AMA: Patreon VP of Product and Growth Marketing, Erik Eliason on Product Launches

* Educate exec and XFN: is there an internal understanding of what PMM does? Are the expectations just to launch the product? Most likely not. Getting a 360 understanding of what PMM means at the company and gaps/desires will help you and the team understand where you can have immediate impact outside of launches. These conversations are also opportunities for you to explain the role of a ‘full stack’ PMM and how that extends beyond being the ‘launch arm’. * Provide a POV: I often tell my team we (PMMs) should know the customer and product better than anyone at the company. In practice this means: * Conduct Thorough Market Research: Regularly perform market analysis to understand industry trends, competitive landscape, and customer needs. Use these insights to influence product strategy and development. * Develop Voice of the Customer Programs: Establish programs to continuously gather customer feedback through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Use this information to guide product roadmaps and positioning. Have your engineers talked with or heard from a customer lately? If not, send them a video recording of a customer interview. Invite a customer to join you for lunch. Or better yet, get out of the office and have the team visit customers. * Become an Expert on the Product Landscape: use your competitor’s products. Document your learnings, screenshot the experience. Record looms. Synthesize your learnings. I’ve seen PMMs distill 40 hours of research into 10 compelling slides that shifted the roadmap quite dramatically. * Become Data Informed: Again, similar to going deep into the customer and product, go DEEP into the data of the current experience. Develop a holistic understanding and POV on the opportunity for where customers are having trouble, where the product experience or marketing funnel can be improved. * Prove your value: start executing and delivering value outside of just product launches. * Build relationships with folks earlier in the product development lifecycle and across the company. Build the relationships from day 1. * And most importantly, be an owner. As you demonstrate care for the company and the customer, not just your product, more responsibility will accrue to you. It’s a lagging indicator.

First, it’s important to understand why you may do a % rollout for GA launches. Typically its related to: * Risk Mitigation: detect and fix potential bugs or user experience problems before they affect the entire user base. * Performance and Scalability Testing: evaluate the impact on system performance and ensure stability. Then gradually increase the user base to test and ensure product scalability. * Build Momentum: Create exclusivity and anticipation, generating buzz and increasing interest. * Targeted Launch Strategies: Tailor marketing and communication strategies based on early phase insights. Second, for a staged GA rollout, I’d structure my strategy along the lines of: * Objective: why are we phasing the rollout? What are we hoping to learn/mitigate? * Pre announce or post announce: Is the POV to do a big announcement and then implement a % rollout afterwards. Or is the DNA to quietly rollout and then have a big GA moment where press and other channels can drive inbound and sign ups. * Customer Impact: which customers will be most impacted by the launch – sometimes that is positive (new capability) and sometimes it’s negative (pricing increase). Understanding the impact to your segments will shape your rollout. * Feedback cycles: how quickly can we act on the feedback? What are the channels for feedback, how is it synthesized and actioned upon? Have a clear POV on what ops, product, marketing, design, CS, etc levers you’ll be able to adjust. * Internal comms: super important to inform and partner with XFN teams and the broader company for staged rollouts. Key XFN partners should be informed weeks/months before launch and communication cadences established long before the rollout begins.

PMMs are often under-resourced and the ‘check the box’ launch can be all too common if you don’t get in front of the launch early. It's essential to focus on uncovering key insights early and securing alignment from stakeholders on the launch ambitions. A few ways to achieve this: * Early Insight Discovery: Conduct thorough market research and customer interviews early in the planning phase to uncover unique insights about customer pain points and needs. These insights can serve as the foundation for a compelling and differentiated launch strategy. * Narrative Development: Use the early insights to craft a story that resonates deeply with your audience. Highlight how the product solves specific problems and improves users' lives, making the launch more engaging and meaningful. * Launch Tiering/Ambition: Establish different tiers for your product launches based on their importance and potential impact. This allows you to allocate resources and creativity appropriately, ensuring high-priority launches receive the attention they deserve while maintaining consistency across all efforts. * Stakeholder Alignment: Engage key stakeholders from the outset to align on the vision and objectives of the product launch. This ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding the ambition and can unlock opportunities to pursue more creative launch activities. The actual aspects of a more ‘creative’ launch – in person event, UGC, celebrity partnership, pushing creative boundaries, etc – will be more executional once you’ve addressed the above.

Depending on your budget and target audience, there are a number of activities you can do. Principally, you should have a POV on how explicit you want to be promoting the new product vs more brand and meme-oriented activities which, while not explicitly promoting your product, can be quite effective at generating leads and new customers. * UGC: for some consumer-facing products, social campaigns with UGC can be hugely successful for driving awareness and interest. * Meme ads: while not specific to your product, can be hugely effective in generating inbound leads across social (IG, TT, X). * Social SWAT team: there are cultural and social moments that can propel a brand and product significantly. Having a social media team that is equipped to engage in these conversations is hugely powerful, and underutilized by most companies today. * Waitlists: these can be effective to drive urgency and excitement. Layering in referral capabilities to move up the waitlist can be effective if you have trust with your community. * Experiential: IRL events, pop ups, city tours * Press Dinners: host small press events/dinners with product execs and a handful of key press partners. You can take a similar approach to strategic accounts. Give them early access, answer their questions directly. * VIP Webinars and Live Demos: Host exclusive webinars or live demos for a select group of customers, such as top-tier clients or industry influencers. These events provide an in-depth look at the new product and offer a platform for direct interaction and feedback. * Testimonial micro-sites: not your boring testimonial wall, but separate micro sites with interactive short-form videos from customers. * Launch events: while fairly standard on the B2B side for companies of a certain size, these are making somewhat of a comeback on the consumer side, such as the Robinhood Gold Card launch event in NYC. 

