Your Product Launched—Now What? 4 Post-Launch Strategies for Sustained Growth

Hi beautiful people,

After a short break in August, Product Marketing Pulse is back!

Whether you're launching a new product or rolling out an update, celebrating is important. But we often forget that launch day is just the beginning—this is when the real challenge starts: getting people to adopt and use your product.

The reality right now is that Product Marketing Managers spend a significant portion of their efforts on pre-launch and launch activities often due to organizational priorities and the excitement surrounding a new product's debut. For SaaS products, it's common to see a huge spike of awareness on a launch day but then most users return to their usual habits. (LaunchNotes)

The challenge most product marketers face is influencing long-term behavioral change. A launch campaign that lasts just a few weeks isn't enough to make it happen.

Fortunately, there are ways to course-correct your launch. In this article, I’ll walk you through my post-launch framework designed to help you shift the focus from chasing vanity metrics to driving real business growth.

Let’s crack on.

Unpopular POV: product launches suck!

If you meet a PMM who claims all their launches were successful, it's likely an exaggeration. Success and failure are context-dependent and often relative.

Personally, I'm not a fan of traditional product launches because they tend to focus too much on short-term impact. The reality is that life—and your product—continues well beyond the stress of launch day. That’s why I admire Apple's approach: they hold a few major events each year, announce everything, and then move forward.

Whether the goal of a launch is to acquire new customers, increase product stickiness, regain customer confidence, or drive expanded product use, the most important thing is delivering long-term customer value. Revenue teams need to prove that the product or service offers enough impact for customers to adopt it.

That’s why my strong POV is that the most important work in product marketing happens post-launch.

Post launch activities is the best way to show that PMM function drives revenue, not costs.

Post-launch activities are the best way to prove that your PMM is a true revenue engine. If your team is always focused on new launches and product releases, you risk becoming a cost-heavy operation.

Why? The product is out there, sure, but now the real work begins—getting the right users to experience its value as quickly as possible. This is about optimizing time-to-value and increasing the rate at which new users adopt or engage with a feature.

The reality is that within the first 5 weeks after a launch, the rate at which new users are added can slow by 40-80%. By week 6, you’re left with a mere trickle of new users adopting the new feature, which signals a problem.

The goal should be to reduce time-to-value, ensuring that users quickly understand and benefit from the product—not let adoption taper off after the initial excitement fades.

4 outcomes of a product launch: How to identify, course-correct, and succeed.

When you launch a product, there are four likely scenarios that you can expect based on user engagement and reach. Understanding these outcomes can help you refine your strategy and optimize post-launch success.

The goal is to shift focus from just generating awareness to driving long-term adoption and value.

Here’s what you can expect and how to course correct:

?? Sinking Ship (low reach; short-term engagement).

What it means: The product fails to gain traction and the few users who try it don’t find enough value to stick around.

Example: Quibi (shut down after six months).

Chance: 60-70%. Many product launches simply fail due to poor market fit or a lack of differentiation. (MIT Professional Education)

If you ended up in a sinking ship situation your focus should be reworking the product or the market.

How to recover?

There could be multiple reasons why you launch ended up being a "Sinking Ship", but here are a few course-correcting strategies that you could consider:

• Reposition or pivot: If neither adoption nor retention is strong, the product may need a significant pivot. Consider new use cases or different markets where the product might better solve a pain point.
• Soft relaunch with adjustments: Consider a soft relaunch after reworking core elements. Test new features or positioning in smaller markets to validate changes before investing in a full relaunch.
• Build a Stronger Market Fit: Conduct thorough market research to better understand user needs and why the product isn’t resonating. Shift your focus to align with pressing customer pain points.
• Reduce Barriers to Entry: Introduce free trials, freemium models, or lower pricing to make it easier for users to try the product and reduce friction in the early stages of adoption. Elena Verna had an awesome post this week on how to decide which feature shall be paid or free.

??Flash in a pan (high reach; short-term engagement)

What it means: Your product gets attention initially, but it doesn't hold users' interest. You'll see high churn rates as people try the product and abandon it soon after.

