You are well-aware of every aspect of your new product and getting ready to launch it. What about your team? Are they as ready as you are?
The success behind the internal launch starts long before a product goes live. Before announcing a product externally, it’s extremely important to communicate internally for a successful product launch.
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What is Internal Communication for Product Launch?
Internal communication for product launch refers to building awareness and excitement of people in the company around major product launches.It is to communicate the details of the product launch strategy with the company team, help them understand their role in this strategy, and align your team on a single message.
Why Internal Communication for Product Launch Is Essential?
Strong internal communication for a product launch is just as important as your external marketing strategy. Without an unprepared team, you cannot win the game. Internal communication enables you to coordinate your team properly, keep them briefed ahead of a product launch andkeep your entire organization on track.
How to be Successful in Internal Communication for Product Launch
There are several points to work on to be successful in internal communications. Let’s take a look at them in detail.
1. The Objective of The Launch
When communicating internally, revealing thekey points of the overall messageprovides your team with a strong idea of the ultimate goal and enables them to move forward with your product launch strategy.
- The key messaging points of the launch (Product Brief)
- Descriptive documentation
- Problems the product is meant to solve
- Expectations from the team -feedback, suggestiongs, testing etc.
- Target audience
- Plans and timelines for the launch
If you can highlight these key points in your objective, your team members will understand the essential information about the product launch.
2. Different Approaches for Different Departments
The success behind the internal launch starts long before a product goes live -it starts with your team. While you provide information to the entire company, it may differ how you approach the different departments. Your sales team needs to know about features and pricing. Your marketing team should decide on their promotions and campaigns. You should provide your product team with detailed information about everything.
Each department requires different types of communication. Therefore, identifying the different teams in the company and focusing on each department with different systems, purposes, and cultures is important while communicating internally.
Do you know which teams need to be provided with which details? You can basically separate them in the following way;
- Marketing Team
You should provide marketing team with the details on the overall value and benefits of the product -marketing campaigns, promotional materials, use cases etc. so that they can create new campaigns and new marketing materials. - Customer Support Team
Customer support team should be trained on features and functionalities -documentation, possible malfunctions etc. so that they can support customers in any case. - Sales Team
You should create awaraness around features and benefits -feature lists, pricing, prospects etc. - Product Team
Product teams need to be in the know of almost everything -from messaging to details of the launch.
3. Internal Communication Mediums
You may have a high-end NYC office space; using communications tools like Slack, Discord, Zoom; or communicating through all-in-one workspace tools like Notion or Asana. It doesn’t really matter. They all have one thing in common: communicate efficiently and quickly.
It’s important to choose your internal communication channel to give your message and information across the company properly.
- Chat Tools
Internal communication or chat tools are great platforms to keep in touch with the team for feedback, suggestiongs, testing etc.; announce every remarkable step for the official launch and communicate any critical change concerning the launch. For these purposes, using Slack, Discord or any internal communication tools will ensure more efficient and quick discussions over the product launch. - Release Notes Tools
Release notes are also useful for providing the team with descriptive documentation, product brief, any change or update concerning the launch. Release notes softwares for product update announcements like AnnounceKit makes your internal communcation much more efficient. - Workspace Tools
Workspaces provides you with much more space to plan, communicate, share and practice. You can use Notion, Asana or Google Workspace for many purposes in that sense: providing documentation, chat, meet, calendar etc.
4. Timing
You want everything to go well, but are you really giving the time needed? Timing for an internal product launch is as important as it is for the official launch. You should define the timeline from internal launch to external launch to your team properly for a successful launch. It will give your teams the desired time to schedule, plan, test, and practice their strategies. For this purpose, you should define product launch stages well and schedule the dates. Basically, it can be divided into 5 stages:
- Initial planning stage
- Pre-launch stage
- Demo launch stage
- Launch stage
- Post-launch
5. Demo Launch
Speaking of product launch stages, providing a demo launch for your team before the official launch is essential. It helps your team test the product, go over their plans, see the missing points, give feedback, and evaluate the overall process -all of which means that it helps you get ready for the launch day.
Internal Product Launch Example
Let’s gather together what we have talked about so far. Here is a simple internal launch example we prepared for you.
| Positioning: | (Provide product brief that covers the key messaging) | ||||
| Purpose: | (Problem statement the product is meant to solve) | ||||
| Audience: | (Target audience for the product) | ||||
| Timeline: | (Set dates for product launch stages) | ||||
| Launch Date: | (Set a date for the launch) | ||||
| Meeting Schedule | |||||
| Departments | Details | Medium | Day | Time | |
| Sales Team | Provide feature list, pricing, and prospects | Release Notes | Mon | 8 AM | |
| Marketing Team | Focus on marketing campaigns and promotional materials for the target audience | Chat Tools | Wed | 1 PM | |
| Customer Support Team | Talk about documentation, target audience, and every possible malfunction | Workspaces | Tue | 3 PM | |
| Product Team | Discuss every detail of the product | Online meeting tools | Fri | 9 AM | |
Launch Day
Now that you successfully managed internal communication for product launch, the more exciting part has just come! No worries, because your team is all set to maintain the product launch process.
Long story short, internal communication is essential for a successful product launch. By focusing on the points we laid out, you can coordinate your team more efficiently.
What about the after launching the product? You will definitely need to announce product updates internally. Take a look at Internal Release Notes to learn more about it!
