If you have trouble trying to organize everything you need to do before launching new products, I've created this checklist I use so I don't feel overwhelmed and I wanted to share it with you!
I have it broken down into several parts including: inventory, website, social media, and advertising! This checklist can be done in any order that works best for your small business!
First, let's start with inventory! Before you can have a release, you need to plan what products you want to release. Your release can be themed (holiday, seasonal, etc.) or they can be random! I've done both types of releases! It just depends on the time of year for me!
Inventory checklist items:
- Check current inventory, and order additional inventory if needed. This can include any supplies and materials needed for your upcoming launch (including shipping supplies)!
- Create your new products! This is the fun part for me, I love watching my products come to life after I created my digital vision of them!
- Take photos! Once I have at least one item made of each product I plan to release, I take product photos!
After taking product photos, I can start hyping up all my friends on social media by showing them sneak peeks, and sharing the new products with them! I also use this to gauge interest and help me determine how much inventory I want to have made ahead of time!
Next, I work on my website. This is usually the most time consuming part of a launch for me.
Website checklist items:
- Create listings for new products.
- Upload product photos.
- Create new category (i.e. "March Release").
- Update inventory for new products.
- Review current listings - sometimes I will decide to move old listings to the sale section if I am not getting a lot of traction on them / want to clean up my website.
- Review shipping options / item weights for new products.
- Schedule listings.
- Password protect the website (if applicable).
After I finish everything up on my website, I move to advertising. Now I've already touched on some of this above but here is a full list of everything I do to help spread the word about my upcoming release!
Advertising checklist:
- Share new products on social media.
- Create a countdown to remind customers of the upcoming launch!
- Share texting / email link for customers to sign up for launch notifications (including early access if applicable)!
- Create texts / emails to send to customers! For this I usually send out a text the week off to inform customers of the upcoming launch, then I send another text the day of the launch that includes a password for early shopping access! I get a lot of questions about the texting service I use, so I linked it here for you!