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Planning Your Product Launch with a Go-to-Market Checklist

If you’re bringing a new product, software or service to market, then you need to have a go-to-market strategy: what are your plans to launch your product and get customers and interest?

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Below is a simple week-by-week checklist leading up to a new software product introduction that you can use to keep all those marketing & promotion details straight. If you need some help putting your go-to-market plan together, or just have a few questions, then sign up for a Software Marketing Consult session here.

Next month we will be introducing our updated Go-to-Market planning package which will include a more detailed checklist and timeline, GTM strategy template, PR templates, eGuides and more! Sign up for our newsletter here to be notified when it is available.

8-12 weeks before launch:

Product name finalized
Acquire domain name, social handles for product name
Create ideal customer persona: Description, Pain points / needs, Benefits
USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – what is the key value of your product to your target customer? why are you/your business the right choice (build credibility)?
Create a high-level launch plan:
1. Goals
2. Strategies (Who is the audience? What channels? When? What messages? How will the customer find it? Why should they act?)
3. Tactics – specific activities to accomplish the strategies
4. Metrics – how to measure success

4 weeks before launch:

Website ready (or new web page / sub-domain for product)
All social pages ready
Promotion plan done:
1. Plan for pre-launch, launch & post-launch press releases
2. Media/influencer targets identified, with contact info
3. Compile editorial calendars
4. Advertising plan (eg, PPC, banner ads, FB ads, offline ads, etc)
Keywords for SEO or PPC identified
Content marketing plan in place – blog posts, guest blogging, social media

3 weeks before launch:

Create media kit (PR, company & product description, bio/story, headshots, screenshots, Q&A, video or demo, trial codes, etc)
Sign up for HARO, Pitchrate to receive email about media pitch requests
Email signup on website (start before launch)
Write email sequence to send to mailing list, both at launch, plus pre- and post-launch
Create SEO content for website/blog to bring in search visitors

2 weeks before launch:

Pre-launch press release sent to select media & influencers
Promote mailing list (prerelease signup)
Email update to mailing list
Customer support plan
Customer documentation complete
Channel plan in place – who do you need to sign up? what do they need to sell or list your software?

1 week before launch:

Email update to mailing list)
Promote mailing list (prerelease signup)
List of events (tradeshows, meetups, user groups) and websites where you can “announce” your new product/service)
Finalize all announcement copy: press release, description, elevator pitch, social content)

At launch:

Update website / product page
Launch press release published & sent to all media & influencers
Email update to mailing list
Add listing / description to websites, directories, stores, etc
Announce on social media, blog, forums/groups (as appropriate), etc

Post launch:

Post-launch press release with user/customer update/announcement
Email update to mailing list
Content marketing: social posts, blogs, guest posts, forum/group engagement, etc
Gather feedback from users, influencers, etc

Researching the Mobile Application Market

Published November 12, 2018 marketing strategy , mobile apps , software marketing , technology marketing , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: mobile apps, software

Do you need to research the mobile application market but unsure where to begin? Worried that your mobile app idea may not be a great business opportunity? Don’t have time or money for a custom mobile app market analysis or an expensive research report?

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Don’t reinvent the wheel. This article will give you some suggestions for doing mobile apps market research.

Check out the article below for:

a summary of the latest research on the mobile application market, which you can use to start your app market research,
a list of some of the latest mobile application market research reports, if you’d like to purchase a professional study,
a step-by-step process to create your own custom mobile app market analysis for your specific niche,
suggestions for affordable assistance if you just need a little help without breaking the bank.

Keep reading…

Developing Your App Marketing Strategy: 7 Key Steps

Published March 28, 2018 marketing strategy , mobile apps , software , software marketing , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: marketing, software, technology

With a good app marketing strategy you can make sure that your sales and marketing efforts aren’t in vain. Keep your limited resources focused on your business goals with these 7 tips to planning a strong software marketing strategy.

A focused software marketing strategy will decrease your time to market and shorten your sales cycle. It can drive the most effective app launch for your software.

To start planning your app marketing strategy, follow the 7-step process below:

Make sure you fully understand your market, including size, trends, and key players.
Segment your potential customer base.
Make detailed profiles of your customer segments.
Identify which of your segments are your early adoption targets.
Identify their key pain points and sales process needs.
Develop micro-messaging for the target segments
Plan your communication strategy

For more detail, read this article on how to plan your app marketing strategy.

Mobile app monetization: Think business model, not ads | VentureBeat

Published June 3, 2013 mobile apps , software , software sales , technology marketing 1 Comment
Tags: app monetization, mobile apps, software sales

This article posted today at VentureBeat is well worth a read if you have a mobile app and need to work on better monetization . http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/02/mobile-app-monetization-think-business-model-not-ads/

Should You Develop Mobile Apps for iOS or Android?

Published May 8, 2012 marketing strategy , mobile apps , software , software marketing , technology marketing 14 Comments
Tags: android, ios, mobile apps, mobility

Currently, the leading platforms for mobile app developers are iPhone and iPad (ie, iOS devices) and Android smartphones and tablets. As a developer of mobile apps, do you choose one platform to focus your app development efforts on, or do you support both? And what about the other mobile platforms such as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry?

In making that decision, do you look at which platform has the largest installed base? Or do you go by which platform is currently shipping the largest volume of units? Or what about which platform has the highest overall in-app usage time? The answers vary drastically depending on how you frame the question.

We published a summary of the mobile app market this month – it is available for download here.

Most of the published data on mobile share focuses on platform market share, which shows a rapid increase of Android compared to iOS. However, an article published by Business Insider in March instead considered the amount of actual time spent online as a proxy for app usage, which paints a very different picture with iOS clearly dominating.

The rapid rise in Android smartphone market share compared to the iPhone is clearly indicated in Silicon Alley Insider’s chart of the day from November 2011 which shows Android smartphones at 52.5% of the market, while iOS is less than 20%.

At first glance, this type of data may give a developer of mobile apps pause: Should one be prioritizing an Android version over iOS or vice versa?

With all the talk of platform market share, what many of us forget is that the relevant question is the market share of mobile app usage time. After all, that is what users will ultimately pay the app developer for. Silicon Alley Insider’s chart of the day from March 13 2012 instead tells the real story of Android versus iOS.

The chart from ComScore shows the digital traffic market share of connected devices by OS in the US – it’s a very different story than what’s told by the device platform market share where Android shipments are now dominating. When you look at it by digital traffic – the actual mobile Web usage – the picture changes, with iOS dominating at 60% and Android far behind at only 32%. Similarly, Net Applications finds iOS has a 4.4x larger web share than Android. On top of that, a number of studies have also found that iOS users are much more likely to pay for apps or make in-app purchases. On average, developers make 6x more on iOS apps for the equivalent app.

This data seems to clearly indicate that the first platform of choice for a mobile app should still be iOS.

So if you develop mobile apps, what choices do you make? Please vote in our poll:

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