Holly Watson

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

August 7 @ 10:00AM PT
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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
Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr8mo
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...
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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
Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr8mo
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 fact...
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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
Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr8mo
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, ...
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Holly Watson
Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr8mo
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 documentati...
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Holly Watson
Oracle Product Marketing, Product Launch, GTM, ex-AWS | Formerly Amazon Web Services, Sprinklr8mo
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...
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