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Greg Gsell

AMA: Datadog VP, Product Marketing, Greg Gsell on Product Launches

March 27, 2025 @ 9:00AM PT

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  1. How are product launches different in multi-product companies?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    The main difference between product launches in companies with a 1-2 products and many products is how you give context on your product launch. For multi product companies, I think product launches will need to tell how this new feature fits into the broader context of your platform. For sales enablement, you need to be able to define your new target personas, new processes, new content, etc and make sure you are thinking about how that fits in. Do you want to trade of $5 of your original for $1 ...Read More

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  2. How do we measure the success of a product launch beyond just sign-ups and revenue?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    Here are a few other things to think about:

    • Sales enablement

      • Number of reps trained

      • Pipegen

      • Pace of pipegen (if it is a product enhancement)

    • Awareness

      • Social engagement

      • Employee social shares (helpful to use Sprout Social, etc for this)

      • Press articles

      • Blog view, shares

    • Product

      • Trials

      • Engagement inside the product (if a new capability)

      • Onboarding flows

    1,119 Views
    4 requests

  3. What are the biggest mistakes companies make when launching a new product, and how can they be avoided?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    Here are a few common mistakes: The launch lacks clarity on product availability. You need to know what the product does and does not do and set those expectations clearly with sales teams via your ICP and target use cases. I am not saying don't launch a half baked product, but if you do, be clear about what the gaps are and the use cases to target The sales team doesn't have a play or CTA. Product launches should not be an FYI for the sales team. Building an actionable sales play with a target ...Read More

    1,957 Views
    4 requests

  4. How would you handle negative user feedback about your product, and how might you address it with the engineering team?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    Negative feedback is more important than positive feedback. For PMM, I would bring it to the PM teams and have honest conversations about the feedback and let them address it. Also look at if it is an enablement issue and how PMM can help educate customers on the use of the feature (if applicable). In my experience, PMMs are not really working with engineering on product feedback, that is more of a PM function

    6,026 Views
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  5. How do you determine whether or not you should do a soft launch (small) or a full scale launch?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    For me, soft launches are for when the product isn't ready or the announcement is not a step change forward. There are countless feature launches that are run of the mill, important, but not game changing features. This is the vast majority of things that ship. These launches haver a defined BOM with sales/SE enablement, maybe a blog, maybe a social post, etc.

    657 Views
    4 requests

  6. What type of pre-launch testing do you do?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    Message testing is critical for launches. I look at 3 areas: Customers/Prospects Focus groups (usual via UX team). Anon survey companies - there are plenty of survey companies you can use to get pulse checks. I take these results with a grain of salt but can be helpful Google surveys - I have never done this but my former CEO would put some money into google ads promoting a simple google survey. This can be stood up very quicky for cheap. Sales teams Find your best sellers for this particular ar ...Read More

    951 Views
    1 request

  7. How do you separate responsibilities of a launch between a customer marketer & a product marketer for a launch?

    Greg Gsell
    Greg Gsell

    Datadog VP, Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, Attentive • 1y

    I think this depends on how you define Customer Marketing, since that role can mean a lot of things (as can Product Marketing I suppose).

    At the end of the day, the PMM is responsible for understanding the product and translating the value into content. Really owning and distributing the messaging is the #1 priority of PMM.

    In terms of assets or work distribution, I would think about this in terms of the audience. Have one person own customer/product comms and another own AE/SE comms.

    674 Views
    3 requests