Launching a product doesn’t need to really feel like blindly fixing a Rubik’s dice — the fitting product launch template will assist you to map out your technique, high-level targets, in-the-weeds particulars, and all of the work it’ll take to get there.
These are a few of the finest tools and templates to begin with, whether or not you’re introducing your first digital course or your tenth bodily product to the market
monday.com: A product launch template for advertising groups
monday.com is an all-in-one software for launching merchandise, managing advertising campaigns, and dealing with dozens (or tons of) of initiatives.
The free plan comes with two person seats, over 200+ templates, and three undertaking boards. It’s tremendous when you’re simply getting began or wish to attempt monday.com, however groups will possible need to improve to a paid plan fairly fast.
My favourite product launch template is particularly for entrepreneurs — it helps guarantee model messaging is constant and that your whole promo supplies align alongside the best way.
Extra on monday.com: monday.com Review | monday.com vs Wrike | monday.com vs Airtable.
monday.com makes it straightforward to change between huge image planning and weekly duties. This helps advertising groups keep targeted on their priorities whereas by no means shedding sight of the excessive stage launch plan.
It’s a totally customizable template with 30+ column sorts, supplying you with every little thing it is advisable to make it work in your staff.
You should utilize it to create pre-launch campaigns and maintain your whole belongings organized for emails, social posts, blogs, PR campaigns, and extra. With superior options like real-time notifications for accomplished duties, you’ll be able to shortly begin work on the proper e mail or press launch when the product photos or dwell demo is able to share.
Whereas monday.com is nice for every type of groups, this one’s particularly targeted on advertising groups.
You possibly can share it with different division heads and leaders or join it to different staff boards throughout the platform, however every little thing was designed round what entrepreneurs want.
ClickUp: Complete product launch guidelines + template
ClickUp is an alternative choice that works properly for groups of all sizes. Whether or not you’re launching a bodily product or new software program, the platform works nice for monitoring duties and protecting your whole firm on the identical web page.
The free perpetually plan is without doubt one of the finest on the market with limitless customers and duties. You should utilize it for fairly some time, even when you’re a small staff.
Whereas it’s not as versatile as monday.com, it’s extra reasonably priced and provides you much more performance at a lower cost.
Extra on ClickUp: ClickUp Review | ClickUp vs Asana | ClickUp vs Notion.
The most effective product launch template for ClickUp is a complicated resolution for planning and executing detailed launch methods. Out of the field, it really works nice for analyzing market traits, planning surveys targeted in your target market, and finalizing your pricing technique previous to launch.
You can even create a customized guidelines that features subcategories for every activity, which is tremendous useful if possession of various phases is assigned to completely different groups.
From there, it’s straightforward to show it right into a timeline to make sure every little thing’s on schedule. You possibly can even set milestones to indicate main occasions alongside the best way.
With practically a dozen built-in undertaking views, ClickUp makes it straightforward to visualise work in several methods, relying on what you wish to see. Kanban board is nice for particular person contributors whereas timelines and dashboards are sport altering for managers.
The most important draw back? This template is probably going overkill when you’re a solo person because it has a ton of collaboration options you’ll by no means use.
However its flexibility, feature-rich nature, and collaborative setting make it a no brainer for groups of all sizes.
Wrike: A product launch template with sequential phases
Wrike is a extra inflexible undertaking administration platform that’s glorious for mid-sized and huge groups. Smaller groups can use it at no cost, but it surely’s fairly restricted in comparison with different free plans we’ve checked out because it’s not likely meant for use long-term.
Total, it’s an ideal possibility for managing product launches as a result of it has every little thing it is advisable to execute your plan and proceed supporting the product post-launch.
The official product launch template is properly completed with pre constructed views, workflows, and directions on benefit from it.
Extra on Wrike: Wrike Review | Wrike vs Smartsheet | Wrike vs. Asana.
By default, this Wrike template breaks down each product launch into three distinct phases — pre-launch, product launch, and post-launch. This will help make large initiatives really feel much less overwhelming since you’ll be able to deal with the part you’re in whereas planning forward so that you’re all the time ready for what’s subsequent.
The construction makes a variety of sense as a result of most launches have duties that needs to be completed in a sequential order.
With different instruments, monitoring these dependencies can get sophisticated. With this template, it’s straightforward to set them up and perceive what ought to occur when. In any case, you’ll be able to’t actually work on product messaging or creatives till you’ve chosen a target market.
Product managers may use Wrike to determine potential roadblocks earlier than they change into a much bigger drawback and pressure you to push again your launch date.
You’ll additionally have the ability to observe the progress of your entire undertaking, every part, and duties with subtasks utilizing its inbuilt timeline view.
As soon as a activity has a deadline, visualizing its standing and understanding its influence on different parts of your launch is a breeze.
The most important draw back of this template is how lengthy it takes to arrange. There’s a little bit of configuring you’ll need to do earlier than it’s prepared so that you can use. You’ll possible additionally need to repeatedly make tweaks till it really works the way you want it to.
