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

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 l ...Read More

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 Mat ...Read More

In my playbook there are 8 steps to a successful product launch: Identify the key stakeholders Outline the deliverables and set the dates and the measures Define your messaging Track progress towards the plan. This is where you start having weekly stand ups. Execute! The day of the launch Measure success and impact Celebrate the wins of your launch - making sure people feel celebrated and rewarded Create an ongoing adoption strategy Ryane Bohm and myself actually spend some time explaining these ...Read More

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 you ...Read More

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 copie ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 th ...Read More

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 th ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 an ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 m ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 pee ...Read More