AMA: Gong Director, Product Marketing, Victoria Chernova on Product Launches

Goals depend on the type of business, the GTM strategy for the product, and selling motion. I will highlight a few examples from my past companies (including B2C and B2B). But first, some advice that’s really helped me throughout my career: 1. Tie your goals to marketing team goals, and even better, to the business 2. Set northstar metrics (usually lagging indicators), and corresponding leading indicators to ensure you’re on track 3. Align goals with key cross-functional partners: Adoption goals with product; revenue with other marketing channel owners; sales-related metrics with enablement I found that doing the above helps set your team and the launch up for success—even if you don’t meet every single KPI you’ve set. Now for some examples. At Udemy, I worked on the B2C side of the house, so we primarily launched consumer products (online courses). As a marketing team, our primary goals were monthly revenue, so launches would roll up into that. We’d set a monthly revenue goal for the new product, which was based on historical data from previous successful courses we had launched. As leading indicators, we’d track visits & click throughs on the course landing page—which helped us understand if awareness was the issue (visits) or landing page content (clicks). These were variables we could still control. At Asana, our team owned several self-serve motions: 1. Non-users signing up for Asana; 2. Free users moving from a freemium account to paid, and 3. Paid users upgrading their account from a basic plan to a more premium version. Asana offered a 30-day free trial for all 3 motions, which made it the lowest barrier to entry for a signup (and trials had a strong conversion rate). Therefore, many of our launches drove trial starts; this was the northstar metric we optimized for. Leading indicators included other campaign metrics like landing page visits and clicks, email opens and CTR, in-product channel views & clicks. Very quickly, we were able to identify which channels drove the most trials (email & in-product for existing users), and zero in on their performance to ensure we were on track. On the other side of the B2B spectrum, Gong is primarily a sales-led motion. When we launch new features, there’s a scaled customer campaign motion, as well as field enablement. Depending on the product, we’ll either launch strictly to the existing customer base or to prospective customers as well. My team focuses on platform and core product, so I can highlight some of the KPIs we’ve used for launches. For northstar metrics, I like to set: 1. Campaign goals; 2. Product adoption; and 3. Field enablement KPIs We use Gong at Gong, no surprise here, so we can actually track when our product messaging is being used by field teams with customers. We call this “field adoption.” We can even take it one step further by correlating field adoption with sales metrics like win rate or sales stage conversion. A very cool way of measuring messaging impact. Field adoption is a bit of a lagging indicator, so a leading indicator would tell you if your sales or CS teams are actually finding your messaging and resources. For that, a CMS can be helpful to track engagement and downloads of your content. A lagging indicator for product adoption could be daily/weekly/monthly users (depending on the nature of your product), or the # of users or companies that have completed an important action. Leading indicators could be visits to that particular product or taking the first step in completing said important action. Campaign goals could include driving demo requests from your target audience; leading indicators would be channel metrics like landing page views and click throughs, email opens and click throughs, etc.

I’ve seen both approaches, but it depends on your business, selling motion, and product team culture on which approach is best for your company. I'll share some takeaways from my experiences at Asana and Gong. At Asana, PMM and product aligned on an annual launch calendar with 3-4 major launches. Launches for smaller feature releases and improvements were coordinated between the PMM and PM. This decentralized approach allowed the PMM to be more strategic when positioning features, which oftentimes meant bundling; coordinating across PMMs to create an overarching story to target audiences. The downsides of this approach are that customers sometimes have to wait to get value from new functionality, and it relies heavily on the rapport between the PMM and PM. At Gong, our product team is quite prolific, so we have a monthly release cadence that aligns GTM teams with product. In other words, we release features when they’re ready but only during a designated 1 week release window every month. On top of this release process, PMMs also create larger launch moments for Tier 1 and 2 features. The upsides of this approach are that customers get value right away, and Gong is perceived as a company with high product velocity. The downside of this approach is that it's challenging to pull through a common narrative when shipping 5-10 disparate features each month. This also makes it more challenging for the field to understand how to plug these new features into their sales motion. There are tradeoffs to both, so it’s important to understand what you should optimize for, based on your business. #1 optimizes for clarity (both for customers and the field), and #2 optimizes for product velocity and faster customer value.

Not exactly sure what you mean by analyzing, but building the customer journey for your GTM strategy is essential for ensuring the right segment gets the right message via the right channel. It’s also how you can identify which assets (or bill of materials) to prioritize for the launch. I’d start with your GTM strategy: Who’s your target audience (including different segments), what are you trying to make them do (objectives), and how will you get them there (channels + assets)? I’m a visual learner, so I like to build a flow chart for each audience segment to map out their journey. Each journey should culminate with your primary goal. Some questions to think through as you build these out: * Based on previous launches or internal marketing knowledge, which channels are most effective in reaching this specific segment? * How many touch points do you need to get your audience to achieve your goals? * What is the happy path (ideal flow) for each step? What can you do if someone falls off the path? * Finally, what type of content is most compelling given your audience, message, and channels? I would lean into other content and marketing teammates to build your bill of materials.

The first step is creating a tiering system so you can prioritize features & products being released. Variables could be based on customer impact (good and bad—think change management), business priorities, revenue potential, brand/awareness potential, etc. For Tier 1 & 2 products, we’ve built out a workback schedule in Asana with dates. Typically this process starts 3-4 months before the agreed upon launch date. I would think through your workback schedule for a few key deliverables owned by PMM, and then each deliverable by channel. Key PMM deliverables are: 1. GTM strategy; 2. Customer journey & bill of materials (or assets); 3. Positioning You need these to do anything else. Use your GTM strategy deck for roadshows with cross-functional partners to drive alignment. Use your draft customer journey in brainstorm sessions with channel and content owners to build out your bill of materials and get their buy-in. And your positioning serves as the blueprint for all the materials created for your launch.

Here are a few considerations and actions you can take to build support across the team: 1. Tie your launch goals to the greater Marketing team goals. It’s important to connect the dots on how your launch can help your marketing teammates accomplish their goals as well. For major initiatives, make sure your marketing leadership team is bought in and understand the potential impact. You have to PMM your product internally first :) 2. Make folks feel like thought partners. I love holding brainstorm sessions and pre-kick offs with content and channel owners. Not only does this get them bought in, but you get a bunch of creative ideas out of it. People are much more compelled to execute a plan if they've been brought in throughout the process. 3. Be organized and make folks feel recognized. As PMMs we often quarterback huge multi-channel launches, but we rely on others to execute much of the plan. Come to your kick off prepared with a clear GTM strategy, workback schedule, and customer journey & bill of materials (that you’ve already co-created with folks ahead of the meeting!). Create a great culture around launches, and folks will be more excited to work with you in the future.