Planning to launch a product? Check out our favorite product launch strategy frameworks to craft the perfect launch.
Our best advice is to mix and match these frameworks, so you leave no stone unturned.
Think of these frameworks as guide rails on...what you need to do at every stage of your launch...who you need to be partnering up with...why you need to do certain tasks, and... when you should move onto the next stage of your launch.
Top 13 frameworks for product launch strategy
Below, we’ve pulled together our favorite frameworks for product launch strategy.
We’ve included project management templates, spreadsheet templates, books, and infographics—so you can find the right concept and the right format to help you plan and manage your launch strategy.
1. The Product Launch Plan Notion Template by Rich Peterson
Format: Notion template
What’s included:
This Notion template created by Rich Peterson is available for free. It includes a checklist that can be viewed as either a Table, Board, or a List. The checklist includes over 70 task examples to keep your team on track. It covers product, promotion, and pricing tasks.
Here are a few examples of the tasks included:
Get customer contracts in place (Category: Product)
Ensure customer can receive product (Category: Product)
Identify list of journalists and opinion leaders (Category: Promotion)
Appropriate commission structure is in place (Category: Pricing)
Keep in mind that there are hundreds of free and for-purchase templates available in Notion’s Template gallery. Some templates were created by the Notion team and some by their community of users.
Who it’s best for:
This template puts product, legal, promotion, and business model tasks all in one project board. That makes it a great fit for small teams launching a new product. Established companies will prefer to have their product launch tasks split into different platforms and boards (for instance, the product team might use Jira and ProductPlan, while marketers will use ClickUp).
However, because it’s free, it’s definitely worth checking out. Give it a look and make sure your product launch strategy is as comprehensive as this framework is.
Ultimately, this template is great for checking off nitty-gritty tasks, but at a high level, you’ll need one of the other frameworks on our list to help you craft your big-picture strategy.
2. The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib
Format: Book
What’s included:
The 1-Page Marketing Plan is one of the best books any founder or product owner could read. I’ll never forget when Avi Meir, the founder and CEO of TravelPerk (which is now a SaaS unicorn) told me in the early days of the company that you should always go to market with one target customer in one geographical location and one marketing channel to solve one problem. Now, they serve customers all over the world—each with their own different set of business travel management problems. But the company started with the rule of one.
That’s exactly what this book advocates.
As you’ll see in the worksheet above, there is supposed to be only one response for the different categories (meaning one target market, one lead capture system, etc.).
The framework covers these 9 requirements:
My Target Market
My Message to My Target Market
The Media I Will Use to Reach My Target Market
My Lead Capture System
My Lead Nurturing System
My Sales Conversion Strategy
How I Deliver a World Class Experience
How I Increase Customer Lifetime Value
How I Orchestrate and Simulate Referrals
Even though this worksheet spells out the framework clearly, the book is still worth reading. It dives deeper into the specifics, advocates for the importance of simplicity, and helps you make decisions around each element.
Who it’s best for:
This book is great for first-time entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs who want to launch more simply and effectively than they have before.
You’ll still need a template or task management board to handle the nitty-gritty details, but this framework is excellent for forcing you to narrow down your launch strategy.
3. Atlassian’s Product Launch Template
Format: Atlassian template
What’s included:
Atlassian’s Product Launch Template lets you document your strategy right inside of Jira.
The template walks you through these key steps to crafting your product launch strategy:
Identify your key players and objectives
Conduct market and competitive research
Come up with the metrics that you’ll use to measure success
Research your target personas
Make decisions around your product and price
Promote and support every aspect of your launch
Step 1 is based on the DACI framework, which encourages you to look at your Drivers (point person), Approvers (people who must sign off on the work), Contributors (people who do the work), and Informed (people who need to stay informed of the work).
This is a really useful Step 1, because you’ll assemble your team and clarify the collaboration before you move onto implementation.
Who it’s best for:
This framework is great for product and engineering teams that are already working inside of Jira.
If you’re looking for a way to document your launch strategy inside of a tool you’re already using, then this is a great fit.
However, you might also want to use some of the other strategy frameworks on our list to inform your approach.
4. Monday.com’s Product Launch Roadmap Template
Format: Monday.com template
What’s included:
This product launch strategy template breaks the roadmap down into different sprints and tasks. With color coding for timelines, statuses, priorities, and sources, it offers a very visual way to map out and view the tasks that need to happen before a launch.
Within the roadmap, you can break down work by month or quarter to make it easier to view what needs to be accomplished and when.
Who it’s best for:
This launch template is specific to product teams. It focuses heavily on the roadmap tasks required to complete V1 of your product and take it to market.
However, Monday.com offers a lot of different templates that your sales, customer service, and marketing teams can use.
5. The Pocket Guide to Product Launches by Mary Sheenan
Format: Book
What’s included:
This book offers a product launch strategy framework. It’s a comprehensive but concise deep dive into everything a founding team needs to do during a launch.
The author has broken the book down into 6 main parts:
Develop the Go-to-Market Plan
Know Your Target Market (Your Customer)
Align the Team and Internal Communication
Prime the Positioning and Messaging
Define the Metrics That Matter
Nail the Launch Timing
Make sure to also grab the resources that the author has created to go alongside with the framework described in the book, including a downloadable GTM plan.
