Customers: The Key to a Successful SaaS Product Launch Plan

An effective SaaS product launch plan is one of the most difficult challenges today facing B2B SaaS companies. In a climate of shrinking budgets and numerous competitive options, many companies launching new products often struggle to capture the attention of their target prospects, quickly demonstrate the value of their solution, and create urgency to buy.

One of the most common SaaS product launch plan mistakes is focusing too much on the product and its features and not enough on the customer and their problems. Customers don’t care if your product is the next “Uber for [insert category]” if they don’t understand how your product helps them solve a meaningful problem.

To maximize the ROI of your newest product and avoid this ‘product-first’ pitfall, follow these steps for keeping customers at the center of your SaaS product launch plan.

1. Build your launch strategy around the target customer

When building a new product or solution, product managers need to intimately understand their users’ goals, obstacles to achieving these goals, and ways those obstacles are typically overcome. It’s this type of insight that enables product and engineering teams to develop solutions that help users attain or exceed their goals in a faster, better, or easier way.

This type of insight should also be used to build an effective go-to-market strategy. Building on insights derived by product management, marketers should be focused on understanding how target customers find, evaluate, and purchase solutions like the one that is being launched.

Marketers can then build their launch strategy around these insights. With answers to questions like:

  • Who are the decision makers?
  • How do those individuals make purchasing decisions?
  • Where do these individuals typically seek information about solutions like ours?

…marketers can make educated decisions about whom to target, which channels to leverage, and what content is most valuable to this audience.

2. Identify, align, and enable stakeholders who are involved in the customer journey

Once a SaaS product launch plan has been established, it’s critical to align key stakeholders across the organization. Product launches touch every part of the organization, from marketing and sales to operations and legal. To determine who should be involved in launch planning, identify key touchpoints that take place throughout the buying process and establish who within the organization owns those touchpoints.

For example, these touchpoints throughout the buyer journey may include:

  • Building brand awareness in the new product’s category (brand marketing)
  • Generating leads for the new product (demand generation)
  • Conducting discovery calls with prospects (sales)
  • Providing legal terms and conditions to prospective customers (legal)
  • Generating sales orders (operations)
  • Implementing the new product (customer success)
  • Supporting the new product (support)

Once owners are established, it’s time to share the launch strategy, objectives, timeline, and key milestones, and to solicit feedback regarding what activities need to be completed across the organization in order to successfully launch the product. This cross-functional group, often known as the ‘launch team,’ is critical to launching products successfully and on time.

3. Employ benefit-based messaging throughout marketing and sales materials

Feature-first marketing and sales often occur because marketers and sales representatives lack a deep understanding of the buyer to whom they’re selling. In these instances, marketing and sales fall back on describing the product and how it works. This approach can result in wasted time and resources that fail to capture the attention and engagement of target buyers  who end up not understanding why they should care about these features.

Instead, leverage buyer insights to compose benefit-first messaging that describes the value provided by the product and features. For example, an email marketing software may promote its ability to ‘use 1,000+ attributes to personalize emails.’ Flip to a benefit-first approach by focusing on the value provided: ‘increase click-through rate with advanced email personalization.’

Incorporate a benefit-first messaging approach into all marketing and sales materials, from paid advertising and webinar content to sales decks and one-pagers. Plus, utilize a ‘product message house’ that concisely describes the target audience, problem faced by target persona, and how your solution uniquely solves the problem will scale benefit-first messages across internal teams and marketing channels.

Focus on customers every step of the way

Keeping customers at the center of your product launch is the best way to maximize ROI on your new product or solution. From developing your SaaS product launch plan to managing launch operations and executing go-to-market tactics, your understanding of target buyers and their purchasing behavior should power every decision you make and every content piece you create.

Questions, or want expert assistance in getting your launch strategy developed? Get in touch with our team today.