How much time should be dedicated to Research before a launch?
This depends on two things:
How much you already know
How much risk you can take
How much do you already know?
A lot - you already have existing data at your disposal. If this is the case, you do not necessarily need to seek more information. You can leverage these existing insights, or analyze the data sets again from new angles.
A little - you have some data but need to validate some burning questions. If this is the case, you can be scrappy yet comprehensive with the additional research. This could mean recontacting people you’ve interviewed before, conducting fresh interviews with a small sample set (but still big enough to detect patterns in their answers), listening to sales or support call recordings that include specific buzzwords (we use Gong for this and it’s great), or launching a short survey that will field quickly.
Not nearly enough - you don’t have sufficient (or any) data that can be used to guide your decisions. If this is the case, you probably aren’t sleeping at night and need to allot a decent amount of time, effort, and/or budget to get the answers you need. I specify effort and budget because you can enlist third parties ($), or more teammates with a research skillset (effort) to get answers quickly.
How much risk can you take?
Everything is contextual and only you know how your company and team can adapt if the initial launch misses the mark. Consider what you will need to know in order to feel confident in your launch strategy.
Startups need to move fast and usually have a small handful of key stakeholders (like the founders). In this case, you’d likely need just a few key insights to validate a launch direction. For instance, if you are launching pricing and can sleep at night without having done a Van Westendorp price analysis, then you don’t need to do it. You can be scrappy yet comprehensive about validating your options quickly with, for example, a small set of interviews with your target buyer (UserTesting is great for recruitment; you should also test this with some existing customers).
On the other hand, big companies move more slowly and have lots of stakeholders (like 20 different teams!), often with very different concerns. Each team may have different motivations or want different things from the launch (e.g., Sales may want more demand, Relationship Management/Customer Success may want to increase retention, Brand Marketing may want to increase awareness). On top of that, each of these team leaders may have different ways of being persuaded. In this case, you’ll want to ensure that your research not only gives you strong (bulletproof) conviction in your proposal, but also gets ahead of assuaging their concerns.
This depends on the magnitude of the launch, the goal of the research, and the budget available. For a large business-critical launch, you may have more than one phase of research. You might do a phase 1 a year out from launch, validating the product's appeal in the intended market. You might need a phase of pricing research 4 to 6 months from the launch. And I also recommend a phase of message testing research 2 to 3 months from the launch.
We are yet to use "it depends". well, it depends.. on how much time you have for your launch, how much risk is associated with the launch and how big your budget is. I recommend breaking the research into two parts. Discovery and validation. former to understand trends, topics and issues. latter to ensure you are on the right path.
Before a new product launch, I would hope that you've already done all your research by then as launch should be all about the actual GTM motions. Things I like to test right before a launch is putting drafts of GTM assets in front of prospects for their reactions/feedback. For example, I had invested on creating a short promotional video for launch day. When it was nearing its final stages of production, I shared it with a small number of prospects to get their feedback. I believe that any major marketing assets should be tested with an external audience before launch day to make sure you're going to be captivating your audience as much as possible!
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