AMA: Dbt Labs Former Director of Product Marketing, Lauren Craigie on Product Launches

I might be misunderstanding the question but you usually can't get them to prioritize new products unless it's built into their targets :) Introducing a new product into their deal could unecessarily complicate and extend sales cycles (which isn't good for them or you—as an employee of a business that relies on that revenue), so if they're not goaled on that by their sales leader they won't attempt it. If they have been told to focus on it, but still aren't, it could be because they don't trust ...Read More

We have a strong community in the dbt Slack channel, but it's not inclusive of all dbt practioners. So we use four main channels to get in front of our target audience: 1. The dbt Slack community, when announcements are highly relevant to their work 2. Quarterly product launch events targeting existing users that want to go deeper on new releases 3. A "how to" write-up for our DevBlog paired with a "why we did it" blog for our Corporate Blog  4. A monthly product newsletter that might include an ...Read More

Good question! Mindset shift suggestion: Every release, or update, or upgrade is a launch. BUT there are different tiers of launches which enable us to provide a very low level, but consistent level of support. It's not the job of PMM to create fanfare around every single update, but it IS our job to create understanding around each. Getting ready to ship v0.1.13? You don't need a parade or a linkedin post, but you do need to make sure your audience understands the changes. Have your product or ...Read More

I wish it wasn't different, to be honest. If I say what people normally say here, like, "it's more honest, it's straight-forward, it gets right to the meat of it," I'm left thinking... Why don't we market that way to everyone? Why don't we create tiered experiences that let you get right to the details if you want, or float up high in the "business value."  But, to be actually helpful here, I think developer marketing typically happens in a company with product-led-growth, which means you need t ...Read More

Curiosity and a desire to be understood. These two qualities over nearly everything else. You can easily learn the frameworks--steps for a successful launch, format for a battle card, considerations for pricing... you can also improve your writing to align with brand and write high impact choppy copy. But it's not easy to teach someone how to be curious about how a user ACTUALLY feels about your product. How to dig into data to find which features aren't being touched. How to keep iterating on s ...Read More

Video or advertising is likely where a lot of your spend will go for high priority launches, and justifying it would likely come down to whether you're expectlong this launch to have meaningful impact on pipeline, deal-size, market share, etc in the next 3 quarters. If it's a brand new product that is meant to generate pipeline I'd see paid ads coming into the picture... (but now I'm speaking out of my depth as that work would be owned by rev or demand gen marketing.) I have done third-party vid ...Read More

I think everything new in the product is launched to some degree, but we do use a launch tiering system— Tier 1 to Tier 3. I've seen this model at other organizations and it works well to align on a standard set of actions for each launch depending on the goal. Major product initaitives that will materially impact your brand, audience, or bottom line? Tier 1—press release, sales enablement, videos, one-pagers, website landing page, paid promotion, blogs, guides, social posts, etc.  Adjustment to ...Read More

I wish I was able to ask this person to expound a little more on this one! I'm not entirely sure what's being asked but my top tips for developer-focused messaging during launches are: 1. All PMMs love to elevate the why over the how, but in developer marketing your why is worthless if it's not focused on why the INDIVIDUAL should care. They want their business to succeed, but not at the expense of a bad workflow for them. Let's use ourselves as examples. If a competitive intel tool launched a n ...Read More

Normal caveat of "it depends."  But generally, if you're hiring your first PMM, focus them on becoming your audience expert. I think a lot of folks tend to focus too severely on ensuring PMMs are product experts in the first 90. "HOW CAN THEY TALK COMPETENTLY ABOUT THE PRODUCT IF THEY DON'T KNOW HOW IT WORKS?!" Personally, I don't care how someone who isn't my target audience experiences the product. I don't care what a PMM thinks about onboarding. I don't care if they know how to demo it. At le ...Read More

I'd say this can change based on the organization, contributing teams, goals for the launch, market you're in, audience... but a few things I would never launch without: 1. Naming. Sounds simple, but the way that your engineering team refers to something is very often NOT the way you should be communicating it externally. Take the time to name. 2. Pricing and packaging. Work out EARLY whether this should only be available to certain tiers. 3. Target personas. Exactly who is this for, and why do ...Read More

I use 30 day adoption as the primary KPI for measuring launch success (did we target the right audience with the right message and make it painfully obvious to do the thing?). I think success of the product or feature, over time, is another matter—where message testing and evolution is critical. But for the former, you'll need to get very crisp on your measurement tactic, especially for features over net new products which are easier to measure as line-items in an order form: 1) Who do you actua ...Read More