AMA: Clari Product Marketing Leader, Ryane Bohm on Product Launches

A new feature within a product would usually fall under a Tier 2 or 3 launch in my book. That means they are getting attention, but not quite everything you have up your sleeve. Tier 2 or 3 launches often include: 1. Website updates 2. Launch blog 3. External comms 4. Employee comms & employee activation 5. Light field enablement 6. Internal FAQ document 7. An ammendment to the core product messaging & positioning, as needed Salesforce has historically done fantastic job launching new features in products on a recurring & predictable schedule, meeting the customers where they already are, and showing the feature value. For overall product marketing, marketing, and category creation education, definitely check out the book Play Bigger. It puts a new spin on thinking differently and creating differention in the market. And of course, give Clari a follow and see how we are activating our channels across social media, product news, web, and more! 

Product Marketing Alliance has an arsenal of amazing templates that are available for members. I have used these many times over the past few years to get me started quickly. They have everything from launch planning to messaging & positioning to sales enablement and more. Don't be shy to customize them to fit your business needs. No template is ever going to be one size fits all.

I'm sure every marketer reading this can agree, everyone has an opinion on messaging! Getting alignment is amongst one of the hardest things we do as PMMs. Here are a few tips to get started: 1. Develop a roles & responsibilities framework. The most important step! You will want to document who your stakeholders and ultimate decision makers are. Make sure these roles are agreed upon and socialized broadly. Both RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed) or RAPID (recommend, agree, perform, inform, decide) work great for this so everyone knows their place. 2. Get qualitative feedback. Interview existing or beta users who have experience successfully working with the produt, internal stakeholders, key decision makers, and executive leadership that may have a vested interest. 3. Get analyst feedback. Validate your message with analysts in your industry to ensure it will land and stand out in the market. Analyst feedback on market fit is great to have in your back pocket when trying to get that final signoff too! 4. Test internally. Test headlines, calls to action, and taglines with your digital team and run a few mock sales cycles with your sales team to find any gaps 5. Get signoff from your decision makers. A good goal is to never have more than 2 final decision makers otherwise it will take forever to get signoff. 

Lauching too soon is a major red flag internally and to the market and it is often why 50% of product launches that fail to meet business targets (McKinsey). When you are being pushed to launch too quickly (which happens all too often) I recommend helping to build understanding of what the characteristics of a successful product launch looks like: - a company-wide initative with executive buy-in - press-worthy moments that are decoupled from a PR - a program that was planned well in advance for proper execution. A solid timeline for a high prioritiy Tier 1 launch is typically 3-6 months before actual GA to pre-educate the market, recruit pilot customers, and create momentum with key logos. Without those things, your launch will likely not move the needle or hit your desired outcomes. 

One of the biggest pitfalls I see in product launches in underestimating enablement. Don't skimp on this, you want to make sure your customer facing teams are armed with right tools to take your product launch to the next level. A solid enablement plan will stem off these 4 questions: 1. WHO is the internal audience? (SDR, AE, SE, CSM, Segment) 2. What do they need to KNOW? (Timelines, expectations, goals, FAQs, etc.) 3. What do they need to SAY? (Messaging, discovery questions, business value, etc) 4. What do they need to SHOW? (Deck, demo, etc) By enabling the right teams with exactly what they need to know, say, and show, they should be ready to sprint and handle anything that comes their way.

Here are a few common product launch pitfalls to keep top of mind: * Lack of sponsor and executive buy-in * Not communicating broadly enough internally * Cross-functional meetings with way too many people * Over-indexing on product vs. business pains * Selling on features/functions, not benefits/value * Messaging changes the week prior * Competing outbound activations * Underestimate enablement