Afreen is a Product Marketer at Swiggy. She has been a part of the teams that launched Swiggy’s SUPER, Daily and multiple products for their Delivery Partners, including the incentive tracker, a product integral to their earnings.
In her meetup at HelloMeets, we got a chance to talk about the 3 product launches Afreen was a part of. In this blog, we are sharing her experience:
- How she and her team launched these three products
- What they did before and during the launch
About the products they launched-
SUPER - A membership program
Daily - A home-made meal subscription plan
Incentive Tracker - Incentive tracking app for delivery partners
Generally, there are a ton of questions going through Product Marketer’s mind while preparing for a launch of their product. Before you get all overwhelmed, we have found a framework that’ll make your life easy as a Product Marketer.
Afreen shared 3 crucial questions you can ask before the launch of your product. So you have a crystal clear vision about the product and everything related to it.
“Before even starting the construction of your product, imagine what people will say about it. What will be written in the articles, blogs, etc.? How will you sell that to the end users?
To answer the 3 crucial questions, You will have to answer some basic questions first. Start by thinking of:
- What is the pain point of your target audience?
- How are you going to solve that pain point?
- How are you going to launch the product?
Here’s how Afreen answered those questions to prepare for the launch - she began with the 3 steps:
1. Stalking
Product marketing brings your stalking skills into practice. Begin with reading about your competitors. Look at how they’re dealing with customers’ pain points. Stay updated on what they are doing, their social media posts, listen to what people and their customers say about the product’s effect on their lives.
2. Obsessing
Deep dive to observe your competitor’s product and dissect it into parts. Observe each aspect, try to understand why it’s built in a specific way, how its UI/UX is designed. See how their customers use their product all over the world.
3. Trying
When you have your research from stalking and observing ready, try the insights out. Experiment a lot of random things and figure out what works for you and your product. How are you able to solve customer problems uniquely?
To elaborate what exactly Afreen did, here is an image of the process.
Steps for a Successful Product Launch
For each step — Research, Position, Message and Launch — Afreen answered specific questions that made the entire process clearer. It is important to ask questions (even small and silly ones) to have a clear picture of the process.
Research- What do users want?
Understand your market, competition and potential audience. Analyse the market trends of the present and future.
By doing a market research you will understand where your competitors stand, what the consumers think about them and what are the current problems that consumers are facing.
Via thorough research, you’ll get insights to help you find the right positioning of your product.
Position- How do users benefit?
While planning your positioning ask-
- Where does my product fit in the world of the user?
- What needs does it fulfil?
This way you will understand where your product will fit in the world of your user.
- List out your features and benefits
- Combine them with the insights you got from the research
Combining the features and insights will help you in setting the right position of your product in the market. This will also help you answer what needs your product will fulfill.
Message- What will users see?
When you have a clear positioning, it makes it easy to find the voice and tone of the product. Clear positioning also helps define the value proposition of the product.The right voice, tone and value proposition when combined together, helps create a powerful message for your audience.
Launch- When will users try it?
With the right message created, you can make the right communication plan that will be the basis of your launch plan. In this step, you can easily define your user segment, know what to measure and when to go live.
After the first launch, start analysing what the users are doing and how they are reacting to the product.
Are they even using it?
Are they using it in the way we intend them to?
How is the product adding value, is it making any difference?
When you get answers to these, start adopting different ways to deal with the problems by starting from step 1 (research) but this time with experience of what not to do. When you follow these 4 steps honestly, you will be prepared for the questions that come up once you have launched the product.
To have better clarity while launching your product, you should be able to answer these three crucial user questions, they will help you in picturing the results better.
- What do the users want?
- What will the users see?
- What will the users try?
These questions may sound basic. But if you dig a little deeper, you will see yourself asking more questions about your product and users. Answering them before the launch will help you tackle post launch problems.
Each question is explained with the help of different Swiggy products.
What do the users want?
Answering these specific questions during your research process will give you a clear picture about the market, product and your target audience. An example Afreen gave was of Swiggy SUPER. When they were planning to launch SUPER V0.0 they answered these questions like this…
What is the offering?
Free Delivery
Who is the target audience?
Loyal Swiggy Customers
What will it solve?
The checkout friction or bill shock
How will it solve?
By removing the delivery fee
What are the benefits for the users?
Why will it be useful?
Because they dislike paying the delivery fee
The SUPER V0.0 was launched as a loyalty program where the benefits were only enjoyed by ‘loyal Swiggy customers’. In a way, it increased sales as the only way to become a loyal customer was to place a certain number of orders.
