Why scale and grow are such important steps of new product development? What do they mean and how to do them properly, is there a secret to it? Why is it just not enough to design a product, but to also make sure to have it scaled the right way? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered on this too and here you can find all the necessary tips based on our extended experience with developing lots of new products successfully over the years.

Step 4 - Scale and Grow

Let’s face it, most of your audience is not ready to buy or start using your product just like that. You know that your product is great and it solves some major issues your audience might be facing. The truth is, they don’t know that at this point and don’t realize they need your product just as yet. You’ve done all the necessary steps that we’ve already covered in our New Product Development Guides to Product Discovery and Product Design & Engineering, but there is more to it and we’re going to explain what. A very important ingredient of a successful new product development process is product marketing, which is included from an early stage of new product development as explained in our previous guides. However, it plays a major role in preparing everything and getting ready for a successful launch and scaling of your product.

In its core focus, product marketing has an understanding of your customers and positioning your products to be successfully sold to potential customers, i.e. your target audience. As we’ve already explained, product marketers, working together with other product teams and before a product launch, typically develop segmenting, targeting and positioning, with messaging, pricing and gathering user feedback. What is also important and what's more related to the final scale and growth steps is to develop an overall product go-to-market strategy and  launch plan, which actually make a difference and help you stand out from the competition.

Here is what you need to do, step by step...

Go-to-market (GTM) strategy and launch plan

Once you've got your product in place, you need to figure out a go-to-market strategy for marketing your products to your target audience.

What is a go-to-market strategy? Basically, it’s a tactical plan in detail about how and when you plan to execute a successful product launch and its promotion. The end result of the strategy is that products are sold to your target customers successfully.

Common elements of a product’s go-to-market strategy include:

  • Pricing strategy
  • Segmenting, targeting & positioning
  • Customer journey map
  • Launch plan
  • Marketing tactics and campaigns
  • Sales tactics and channels
  • Budget for product launch and marketing
  • Plans for training the sales and customer support teams

We’ll explain the STP process and launch plan and the steps more, and here is how you do it:

Segmenting, targeting, positioning (STP)

After you develop your buyer, user and/or customer persona, it’s time to turn learnings into action. This comes in the form of a positioning document including a list of key messages, usually named STP document/plan. When working on this, try to answer these questions:

  • Who is this product for?
  • What does this product do?
  • Why should customers want to use it?
  • Why is this product different from what’s out there already?

Launch plan

A product launch plan is a document that details all the tasks and an entire timeline to get your users to interact with your new product or a new feature. Creating a product launch plan will make it easier to identify your goals, set out your strategy, and designate tasks for different teams and members to have all the relevant ones onboard. It is usually created by product marketers who own the creation of a launch plan, but it typically involves various teams from across a company, including product management, engineering, sales, traditional marketing, support, and more. It is very important to plan and create launch content, which is the glue to any launch plan and involves multiple teams too. This content includes everything from demo decks to product screenshots, explainer videos, blog posts, landing pages, website updates, PR announcements, campaign collateral, etc. Here is a nifty product launch template that might be of help.

Product launch 

Deciding when, how exactly and where to launch your product will determine its early impact on the market. A launch helps to showcase a new product to the market and lets customers know that it is available for purchase. The previously created launch plan can help build anticipation and create momentum for the product. You should try and make sure that everyone inside the company and your customers knows about the new product.

Keep reviewing your product

Once the product is launched, you can’t think it is over and there is nothing you have to do it about. Keep reviewing your product, its OKRs, how it is doing on the market, what your users are saying - listen to their feedback. This will make sure you are going to keep your market share after your product is launched, be innovative and keep yourself ahead of other products and businesses, to better anticipate changes to your competition, market and audience, and make your product stronger for the long run. Finally, you’ll want to measure the success of your launch plan. You can do this by also monitoring customer and internal feedback. Track the performance of the launch based on key metrics like adoption, up-sell, cross-sell, etc.

Review and refine, review and refine, review and refine...

It probably won’t be the last time you start a New Product Development process, so take enough time to analyze what went great and what could use some fine-tuning next time.

On top of that, you should also analyze how your GTM is working out and make edits to your marketing efforts if necessary. The bottom line is that the new product development process doesn’t just stop once the product is developed and launched, it is a continuous process. It is also a great way to pick up a lot of new findings that will help you be better at the next new product development.

If you need help with your new product development process, just reach out to us.