Who it’s best for:
This framework is ideal for product marketers. You’ll get a step-by-step system for creating a GTM plan, setting up collaboration processes as a team, and crafting super clear positioning.
6. SmartSheet’s New Product Launch Plan Template
Format: Downloadable as an Excel Spreadsheet, a Word document, or a PDF.
What’s included:
Here you can find a variety of product launch frameworks offered by SmartSheet, but we feel that the New Product Launch Plan Template is the most effective.
The framework walks you through these essential elements:
Market analysis
Audience personas
Product pricing
Market positioning
Go-to-market strategy
Sales enablement
Internal communications
External launch
Post-launch feedback
Within each of those categories, there are 3 different task descriptions as well as space to add your own custom tasks. You can also add the task owner, due date, and status. You can use this framework to come up with the most essential tasks for your launch strategy and then add them to a project management tool like Monday.com or Asana.
Who it’s best for:
This framework strikes the perfect balance between complicated and simple, so it could be used by a single founder, a small founding team, or a larger company looking to cover all of their bases and collaborate using a proven approach.
7. Hubspot’s Product Launch Template
Format: Downloadable as an Excel Spreadsheet, Google Sheet, or PDF
What’s included:
This template offers a great framework for some of the basic elements of crafting a product launch strategy. It includes the names of your product and company, your positioning statement, a summary of your competitive analysis and your strengths and weaknesses, the product strategy and promise (its benefits), your target audience, the customer pain points, and how you will promote your strategy.
Who it’s best for:
This framework is a great jumping point for a basic strategy exercise. It will force you to summarize and document your research and thoughts. This is great for any team looking to get agreement and buy-in from all stakeholders.
However, once you’ve achieved the basic understanding laid out by this framework, you should move onto some of the other templates in our list which will help you convert that strategy into real tasks, task owners, due dates, etc.
8. The Product Launch Checklist by Viral Loops
Format: Google Sheet
What’s included:
Viral Loops offers a really useful Product Launch Checklist. It separates necessary tasks into pre-launch, launch, and post-launch stages.
For example, in the pre-launch stage the checklist includes:
A complete SWOT analysis
Your goals and objectives
Your product positioning statement
Define the challenges and pain points of your audience
Define your unique brand identity
The launch stage encourages you to do a soft internal launch to check that every thing is working, then implement your market, sales, and customer support plans.
And the post-launch stage includes:
Measure the success of your product launch
Identify your super users or super customers
Get testimonials and case studies
Collect feedback to improve your product
Who it’s best for:
This product launch checklist is perfect for teams managing product launches for B2B services, B2B SaaS, fintech, digital products, or ecommerce stores.
Because of the way it separates tasks into stages (rather than departments), this framework is best for solo founders or small teams. It offers a great way to make sure you’re on track with what matters and it can help you stay focused on the big picture.
Large companies will be better off finding frameworks designed specifically for their teams (such as marketers, product marketers, product managers, etc.).
9. Product Launch Marketing Framework by Viral Loops
Format: Google Sheet
What’s included:
Viral Loops has another framework we think is worth sharing, and that’s their Product Launch Marketing Plan. Unlike their template above, this one focuses more on marketing, making it a great supplement.
This template also separates tasks into different phases, pre-launch, launch, and post-launch, except the tasks are focused on product marketing specifically.
Here are some of the best things included in the framework:
How to create hype by teasing your offers, generating enthusiasm, and driving pre-orders
How to make your launch a “spellbinding event” with exciting presentations and product demos
Ways to get your customers excited and talking about your launch and sharing it with others
How to make sure you’re delivering on your promises and exceeding customer expectations from day one
Who it’s best for:
As you might have guessed, this framework is perfect for product marketers! It can be used by companies of any size.
10. The Business Situation Framework by Victor Cheng
Format: Infographic
What’s included:
This infographic by consultant Victor Cheng is loosely based on Porter’s Five Forces, a framework for analyzing an industry’s strengths and weaknesses.
Victor Cheng calls his The Business Situation Framework, and it’s super useful for understanding the position that your business is in the moment that you launch. Entrepreneurs and marketers tend to get excited, which causes them to get ahead of themselves. This framework will bring you back down to earth.
It’s separated into four categories: Customer, Product, Company, and Competition.
Here are some of the tasks that this framework will help you achieve:
Identifying your audience segments, growth rate, and percentage of the total market
Comparing current-year metrics to historical metrics to identify trends
Understanding the benefits of your product and why someone would buy it
Coming up with complimentary products to partner with
Knowing the substitutes for your product (direct competitors)
The cost structure and product distribution channels you’ll use
The regulatory environment of your industry
The barriers to entry to your market and how easily new players can enter
Who it’s best for:
Because it's focused on the entire business situation as a whole, not just the product, this framework can (and should) be layered on top of any of the others ones on our list.
Use this framework to make sure you truly understand your market environment.
It will help you craft a more accurate and realistic launch strategy so your product stands a chance.
