Soft Launch vs Hard Launch: Which Strategy to Choose

How much thought did you spend on how to launch your product vs what and how to build it?

While this last step may look straightforward, it’s a critical phase of your product's success. And if you think there aren’t many options, read on … there is a lot to think about.

Types of Go-To-Market Strategies

A go-to-market strategy is an approach to delivering your product to customers. Multiple approaches have been developed, and each caters to the needs of a specific audience, type of product, and business model. Let’s go through the most common categories.

Sales-Led vs Product-Led

In sales-led strategies, the sales team drives the go-to-market motion, focusing on selling the product to target customers. This approach involves personalized sales pitches, relationship building, and strong competitor differentiation. This strategy depends on building a strong sales team. In this case, scaling your business would rely on scaling your sales team.

The product-led go-to-market relies on the product as the main driver for converting visitors to customers. That includes offering prospects a way to try the product (trial offering, freemium plan, etc.) and an in-product onboarding experience that walks the user through their Aha! Moments with the product and self-purchase method. This is a much more scalable go-to-market approach as it doesn’t scale with people but offers limited opportunities to personalize the experience.

Typically, sales-led processes would be used for high-priced premium products where each deal is a significant six, seven, or more figures. These products have a complicated evaluation and buying process, and people can adjust their pitch based on the customer's requirements. A product-led approach is appropriate for products that are quick transactional purchases at a small price.

Soft Launch vs Hard Launch

Another point of consideration is how the product is first introduced to the market. Soft launches offer the product to a limited number of customers, while hard launches open it to the general audience. We will later discuss the specifics of each approach.

Inbound vs Outbound

This is the classic pull vs. push dilemma. Do you reach out to prospects with your proposal or create avenues for them to purchase your product?

To create a strong inbound motion, you need to work with customers to discover your product, realize its value proposition, and decide to try it. This could involve valuable content related to the jobs that need to be done for your product. This strategy can work well when you can reach a vast audience.

Outbound go-to-market relies on identifying and reaching potential customers with a high probability of intent to purchase. Since you will be pushing your product, to be successful, you need to reach out to the right audience with the right message and through the correct channels to resonate with them.

What is a Soft Launch?

Soft launch is when you release your product to a small group of people instead of making it generally available. Different products may have different terms for that closed release:

• Closed beta
• Early Access
• Invite-only preview
• Pilot program

All of these suggest a filter for those with access to the product's first version. The product can be offered to a small group of existing customers or contacts who participated in the product research and expressed interest.

Benefits and Disadvantages of a Soft Launch

Key Benefts of a Soft Lauch

A soft launch is the natural continuation of the step-by-step approach of testing and adjusting the product from its inception. Suppose you follow a structured approach to building your product in previous phases. In that case, you can create hypotheses that were tested first in conversations with potential customers and later by showing mocks and prototypes of the product. Launching the product to a small selected group flows easily from that process.

1. Adaptability

Launching a small group of people gives the product team time and space to understand and learn from the customers' reactions. It allows for multiple iterations before opening up to the whole audience.

2. Risk Management

Related to the previous point, launching a product to a smaller group creates fewer risks if things don’t go according to plan.

3. Perception of Scarcity

Offering the product to a limited number of people creates a sense of limited availability, which can increase engagement and the product's desirability.

Disadvantages of a Soft Launch

1. Data Bias

A soft launch is great for providing additional validation for that product. However, this validation will only work if your target group represents the general audience.

If you handpick only the most passionate people for your project, you may get overoptimistic results from the soft launch that won’t scale well later.

2. Competitor Risks

The moment you open the product, even to a smaller group, you lose the novelty advantage. Especially if you are a well-known brand, your competitors will look for a way to counter your unique value proposition.

3. Brand Perception Risk

Even when the release is scoped down to a smaller audience, shipping a product that is not good enough can create negative reviews, hurting existing brands and their other products. This is especially relevant for companies that have existing products whose performance could be at risk.

Examples of Successful Soft Launches

Gmail

When Google’s mail service was launched, it was only an invite. Initially, only the GMail team could invite, and the process gradually loosened by adding a certain number of invitations to already active users. These tactics created a strong network and viral effect, with people looking for an invite and those who have invites offering them to others. It also allowed the Gmail team to gradually increase the load on their product instead of launching it from Day 1 to the whole world from their homepage.

Dropbox

Dropbox used similar tactics to Gmail's. They built on top of it by combining the invitation mechanism with a referral program that granted additional storage for every invite. This bonus was another incentive for existing users to promote Dropbox’s product in their network.

Airbnb

At first, the platform for short-term stays was limited to San Francisco and targeted conference attendees looking for affordable accommodations. This allowed the founders to take a very hands-on approach with hosts and guests and understand the needs of both sides.

Spotify

In its early days, Spotify was launched in just a few European countries before expanding globally. This allowed the product team to adjust the product based on customer feedback and improve the user experience.

