Product launches are arguably the biggest and most important part of your Go-to-Market strategy. The result of months (or years) worth of work is finally live and in the world. But a product launch is more than just a big announcement or a launch event.
A product launch is just one more tactical step in your strategy, and it needs to be treated as such if you’re going to make it as effective as possible. When your product goes live, there’s a lot to keep track of to make sure the launch is a success.
Metrics and KPIs give you the power to take control of your launch, track it, measure it and make adjustments if it's not delivering the results you need. In this article, we’ll be breaking down the metrics you need to measure for product launch success and how to measure them.
Let’s get into it. 👇
Product-market fit
Product-market fit means, in simple terms, that there’s a demand for your product and customers want it. It’s what we all hope to achieve, but it's easier said than done. Sadly there’s no magic wand you can wave to get it.
Signs you’ve achieved product-market fit include high and sustainable sales, positive customer feedback and minimal churn. But why measure something so vague? Although it is hard to define and more of a state of being than a hard KPI, product-market fit means that you’re resonating with the market. That’s hard to do and harder to sustain, so you need to be able to track how successfully you’re doing this if you’re to keep it up.
While product-market fit is hard to measure, what’s easier is your NPS, or Net Promoter Score. An NPS can be found by carrying out quantitative research among your customers.
Win rates
With this metric, you’re measuring the number of sales you win. Sounds straightforward, but you do need to define your meaning of win before you start tracking to ensure consistency. Typically a win is when a prospect chooses you over a competitor, a loss is when they chose a competitor's product over yours and a no decision means they don’t buy from anyone.
It's important to decide ahead of time if you’ll be including no decisions in your losses or not, and stick consistently to the decision, or this metric loses meaning. You can measure your win rate with this simple formula:
Market share
Your market share refers to the percentage of the market/industry that your company owns over a defined period of time. Think of the market as a pie chart. If you, for example, were a company selling smart phones, you’d be measuring yourself against everyone else selling smartphones.
The percentage of people choosing your smartphones over everyone else’s is your market share.
You can calculate your market share with this simple formula:
When you launch a product, it's important to track how well you’re doing compared to your direct competitors. This metric allows you to do just that.
Grace Gupta
Sign ups
Sign ups could be referring to a newsletter, a private group on LinkedIn or to launch announcements. This metric is useful for multiple reasons. First up, when you’ve publicly announced your product, but haven’t launched yet, sign ups are a great way to get a sense of how popular your product will be.
With this metric you’re essentially gauging interest and popularity for your products. But for this metric to be most effective, you do need to set targets ahead of time.
By establishing how much interest there is, you can set more accurate targets for the first days, weeks and months after your launch. Sign ups to the free channels on your business allow you to understand how well your messaging is resonating and if your product is finding the right audience. Once you have that captive audience, you can start converting those leads into paying customers.
Kate Onley-Gregson
Conversion rates
Your conversion rate is the percentage of free users who convert to paying customers. So with this metric, you’re tracking the number of people using your digital channels, your website traffic, your social media users, etc, who then become buyers.
Conversion rate is really important because, while getting people onto your website and interacting with your marketing is an important step, you can’t run a business on likes and shares alone.
ARR and MRR
ARR and MRR are Annual Referring Revenue and Monthly Recurring Revenue, respectively. They refer to the amount of revenue you can expect to make over a defined period of time.
These metrics are both incredibly valuable because they allow you to:
- Quantify the growth of your business.
- Understand how successful your launch strategy is.
- Demonstrate your value to stakeholders.
When measuring for these metrics you include recurring invoices, upgrade revenue and downgrade revenue, meaning when a customer moves to a cheaper subscription option. These metrics are typically used by SaaS companies working with a subscription model.
To sum up
With these metrics, you can measure the success of your product launch and make sure it’s on track to deliver the results you need.
And remember, for these metrics to be their most effective, follow these top tips:
- Set your goals ahead of time.
- Decide a cadence for measuring ahead of time and stick to it.
- Choose metrics to track which make sense for your product and business model.
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