AMA: Dandy Director of Product Marketing, Jesse Lopez on Product Launches

Your product launch timing should be informed by several internal and external factors, such as product readiness, internal resources and enablement, competitive landscape, and seasonality of your product category. I typically partner with a cross-functional team (e.g., product, brand, comms/PR, sales, and support) to determine launch dates. Some key questions to consider as you recommend and/or influence your company’s timing for launches are the following: * Product readiness: What product criteria must be met before it is ready to be released (e.g., beta milestones, customer satisfaction score, etc.)? * Internal resources and enablement: Will this be a new capability or product area for your sales and customer support teams? If so, how complex will the change be? What internal training is required prior to the launch to ensure customer-facing teams are ready to answer customer questions? * Competitive landscape: What type of themes or launches have your competitors recently launched? How will your new launch compare to competitive news? Will your launch have a differentiated narrative to garner media, or the attention of your buyers? * Seasonality: When are key buyers most engaged throughout the year? Is there a specific month or quarter when buyers begin to research new solutions or actively consider switching solutions?

Launching a product or feature is only the beginning of the journey. To maximize its impact and ensure continuous improvement, tracking feedback and outcomes is crucial, capturing valuable learnings for your cross-functional teams. As a PMM, you can champion three key areas in this post-launch phase: 1. Listening to Your Customers: * Proactive Feedback Gathering: Monitor user feedback across product surfaces, support channels, and third-party review sites. This helps identify areas for tweaks, fixes, or potential feature enhancements after launch. * Unveiling the "Why": When necessary, conduct user interviews to delve deeper into the "why" behind identified issues. This qualitative data provides invaluable context for improvement efforts. 2. Tracking Product Usage: * Identifying Early Adopters: Track feature usage post-launch and pinpoint key user segments who have embraced your new offering. * Understanding Motivations: Interview these early adopters to understand their reasons for adopting your product feature. These insights can help equip sales and customer-facing teams with compelling narratives that can be leveraged when selling the “value” of your product to prospects and existing customers. 3. Evaluating Campaign Effectiveness: * Measuring Campaign Success: Analyze the performance of your launch campaign, including conversion rates and customer acquisition costs. Recommended Meeting Cadence As a PMM, fostering regular communication with your cross-functional teams is vital to ensure launch learnings and strategies permeate the company. I recommend you align with cross-functional partners on cadence of meetings - a potential cadence is as follows: Weekly or Biweekly Meetings: * Product Team: Collaborate with your product team to discuss user feedback, prioritize enhancements, and regularly plan roadmap updates based on gathered insights. * Customer Support Teams: Work closely with support teams (e.g., CX, account management, training, implementation) to understand common user issues and refine support resources to address them effectively. Monthly or Quarterly Meetings: * Analytics Team: Collaborate with the analytics team to review key business and product metrics, identifying key drivers of success and potential issues that may require further attention. * Marketing Team: Share insights from user feedback and performance metrics to inform ongoing marketing and promotional campaigns, ensuring they continue to resonate with your target audience. * Sales Team: Equip sellers with user feedback and competitor analysis to refine their sales pitch and confidently address customer concerns.

In the competitive landscape of product launches, a well-crafted launch messaging document serves as the strategic foundation for your cross-functional team's success. It ensures all assets, campaigns, and tactics seamlessly align and resonate with a compelling narrative, capturing the attention and interest of your target buyers. This essential document acts as your launch bible, encompassing the following key elements: 1. Differentiated Value Proposition: At its core lies a concise statement articulating the unique value your product or feature delivers, addressing specific customer pain points and offering a compelling solution. 2. Target Audience Mapping: Clearly identify the audience segments and personas you'll be targeting with your messaging. Unearth the challenges they currently face with their existing solutions, and then illuminate how your new offering empowers them to improve their current setup. 3. Customer-Centric Key Messages: Craft impactful messages tailored to each persona, highlighting the benefits and features that resonate most deeply with them. Invest time in researching your beta users to glean valuable insights that will inform how you position and prioritize key messages for each specific audience. 4. Embedded Proof Points: Solidify your key messages with concrete evidence and examples, such as customer testimonials, case studies, or compelling data points. Beta users are exceptional candidates for providing social proof you can leverage during launch announcements or campaigns, lending valuable credibility to your messaging.

In a launch-heavy tech landscape, where every competitor clamors for attention, effective product marketing hinges on strategic resource allocation. The key lies in a tiered launch strategy that maximizes the return on your most impactful releases while driving efficient, scaled campaigns for thematic launches. Scattering your resources across many launches often leads to underwhelming campaigns that struggle to gain traction in a crowded marketplace. Here are some key questions to guide your resource prioritization across product launches: Business Impact: * Strategic Alignment: How does this launch align with your overall business strategy and goals? Will it drive concrete results to achieve those objectives? * Business Metrics: Which key business metrics will this launch impact (e.g., revenue, new customer acquisition, retention)? Market Opportunity: * Growth Potential: Does this launch address a new market segment, expand your reach, or deliver incremental value to your existing customer base? Competitive Edge: * Differentiation Factor: Does this product meaningfully set you apart from your competitors in the market? Performance Benchmarks: * Lessons Learned: Which past launches have had the most significant impact on your company or the broader category? In collaboration with your cross-functional partners (product, marketing, and sales), leverage these questions to create a scoring system. This will help you identify the most critical product launches deserving of Tier 1 support, characterized by an outsized investment (e.g., PR support, dedicated landing page, announcement video, etc.) compared to smaller releases. For all other launches, consider grouping them based on shared themes, narratives, or value propositions. This allows you to craft compelling stories for prospects and existing customers, ensuring optimal resource allocation and reserving valuable resources for your largest launches.