AMA: Quizlet Head of Product Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Product Launches

I don’t have a framework, per se, but here’s a list of actions I tend to go through when creating the plan. Strategy steps (Pre-tactics) Give the thing a name and decide how important it is. Obviously this should be a given, and it’s not really a tactic, but I find it can be a difficult step, depending on how established your guidelines are here. Is it a whole new product? A feature? What else is it like amongst your portfolio? Start thinking through some basic name usage guidelines. Then, don’t ...Read More

Some of our success is up to us, and there are also conditions for success that are out of our control. You can learn to recognize when those conditions are and aren't present to advocate for what you need to increase your chances of having an awesome launch. I'll try to speak briefly to both. Conditions for success (out of your control) You and others having real confidence that the product/feature is providing meaningful user value Singular company or group focus on making the most out of a ke ...Read More

If your industry thrives on frequent technology updates, quarterly can make sense, or potentially even more frequently than that. It really comes down to how you balance out your marketing and product calendars. What events or “moments” has your company established that serve as anchors your loyal customers begin to rely on? Try to rally around those. You may also need to invent new moments that position your brand relative to other industry events, typical purchase cycles, and news. How tech sa ...Read More

Beyond the 5 “don’t”s I listed in another question, here are two others: Not having tight enough clarity and communication about what the launch stages look like for all stakeholders. Sometimes it’s fine to have a more decoupled feature/product release and marketing launch, but oftentimes that creates a poor experience for users and steals some of the thunder from your "moment." Not to mention, it tends to create some internal churn and chaos. This one seems like a given, but it's common for eng ...Read More

It depends on your product and business model. Since Quizlet is a freemium model that offers a ton of value to more than 50 million students each month, we focus a lot on the onsite placements that capture active user attention. Pop up modals and banners can be really useful to get your message out there, as long as you reserve them for special launches (so as not to diminish their attention grabbing value). We often build these placements with a feature flag so we can easily turn them off if th ...Read More

Data! Everything you do once the launch has started should be about strengthening the feedback loop between your tactics and your outputs. Make sure to have everything you need and want to track in a built-out dashboard or in the form of queries you can run daily or at least a few times a week during launch. If you’re delayed on measurement, you’ll be slower to diagnose problems and learn from what’s working/not. Conduct user research. If you had a pre-launch beta group great, follow up with the ...Read More

No clear messaging target - it’s almost impossible to write copy for everyone, so it ends up being for no one. In this scenario, we also become more tempted to use our internal lingo in absence of anything more specific, which almost never works. Even if you want to reach a broad audience, decide who is most important to influence and write to them. Adding more features or products to a page rather than recontextualizing the whole. Make sure you’re not just positioning the feature or single prod ...Read More

I think it really depends on the scope and scale of launch and your launch cadence. It’s important to strategize with company leaders and your head of PR to agree on an ideal product launch cadence in a given year so that PR has enough substance to work with (and enough notice to plan for it). For example, if your industry has any key dates, seasonal moments, or editorial debates going on, you’ll likely want to align at least once a year with one of those.  That can magnify your PR team’s likeli ...Read More

This is a good question. It depends how much buffer time you have leading to launch and whether you’re in a comfortable place to execute on each phase and collect feedback at each step. For me, I often need different people’s input at different stages.  The two stages I need input in most are 1) after drafting positioning, messaging, and high level launch tactics and 2) about a four to two weeks ahead of the launch to ensure there’s time to make any last minute adjustments.  That said, stakehold ...Read More

Build from what you know If you’re doing this to prepare for a launch, I’d consider whether this new feature or product is for a similar audience that you already target. If are marketing to a large portion of your existing customers, you may already have some journey insights. It helps to plot these on a buyer/customer journey map. Consider learning more about the competitor journeyIf you are expanding to a new audience and/or a new category, you’ll want to analyze the customer journey of compa ...Read More

There was a similar question below, so I encourage you to check that out, but otherwise here’s a list of other thoughts that come to mind: For initial launch campaigns I always try to consider what can be repurposed and reskinned post-launch for use in lifecycle campaigns, ad campaigns, and user education. That means build things in a modular way so you can take out any key dates or "brand spanking new" launch messaging without having to fully redesign collateral. Post launch try conducting a su ...Read More

I'd love to ask folks the same question! We haven't had a lot of luck with solutions that cater specifically to PMs or PMMs. Our product and eng teams use Jira most and marketing dabbles in it, but I think the most valuable tool is the one that holds us together (especially with a completely decentralized workforce). So it's the tools that facilitate quick and clear communication that are most indispensable for me. For me that's Slack because I can orient different channels for a few key stakeho ...Read More