The Lost Art of the Soft Launch
In the past two years we’ve launched a lot of things at Zapier. Whether it was the product itself, big features, or separate products I’ve grown to love the soft launch.
The soft launch traditionally refers to launching a product to a limited audience in order to work out the kinks. But one thing many entrepreneurs fail to remember is that if you are launching your startup for the first time, the odds of you attracting anything but a limited audience are slim to none unless you have influential friends or a big following via an email list, Twitter, Facebook or some other soapbox.
So the first launch of a product is likely to be a soft launch whether you want it to be that way or not, because it’s highly unlikely you’ll get in front of a mass audience.
This might be discouraging, but in many ways a soft launch is to your advantage. This week’s Startup Edition explores how to launch. And here’s why and how I like to do soft launches.
1. You can flip on a feature or product and work out the major kinks before a big audience comes in.
If you try and do a major marketing launch you’ll run the risk of getting a lot of users into a funnel with an unprepared product. While it’s unlikely you’ll get a ton of users right away, a few days of testing feels like the smart move.
2. You can target people who will find your product most useful and get the highest level of feedback possible.
One of the best parts of a soft launch is getting quality feedback from a handful of highly targeted leads who are vested in the product and can give you feedback you can trust.
The first 10 Zapier users, paid us $100 to get access to the product. Their feedback was phenomenal and of much higher quality than the 1,000 random tire kickers who just like to check out new tech products.
3. You won’t be overwhelmed with a plethora of unqualified leads who will provide advice that isn’t in your best interests.
If you try and do a major press launch or a generic ad campaign, you’ll likely generate a lot of traffic, but get a lot of low quality feedback. With so much competing advice it can be hard to prioritize what to do next.
4. You’ll identify the right objectives to target when you actually attempt a major launch.
Because you’ve taken the time to test things out with some highly qualified early users, you’ll know a lot more about what you should be shooting for in a public launch. You’ll know who you want to reach and what publications they read. Those learnings will make it much easier to have a successful public launch.
Executing a Soft Launch
So now that you want to do a soft launch, how exactly do you make it happen. Well the nuts and bolts are pretty simple.
1. Make whatever you are launching publicly available.
Whatever it is you’re making, make it live so anyone who just so happens to know where to go can use your product.
2. Test everything yourself and with your team.
Open a text editor. Jot down everything that is a show stopper and fix it immediately.
3. Make it easily discoverable for your target users.
Once you have some confidence in the product, start linking to it and driving traffic from places you think are valuable. This could be an email list, your social profiles, status updates, a blog post, or ads. Just make sure you can get some high quality traffic into the funnel.
If you don’t have a way to get people into the funnel, then you might consider launching something that will help you generate traffic. The very first thing we launched for Zapier was the service directory which is designed to generate long tail search traffic.
4. Have an easy way for people to provide feedback.
Once people are in the funnel don’t let them get away without getting feedback. Call them, survey them do whatever it takes. I’m a huge fan of putting an in-app message bar that links to a survey and also sending out an email a few days after a user signs up to collect feedback from them.
5. Once all the major kinks are worked out, launch it for real.
Once you’re feeling good, it’s time to take the training wheels off and launch for good. A lot of people launch in the press, but the most important thing is to get your product in front of the early adopters of your industry.
And that’s a wrap. The soft launch isn’t tricky, but it’s a helpful tactic for making your real launches more effective. What other tactics do you use to launch products?