11. The Go to Market Framework for New Product Launch by SlideTeam
Format: Infographic
What’s included:
SlideTeam has created a helpful infographic to summarize The Go to Market Framework.
This framework splits out product launch strategy into 4 distinct phases:
Discovery: Creating a comprehensive product strategy that appeals to your target audience
Development: Conducting research, developing proposals and prototypes for the new product, and identifying clear user needs
Market Entry: Deciding on your initial market entry, such as your launch date and the price point of your product
Optimization: Tracking and measuring the progress of the new product launch, adding additional features, and improving on the product design
Who it’s best for:
Because this framework is pretty simple, it’s best suited for those who are brand new to product development, entrepreneurship, or executive leadership. If nothing else, you can use this framework to help you categorize all of the other tasks that you need to do. That way, you can be sure you’re managing work in clear, purposeful stages instead of running your launch haphazardly.
12. The Product Launch Framework by Alok Abhishek
Format: Infographic
What’s included:
We’re in love with this Product Launch Framework by product manager Alok Abhishek. With so many launch tasks on your plate, it’s very difficult to track your progress and understand where you are in the launch timeline.
This framework provides a very clear timeline:
Lay the groundwork
Create a launch team
Create a launch plan
Pre-launch internal (crossfunctional work for launch)
Pre-launch external (working with B2B partners, press, etc.)
Launch
Post-launch evaluation
Use this to orientate you and your team as your work on crafting your launch strategy and implementing it. You can communicate these phases to your team and adopt them. Add the phase names to your Kanban software or whatever project management tool you’re using to help everyone understand how each task corresponds with the timeline.
Who it’s best for:
This framework can work well for teams of all sizes. Small founding teams can use it to craft their strategy while larger teams can communicate to everyone how various tasks fit the launch stage.
13. 280Group’s Product Launch Steps and Timing Framework
Format: Infographic
What’s included:
And for our last product launch strategy framework, we’re sharing the Product Launch Steps and Timing Framework, created by the 280Group, which offers product management consulting.
This framework is useful because it not only breaks things down into phases, it actually offers a month range for each phase. The 280 Group recommends that teams start planning their product launch 4 to 6 months before it will actually occur.
They suggest allowing...
1 to 2 months for developing your plan, reviewing it, and securing internal alignment
2 to 6 months for driving internal awareness and generating partner awareness (complimentary companies, affiliates, press, etc.)
3 to 6 months for actually managing the release of your product and driving market awareness
Keep in mind that the second two categories can overlap.
Who it’s best for:
This framework is great for first-time entrepreneurs because it shows that if you wait to start thinking about your product launch until the product is fully developed, you’ve lost valuable time.
While your software development agency or manufacturer is developing your product, you should be mapping out your launch plan, reviewing it with stakeholders, assembling your launch team, and driving awareness through partnerships. You can create relationships with employee advocates, target customers, press contacts, influencers, and more before it’s time to launch.
2 examples of a new product launch strategy
What does product launch strategy really look like?
Below, we offer two examples. We’ve crafted these case studies using two of our favorite frameworks from this list.
Example 1: Business management platform for professional photographers
For this example, we’re using the 1-Page Marketing Plan, which includes functions outside of marketing and is more comprehensive for product launches than the name belies.
Description of the business: A business management platform that professional photographs can use to send proposals, send invoices, collect payments, embed packages and pricing on their website, and curate and deliver photographs.
Example launch strategy:
My Target Market: Professional photographers, initial target segment: solo-professional wedding photographers
My Message to My Target Market: Sell more packages with an effortless client experience
The Media I Will Use to Reach My Target Market: Instagram
My Lead Capture System: Free trial
My Lead Nurturing System: Email marketing
My Sales Conversion Strategy: Free trial is only available for one client project
How I Deliver a World Class Experience: Easy signup, upgrade, cancelation for my customers a great user experience for both my customers and my customers’ clients
How I Increase Customer Lifetime Value: Delivering great features that make them want to stay subscribed to my software
How I Orchestrate and Simulate Referrals: Affiliate program for business coaches who target photographers; sponsorships and attendance for wedding industry conferences
Example 2: Marketing analytics platform
For this example, we’re using Alok Abhishek product launch framework.
Description of the business: A marketing analytics platform designed for owners of small ecommerce companies.
Example launch strategy:
Lay the groundwork: Determine the budget, timeline, goals, and metrics for our launch.
Create a launch team: Hire a freelance brand strategist, growth marketer, copywriter, designer, and ads manager.
Create a launch plan: Determine our product benefits, positioning, entry pricing, launch date, and marketing channels. Create a list of partners and a plan for engaging them.
Pre-launch internal: Product and marketing team work collaboratively on launch strategy.
Pre-launch external: Business development team create relationships with partners, influencers, advocates, and press.
Launch: Release and test our product.
Post-launch evaluation: Collect internal and external feedback on the product and our approach to the launch. Gauge product success against initial goals.
Creating a product launch is...well...complicated. We hope these excellent frameworks provide the guidance you need to check off every task. ✅
Ready to launch a competitive product? Learn more about DevSquad’s one-of-a-kind approach to software development.
