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Sam Duboff

AMA: Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing, Sam Duboff on Product Launches

January 28 @ 10:00AM PST
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Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing, Sam Duboff on Product Launches
Top Questions
Do you have a product launch template that shows what teams (and when) to incorporate into the preparation of a strategy/plan?
How should I think about that?
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
Yes, templates can be helpful, as long as they don't limit your creativity and thinking. Sometime you can get into a "rinse and repeat" rhythm with product launches and miss bigger opportunities — and a really rigid launch template can create that dynamic. One resource I've found to be effecti......Read More
17397 Views
2 requests
How do you tier your launches, and what KPI's do you assign to each tier?
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
Having a documented tiering system across your full PMM organization is really important for a few reasons — it helps create consistency across marketers who might be working on different areas of your business; it creates efficiency to PMMs don't have to re-invent the wheel for each GTM; it help......Read More
38455 Views
4 requests
How do you create a GTM/launch strategy for a product with a long beta period? Follow-up question: What do you do if the product changes significantly between beta and full launch?
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
Navigating a long beta period can be tough for a marketer. At worst, it can lead to you losing the opportunity to shape perception of the product and taking the wind out of your sails. When you launch the "beta," it can be hard to drive excitement given limited availability. Then by the time you ......Read More
2054 Views
6 requests
What are the core ingredients of a successful launch? How do those ingredients shrink or expand based on priority (i.e. top tier vs bottom tier)?
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
Answered a question about how I think about tiering framworkers. I think the core ingredients of a successful launch really depend on your business — size, B2B vs. B2C, business model, stage, etc. — so it's hard to say. I'd say in general, I've found the most important quality is planning a launc......Read More
2762 Views
3 requests
If your product team works in two-week sprints, how do you balance and prioritize each launch? In other words is a "release" always a "launch" and how do you differentiate and treat each?
Product team releases something worthwhile (to a degree) every two weeks. A new feature is released in an MVP stage (not always in beta) and frequently iterated on. How does a small team manage the constant updates to existing products to ensure clients are informed (so the updates get used/don't take anyone by surprise) but aren't constantly being bombarded by marketing messages.
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
That sounds really challenging, but exciting to work on a product that iterates so quickly. First, I'd work with your product team and try to show the impact of bundling a few small updates at a time, rather than piecemeal. It's tough to break through if all the updates are small and are so fr......Read More
1470 Views
4 requests
What are the key things to consider post-launch? What standard metrics are important to track to measure success and what teams (and at what cadence) are important to connect with post-launch?
Sam Duboff
Sam Duboff
Spotify Director, Head of Creator Brand & Product Marketing • January 27
Can really vary product to product — but I'd separately track product metrics you're able to drive and marketing channel performance. If you have the tech stack for it, ideally you can measure how much product adoption was driven your marketing efforts to keep yourself accountability and prove in......Read More
2045 Views
2 requests