AMA: Gong Former Vice President Product Marketing, Julien Sauvage on Product Launches

You have to have a pretty streamlined process. It should be starting about three, four months ahead before launch day, and probably have three, two, five key milestones until reaching that day - the launch kickoff, a launch plan, the launch execution, launch readiness, things like that. Again, there's a ton of frameworks that kind of talks about what each stakeholder is supposed to do for each of the milestones and also what the output and deliverables are. You can get as granular as defining the RACI for each activity in your BOM. Finally, it goes without saying, but you need somebody who would own the program management aspect of your launch. That is the only way to stay on track and make sure we track progress against the plan.

We product marketers all have PTSD from product launches that didn't go as planned! So let’s talk about a few common pitfalls. The biggest one is probably the lack of exec buy-in. If you don't have a strong sponsor, don't even try launching a new product. Another big one is not being able to communicate broadly enough. But at the same time, you don't want to fall into the trap of having cross functional meetings with a lot of people where nothing actually gets done and you have too much noise and too many voices. Another big one is not really doing value-based messaging and selling features, not benefits. Over indexing on the product versus the business pains. Another one is to change things the week prior, change messaging the week prior or even the night prior! That has happened to me… more than I’d like to admit! And finally, I would say having a lot of competing outbound activities could be a challenge. So really pick the date that works the best for your product launch.

First off, we should clarify that releases do not mean launch and vice versa. There's a distinction there that I believe we will address in another question, part of this AMA! Am gonna be oversimplifying, on purpose. Product releases are mostly geared towards existing customers. Your install base. Because of that, they mostly talk about product feature enhancements, functions. You do that every month, to keep the product momentum high, show the pace of innovation and the value you're bringing to your customers.T The second one, let’s call it the “marketing launch” is more geared towards your prospects. Not the existing customer. You do that less often, but you increase the reach, you make this a bigger splash here, it’s a moment really led by the narrative, not so much by the product release. You do that every quarter, tops. So if we're talking about managing the internal communication of the first one, the releases, I think there's multiple ways to do that. The most obvious one is a customer newsletter. Also distill the product news via your other customer channels like your customer community if you have one, your learning management system and academy, things like that. And of course, think about the internal enablement. The enablement piece is so so crucial. You need to enable your reps (SDRs, AEs, SEs and CSMs) on the best ways to communicate the product news and exciting releases to your existing customers. Now let's briefly touch on the process aspect of it. I know sometimes people have a visceral reaction to this word. Process. Believe me, a good process is your BFF when lauching products. It all starts with a really streamlined process that you have to build and rally behind as a PMM. You have to think about the cadence that makes sense for your audience. If your audience is mostly technical and they care about product features, then cadence is probably monthly. If your audience is mostly line of business and decision makers, then they don't have time and the bandwidth to absorb that much news - so you would space out your cadence of news. And do that every quarter. I believe that one of the absolutely crucial things to include in the process is to list all the stakeholders, internal and external. And for the internal ones, you have to assign a role to each of them, following a RACI or RASCI model. This is something that we do here a lot when we think about product launches. We make them a total team sport. PMM needs to involve people from the content team, from the sales readiness and the sales enablement team, the customer marketing team, events, demand gen, product management, Pricing and Packaging. So it's all across the board. Then when you do that, you build a Bill of Material (BOM) and you can try to break it down with the RACI for each and every asset. Clearly define who owns the production and the approval of each asset in the BOM. I really believe that scoping this right, and doing that far in advance, is the best way to avoid any bad surprises, any last minute changes when it comes to well-executed product launches.

I'm so glad you asked because I feel like enablement is often enough an afterthought for product launches. Never to be underestimated. Sales teams really need to have a single message and content to paint that big picture vision and differentiate. So when it comes to launch enablement, you always have to ask yourself these 4 questions. One, who is your internal audience for the launch? Probably mostly AEs, but what about SEs, SDRs or Customer Success Managers? What about company segments - is this for a specific segment of the market, SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise? What about sales overlays if you have those, or industry specialists? So who is your internal audience for a given launch? Then what do they need to know? What do they need to say (pitch and deck) and what do they need to show (demo)? I've used that framework so many times. And then you work with your enablement counterparts to develop a strong enablement program - creating new modules and learning paths in your learning management system, creating certifications, training the trainer, etc.

