategy options into initiatives. These will drive project selection going forward.

When all this has been done, you need to be prepared to defend what you’ve developed. Be aware that some people may be not align to your thoughts and plans. You can back up your plans by gathering relevant data and customer quotes to ensure you are on the right course and prepared to address any concerns.

Looking Ahead

Next week, we’ll consider the development of the Product Concept.

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The GE-McKinsey Matrix

The GE-McKinsey Matrix simply gives your organization more nuanced options for how products are categorized. Instead of just four boxes, the grid now includes nine. By replacing Market Growth (used on the BCG Growth-Share Matrix) with Industry Attractiveness, you have the option of weighting your decision based on such factors as:

• Size of the Market
  • Intensity of the Competition
  • Market Growth

The result often is a clearer view at your product mix and opportunities.

The GE-McKinsey Matrix Horizontal Axis

As with the vertical axis, the relabeling of the horizontal axis from Market Share to Competitive Position opens up new ways to examine your market. Now, you can factor in other corporate strengths such as:

• Brand Equity
• Your Company’s Core Competencies
• Distribution Strength

Nine Boxes Vs Four

With the GE-McKinsey grid, you have nine possible options of how to view products. Your alternatives now range from clear winners to invest and grow to products you need to phase out and cut loose.

Elements of a Good Product Portfolio Management Process

No matter which analysis method you choose, you need to be sure it includes the following:

• Allocation of resources that aligns with your corporate goals across multiple product activities
• A balance of product activities with diversity across products you currently have and what you’ll need to develop as tomorrow’s winners; current and future markets; and short-term versus long-term revenue sources

Upcoming Post

Next week my post will take a look at the SWOT Analysis and how it will help you gain a clearer view of your product’s current and prospective standing.

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Managing the Product Portfolio

Your product portfolio links your specific product strategy to the overall company strategy. Within the product portfolio you should find the complete suite of products, including those that currently exist and those that are planned for the future. By actively managing the product portfolio, you help ensure that your company meets its goals.

The product portfolio management process links your company’s high-level resource/budget allocation to the strategic initiatives or the product roadmap(s). The process of managing the product portfolio is also linked to what is a more tactical project portfolio management regimen. This discipline manages the approval and tracking of specific projects tagged as being supportive of the overall product portfolio initiatives.

Analyzing the Product Suite

Successful product leaders know not only where to invest, but just as important, where not to put their resources.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) devised a simple way to communicate how to handle market analysis. It revolves around a dog, a cow, a star, and a question mark.

BCG’s Growth-Share Matrix

Using this approach, market growth rate is shown on the vertical axis and relative market share on the horizontal. Products that fall in the lower right box are those with low growth potential and low market share in your company. In other words, these are the dogs. Anything that falls in this quadrant is definitely on its way out. By pulling investment from the dogs, you free up resources to use in more productive quadrants.

The upper right quadrant displays a question mark. This represents products that usually will require your company to invest in order to improve your share of the market. However, since the prospect for market growth is high, the products represented here have high potential for the future.

Now let’s move to the upper left quadrant where you find the star products. These are the products where your company has a high share of the market and there is high potential for growth.

Finally, in the lower left quadrant are the cows – the CASH Cows. These are successful mature products. Your company has a high share of the market, but growth potential is pretty low. These are the products that produce profit you can invest in your stars and question marks hopefully to turn them into stars.

Looking at the Matrix Over Time

As time passes, things change. You will see your cash cows gradually morph into dogs as new and better products come into the market. You’ll also see today’s question marks evolve into tomorrow’s stars as the current stars replace the cash cows or rotate out of the 2-by-2 matrix entirely.

This visual clearly shows the importance of keeping a pipeline full of emerging products you can grow into robust winners for your company.

Next Week

Through my next post we’ll take a look at other product management tools starting with the GE-McKinsey Matrix, another tool that can be very helpful in your product portfolio management.

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Question: How do you track, review, and develop ideas from your employees, customers, and suppliers? (Check one.)

What Responses Tell Us

Nearly half of all respondents (48.2%) indicated that their organizations have no formal system for tracking, developing, and managing ideas. Other responses were more equally distributed including use of a CRM tool (14.2%), reliance on an in-house solution (15.4%), and use of an off-the shelf cloud or premises-based system.

Question: What criteria do you use to prioritize requirements? (Check all that apply.)

Criteria to Prioritize Requirements

A Closer Look at Responses

Nearly 60% of respondents indicated that the size/influence of a customer is a primary way their organizations prioritize requirements. Respondents also highly rated development cost (54.0%), revenue (50%), technical criteria (46.8%), risk (44.4%), profitability (42.1%), and key internal stakeholder influence (38.9%). It is reassuring that thumb in the wind and treating everything as a priority ranked much lower as criteria for prioritizing requirements. These two earned just 11.5% and 10.7% responses respectively.

Coming Up

Next week we’ll take a closer look at team product backlog. We’ll also consider which product development requirement format makes on-boarding new employees easier.

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• Market focus
• Size of your market and expected growth rate
• Overview of your company’s current marketing position
• Matrix of your top competitors by market segment
• Detailed breakdown of competitors
• Overview of your current position with a focus on market opportunities
• Buy vs. build opportunities
• Possible acquisition candidates
• Risks and contingencies
• Potential competitive movements
• Deep dive into specific competitors

We’ll begin with bullet four: Matrix of your top competitors by market segment.

