AMA: Privy VP of Marketing, Daniel J. Murphy on Product Launches

The #1 thing is listening to customer calls. Or beta calls if you have someone selling the product before the launch. We use Gong.io for that.  This is where I get most of the positoining. Copy and paste call transcripts into the positioning deck. Better to use their words than make up your own.  Once you have the positioning, you can pitch it to other customers. Get on a call yourself, test it out. So not only does your positioning originate with your customers, but it's validated by more of th ...Read More

I've heard it described a few different ways: product marketer is the CEO of the launch, since you have to wear so many hats preparding for a launch, or you're the quarterback since you have to pass the ball, run the ball and organize with so many other people.  The role really is ownership of the launch though. Because someone has to own it completely, it can't be done correctly by committee (from my experience at least). So what that ends up meaning is you have to do a bunch of jobs: communica ...Read More

This is not a great answer but the best approach for enablement is overcommunicating. Taking every opportunity to pitch the launch: why it will make sales more money, why it will help CS save customers, etc.  Not just at meetings but on Slack every week too. Share updates, share customer feedback, share new content you've developed for the launch. Basically don't keep that stuff behind close doors leading up to the launch.  For training a sales/cs team I recommend doing that with a video you rec ...Read More

Great question.  I actually answered a similar quesiton above, here it is:  First of all, don't try to prevent the short term spike! that's why you launch, to drive attention and focus for one thing in the short term. But how to get long term results: have a plan to continue building momentum. Like for a new product, you want to continue building momentum with content, marketing campaigns, sales team selling it, etc. And don't forget feature launches, if it's a new product, plan the announcement ...Read More

Depends on your business model. If you're in SaaS and selling monthly contracts, do more launches regularly to keep your customer engaged "look at this new thing we just built for you." If you're an enterprise sales motion, selling annual contracts this might not be as important for you, but captivating your audience once a year with a really strong launch with a great story, then go and do that.  Also of course depends on your product team. How often they are building new stuff, what customer p ...Read More

It's all about the process. Don't start with "we have something to launch and here's all the stuff we're going to do for this launch and NOW let's set a launch goal." Instead, start with what strategic goals your company is trying to solve. Okay, it's churn. So how will this new launch help with churn? Then come up with your plan based on that goal.  Sometimes it's not easy to set a goal using the numbers at your disposal. Meaning you can't come up with "I need to book 50 meetings for CS with th ...Read More

1) Waiting for something new from the product team to launch vs. designing a launch around a strategic company goal  2) Going to market with messaging that matches what the produc team gave them vs. coming up with messaging for your target customer 3) Trying to do too many things (emails, content, channels, etc) in the launch vs. focusing on the few things that will get you to your launch goal 4) Not setting an attainable short term launch goal and then delivering on a brilliant launch but not b ...Read More

Yes, 100%. That can be it's own role on a product marketing team, especially if you are building a platform and have a large partership ecosystem. Marketing tech is a good example of this. Partnering with numerous other marketing tech companies can be your growth strategy, that's how a lot of companies got their start (including Privy).  Also, integrations can be a success factor for your customers. Meaning you might realize customers that integrate with Marketo, for example, are more likely to ...Read More

First of all, don't try to prevent the short term spike! that's why you launch, to drive attention and focus for one thing in the short term.  But how to get long term results: have a plan to continue building momentum. Like for a new product, you want to continue building momentum with content, marketing campaigns, sales team selling it, etc. And don't forget feature launches, if it's a new product, plan the announcement of the product, but then plan follow up launches for new features as you b ...Read More

Building an audience. It's hard when your company is new and people don't know what you're about, why they should care and often very little credibility. Best way to combat that is to start building an audience earlier than your launch. Start talking about the problem you are solving with your product. You don't have to talk about your product. But you can establish thought leadership for your brand by doing this. Maybe it's just LinkedIn, or maybe a podcast or maybe something else. But your lau ...Read More