Measuring the success of your launch is a fascinating topic, and no easy task. You can think of 5 dimensions of success: global impact, digital impact, revenue impact, employee impact, product impact. 1) Global impact The global impact is really about how your launch made your brand more popular, how did it help with brand awareness? Of course, the metrics that go with this are things like a share of voice and VOC studies. A good product launch has the potential to make a big splash! 2) Digital impact The digital impact is the most common or well known one. You can measure the organic engagement, as well as the paid digital engagement with all the metrics that you can think of. For web, things like web traffic, CTR etc. For Paid, the views, reach, ad recall, etc.. 3) Revenue impact The third one is the revenue impact. How much pipeline did the launch influence or help mature? How much ARR or revenue, what about my close rates? Am also a fan of velocity as a metric. Did your launch impact your sales velocity? How fast do the existing deals move through the stages there - before and after launch? There’s numerous ways to measure revenue impact. 4) Employee impact One that is often overlooked is the impact on employee morale and happiness. If you do a launch well, it is a great way to align everybody across your company around one given theme. One big news, one exciting moment. And as such, you should measure that with a pre and post launch survey. Has engagement increased? It should! 5) Product impact Lastly, the product impact also has to be measured with things like product adoption, Monthly/weekly/daily active users as well as page views, clicks, things like that. So as you see, there's many ways to measure success for a product launch from the top of the funnel metrics, to the digital impact, all the way down to the revenue impact, the impact on employees and on product. That’s why I can't get enough product launches as a marketer 😊 Note: More details on metrics in this podcast (around minute 32): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kristinajaramillo_how-top-product-marketers-will-create-a-strong-activity-6824424440084865024-ZmvF

In my playbook there are 8 steps to a successful product launch: 1. Identify the key stakeholders 2. Outline the deliverables and set the dates and the measures 3. Define your messaging 4. Track progress towards the plan. This is where you start having weekly stand ups. 5. Execute! The day of the launch 6. Measure success and impact 7. Celebrate the wins of your launch - making sure people feel celebrated and rewarded 8. Create an ongoing adoption strategy Ryane Bohm and myself actually spend some time explaining these steps in details in our presentation given at a product bootcamp and called “Building the ultimate playbook launching new products”, check it out: https://info.gainsight.com/product-led-bootcamp-growth-webinar.html

We talked a lot about that in another question on this AMA - teams like PMM, product management, content, sales enablement, customer marketing, events, demand gen, and the Pricing and Packaging team that have to be involved. PMM needs to involve people from the content team, from the sales readiness and the sales enablement team, the customer marketing team, events, demand gen, product management, Pricing and Packaging. So it's all across the board. Then when you do that, you build a Bill of Material (BOM) and you can try to break it down with the RACI for each and every asset. Clearly define who owns the production and the approval of each asset in the BOM. Ryane Bohm and myself actually spend some time explaining these steps in details in our presentation given at a product bootcamp and called “Building the ultimate playbook launching new products”, check it out: https://info.gainsight.com/product-led-bootcamp-growth-webinar.html

Not every launch can be treated equally! There's only so much attention that you will get from your reps, internal stakeholders and external audience. You have to prioritize. So think about 3 tiers. Tier one is a new product or a new solution or an acquisition. You would do that once, twice, maybe three times a year. Tier two is a significant product or customer momentum… same two, three times a year. And then the Tier three is the seasonal release where you can do that as frequently as once a month if your product team happens to ship product that fast! You would then have to allocate the resources to those tiers. For example, if it's a tier three, you're not going to do a press release, but you would do release note and a product newsletter to your install base. So it really depends what the goals are, who the audience is, what’s the timing. There's a lot of resources about what should be included in each tier. There's that webinar that actually gives you the Bill of material for each tier: “Building the ultimate playbook launching new products”: https://info.gainsight.com/product-led-bootcamp-growth-webinar.html Also check out this upcoming talk: https://www.winlossweek.com/how-launching-a-b2b-product-is-like-conducting-an-orchestra

By design, major launches are global and they rely on the general availability of the product. I would treat the regional launches as tier two or three launches. And I spend a little bit of time talking about the tiers in another question here - please check it out. Tier one is a new product or a new solution or an acquisition. You would do that once, twice, maybe three times a year. Tier two is a significant product or customer momentum… same two, three times a year. And then the Tier three is the seasonal release where you can do that as frequently as once a month if your product team happens to ship product that fast! You would then have to allocate the resources to those tiers. For example, if it's a tier three, you're not going to do a press release, but you would do release note and a product newsletter to your install base.

It starts with a super close collaboration between PMM and PM. Then I'm a big fan of using existing frameworks and templates like messaging & positioning documents, etc. There's a ton of them on various channels like the Product Marketing Alliance and others. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Pick a framework then focus on being creative and finding your voice. A messaging document really becomes your go-to for any positioning questions. Also helps having approved soundbites to then be quickly copied into AR/ PR decks and other content. And helps with the overall approval process. Of course, how to get the right message to the market can be tricky. There's three ways to do that. One is a lot of qualitative feedback, spend time talking to your users, your stakeholders, the decision makers, doing executive leadership workshops. The second one is analysts feedback, you're lucky enough to have a seat with one of the industry analyst firms. Then you consolidate feedback from them. Finally do internal testing, test your headlines, your calls to actions, your Adwords with your digital team can do a lot of AB testing in there. How do you ensure your latest messaging gets adopted even after launch? Now that’s where you can use a Revenue Intelligence platform like Gong, where you're actually able to see what rep is using what messaging, and how does the message resonate with your audience. I know it sounds a little promotional but I do believe it’s the only proper way! I'll give you a personal example of how I am using Gong as a product marketer. A few weeks back, we introduced a new messaging to the field solution sending type of messaging. We call that use case messaging. And we needed hard metrics on adoption and quality checks on talk tracks. So we did that with a pretty solid process. First, we used Gong to really get clarity and visibility into who's adopting the new messaging to make sure every team member is accountable. Second, we are able to replay certain portions of some sales calls to see what piece of the messaging really resonates with the prospect or the customer? Finally, how do we measure the true business impact of that messaging? Basically we did AB-testing to compare the average win rate for the reps using that messaging, with those who are not using it much. And in our case, the improvement in win rate was actually huge!