It depends on the scale of the launch, but I would generally use the following process: * Get Specific on Your Target Audience: * Customer Segmentation: Identify key segments such as new users, power users, or specific industries. Tailor the launch to resonate with these groups. * Journey Timing: Consider where customers are in their product journey to tailor the introduction appropriately. * JTBD and Regional Nuances: Focus on the specific jobs to be done and any regional differences to ensure relevance. * Test Your Messaging Early: * Alpha and Beta Testing: Partner with Account Management and Sales to gather diverse feedback from power users and new customers. * Iterative Refinement: Use this feedback to refine messaging, ensuring it resonates across different segments. * Develop ‘Quick Hit’ Assets: these don’t take much effort and can provide directional signal: * In-App Notifications: Create brief notifications to alert users to the new feature without disrupting their workflow. * Guided Tours and Tooltips: Implement interactive tours and tooltips for quick adoption. * Banners and GIFs: Use engaging visuals to highlight the feature’s benefits. * Partner Closely with Engineering, DS, and Growth Teams: * Collaborative Planning: Align with Engineering and DS teams on objectives and key metrics for in-app tests. * Rapid Iteration: Quickly iterate based on feedback to continuously improve the feature and messaging. * Data-Driven Decisions: Regularly review performance data with the Growth team to optimize the feature and messaging. * Assess Longer Shelf Life Assets: * Performance-Based Development: Develop detailed content like video tutorials and webinars based on the success of quick-hit assets. * Personalized Onboarding: Create tailored onboarding flows for different user segments to ensure relevant and actionable information.

I would synthesize it into 3 things: * Start with the end in mind: if this launch goes well, what does it mean for the product, the company, and customers? In 6 or 12 months from now, how is the company different? What is the story you want to tell to the market? Build alignment with exec and XFN on the scope and expected impact of the launch. Doing this early will open doors to new possibilities. * Build compelling products: you can have the best raw ingredients in the world at a good price, but if the meal doesn’t taste good no one is buying. Product, PMM, Design, and Eng have to build a compelling product that addresses a key customer job to be done. * Embrace quirkiness: for launches to breakthrough with press, partners, and customers and be successful a dose of quirkiness is needed. Not quirkiness for the sake of it, rather, a culture that embraces different points of view, trying new approaches, and embracing cultural trends. As a PMM (and more broadly the marketing team) it’s important to push the boundary to find the edges. It’s often where you’ll find mispriced channels, creative, and messaging. 

While challenging, the upside here is you know your constraints – timing of the event, what you’re launching, and resourcing. For something like this it’s important to be clear and direct on the tradeoffs you have to make with the team and XFN folks. In terms of prioritizing, my plan of action would be: * Impact on company narrative and performance: what is the story you’re telling the market? How does each of these support that narrative? Is one product launch going to have a much greater impact on your narrative? Is one product launch going to have a bigger impact on your company performance? Mapping your narrative to value props to reasons to believe/features will create a cohesive story across each launch. * Create a Timeline: Develop a detailed timeline for each launch, considering key milestones and deadlines. Ensure the timeline includes the industry event and any associated activities. Assuming you’re launching both products at the industry event, there I’d lean into building some excitement beforehand with customers, press, and partners. * Divide and Conquer: Clearly define roles and responsibilities for each team member. One person might be stronger at content creation and communication, while the other leads logistics and coordination. * Develop messaging: * Consistent Messaging: Ensure all launches have a consistent core message that aligns with the overall theme of the industry event. * Tailored Content: Create tailored content for each launch that highlights unique features and benefits while maintaining the overarching message.

I generally think PMM responsibilities fall into three buckets: * Inbound - shape what is build and how it’s talked about * Launch - announcing new products and features * Outbound - driving adoption and revenue of products and features How time is allocated across these buckets depends on: * Business context: time allocation for PMMs depends on the ‘season’ the team is in. Is the team relaunching the core product? Is the bi-annual launch event upcoming? Is the product and eng team staffing up so velocity is slower? Did the team recently launch a suite of new products and now adoption and cross sell is the priority? Where is the momentum and urgency for the product team? * Launch impact: is it a tier 1 launch meant to reposition the company? Or is it a tier 3/4 launch that serves a subset of existing customers? Based on the above, it would dictate how I would prioritize team resources across these buckets and communicating these priorities to XFN partners.