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

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 this launch" by running a Salesforce Report. Sometimes it's a guestimate. "Okay, I need to help the company reduce churn. This new feature is only available for customers on the Enterprise plan. I know if they talk to their CS team after they hear about this launch they are less likely to churn. So if I got 50 extra meetings with CS this month, that's 25% bump on meetings, that should put a dent in churn this month"

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 problems they are solving and how big the new stuff is. 

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 them. If you're short on time, pitch the positioning to your team (CSMs, sales reps, support reps, people close to the customer).

Slack, wiki and weekly meetings. There's no one tool. But the approach is overcommunicate everything. Repeat information, go through a launch plan twice a week with the team, just spend time practicing and covering all the details. The launch plan is created in an internal wiki (whole company can access and see the plan) and we're constantly sharing the plan in Slack leading up to the launch, as things change, as we get work done. 

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 record (5-10 minutes of trianing) and send them a short quick (with Google Forms). I find that's better than doing a live presentation. 

You shouldn't be working on a product launch without a launch goal already set in place. Launches should be either: 1) focused on helping hit a strategic company goal 2) focused on helping grow a new product Your launch goal should be a short term focus: book 50 sales demos, get 200 customers to enable this integration, etc. The launch goal relates to the strategic company goal or growing the product SKU. But the launch goal is a short term focus on the launch, to build momentum. 

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 of the product, but then plan follow up launches for new features as you build them. Other tactics for keeping momentum up: - Develop a training product for the new product (can be as simple as webinars) - Use social proof from the launch to run an ad campaign, write case studies, or an email campaign - Develop sales spiffs to keep your sales team focused on selling the product/feature

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 build them. 

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 being able to explain the success of it to your management team. 

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 launch won't work if you don't have an audience to go share the news with. 

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: communicator, organizer, writer, researcher, cheerleader, advocate, etc. So my suggestion is don't think of it in terms of "key deliverables" for the launch, but owning the launch from top to bottom. Product management should own delivering the thing (product, feature, solution) that's being launch. Product marketing should own the launch itself. 

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 be succesful with your product (they use it more, upgrade or churn less). So then prodcut marketing's job is to help encourage customer to set up that integration.