Is it effective to LAUNCH a service that has been live (in beta for 9 months)

Discussions
#1

I’m a big fan of getting feedback rather than the “stealth launch”.
So our new speech therapy web app has been live for 9 months. We’ve advetised in Adwords for 6 months. (We thought we were 2 weeks from “pay version” for 3 months. I guess we were using Jeff Atwood (Stackoverflow) scheduling.

So I"m thinking now that maybe we need to have an actual launch with a bit of PR around an “event” rather than quietly "turning on the “pay” switch.

Any thoughts pro or con?

-Clay

#2

I’m the last person to ask about launches, but…

  1. The launch is announced to some auditory. Do you have a mailing list, professional forums or some other place where the prospects are concentrated and can be reached?

  2. The launch, I believe, follows some period of building up a desire to buy, a “OMG it’s gonna be sooooo good” kind of feeling. Then launch releases that feeling and channels it into the action (of buying). It doesn’t seem you have built that.

  3. I also believe the Big Launch works better for some ground-breaking projects. Adding a new media (web app) doesn’t seem like a launch-worthy event… though of course it may be, for instance, if it allows for radically new features.

I.e. if I were you, I’d channel my efforts into focused marketing to the potential users – patients, their relatives and the speech therapists. LinkedIn? Facebook? Anything that allows for better targeting than blind Google adwords.

#3

Yep, that’s kinda how I thought The Launch would work.

Since our service technically launched 9 months ago, not sure if we have an “event” to build around.
(Other than “we are now charging for it”. NOT the event that would appeal to them :smile:
-Clay