It all starts with a unique point of view. So you need to have a strong messaging for every persona - across decision makers, business users, technical users, ecosystem, partners. And that messaging always needs to show a really strong human connection to a simple story. It has to be about a pain point, has to be about key benefits and why your product would be better placed than anybody else to get your customers to that promised land. There's a ton of press and thought leadership opportunities related to a given product launch, but it has to be above the story and the value and even the emotions, not just the cold feature function type of story. Your story has to be bold, has to be challenging. It has to be human. And that will be the only way you could get any attention from the press. Now, I will say PR public relations doesn't always work as planned because of the competing news you have no control over - which is why the moment of press launch really needs to be well thought through. If you're launching at the moment where there's a lot going on in the tech space or maybe even outside of it, then it's going to be a hard one to reach your audience.

Your first product launch is going to be a special one! I believe it will be maybe a little more than just about the product. It’ll be about the company. Use the opportunity to tell a really big story. So you would have to nail your market differentiation, your brand and your strategic narrative. Combined, of course, with some awesome product news. Then you need credibility, a lot of social proof. Social proof will be key. So you will need to have custom stories and stats, ROI studies, maybe peer reviews on G2 sites and the likes. In terms of metrics that you need to think of, I would think big - set big audacious goals in terms of awareness and pipe. Ok... budget. I have no idea :) But in my book, you would have to be creative first, and think about the ways to break through the noise. Experiment with new tactics, with your own voice, with your style. Budget doesn't buy creativity. I'll give you an example. We had a product launch a few months ago at Gong and we actually had the cartoonist join our live launch event. That person was sketching what was happening during the event, on the fly. And we ended up with a beautiful drawing , almost a mental map of everything that was going on with the speakers and the customers and the story and the attendees. And then we sent that as a post-event giveaway to the attendees, and guess what? They absolutely loved it. Well, that didn't cost an arm. But it did create an awesome personalized and engaging experience that people will remember. That is just one example showing that you don't have to have a crazy budget to be creative, impactful and memorable.

I see Pricing and Packaging as both a science and an art. What do I mean by that? It’s a science in the sense that you have to run a lot of business simulations and crunch the numbers to do the revenue projections. That is the science aspect of it. Yet there's also an emotional aspect to your product price, which in my mind also makes it an art. And because of the art aspect of it, you have to do a lot of testing. You have to test your assumptions in terms of charge versus include. Test with your account executives, with your existing customers, even maybe with prospects, if you can (via a third party agency to do a web survey). A big guiding principle for me is to always put your buyer’s hat on - always, but even more when doing Pricing & Packaging. If the product that you're launching is reaching a new line of business or a new persona, then that probably means a new SKU or even a new BU or product line. You also have to think about product dependency. If the new product or module you’re launching has a strong dependency on an existing product (AKA the new product only works if you bought the previous one), then you might have to consider an add-on approach - or an Edition approach. Big rule is always shooting for simplicity, both for the buyer and the seller. I am a big fan of a “Good/ Better/ Best” packaging approach - aka Editions. I think add-ons are to be used sparingly… because you always want to avoid SKU proliferation, and i’ll tell you, add-ons can be the best way to get there, you end up with a lot of SKUs and a very long pricelist which everyone hates. I always prefer to include new features in the correct edition to justify my product prices. Rough rule is if less than a third of customers would value that feature in an edition, then don't include it, and charge as an add-on.

Launch isn’t just about market awareness, pipe and ARR/ revenue, it’s also about product adoption - MAU, WAU, DAU, product page views, clicks, etc. To optimize your post-launch product adoption, you need an integrated campaign approach where you reuse a lot of the content that was put together for the launch. Remember, a lot of time and effort was put into that launch and as such, it's your responsibility to reuse a lot of that content, repackage it to make it live a second or third life after launch! Of course, tweak the existing content, change the format, mix the channels, break it down into chapters, but always keep hammering the same message that you had at launch. In-app as a channel works really well for adoption. Also think about your other customer channels like a customer community, a learning management system, etc., Something else I've seen work really well at Salesforce is doing hand-on product workshops at in-person events where people would be clicking along. Lastly, I would say Champions if you have a champions group or if you built a champions program with your customer marketers. Work with them to show the value that users are getting from the product. This should go a long way for product usage.

There's always a way :) But if that's the case, you have a great probablem. Why not separate and do two launch moments? Keep the drumbeat and make it easy by sticking to one key message for each launch. If combining products or news together feels forced, then don't do it. Your audience will notice, and will get confused.