Teamwork: A collaborative launch template for companies
Teamwork is a undertaking administration and staff collaboration resolution bundled right into a single platform. It’s nice for day-to-day activity administration and big-picture alignment — two issues which might be important in rolling out new merchandise.
Particularly, it’s for companies, consultants, and corporations that handle work throughout dozens, tons of, or 1000’s of various purchasers.
It’s free for groups of as much as 5 customers. In any other case, you’ll be able to attempt any premium plan free for 30 days.
Extra on Teamwork: Teamwork Review | Teamwork vs monday.com.
Apart from Teamwork’s inbuilt performance for managing consumer work, this template makes it straightforward to create a backlog of duties, assign them to the suitable folks, set due dates, and centralize communications.
Assignees could be different folks in your staff, a special staff, or perhaps a consumer. Out of the gate, this helps maintain purchasers accountable for his or her half in what you’re doing.
You can even simply add information and different belongings to every card so everybody will get access to the weather that make your launch tick.
Say a designer creates a customized picture and uploads the file to your Teamwork house. From there, your consumer can approve or reject it, triggering the suitable workflow. In the event that they approve, your social media supervisor can use the file to schedule an upcoming submit to advertise the consumer’s new product — all with no prolonged e mail chain or Slack thread.
In comparison with different platforms, Teamwork could be very simple and user-friendly. It doesn’t take a variety of tweaking or configuring.
This comes on the expense of flexibility. You gained’t have the ability to make main changes to the platform itself so that you’ll possible need to construct a few of your workflows across the platform fairly than the opposite means round.
TeamGantt: A launch template for software program growth
TeamGantt is a undertaking administration resolution recognized for its top quality Gantt charts. It’s generally utilized by groups that use agile methodologies, like software program growth groups launching a brand new product, characteristic, or model launch.
Apart from launches, it has quite a few templates for dev groups, together with bug monitoring, characteristic backlogs, request administration, and excessive stage growth plans.
The free plan is ok for a single small private undertaking with as much as 60 duties, though you’ll miss out on a variety of the important thing options that make TeamGantt an ideal resolution.
Alternatively, you’ll be able to attempt their Professional plan free for seven days to see if it’s proper in your staff earlier than you commit.
Extra on TeamGantt: TeamGantt Review.
TeamGantt works properly for software program growth as a result of its interface ought to really feel acquainted when you’re already doing agile undertaking administration. Making the change might be comparatively straightforward vs spending weeks or months studying one thing new.
Their product launch template makes it straightforward to arrange an entire roadmap that covers a couple of months, 1 / 4, and even half a yr.
From there, managers can work with their staff to stipulate main themes and epics earlier than breaking every little thing down into even smaller sprints and duties.
With a plan in place, you should utilize TeamGantt’s workload administration instruments to assign the work with out burning anybody out. It even has inbuilt time monitoring and hourly estimating to make it straightforward to plan for sources forward of time.
You possibly can coloration code every little thing by possession, sort, or another area you’d prefer to visually sign no matter you’d like.
The software additionally allows you to arrange activity dependencies to assist management processes.
One final attention-grabbing level about TeamGantt is its pricing construction. You solely need to pay for managers — collaborators are fully free and you may have as many as you’d like so long as you’re on a paid plan.
Notion: Excessive stage product launch templates
Not like the others thus far, Notion is a productiveness suite with undertaking administration options inbuilt. Many people use it to take notes and arrange to do lists whereas companies can use it to handle staff work, documentation, SOPs, assembly notes, and extra.
It’s versatile and extremely customizable, which can be certainly one of its greatest drawbacks. It begins as a clean slate — the way you set it up is fully as much as you.
In case you’re somebody who likes to tweak issues and enhance programs or processes as you go, you’ll recognize the freeform nature. If that sounds horrible to you, you’re higher off selecting one thing else.
Notion affords a free plan that’s nice for solo customers but it surely’s extra of a free trial for groups.
There’s an enormous ecosystem of Notion templates on the market and I couldn’t slender it all the way down to only one for this submit. You should utilize both or each, relying on how detailed you need your excessive stage plan to be.
Extra on Notion: Notion Review | Notion vs Asana | Notion vs Confluence.
Template 1: A launch transient for staff alignment
Notion’s product launch transient template is ideal for placing your plan in writing. Whereas you should utilize it to prepare ideas as a person person, I like to recommend it as a one-pager (or two-pager) for sharing these plans together with your staff and stakeholders.
Everybody concerned can simply reference this doc as a reminder of your targets, what you’re launching, and why.
It’s a lot less complicated than anything we’ve talked about thus far. As a substitute of mapping out duties and assigning them, you’ll get a template for summarizing your technique, targets, launch date, and the tasks for everybody in your staff.
You can even add product-specific info, like specs, pricing, and phases.
The template features a house to plan launch deliverables organized by standing and staff. There’s additionally a easy pre-launch and post-launch guidelines included on the template. Nevertheless, it’s not likely meant for managing work throughout your staff.
All of it is a good place to begin however you’ll possible wish to add extra sturdy undertaking administration capabilities or pair this with one other template to truly execute the plan you wrote.
