How do you track the success of your products post-launch?

Success is only as good as the definition of success. So in the early days of the launch you need to have a aligned defintion of what the launch goal is. Market share, awareness, competitive takeouts, upsell/cross-sell. Define it very clearly and define what the metric is for success. Also define the expected timeline for success, and ensure you have the actual instrumentation to measure it.  

Then the launch leader should commit to regular updates to the launch stakeholders on success metrics, and should call quarterly or monthly reviews in case the launch goals are not being met (in order to course correct)

First of all, successful launches set a goal for a launch during the initial phases of the launc, not just slapped on at the end. If you don't know why you're launching something, and what goals you are trying to acheive, you should pause and sort this out before moving forward.

Once the launch happens I like to assess the impact of the launch by channel at first weekly to spot any anomalies and make sure your launch is on track, and then at least monthly to keep up momentum and iterate if necessary. 

Overall, you want to be looking at metrics that give you an understanding of success (e.g. adoption, revenue, word-of-mouth), inform tweaks to your messaging, and future direction of the product. These metrics may differ between B2B and B2C products, especially around Sales Enablement.

Post launch, I’m tracking several metrics for my products, including:
1- Adoption and usage of the product
2- Revenue derived from a product
3- Customer support inquiries related to the product (this is a good source for additional product education and messaging)
4- Understanding of product from the Sales team
5- Influence of product for larger broader selling

When I worked in Consumer Product Marketing, I would also track mentions of the product in social media channels, NPS related to the product, awareness and understanding of products, and other related metrics.

Measuring the success of your launch is a fascinating topic, and no easy task. You can think of 5 dimensions of success: global impact, digital impact, revenue impact, employee impact, product impact.

1) Global impact

The global impact is really about how your launch made your brand more popular, how did it help with brand awareness? Of course, the metrics that go with this are things like a share of voice and VOC studies. A good product launch has the potential to make a big splash!

2) Digital impact

The digital impact is the most common or well known one. You can measure the organic engagement, as well as the paid digital engagement with all the metrics that you can think of.

For web, things like web traffic, CTR etc. For Paid, the views, reach, ad recall, etc..

3) Revenue impact

The third one is the revenue impact. How much pipeline did the launch influence or help mature? How much ARR or revenue, what about my close rates? Am also a fan of velocity as a metric. Did your launch impact your sales velocity? How fast do the existing deals move through the stages there - before and after launch? There’s numerous ways to measure revenue impact.

4) Employee impact

One that is often overlooked is the impact on employee morale and happiness. If you do a launch well, it is a great way to align everybody across your company around one given theme. One big news, one exciting moment. And as such, you should measure that with a pre and post launch survey. Has engagement increased? It should!

5) Product impact

Lastly, the product impact also has to be measured with things like product adoption, Monthly/weekly/daily active users as well as page views, clicks, things like that.

So as you see, there's many ways to measure success for a product launch from the top of the funnel metrics, to the digital impact, all the way down to the revenue impact, the impact on employees and on product.

That’s why I can't get enough product launches as a marketer 😊

Note: More details on metrics in this podcast (around minute 32): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kristinajaramillo_how-top-product-marketers-will-create-a-strong-activity-6824424440084865024-ZmvF

It really depends on what you’re launching, where your product fits into the customer’s journey, and the broader market. Generally speaking I think really large notable product launches can be measured by all, or just some of the following:

Awareness: Organic search traffic before/after launch, rise in social conversations (post launch), PR mentions, and more.

Interest: Growth in leads, MQLs, demos, or similar metrics for your business.

Impact: Revenue, retention, and more.

Overall here’s my playbook that I hope is helpful for large launches:
- Define which metrics matter for a specific launch. If it’s a really large launch, you should have executives involved in this step.
- Once those metrics are defined, setup some dashboards in whatever tool you’re using. I really like Looker, but it could be virtually any tool.
- Day of launch: Send an end of day recap on the launch and any early outcomes from the launch.
- 7 days post launch: Send an update including your core metrics. If you launched a paid product that has a long sales cycle you may not have information about revenue impact, but at this point you should have some metrics around leads, PR, and a broader read-out of how the launch went in the market.
- 30 days post launch: This should be a deeper read-out on how the launch is having impact. Ideally things like free users generated, revenue, etc.
- 90 days post launch: This is the final email that should have a full recap of your key launch metrics and wins from the launch.

Within each of these emails link to the dashboard that was setup so you can get the team in a habit of checking that resource whenever they want an up-to-date view on launch performance.