Example: remember Clubhouse ? (huge initial buzz, but user interest quickly faded).

Chance: 60-70%. Most product launches fall into this category, with initial excitement fizzling out quickly.

If you ended up with flash in a pan situation your focus should be addressing churn and re-engaging users.

How to recover?

Here are a few course-correcting strategies that you could consider:

• Fix onboarding: Ensure users immediately understand your product's value by improving tutorials and onboarding.
• Rework value proposition: If users churn after initial use, your product may not be meeting their needs. Reassess whether your product delivers on its promises or if there are missing features that could improve retention
• Create engaging journeys: Gamification, user challenges, and regular updates can keep users hooked.
• Gather feedback & iterate: Regularly gather feedback from both new and lapsed users to understand what’s causing churn. Use that feedback to quickly iterate and improve the product experience

??Hidden Gem (low reach, long-term engagement)

What it means: Your product has a loyal following, but the user base is limited. While your audience is highly engaged, scaling is a challenge. These products serve a particular niche well but may struggle with broader market appeal and fail to break into the mainstream.

Example: Basecamp (popular among SME's but not mainstream).

Chance: 20-30%. This outcome is more common for niche products that serve a specific need.

If you ended up with hidden gem, you are on the right track. To scale from a "Hidden Gem," work on refining your marketing strategy, expanding into adjacent markets, and leveraging user testimonials to build broader awareness while retaining your reach.

How to improve:

Here are a few strategies that you could consider:

• Refine messaging and positioning: The product has a loyal user base, but may not be marketed effectively to reach a broader audience. Work on refining the messaging to highlight the product’s core benefits more clearly
• Improve awareness via partnerships: Partner with other products or services that complement your offering to leverage each other’s user bases. This can help expand your market reach with minimal investment.
• Leverage customer advocacy: Mobilize your loyal customers to help you spread the word. Case studies, testimonials, and referral programs can help increase visibility
• Target niche markets: If broad market expansion is difficult, target a specific niche where your product excels, then dominate that niche. This allows focused growth while keeping user retention high
• Double down on marketing: Utilize a mix of content marketing, social media, email campaigns, influencer marketing and paid advertising to increase your brand's visibility. Experiment with different channels and messages to see what resonates most, and optimize your strategy based on performance metrics.

??Rising Star (high reach; long term engagement)

What it means: Your product hits the mark. It gains widespread adoption, users love it, and it becomes a core part of their daily workflows.

Example: Slack , ChatGPT .

Chance: 5-10%. Only a small fraction of products reach this level of success on the first try. It’s better to say that you can only judge if you hit this outcome after a period of time.

If "Rising Star" is a story about your product, your best bet is to focus on scaling and keeping the momentum.

How to achieve this:

• Double down on engagement: Keep adding valuable features and integrations to make your product indispensable.
• Expand into new markets: Target adjacent industries or regions to grow your user base.
• Create a premium experience: Offer premium features or pricing tiers to capture more revenue without alienating core users.
• Foster community engagement: Build a strong user community to create brand advocates and long-term loyalty.

Final thoughts

It's time to rethink how we approach product launches. Rather than focusing solely on driving awareness (high reach, short-term engagement), the real value lies in helping users realize the full potential of the product. But event if they come to this realization, we need to help them change their habits.?It moves through to full adoption, with campaigns designed to engage users over the long term. This means creating sustained efforts that continue well beyond the initial launch to maintain high reach and long-term engagement.

Whether you're battling a "?? Sinking Ship" or nurturing a "?? Hidden Gem," understanding how to course-correct your launch is critical to turning a fleeting moment of excitement into lasting business growth. The real work of product marketing starts after launch day—this is where long-term impact and sustained revenue are built.

May the PMM force be with you,

Yours Anna Borbotko

Hi! ?? I am Anna Borbotko. I help grow product marketing and enablement teams. ????

Product Marketing Pulse is my monthly newsletter for aspiring and established product marketing leaders. I share practical product marketing and leadership tips drawn from my day-to-day experience.

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