Launching
The moment of deployment
There are dozens of books and videos on launching products into the marketplace, but the truth is, if you’ve gotten your design and marketing right, launching should be a mechanical issue. Follow this brief checklist to ensure you’re in the right place, and take the leap.
- Final mechanical tests: do all the pieces of your offering work?
- Scale test: under stress, saying to receive a huge influx of buyers or users, can your systems deliver?
- Ramp up plan: if you get no buyers or users straight away, what’s your ramp up strategy? How will you increase your marketing and gain visibility without losing the initial exuberance that comes with launch?
No matter how much you’re tempted, never do a big launch or back into a launch date because you’ve committed to a date to your stakeholders or the public. If your offering isn’t ready, delaying launch by a bit won’t hurt you in the long run, but if you launch and fail, your reputation will almost certainly be negatively affected for a long while.
Keep your head; know that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and launch with a strong, secure offering to a focused, well-loved customer group, and with a well-trained staff (if you have that) to help them through.