Template 2: A extra detailed product launch to do checklist
If you wish to put collectively a extra granular guidelines, this template has a greater structure.
It comes pre loaded with an inventory of motion gadgets for a typical product launch. You possibly can simply replace it to match your processes. Plus, it’s far less complicated than building out a whole undertaking administration system in Notion when you don’t have to get that fancy.
By default, it comes with seven phases in your product launch — market analysis, purpose identification, advertising plan, sales help and coaching, testing, launch occasion, and post-launch analysis.
It features a bunch of duties for every stage, however you’ll be able to simply add or take away phases (and duties) based mostly in your state of affairs.
This template allows you to tag staff members and assign due dates, but it surely’s fairly naked bones. It’s much more suited to solo use. In case you’re working with a number of folks, you’ll in all probability want one thing extra sturdy.
In that case, you’ll be able to add this guidelines to your undertaking administration system after which customise it, assign every activity, set due dates, and handle progress with out having to begin from scratch.
Launch trackers for Excel, Google Sheets, Phrase, and PDF
In case you’re working alone or launching a easy product, you in all probability don’t want an entire undertaking administration system. You possibly can possible get by simply tremendous utilizing a spreadsheet or normal doc.
Whereas these don’t have as many collaboration options or automations, they’re far less complicated and simpler to make use of.
Template 1: 90-day product launch plan
Smartsheet is a strong spreadsheet-based enterprise app builder. It doesn’t have a free plan, but it surely does provide free spreadsheets and doc templates for varied use circumstances, together with launching a brand new product.
Their product launch plan template is nice for launches that’ll take three months or much less.
You possibly can obtain it and use it at no cost with Excel, Phrase, or PDF — and it’s so easy you can begin planning your launch in a matter of minutes (no configuration required).
It’s damaged up into segments for the primary 30 days, days 31-60, and 61-90. All you need to do is add motion gadgets for every section into the suitable column.
Every activity can have its personal standing and purpose or part for further context. It might assist to begin by figuring out key targets, phases, and milestones. From there, you’ll be able to break them down additional into duties and observe progress as wanted.
After you’ve added begin and finish dates in your launch, the template will routinely spotlight overdue duties that will help you prioritize them and ensure nothing slips via the cracks.
Template 2: A template for launch-specific advertising plans
Just like the template above, this one was created by Smartsheet. You possibly can obtain it for Excel, Google Sheets, or as a PDF at no cost.
Slightly than protecting all features of your product launch, this one focuses on serving to you develop and execute a advertising plan to advertise your new product, service, launch, line, or characteristic.
This template is lifeless easy as a result of it doesn’t embody work concerned with growing no matter you’re launching.
It’s solely targeted on advertising actions, permitting your staff to remain laser targeted.
There are fairly a couple of sections designed that will help you determine key strengths, evaluate your product to your rivals, and place your self in a means that may resonate together with your target market.
From pre launch to submit launch, it’s an ideal useful resource anybody in your advertising staff can confer with when engaged on belongings or campaigns round your launch.
It may be particularly useful in case your staff manages a variety of launches — it could assist everybody maintain completely different services straight from a advertising perspective with out having to reinvent the wheel each time.
None of those templates work for me. Now what?
You possibly can both customise an current template or construct your personal system to plan and handle the work concerned. Both means, your first choice needs to be the software program you’re going to make use of.
SEE: Study concerning the best project management solutions in the marketplace.
From there, it is best to make an inventory of priorities, together with what it is advisable to maintain observe of, completely different views that is perhaps useful, how a lot you’re in a position to spend (if something), and the way a lot work you wish to put into setting it up.
At a minimal, your product launch resolution ought to:
- Outline the product you’re launching.
- Clarify what it does and the issues it solves.
- Spotlight your goal market and why they need to care.
- Estimated ship dates and a last launch date.
- Your excessive stage targets and targets.
- Particular pre-launch deliverables.
- A promotion plan if relevant.
Lots of the templates above cowl all of those components after which some. You might want or wish to go into extra element and that’s okay too.
Say you’re launching a brand new piece of software program. You might have to play for beta testing, market analysis, focus teams, hiring builders, and coaching. These are all vital steps that’ll influence your launch, so they need to be lined in your template as properly.
SEE: Take a look at these free customer satisfaction survey templates when you want them.
The simplest route is discovering a template for the software you wish to use that will get you as shut as attainable to what you want.
What’s the distinction between a product launch and go-to-market (GTM) technique?
Launching a product is a bit of your go to market technique. In different phrases, your GTM technique is broad and encompasses a variety of issues, together with your product launch.
GTM methods can be utilized to deliver new merchandise to current markets, present merchandise into new markets, take a look at new markets, and even begin a brand new enterprise. These methods are usually extra concerned — together with components associated to danger administration and aggressive analysis.
Product launches are product-specific and don’t need to rehash your total model, different merchandise, or total enterprise technique. Take a look at my favorite go to market strategy templates if you wish to begin there. You possibly can all the time add a product launch template in whenever you’re able to get extra particular.
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