Analyzing Top Competitors as Part of Your Market View Analysis

As Product Manager, you’ll need to create an easily understood slide showing your company’s top competitors in each market segment. This slide should also reveal how these companies compete with your firm in multiple areas of business.

Once this slide is complete, you’ll want to single out the top five competitors and write a short description of each. Include each company’s profile, strategic direction, and partnerships. The narrative should indicate how each company differentiates itself from competitors. What gives them a leg up in the market?

Your Opportunities

Next consider areas where there are gaps that your company could fill. Now that you’ve covered competitors you have a good idea of where your company stands in the mix. You can begin considering buy versus build opportunities that will secure your market position. The presentation of findings should outline your reasoning about whether you should buy or build certain aspects of your products’ planned new capabilities.

If you become convinced it is better to acquire a component rather than build it, you must create a list of potential acquisition targets. Include target companies, their revenue, and the market segments they serve. Of course, it is also important to explain any known risks connected with the acquisition. These include things like:

• How should the company be valued?
• Are they amenable to being acquired?
• Next steps in the acquisition process

Eye on the Competition

Take a look at what the competition has been up to on the acquisition front. Has a competitor been binge buying in recent years? Have competitors been raising capital? Are they making moves to control strategic channels important to your business? All this bears consideration along with how competitors will react to your firm acquiring another.

The Final Step

The last part of the market view analysis contains a deep dive into the profiles of your five top competitors. You’ll need a short summary of each competitor’s annual revenue, number of employees, ownership status, products, and any ideas you have about their future direction.

When complete, the market analysis will keep senior leadership aligned with the market you serve and plan to grow. The sensitivity of the information contained in this report makes it unsuitable to share with anyone but senior leadership.

In my next post I’ll talk about the document you should create to share with customer facing employees.

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Two Objectives

A successful product launch should accomplish two primary objectives:

• Clearly show what your product stands for
• Reveal why customers should buy the product

If the product launch is mishandled, it is nearly impossible to pull a product back. The consequences of such a move are costly. For this reason, you need to plan every facet of the launch down to the smallest detail. Then make sure each detail is executed perfectly.

Two Types of Market

There are essentially two types of market for any product:

• An existing market that already has a number of competitors in the same space
• A new market – one that didn’t previously exist

Three Approaches to Product Launch

The most common approach to a product launch requires you to release your product into an existing market. To successfully do this, you must have a distinctive value proposition that sets you apart from your competitors. This is how you take as much market share from competitors as possible. Your approach must be single-minded in its dedication to acquiring new customers and developing demand for your product. Your company must take an “all-in” attitude toward the launch to be successful. This approach is typically quite expensive.

The second launch approach is oriented toward seeking out markets that don’t currently exist. Your goal is to ramp up awareness and ultimately compel customers to buy. It is a long-term focus. Your company needs to target early adopters to gain momentum and generate interest among an unengaged mass market. Education features prominently in this approach. It’s wise to take it slowly and not invest the high dollars required for a launch into an existing market.

The Third Approach: Into a Re-segmented Market

You create a re-segmented market by slicing off a piece of an existing market by offering a product priced lower than the competition. Or, you can achieve a re-segmented market by targeting those who will be especially attracted to certain product strengths.

The re-segmented approach requires you to redefine market conditions so you can peel off a winnable segment. You need to both educate your audience and capture customers. Decide if you are targeting people who will be ready to buy. If so, you’ll want to go “all in” as described in the existing market approach. However, if you don’t feel the segment is ready to buy, focus on attracting a few early adopters and work the launch like you would one into a new market.

In my next post I’ll explore the use and development of the launch product brief.

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Reach Out to the Rank-and-File with Your Product Vision

Step back a moment and enjoy your recent weeks’ accomplishments. You’ve developed a solid product vision and shared it successfully with executives and thought leaders. Now it’s time to broaden your reach and get those who will be actively involved in executing your plans on board. One of the best ways for you to do this is by creating forums for sharing your product vision. Also be prepared to share any high-level support detail that you developed after meeting with customers.

Begin With the Team Leaders

In the influence map exercises we’ve discussed in an earlier post, you identified key people who were critical to your success. Now it’s time to circle back and meet with any team leaders who may not be aware of your plans. A good place to start is with any of your own team members who may not be aware of the plan. Bring these people up to speed then reach out to others in your organization. Some meetings will be one-on-one. At other times it will be appropriate to talk to an entire team or even a larger group at one time.

Engage Your Known Supporters

Think back to when you were sharing your vision with your company’s thought leaders. Who among them were your strongest supporters? Once you’ve identified those firmly behind your plans, enlist them to bring those in their operational area on board too.

It’s important to remember that not everyone will be solidly behind you. Some people are happy with the status quo. Others resist change. Be prepared to face a certain amount of resistance. Keep focused on your goal: to align as many people as possible behind your vision. Invite them to participate in making the vision a reality. The better your team understands where you’re leading them, the more support you will gain.

How Product Managers Should Handle Questions

Don’t dodge questions from employees or try to bluff your way through. As a product manager you’ve done a tremendous amount of research and consulted with customers, executives, and thought leaders. You’ve tried to think of every possible argument against your plan. If someone asks a question you haven’t considered, take the time to find the answer and then get back to this person after the meeting.

Accurately communicating your vision and getting the employees behind your plan is critical to success. With the help of those who share your vision, you’ll be able to win the support of many people across your organization. Ultimately, you are accountable for getting results. But you need others to ensure success.

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