It did not solve the problem of attracting non customers or not so loyal ones. Therefore they came up with a V0.1.
Swiggy SUPER V0.1 expanded their offering:
- From a loyalty program, they turned it into a membership program.
- Instead of just targeting loyal customers, they targeted all of them.
- They offered not only free delivery but also special offers. This played really well — as it meant, the customers saved even more.
- This was useful because customers HATED paying the delivery fee.
This brings us to our next stage Positioning and Messaging.
What will the users see?
Getting answers to these questions will make the position and communication clear. The message you want to give to the end user will be laid out in the answers you find.
Afreen gave an example of Swiggy Daily. A Home-Made-Meal subscription. The concept was — home-made meals, prepared by home chefs in their home kitchens.
To prepare a message for this, the team answered the following questions:
What is the proposition?
Home style meals delivered daily.
Value proposition for Daily was defined earlier by combining the insights and benefits.
What are the channels?
In-app option
The channels depend on how and where you want the target customer to see your product’s ad. It can be social media, website, SMS, push notification, google search or an offline medium.
What do the users need to know?
Trustworthy, variety, a way to connect.
This will change as per the channel you select. The audience and CTA also play an important role in forming this message. No matter what your channel or target audience, the message will always flow from the value proposition.
What is the visibility?
Brief, upfront. Details available on a tap.
The visibility or frequency answers how often a user will see the message and where they will see it.
What are the guidelines?
Simple warm tonality, curator not creator, brief.
The guidelines define the voice and tone of your message. Where voice = proposition, tone = context. It also tells whether the message will be long or short. With these answers, the Swiggy’s Daily team came up with great content.
But there was one challenge - These kinds of vendors (home chefs) don't have the same kind of engagement with the customers as other conventional restaurants and take-aways have.
The team wanted to bring out the essence of home cooking. Show it’s clean (the food is not cooked in a stale kitchen) and show the BTS (behind the scenes) which would result in increasing trust of the people who’re ordering.
The final communication was a small story about the home chef and their kitchen. They mentioned how the chef started cooking for others. Also, showed their kitchens and a personal element to give it a more trustworthy and emotional touch.
Here is an example of the communication piece:
They shared a story of Bon Appettie by displaying the BTS, a short story and shared direct quotes by the chef to add a real feel to it. Storytelling helped them build trust and sell. They found 35% of daily active users selecting 1 meal and 12% purchasing a meal everyday.
Coming to our last stage, Launch.
What will the users try?
All these questions help you in figuring out the pre-launch process. How will you go about it, and be prepared for all the challenges coming your way after the product is finally out and running.
The example Afreen gave here was of Swiggy’s Incentive Tracker. It was created for the delivery partners to help them track their incentives.
The delivery partners were not able to see how much incentive they were earning from each delivery, which was not helpful for them as they couldn't track their progress. And it was not helpful for Swiggy as they could not boost their partners' moral to work more.Coming out with an Incentive Tracker meant the delivery partners would see how much incentive they are earning daily, what their target incentive is and how many more deliveries they have to make to reach that target.
Here is how they answered the following questions-
What are the users segment?
New and existing users, in different cities.
Your frequency and message changes based on the type of user segment. It is important to define your user segment in the early stage as it will define how you will launch the product.
What is the experimentation framework?
For Swiggy’s Incentive tracker, the team used A/B testing as the target was dynamic.
To select the type of testing you should follow this-
In a dynamic world (market) use a test control setup, eg. AB testing. In a steady one, compare the changes before and after the launch.
They divided their users (delivery partners) into 3 user buckets for the experiment:
- Don’t show the tracker
- Show the tracker
- Full guided discovery of the tracker
The first group was working just the same way as before. The second group hit some incentive goals but the results of the 3rd group were 2x higher.This showed them that the tracker was working exactly the way they wanted it to.
What will you measure?
Business, user and product usage metrics.
Knowing what to measure is more important than knowing you have to measure. You won’t get the answers you are looking for when you don’t know what you are trying to measure.
What could go wrong?
It won't help users get incentive
No product is perfect, knowing what could go wrong or what could be better is the best way to prepare yourself for any calamity.
When will you launch?
When we know its working
Releasing a product is not equal to the launch of the product. They are never at the same time.
Release = product going live
Launch = marketing for the product going live.
When we look back at where we started,
The research and positioning of the product was explained via Swiggy SUPER
The message, via Swiggy Daily and
The launch via Swiggy’s Incentive tracker
Hope this helps you in designing your product launch strategy.
If you have any questions, comment below.
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