如何实现完美的产品发布

Gartner Research Optimize 4 Phasesfor Product LaunchSuccess Ron Burns, Adrian Lee4 October 2023 Optimize 4 Phases for Product Launch Success 4 October 2023 - ID G00766770 - 10 min read By Analyst(s): Ron Burns, Adrian Lee Initiatives:Product and Services Strategy for Tech CEOs; Product Marketing Execution;Product/Service Introduction and Delivery Delayed or false-start product launches can create a cascade ofproduct life cycle and credibility issues. Product leaders need tostrengthen fundamentals, adopt innovative methods and optimizeall four phases — strategize, plan, create and communicate — toachieve product launch success. Overview Key Findings Agile product development practices pressure product leaders to overinvest timespent with engineering teams and reduce their strategic collaboration with sales,marketing and other key functions.■Delayed product launches create a cascade of other life cycle management issuesfor product leaders and raises credibility issues for both the product and theextended launch team.■Customer success stories and case studies are a critical method of communicatingproduct value and overall product success; however, product leaders also find thiscontent the most difficult to create.■As buying journeys grow in length and complexity, product leaders struggle tocommunicate impactfully, as the majority of buyer time is spent with third-partycontent and not the technology and service provider’s sales team.■ Recommendations To deliver an effective launch as part of a product introduction strategy, product leadersmust: Strategize and clarify a launch approach by using the product strategy as thefoundation to build up and motivate a cross-departmental launch team.■ Gartner, Inc. | G00766770 Plan the most optimally timed launch date by not only removing dependence onproduct feature releases, but also ensuring time and resources to validate and testlaunch deliverables.■ Create and prioritize buyer-enablement content by prioritizing thought leadership,value assessment tools and customer success stories.■ Communicate product value by investing resources in sales enablement and “virtual-first” hybrid events.■ However, product leaders often manage portfolios of multiple products, each at variousstages in their life cycles, with a constant flow of parallel major, minor and minimumviable product (MVP) launches. The pace of market change has also accelerated, causinga sharp shift in buyer priorities and even redefining outdated market segments. This canprove to be chaotic and require significant effort to prioritize limited resources when thereis a need to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Product launch needs to bemore dynamic and flexible to meet rapidly changing buying dynamics. For example, manytechnology and service providers traditionally used well-publicized mass events to kick-start new product awareness and sales momentum, but now need to adapt to new marketrealities where a balance of hybrid virtual and in-person events are necessary. Ideally, each product launch should align to an individualized product strategy and beweighted heavily on methods that communicate product value, especially in today’sdigital-heavy context. It’s important to know the root causes of past launch failures andfocus on launch best practices, while entertaining innovative ideas within the four phasesof product launch (see Figure 1). Introduction Product launch is a continuous cycle of product-leader-led collaboration (productmanagement and product marketing) powered by currents of updated differentiation andvalue propositions. Go-to-market (GTM) and launch processes remain a methodical andstructured set of activities. Launch activities require testing and validation, and ultimatelyfeed lessons back into strategy as inputs such as the voice of the customer (VoC), marketfeedback, new market opportunities and competitive intelligence. Strategize Launch timing and clarity around the main purpose of the launch are among the topchallenges faced in major product launches. Advances in product development haveenabled high-frequency releases, which can pressure product leaders to overweight timespent with the engineering team on technical features, and spend less time with sales andmarketing teams on launch strategy. Often, launches have success metrics that are too simplistic in referencing sales or usergrowth targets. Launch objectives need to be more multidimensional and may involveimproving win rates and wallet share, entering new geographies, upselling to existingcustomers or improving customer experience (CX). Launches that try to do too much orreach too broad of an audience (that is, don’t clearly show how the product relates to orcreates value for a targeted audience) will be challenged to get off the ground or gainmomentum. The clarity of motivation drives the planning, investment and expectationsfor the launch. For example, a launch whose purpose is to increase wallet share c