About 30,000 new products hit the market every 365 days. Unfortunately, only 5% of them find success. So, what happens to the remaining 95%? In the tech sector, the challenges are more pronounced—only 40% of developed products ever make it to market, and among those, just 60% manage to generate revenue. These sobering statistics point to one conclusion: thorough preparation before launch can make the difference between market success and joining the ranks of forgotten software products.
This comprehensive guide outlines the ten essential steps every software company must take before launching a product, drawing on proven strategies from successful software launches and industry best practices.
- Conduct Comprehensive Market Research
Launching a software product is easier than ever thanks to the rise of low-code and no-code platforms, which have streamlined the development process. Now, even those without technical backgrounds can quickly create functional applications.
But, before writing a single line of code or designing any interface, you must deeply understand your target market. This foundation shapes every subsequent decision in your product development journey. Effective market research involves identifying precise pain points your software will solve and determining whether sufficient demand exists to support your business model.
Market research should extend beyond potential customers to include a thorough competitive analysis. As noted by Udit Goenka, co-founder and CEO of PitchGround, the digital playground is "hyper-competitive," making it essential to differentiate your offering. Document existing solutions, their strengths and weaknesses, pricing structures, and market positioning. This intelligence allows you to carve out a unique value proposition that connects with your target audience while addressing gaps competitors have overlooked.
Again, your research should quantify market size, growth trajectory, and specific segments most receptive to your solution. This data will inform everything from product features to marketing messaging and sales strategies, ensuring alignment with actual market needs rather than assumed ones.
2. Develop a Minimum Viable Product
Simply getting a product market-ready isn't enough; it's equally important to ensure the market is ready for the product. The concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has become fundamental to modern software development for good reason. An MVP represents the smallest possible version of your product that delivers value to users while allowing you to gather honest, salient feedback. Referencing Gartner's research, setting accurate expectations around your MVP is key—overpromising features and capabilities that aren't yet ready can damage your brand reputation and customer loyalty.
Werner Goertz, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, emphasizes that product marketers must "mitigate messaging risks" when introducing new products. Your MVP should focus exclusively on solving the core problem identified in your market research. Strip away all secondary features and nice-to-have elements to concentrate development resources on perfecting essential functionality. This approach reduces time-to-market and development costs while enabling faster iteration based on real user feedback.
3. Create a Robust Product Roadmap
A well-constructed product roadmap acts as both a strategic planning tool and a communication device for internal teams and external stakeholders. Your roadmap should outline short and long-term development plans, feature prioritization, and anticipated release timelines.
When developing your roadmap, balance market demands with technical feasibility and business objectives. Include milestones for feature enhancements, platform expansions, and integration capabilities based on anticipated user needs and competitive pressures. This living document should be revised regularly as market conditions change and user feedback accumulates.
Product School's launch guidance advises that your roadmap should fall closely with your product readiness checklist, ensuring that engineering, UX/UI design, QA, operations, and legal/compliance teams all work toward synchronized goals. This alignment prevents disconnects that could delay launch or compromise product quality.
4. Establish a Clear Pricing Strategy
Pricing represents one of the most challenging yet consequential decisions for any software product. Your pricing model must balance revenue requirements with market expectations and competitive positioning. Consider various approaches—subscription-based, tiered pricing, usage-based, or freemium—each with distinct implications for cash flow, customer acquisition, and retention.
Your pricing strategy should reflect your product's unique value proposition while accounting for development costs, ongoing support expenses, and desired profit margins. Test pricing scenarios with potential customers during the pre-launch phase to gauge reactions and willingness to pay. This feedback can help refine both pricing structure and associated messaging.
For B2B software specifically, pricing should acknowledge the complex decision-making processes of corporate buyers. As noted in Insivia's research on successful B2B SaaS launches, your pricing must appeal to key decision-makers while demonstrating clear ROI for their organizations. As a selling advantage, consider developing ROI calculators or case studies that quantify the value your software delivers relative to its cost.
5. Design a Comprehensive Go-to-Market Strategy
Your go-to-market strategy orchestrates all the activities involved in introducing your product to the market. This multifaceted plan should address channel selection, messaging and positioning, launch timing, and initial customer acquisition tactics.
When developing a strategy, create a decision matrix to determine whether to preannounce your product or not. Gartner recommends asking questions such as: Is the market nascent? Is our product disruptive? Are we a market challenger? Are we ahead of the competition? Do we have sufficient resources? Is the brand at stake? Is our company a market influencer? Is there an ecosystem in place?
