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Holly Watson

AMA: Amazon Product Marketing SME, AWS, Holly Watson on Release Marketing

August 7, 2025 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. What type of customer research do you do pre-launch to help you have a great product launch?

    Holly Watson
    Holly Watson

    Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr • 10mo

    Customer research is a gold mine - if done correctly. What's not understood, and often missed, is that customer research should be a continuous effort. It is often poorly conducted when timelines are short and pressure is high. Work with sales, customer support, field marketers, and SAs to help you identify customers willing to provide feedback on your product. Find moments at events (big and small) to host customer round tables, 1:1 conversations, or sponsored dinners. During pre-launch phases, ...Read More

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    2 requests

  2. How do you assess organizational readiness ahead of a product launch?

    Too often product marketing is seen as a collateral producing engine. But with substantial new launches, we are sometimes the only ones integrating needs, insights, and potential operational bottlenecks across all stakeholders, internal or external. I’m curious both of how you think of org readiness and how you incorporate this dimension into your launch motion.

    Holly Watson
    Holly Watson

    Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr • 10mo

    I'll assume that the organization's leadership is aligned to the product roadmap (in general) when answering this question. Organizational readiness can have several factors including sales training, product market fit, clarity on understanding who your ideal customer profile (ICP) is, product truth and value, and market timing. Additionally, org readiness might change depending on the launch scope. Is this new launch targeting existing customer? That might mean you spend more time with the cust ...Read More

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    1 request

  3. How can I make it easier for my team and stakeholders to work with me on the marketing launch timeline when engineering releases are sometimes delayed?

    Any tips for setting expectations and not losing team’s trust while ensuring we have a timeline to work towards?

    Holly Watson
    Holly Watson

    Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr • 10mo

    Build cycles can change, but it's best to focus on what you can control. Work with your stakeholders to set reasonable work back timelines for deliverables. For example, a webinar cannot be created, promoted, and established in a day. A typical cycles can take up to 4 weeks for proper promotion. Layout basic timelines your stakeholders can use when determining risks or tradeoffs for when dates slip and/or change.

    2,898 Views
    1 request

  4. How do you handle alpha/beta as it relates to your Release Marketing program and tiering framework?

    Do you only include GA products / features in your releases? Do you tier alphas and betas, or have a different approach for classifying them with a corresponding level of effort / activities?

    Holly Watson
    Holly Watson

    Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr • 10mo

    Most broadly I look at launches across 4 major milestones 1/ Alpha/Beta, 2/ Limited Availability (LA), 3/ General Availability (GA), and 4/ GA continued (90+ day plan). I also use a tiered launch program to manage what resources are dedicated to each launch. Smaller updates like bug fixes or minor feature improvements most likely will not get full marketing support. These frameworks help me manage time, resources, and focus on the most impactful work. That means that only some of the larger laun ...Read More

    1,937 Views
    1 request

  5. How do you transform the traditional product marketing launch process to keep up with a rapid product release cadence?

    Holly Watson
    Holly Watson

    Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr • 10mo

    Tier your launches. Not every launch will need or should get the same level of resources. Smaller releases (bug fixes) probably don't need more than technical documentation updates, updates that are most important to current customers can have a very focused marketing comms strategy, and net new functionality might only be available in certain regions or target specific personas. Tiering launches (I put releases into this structure) is a great way to scale resources and manage stakeholder expect ...Read More

    1,451 Views
    1 request