Another reason for the staged release was the need to handle the intellectual properties with the artists and record labels, an important part of Spotify's business model. As those negotiations were happening for the first time, there were many concerns to be addressed from all sides, and launching in specific countries in the EU allowed us to focus on those markets before going global. That was why Spotify launched in the US three years after the EU.

What is a Hard Launch?

A hard launch is making your product generally available to the public. Everyone interested can come and try or buy it, depending on the purchasing process. Big announcements usually support it, and a company would use all its channels to promote the product and give it maximum visibility.

A hard launch doesn’t mean a lack of focus on a specific audience. You still need to have a well-defined customer segment that you will be targeting to maximize the impact of the marketing effort. However, it means that the product is somehow not gated for customers.

Pros and Cons of a Hard Launch

Advantages of a Hard Launch

1. Huge Impact over Short Period

Hard launches can make a big difference in a short period if there is demand for the product and it solves the customer problem well. This effect can be further amplified by growing a contact base of interested customers with high intent to purchase.

2. Powerful Marketing Campaign

A hard launch can leverage all marketing tools that you have at your disposal, which can further amplify its impact by reinforcing each other. Some marketing and PR options are only available for big announcements, which won’t be an option for a small-scale launch.

Disadvantages of a Hard Launch

1. Higher Failure Risk

A hard launch puts more of your eggs in one basket. You will hardly get a second chance if something goes wrong during the launch. As the saying goes:

You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

2. Overwhelming Demand

Each entrepreneur or product leader wants their product to be successful. However, predicting and preparing for the actual demand can be hard. Do you need a customer service team for 1,000 or 1 million users?

Overproviding resources will be a waste of money and require more time. Underprovisioning resources may create a poor user experience and diminish the benefits of the big launch.

Examples of Successful Hard Launches

iPhone

Apple has a long history of big product announcements that feature innovative products and create a big impact for the company. The iPhone is one of these examples. Creating a big marketing splash for physical products is more challenging than for software products, as the manufacturing process exposes the product to many third parties up the supply chain. Leaks and rumors are always part of upcoming hard launches and, to some extent, further amplify their marketing impact.

Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go’s launch is an interesting example of a hard launch, as its approach stepped on a previous product—a game called Ingress. The publisher Niantic tested the game mechanics and created a very successful game, which later was reimagined as Pokemon Go, developed in collaboration with Nintendo.

Tesla Model 3

Tesla’s launch of Model 3 generated a huge number of preorders and was considered widely successful. It illustrated very well the risk of being unable to handle huge demands, as car manufacturing is not an easy process to scale.

The huge number of preorders led to many delays and some unsatisfied customers while increasing anticipation and the perception of scarcity.

How to Pick Between Soft and Hard Launch?

There are several factors to consider when deciding on your go-to-market strategy.

1. Product Maturity

You might suggest a hard launch if you are more confident in your product. Based on previous research and validating the demand, you can afford to go all-in with your product launch. If you are less confident than you were during the previous round of validation, a soft launch can be a smoother transition.

2. Market Risk

Some markets are more established than others, and they are still emerging and not well understood. If you enter a new emerging market, your product might be exposed to more risk due to the high uncertainty and weaker understanding of customer needs. More established markets are less volatile, and you can proceed more confidently, provided you researched your problem earlier.

3. First-Mover Advantage

There are markets in which the first movers get a significant advantage. One typical situation is when winners take it all, like marketplace platforms. Airbnb and Uber leave little room for competitors once they establish themselves as leaders, as users will experience a significant disadvantage when using more than one product in that category.

If this is your situation, a hard launch might be the only option, as a soft launch will expose your solution to competitors and shorten the window of opportunity for your idea. All of this can be countered by developing a strong unfair advantage, but it’s still a factor to be considered.

4. Revenue Generation

Depending on how you funded your business and what your runway is, a soft launch might not be a viable option as it postpones revenue generation. A hard launch pushes revenue generation sooner at the cost of a higher risk of not having that revenue at all.

The Hybrid Approach

The soft and hard launches are the two extremes but there is a whole spectrum of options in between. A hybrid approach may combine the strengths of both soft and hard launch while at the same time mitigating their risks.

One possible hybrid approach is a staged rollout in which the company increases the target audience in different phases, leading to a big, generally available release.

Most of the examples above are actually hybrid approaches:

• Dropbox started with an invite-only beta but was later on followed by a big public access which leveraged the momentum from the referral program.
• Tesla’s Model 3 soft launch was based on limited production and preorders until the company was ready for mass production with a hard launch.

The Benefits of the Hybrid Approach

A hybrid approach combines the best of both worlds by shipping the product to a smaller audience to taste the water, get real-world feedback, and adjust based on it. Later, the product executes a generally available release that attracts a lot of publicity with a polished product ready for prime time.

Wrap Up

Figuring out the appropriate way to launch your product can significantly reduce the stress associated with releasing a new product and give you a significant advantage in the market.