AMA: Seismic Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Eve Alexander on Product Launches

I've tried so many tiering methods! One that's working really well for us right now is something we made up based on the audience that "needs to know": Go Big, Tell Sales, Tell CS. Every quarter, we propose one story line to put in the Go Big bucket (typically several capabilities that ladder up to a unified story). That gets 80% of our efforts -- or at least, that's the goal! That's what we rally our marketing team around in terms of PR, social, analysts, content. If there are additional capabi ...Read More

I don't know about you, but I think there's so often a tendency to jump right in and start delivering. I encourage everyone that starts working on my team to spend their first 30 days learning! If you can work with your boss, try to buy yourself some time just to soak up knowledge and develop a point of view. The key things I try to get to know as much as possible when starting a new job are: the product (spend time using it, get certified if that's an option), customers/prospects (listen to Gon ...Read More

One thing that has been wonderful at Seismic is we have someone on the product marketing team that is in a program management role and who is responsible for driving and faciliating organizational readiness for launches (shout out to my colleague, Steve!). He pulls together "tiger teams" for our major launches with representatives from around the company, leads weekly meetings, and manages our project plan. This takes some of that organizational readiness weight off the PMM. The PMM lead may sti ...Read More

Here's my go-to:  Initiative objectives and targets (bookings, adoption, whatever you've aligned on) Opportunity size and costs Customer challenge Brief product strategy (MVP + 1-2 releases out) Positioning/Value Prop Target audience Distribution strategy (e.g., are only a subset of your sales teams going to be selling it? Can partners resell it?) Pricing & packaging (including Services) Competitive set (do your traditional competitors have a similar offering? Are there non-traditional compe ...Read More

Is it ever wrong to start as soon as possible?! Early in the ideation/business case phase, I try to keep it narrow. I'll tap a few members of the GTM team to help me brainstorm use cases and value proposition, which we then refine through additional research and customer validation. It's helpful to have early champions that you can pull in as you are launching -- they can help generate excitement and understanding.  If it's a really new motion for the company (e.g., the first time you're introdu ...Read More

I can so relate to this question! One of the things I've grown more comfortable with over time is the idea that if we wait until something feels truly "fully baked" then we probably aren't moving fast enough! This is especially true if you've got longer sales cycles. I used to be really uncomfortable with that, but I think there are a number of ways to mitigate risk. Here are some of the things I think about: Can I phase the launch or roll out? For example, is there a pilot I can do with a subse ...Read More

I won't share the full list -- there are some great resources out there like SiriusDecisions -- but here are a few that I've learned through trial and error are really helpful. PRFAQ: As soon as possible, I work closely with PM to craft a "PRFAQ" (fake press release, customer and internal FAQs). Then, we circulate that to cross-functional stakeholders from sales to legal to finance to customer success to enablement. It's a killer way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and flag items that ...Read More

Probably the top one -- and one I've been guilty of in the past -- is not setting objectives and measures of success for a launch. I've seen this most often at companies that are earlier in their maturity, before a formalized business case process is in place to greenlight projects. But you don't need a formal process to at least sit down with your PM counterpart and discuss things like "is this a product that we expect to drive revenue? Or is it about reducing customer churn/increasing stickine ...Read More

Love this question! It's funny - the first one that comes to mind was not actually a traditionally successful launch; it was the one where I learned the most, got to spend a ton of time with customers, and really got to flex my creative muscles. What I loved was having the space to conduct deep qualitative and quantative research. I had the chance to go on a few multi-city roadshows to pitch it live, and refined the storyline after every conversation to craft a compelling, customer-centric, vali ...Read More