Once you’ve selected your approach to the product launch, you’re ready to prepare your product brief. As you’ll remember from my last post, there are essentially three approaches to product launch:
- Launching to an existing market
- Seeking out markets that don’t currently exist
- Creating a re-segmented market by taking a piece of an existing market
It takes collaboration among many internal team members to effectively launch a product. To get everyone on the same page with regard to messaging and execution, you’ll create a product brief.
What is a Product Brief?
The product brief is a one-to-three page document that provides critical information your internal team needs to effectively launch the product. It will be the central information source for your team during the launch preparation and execution.
You’ll develop the brief once and it will be used many times by many different people. Your company’s executive team will review it to understand your thought process and value proposition. Marketing will turn to your key messaging points to develop appropriate sales materials and to fine-tune the message. It will also help your marketing group identify the best channels for reaching your identified market segment. The product brief will help your sales team, channel partners, and customer service when you begin training them for the launch.
The Product Brief’s Eleven Suggested Sections
There’s a lot of critical information included in the one-to-three-page product brief. It should outline the following:
- Product name and release date
- Who the product is targeted to
- Product description
- Summary of the customer needs the product will meet
- Customer value proposition
- The impact the product will have on the customer
- Launch plan description and timetable of key events
- Product benefits and features
- Sales and customer service talking points
- Pricing
- Resources
This concise document will immediately become the rope that ties your launch together and keeps everyone on task and on message. The product brief is not to be circulated outside your company. It is strictly an internal document that will immeasurably smooth out your launch preparation process.
Coming Up
In my next post I’ll discuss the how to create a launch plan framework to coordinate the tasks and timing required for a successful product launch.