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AMA: Gusto Former Head of Product Marketing, Emily Ritter on Product Launches
August 6 @ 10:00AM PST
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Gusto Former Head of Product Marketing, Emily Ritter on Product Launches
Top Questions
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
Ultimately you’re working to drive revenue (in one way or another), which comes from feature awareness and/or usage. Revenue is a lagging indicator so your launch plan should include metrics that can ladder up to revenue and be measured in a more immediate time frame. * Some measure of awarene......Read More
1751 Views
5 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
In a previous role, it had been awhile since the team I was working with had shipped anything. We were heading into the holidays and I was starting to worry about demonstrating momentum, especially as our sales team worked to hit their quotas. A ton of small features were in the works but nothing......Read More
1321 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
It’s a good idea to get super aligned early in the product development lifecycle about what success looks like and what everyone really cares about. Get to know your stakeholders as humans. With these insights, you’ll be able to anticipate needs and gain trust. Over communicate, and have fun! Cr......Read More
1834 Views
2 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
The heyday of product launch PR is behind us. Ah, the good ol’ days. ;) These days you need truly innovative product stories and/or proven business impact to get solid coverage. Customer or human interest stories can help, as can data-driven storytelling. Think about how to use PR in these ways ......Read More
1719 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
Great answers all around. Here's what I'd add: * You deliver a product/feature that people actually want * You position your product in a way that gets the right people to try it (which they then adopt because of pt 1) * You deliver against whatever higher level objective you’re trying to achi......Read More
1852 Views
3 requests
How do you best structure and leverage beta releases to assist the product team (with iteration, feedback) and Product Marketing (positioning, messaging, enablement, onboarding)?
How do you collect information from users and disseminate between teams? What does an ideal timeline for a beta look like?
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
A bit of an “it depends” answer. Sometimes people use betas for QA: does the feature we built work end-to-end? Other times betas can help you determine if you’ve hit product-market fit with your product. And everything in between. It’s best to get super aligned cross-functionally at the KICKOFF ......Read More
1759 Views
4 requests
How often is too often when it comes to launching a new product feature/enhancement publicly?
Our CMO wants us to do a major product announcement every quarter.
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
It really depends on what stage your company is at, how your customers consume information from your company, your ship cadence, and what you’re trying to accomplish with the launches. If you’re early stage, your audience is B2B, highly engaged, it might make more sense to communicate smaller up......Read More
1717 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
* not getting involved in the product development process early enough * not talking to customers directly * not asking “how might this NOT work out” aka a "Pre-Mortem" (and developing mitigation plans accordingly) * not spending enough time thinking about a “day 2” strategy * being too precious ......Read More
2050 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
Small: tight, thoughtful FAQs. Keep it simple. Prep a concise one-pager that delivers the facts and moves on. Large: think about enablement as a mini bootcamp program rather than a one-and done. Work with managers in advance to get their input on what their teams might need. Do in-person training......Read More
1805 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
We aspire to do this with absolute excellence -- with rapid A/B testing and optimization. Come join our team!! That being said, here are some observations (I polled folks on my team to contribute based on what they've seen in their careers as well). Bottom line, pricing projects are hard--and c......Read More
2785 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
Yes! We have a tiered launch playbook system that enables us to provide transparency to our product management partners about the activities we do depending on the size and complexity of the feature launch. Big fan of the book "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande. Templates can take some......Read More
2886 Views
2 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
This is an area we’re looking to get better at. We think that being able to send relevant messages in context, will help us be a guided partner to small businesses as they look to take care of their teams (and ultimately raise awareness and drive adoption of the valuable new things we ship). We h......Read More
1124 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Front VP of Marketing • August 6
Seek out underrepresented groups, listen to what they’re saying—and not saying—and amplify their voices to be even louder internally. Never stop thinking about your work as an ally. Be thoughtful in how you represent your customers in your marketing materials. Be honest. Work to educate yourself ......Read More
1368 Views
1 request
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