What is a Post-Launch Campaign?

The energy levels will inevitably decrease once your product is finally launched the anticipation ends. Then comes the post-launch stage where you need to work harder to maintain the rhythm whilst reviewing how the launch did.

Product launches are not a singular event in time. Instead, post-launch is the perfect opportunity to create a drumbeat of momentum around your launch, product, pricing, or what’s coming next. Most impactful product launches easily extend about four to six weeks after the initial launch day.

Post-launch campaigns focus on maintaining and nourishing a relationship with customers. This is executed with the help of relative media content, in-depth analysis and research, responses and reviews, and more. Elements of a post-launch campaign vary depending on the nature of offerings, the bandwidth and capacity of the team, and other factors. Let’s take a look!

Why Is a Post-Launch Campaign Important

Post-launch activities are essentially a source of feedback for a company about the product or service they just launched. The review allows them to evaluate how the product or service is performing compared to the initial advertising and the target audience’s expectations. This also helps in spotting areas of potential improvements to the product or service’s market fit.

Learnings and developments based on customer response give a good idea of what went well and what areas can you improve upon for the next launch. Some incremental tweaks businesses have to make are based on essential customer feedback like:

• Who is and isn’t using the product or service?
• What makes them use it or not use it?
• How does the product or service’s performance compare or contrast to the expectations pre-launch?
• What characteristics of the product or service seem to be most appealing to early adopters?
• What kind of product should you add to the pipeline?

How to Conduct a Successful Post-Launch Campaign

The response stage or the post-launch stage is when a company’s product marketing team needs to be the most active. Here are a few things your team should focus on after the launch day.

Keep Publishing More Content

A well-planned content strategy is the key to a successful marketing campaign. It’s especially true to keep the momentum going after a product launch. In the weeks following the launch, plan to publish numerous content pieces to drive interest and continue the motion of the launch.

Two to three posts on each social media channel per week is a good strategy. This should continue for several weeks after the initial launch date. Post-launch content can range from blog posts, ebooks, emails, videos, AMAs, webinars, Twitter spaces, and more.

Remember, the goal of post-launch content is not only limited to keeping people engaged. But it’s also the perfect time to double down on why and how the recently launched product or service can change users’ lives for the better.

You can create how-to guides, tell the target audience why your product is the future of your industry, and integrate early customer reviews. Another great idea is to do a series of “how we built it” or “the process” to engage audiences that are interested in getting a glimpse of product creation.

Make sure your company has a solid content calendar and a content scheduling tool in place. This helps in organizing content ideas, planning the right time to publish for maximum impact, and more.

The gist is: Keep posting anything that educates the audience about the true value of your new launch. Continue to pull engagement from the audiences and draw their interest in your product or service.

Collect, Review, and Respond to Customer Feedback

It’s important to collect and incorporate customer and product feedback into your marketing strategy. Monitor this feedback continuously because it’s an excellent way to get insight into functionalities and features audiences are perceiving well and excited about. It helps dictate and refine your strategy further.

Some questions that can help you review customer feedback and launch sentiments include:

• How was the media attention? Did the launch attract enough buzz?
• Was the launch worth triggering a Twitter fire? If so, how and why?
• How did your Support channels take the launch?

Based on these data points, decide what more needs to be done. A great way to find out how your product is doing is to engage in social conversations and answer customer queries.

Set up a customer feedback database to collect and categorize data automatically from a wide variety of sources. These sources could include email interactions, social media posts, customer support tickets, etc. Pay close attention to feedback on pricing and competitors too.

Dissect Launch Activities and Track Customer Experience

Measure and check the end-to-end customer experience of initial users of the launched product. Collecting quantitative data is the key here. Such data is valuable and collected via the organization’s tracking mechanisms and analytics. It’s also crucial that all the departments and stakeholders of the company approve of what the most important metrics are.

Examples of data that can help you include:

• Number of products trials
• Competitive win rate
• Leads generated
• Product adoption rate
• Retention rate
• Blog Traffic
• Website and webpage views
• Customer support tickets
• Feature use – the number of people who used unique features, avg. number of users per day, etc.)
• PR coverage – company mentions, social media recognition, etc.
• Revenue and market share
• Promotional channel metrics

Setting up these dashboards is necessary before the launch. Because they will allow the company to compare post-launch metrics easily against the launch metrics.

For that, decide on what CRM tools and analytics you will be using. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Optimize, and Hotjar are popularly used. You may also want to tap into a marketing automation platform like Hubspot which gives analytics and tracking capabilities.

Verify Pricing

Pricing research is a part of your pre-launch activities. The goal is to highlight your products’ good features in a manner that it’s so widely and heartily accepted by users as a result. It may be beneficial to keep the pricing slightly at the higher end of the spectrum and then use the post-launch weeks to validate it.

Some things to think about if you choose to validate pricing post-launch:

• Is your product easy to sell? Does the sales team come back with multiple questions?
• Is the current pricing a point of friction for the planned sales motion?
• Are there more sign-ups/ better responses for a specific price tier?

Checklist For an Effective Post-Launch Campaign

Devise a Solid Retention Strategy

Map out the complete journey of the customer from onboarding to retention and point out all the stages where there could be a roadblock. This defines what comes next for your customer after they make the purchase.

Make sure you set up a proper onboarding experience and support before and after you launch. Decide any alternative offerings or guarantees as well as other software and tools to make sure that customers you attract stay with you post-launch.

Optimization is the Key!

Just like qualitative feedback about your newly launched product, the quantitative data also needs interpretation followed by action. After your launch a new product or feature, there will inevitably be differences in how the promotion activities perform across different channels and formats.

So for that, you need to optimize. Monitor your channel ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and ROI (Return on Investment). If there is a particular blog post doing well and you see some momentum picking up, you might want to create more pieces on a similar or related topic.

Create a checklist of KPIs, goals, and objectives for each of your marketing channels and make sure they are measurable, relevant, time-bound, and achievable.

Timely and Effective Reporting

Lastly, a crucial aspect of post-launch strategies is compelling reporting. Organizations need a clear and closed-loop process for data to be analyzed, interpreted, and actioned efficiently. This interpretation essentially helps all stakeholders to stay updated and on the same page.

Timely reporting also helps the business to make accurate judgments and plan goals on whether the current product marketing is heading in the right direction.

Make sure your reporting is concise and that you only report what’s important. Always ask: Are these metrics and numbers going to help the organization decide the product’s performance post launch? This will ensure that only readable and actionable reports are generated and in turn, will encourage cross-department collaboration.

To do this, make sure you already have prepared standard report templates to ensure readability and consistency. Some metrics that are helpful in such reports include: Monthly Active User (DAU/MAU) ratio, Daily Active User, Customer Churn Rate, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

Final Word

Launching a product is just the start of a journey. The post-launch stage is the best time to seize opportunities to collect lifelong customers. Setting up effective post-launch strategies by keeping the psychological needs of the customer into account will help you keep things organized and actionable. And if you need a helping hand, Prefinery.com can do all the leg work and set you up for success.

FAQ

What is post-launch analysis?

A post-launch analysis is monitoring how good or bad a product did after its launch. This includes looking into sales figures, customer feedback, and other measures of success to identify areas of improvement.

What is the goal of post-launch research?

Post-launch research basically tells the company if it succeeded. Market research involves understanding how was the user’s experience of the product and its comparison with competitors.