Furthermore, a go-to-market strategy should include a launch readiness checklist to ensure all departments—from marketing and sales to customer support and technical operations—are prepared for the influx of interest and activity a successful launch generates. This coordination prevents disjointed customer experiences that could undermine your launch momentum.
6. Build and Train Your Sales and Support Teams
Your product's technical excellence means little if your customer-facing teams cannot effectively communicate its value or provide necessary support. Comprehensive training for sales and support personnel should begin well before launch, ensuring they thoroughly understand the product's features, benefits, and technical aspects.
Develop robust sales enablement materials – product demos, case studies, competitive battle cards, and objection-handling guides. Avid research on successful B2B SaaS product launches suggests that "utilizing a product demo video and scaling up your inbound content marketing with a focus on the customer journey will yield significant results.”
Similarly, prepare your support team with detailed documentation, troubleshooting guides, and escalation procedures. Establish clear communication channels between support, development, and product management to quickly address issues that emerge post-launch.
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7. Implement Rigorous Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is your last line of defense against product failures that could irreparably damage your market reputation. Implement comprehensive testing protocols covering functionality, performance, security, compatibility, and user experience.
Research on medical imaging software development—a field with exceptionally high quality requirements—reveals that successful products typically employ multiple testing methodologies, even though there is always room for improvement. For business software, these practices should be considered minimum standards rather than aspirational goals.
Beyond technical testing, conduct user acceptance testing with representatives from your target market. If you are in the tech space, Propel ecosystem should be your best bet. Their feedback often uncovers usability issues and feature gaps that internal teams might overlook.
8. Prepare Marketing and PR Materials
Effective marketing materials translate your product's technical capabilities into compelling value propositions in target customers' ears and minds. Amplitude's research on SaaS product launches says that the launch phase involves "executing your marketing plan" as a critical component of success.
Develop a comprehensive content strategy that includes website copy, blog posts, case studies, whitepapers, and social media content focused on customer pain points and your solution's unique benefits.
For B2B software specifically, marketing should emphasize ROI, integration capabilities, scalability, and security—factors that influence corporate buying decisions. Insivia couldn’t have said it better, "products don't sell themselves, regardless of their inherent merit. You need to be doing everything you can to put your product in front of as many qualified business leads as possible to generate buzz and early buyers."
As per industry recommendations, create a media kit with press releases, product images, executive bios, and company information to facilitate media coverage.
9. Set Up Analytics and Feedback Systems
Launching without proper measurement systems in place is like navigating without instruments—you'll have no reliable way to determine if you're on course. Implement analytics tools that track key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your business model, such as user acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue metrics.
Beyond quantitative data, establish mechanisms for collecting qualitative feedback through surveys, interviews, support interactions, and product usage monitoring. This multi-dimensional view provides relevant context for interpreting metrics and identifying improvement opportunities.
The Biological-Psychological, Economic, and Social (BPES) framework used for evaluating AI-based medical technologies offers a valuable approach that can be adapted for software products generally. This framework elucidates measuring not just technical performance but also psychological impact on users, economic value delivered, and broader social effects—providing a more comprehensive assessment of product success.
10. Develop a Post-Launch Strategy
The most successful software companies recognize that a launch represents the beginning rather than the culmination of the product journey. Develop a structured post-launch plan that includes regular feature updates, customer success initiatives, and scaling strategies.
Your post-launch strategy should have specific timelines for gathering and analyzing initial user feedback, implementing priority improvements, and expanding marketing efforts based on early adoption patterns. A dedicated post-launch checklist is essential for maintaining momentum after the initial release.
Plan for potential scenarios including both overwhelming success (which might strain technical infrastructure or support resources) and disappointing initial traction (requiring tactical pivots in messaging or targeting). This preparedness enables agile responses regardless of initial market reception.
What’s Next?
The ten steps we’ve covered, from nailing market research to building a post-launch roadmap are your playbook for avoiding the graveyard of forgotten products. But even the best-laid plans can stumble without a bridge between your vision and the market’s reality.
This is where Propel transforms ambition into achievement. We’ve helped brands like Fertitude, Defined.ai, and Inter.ai turn their ideas into solutions that actually stick. How? By combining community-driven feedback, rigorous testing frameworks, and scaling strategies specific to real-world needs.
Explore how Propel can help with your product launch now.
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