Marketing campaign launch checklist
It is always exciting (and sometimes nail-biting) to launch a new marketing campaign. Like any marketing launch, new campaigns represent a lot of effort and collaboration. It is a thrilling moment when you can finally unveil the pieces to your audience — whether a new design, content series, or set of ads. But campaigns are much more than that single launch moment. They often represent weeks of deliverables and dependencies.
This is why many marketing teams use launch checklists to stay on top of important to-do's. Checklists are a simple tool to help you remember it all — the tasks, the timing, the impacted teams, and everything else you need to successfully kick off your campaign. Read on for tips (and a free template) for creating your own marketing campaign launch checklist.
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Why marketing teams need a campaign launch checklist
Marketing teams frequently roll out new campaigns to help educate, attract, and retain customers. Each campaign requires its own promotional assets and activities as well as internal communication and training. Checklists help you organize these tasks and consider all the areas of the business that will be impacted.
By sharing a detailed launch checklist with your teammates, you also help to set expectations for the work that needs to be done. Aligning everyone around the same set of tasks will help you manage cross-functional launch activities with greater ease and accountability.
Campaign launches can vary in scope. Before working through a launch checklist, it is helpful to think through your marketing goals, core messaging, and other context surrounding the launch to get aligned on the intended impact. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
What are your objectives for the launch?
What are the key themes and messages?
How many marketing materials do you need to create or update?
Which teams in your company will be impacted?
How will customers be impacted by the campaign (if at all)?
Is the launch newsworthy enough to share with partners, analysts, and/or press?
Related:The marketing plan vs. the launch plan
What to include on your marketing campaign launch checklist
Ideally, your checklist should be comprehensive yet reusable for future campaign launches. The table below provides an overview of the different sections and items to include in your own marketing campaign launch checklist. If you want to jump in right away, check out the free template below.
Remember — your campaign launch checklist is simply an itemized list of to-do's that must happen before, on, and after the launch date. It is not the same as a marketing launch plan which communicates ongoing progress and cross-functional dependencies in greater detail.
Section | Items |
Overview | Objective — Overall goals for the campaign plus how it supports the broader marketing strategy. Channels — Places where you will launch the campaign including email, social media, digital advertising, and your website. Creative brief — An outline of the vision, target audience, messaging, deliverables, and creative approach for the campaign. Team — Key contacts and their responsibilities for the campaign launch. Launch date — A set date to work towards for the new campaign to go live. |
Assets and promotion | Advertising — Plans to run paid search, paid social, display, or retargeting ads. Content — Blog posts, emails, videos, webinars, and webpages to create or update for the campaign launch. Social media — How you will announce and promote your launch on social channels. Design — Images or web design work need to support ads, content, and social media. |
Communication | Communications plan — How you will announce the campaign launch both internally and externally, including analyst outreach and media relations. Partners — List of partners and affiliates that can help promote your launch. |
Team support | Documentation — Reference materials to create or update including boilerplates, internal articles, and technical requirements if needed. Training — Plans for training customer-facing teams including sales, customer success, and support on how to communicate and share campaign concepts. Collateral — Sales and support content to create or update including competitor comparisons, pitch decks, and case studies. |
Performance | Success metrics — How you will measure and track the results of your campaign launch. Key results — Indicators that show when the goals of your campaign launch have been achieved. Follow up — How you will provide insights and collect feedback from customers and internal teams on the campaign's performance. |
Marketing campaign launch checklist template
A checklist template will help you establish an effective and repeatable campaign launch process. It also helps to set clear expectations across internal teams — both for groups that are directly contributing and others that simply need to be informed.
Download the Word template below to get started:
With this template it is easy to start customizing your own marketing campaign launch checklist. But managing deliverables and aligning the team is even more efficient when it all happens in one place. Try planning your next marketing campaign in Aha! Roadmaps — where you can brainstorm creative on a whiteboard, collaborate on asset creation, and showcase progress with dynamic Gantt charts.
Plan, collaborate, and launch — all in one tool. Try Aha! free for 30 days.
