How do you follow the "Big Bang" of a product launch to drive/nurture sustained growth?

Good question. For Zuora - which is a B2B enterprise software product - a “Big Bang” product launch usually drives awareness, not necessarily immediate adoption. It takes additional education to get a buyer to commit resources to the sales cycle and effort to adopt a new software. That being said, a coordinated follow-up between Marketing <> Sales <> Services <> Customer Success makes all the difference here.  For example, if the launch did not enable Sales and Customer Success ...Read More

Proactively plan for sustained momentum from day one. It’s tempting (and deceptively easy) to over-invest in “launch day” activities given all of the buzz these moments can generate. While it varies based on the tactics you deploy, the initial launch announcement is often great for top-of-funnel awareness but can leave some significant gaps in product adoption given the short attention spans of consumers. Mapping out a steady drumbeat of activity post-launch is critical to sustaining that desire ...Read More

Data! Everything you do once the launch has started should be about strengthening the feedback loop between your tactics and your outputs. Make sure to have everything you need and want to track in a built-out dashboard or in the form of queries you can run daily or at least a few times a week during launch. If you’re delayed on measurement, you’ll be slower to diagnose problems and learn from what’s working/not. Conduct user research. If you had a pre-launch beta group great, follow up with the ...Read More

One way to do this is build a launch plan that eliminates the “Big Bang” altogether :). When building your launch plan, craft a “Season of Launch” instead of a plan that is centered around a single moment in time (ie, when your product/feature is announced or generally available) and ensure your resources are allocated thoughtfully across the “Season of Launch” time frame. Also, your launch plan should ideally define goals that map to broader company goals (ie, awareness uplift, usage & adop ...Read More