AMA: Google Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Madeline Ng on Product Launches

My initial reaction to this question was - why would you do this? :D If you are asking a customer to make a big effort, your overall benefits should far outweigh the work needed to achieve it. So instead of "some benefits, big effort" you're really targeting "some effort, big benefits." But I think what this question is actually asking is about a breaking change, such as a forced migration or a deprecation. These are hard but necessary situations and the approach to take is to overcommunicate, r ...Read More

The key here is to invent the wheel once, and then modify it if and when there are changes to the type of launch. This will make your life a lot easier and more predictable, and help all the stakeholders you work with also have an easier time. We start each launch with the same playbook - a set of activities that help drive a cross-functional team across marketing, comms, product, and more to help us through launch and to landing. Within that playbook, we have different tiers of launches, and th ...Read More

It sounds like this conversation is around pre-launching products that need to go live to further the company or portfolio's narrative among your customers, or other key opinion formers in your space. I believe you can only launch a product once. Pre-launches are tricky because you get one splash, but you know you're going to try to make news again when the product is ready. Here's my general flowchart on the key actions I take. Understand the goal of the launch: Pre-launches are exciting when t ...Read More

This is a really interesting question! I work in B2B and always think about the channel relative to the goal of the message. For broadcasting a message to the widest possible audience, I find comms/PR to be a very effective way of communicating with users. If you're looking to gain reach and help reaffirm your position in the market with your users while also communicating to prospective users, there isn't really a better channel. Comms strategy can be as broad as targeting major news outlets or ...Read More

Landing is everything, but can oddly become an afterthought in the eyes of an organization. It just doesn't have the same sizzle as a launch, right? But landing is where you get the business impact and that is, after all, our goal. "Standard" metrics are a bit challenging to identify because they really are dependent on your business - what was the goal of the launch, what can be measured, and what larger business objective does this launch ladder into? Here are some standard metrics I've used, ...Read More