Christy Roach

AMA: Airtable Senior Director, Portfolio & Engagement Product Marketing, Christy Roach on Product Launches

December 9 @ 10:00AM PST
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Airtable Senior Director, Portfolio & Engagement Product Marketing, Christy Roach on Product Launches
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Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
Enablement is one of the most critical and often most difficult parts of the launch. The key to remember is that, usually, the product launch is just part of the overall sales process, and you need to treat your enablement as such. Very rarely will a customer-facing team drop everything for a new......Read More
1130 Views
2 requests
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
If you take one thing away from this AMA, it’s that you need a source of truth for your launch activities. Please don’t run a launch without one, I’m begging you. Unsurprisingly, at Airtable we use Airtable to do this. I’d recommend it, it’s worked well for us. But I won’t give you too much of a......Read More
982 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
This totally depends on the product. Some launches are meant to grow top of funnel signups, others drive expansion with your current customer base, others reduce churn or expand product stickiness. Your goals should line up with the problems you’re solving. They should also have a tie back to you......Read More
623 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
This is one of those times that PMM’s role as a “connector” shines most brightly. There are so many teams involved in a launch, and usually, they have differences in their POV on what the launch should do. I get goal ideas, questions, and suggestions from across the org, but I’ve worked to keep P......Read More
934 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
I think more than anything, the things we got right were the fundamentals: * Product need: We were launching a product that truly solved customers’ needs. We were crystal clear in our product spec about who we were solving for and what problems we were focused on. We validated that and go......Read More
911 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
Your GTM strategy for a launch starts by determining the audience and “tier” of your launch. I use a framework that has 4 different tiers: * Tier 1: Large, newsworthy updates that happen 1-2x per year. These change the positioning for your overall product, will appeal to your current custome......Read More
4199 Views
5 requests
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
Every single launch, even the ones that made me crazy, taught me something valuable. As I’ve gotten more senior, I’ve done less of the launch coordination but I still get deeply involved in our product launches because I believe there’s nothing that encapsulates the feeling, energy, and excitemen......Read More
595 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
This is something I deal with a lot. Often, for a large launch, you’ve got multiple product components that you’re bringing together for one big moment. I find that launch teams often have that "more is more" mentality, where our product teams push to get something else completed with the energy ......Read More
758 Views
4 requests
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
I count these as “Tier 3” launches which I define as: Relatively small product updates that a subset of your current customer base will care about deeply. You are spot-on that they’re important for users to know about. Usually, it’s a specific group that needs to know about it. For example, we u......Read More
921 Views
2 requests
What process have you taken to enable your sales team to demo a new version of a feature while it's in Beta?
- At what point did you allow them to start demoing? X weeks prior to GA? - What training was necessary prior to making the change? Workramp, etc. - When did you make it mandatory for Sales to only demo the new version? - Were there any concerns that the feature might be sold as one thing, then the final product might look slightly different?
Christy Roach
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of MarketingDecember 9
This can be really hard to manage! Like everything, it really depends on the feature and product readiness. I’ve often done this is in a few stages: * Early product development: We start by educating our internal teams on what we’re building, the problems we want to solve, and our target cus......Read More
912 Views
2 requests