AMA: Sendbird Head of Product Marketing, Jack Wei on Product Launches

I'll answer this in two parts. Part 1: You've likely arrived at launching a bunch of small features to begin with because the product vision and strategy is fuzzy. Or that the strategy is to build what customers request and your release cadence is fluid. You wouldn't have asked this question if PM+PMM planned product strategy together and looked at the roadmap earlier on to develop and align on launch themes mapped to business objectives. You're asking this question because things currently work as a hand-off process, and PMM tries to "work with whatever's been given." This is not an ideal long term setup, so that has to improve. Part 2: There must be some sort of overlapping value when these small feature enhancements are evaluated side-by-side. Applying the following framework might help: * Why was this feature enhancement built? (There will be an internal and external motivation, steer towards the external) * Who was it built for; what are their perceived value vs. benefits? * When and in which situations will the value be realized? * Where in the marchitecture or product suite is impacted by each feature enhancement? Once you can answer the above for each feature, is there an overlap or commonality anywhere? If so, great. Go deeper in that area. If not... be prepared to live with less than impressive launch results and improve the upfront strategy for the future.

You can use internal and/or external benchmarks. How did prior launches perform at your company? Are you choosing the right metrics? Use that as the benchmark to outperform by X%. How are launches for similar products/features measured at a peer company of yours? What do their performance look like (assuming you have a network or a friendly willing to share). Use that as a benchmark. Do your investors have other portfolio companies willing to share?

Welcome to the fun world of Enablement! And there are internal + external aspects of this. * External * Message x Value & benefits: What's in it for your users? Migration is a pain in the ass. Before you get to the logistics, you have to sell them on the why * Transition plan: What's the step-by-step guide? Is it one size fits all, or does it require different approaches for different types of users? These need to be documented and clearly laid out. * Timing & cadence: Give your customers enough time to make the changes. I'll leave the communications format, channels, and cadence up to you (but this is never a one-and-done exercise). For example, don't expect one email to the entire database to yield good results or high customer satisfaction. * Internal * Is an Enablement team in place at your company? If so, great! Loop them in early on customer enablement plans and they'll be able to position that for your internal folks. If not... * Message x Value & benefits: Why is this change important to communicate and will it help your team sell more & better? Sell the change internally. * Transition plan: Leverage what's built for customers and share it widely internally so that every customer-facing team is aware. Roadshow it in team meetings, mention it at all hands, set up office hours to give your colleagues the opportunity to ask questions and poke holes. * Timing & cadenece: Keep internal teams updated on the customer comms plan. In B2B sales, give your CSM team the opportunity to send 1:1 messages while marking takes care of the 1:many.

This depends if you're a B2C or B2B company. For B2C, you're likely embarking on a product-led growth strategy (if not already). And in this case you should be on the hook for hitting prescribed revenue targets... because you have direct control over the purchase experience. For B2B, instead of hitting the revenue target set the right pipeline target 30, 45, or 60 days post-launch (depending on your sales cycle). This will force you to think of an integrated campaigns plan at launch, across paid, social, ABM, press, webinars, events, etc. and mobilize all relevant marketing channels in order to drive pipe. Work with your demandgen colleagues to set the right targets here, and work with your sales leaders for proper enablement. In a B2B setting, PMM is not going to have direct impact on sales but you can set the right process & plan to impact.

Whoever asked this question: I suspect at your company there is opportunity for a tighter partnership between product management + product marketing that goes beyond only coming together for product launches. You wouldn't have asked this question if PM+PMM planned product strategy together and looked at the roadmap earlier on. You're asking this question because things currently work as a hand-off process, and PMM tries to "work with whatever's been given." This is not an ideal, long term setup, so I'd recommend to fix that asap. Now, you need to work with the hand you're dealt. Tier the products/features to see if that helps to shape some sort of common value for a persona or industry. If that doesn't help, then force yourself to pick 1 product/feature to build a launch theme around. Everything else is gravy, but what's that killer product/feature you can confidently ground the launch on? Ruthlessly focus on that to hook the audience. The others hopefully help your audience stick around.

1. Always set a clear objective, then work backwards from there. Why is the relaunch happening? Either because the first attempts were deemed unsuccessful by some performance metric, or because there has been a pivot in the business that requires getting the product in front of a new audience (eg. change in target persona, industry, use case, business segment, pricing & packaging, etc.) 2. Build a plan against that objective. Let's say you're relaching because the first attempts did not drive enough "free trial signups" with X target audience. Great, what's the new number that the business needs, by when? Then build a time-bound launch plan needed to meet that number and timeline -- the assets that need to be created, the campaigns that need to be lined up, the product functionality that need to be confirmed, the internal/external enablement that needs to happen beforehand -- then assign out the action items. 3. To Beta or not to Beta? Launches often fall flat because of a weak hook or lack of support from existing customers. Betas are a good way of getting feedback from customers you trust (and vice versa). They are also a good way of collecting endorsements prior to general availability (full market-facing launch). Use this to your advantage if you have an existing business with customer who have shown interest. Final note: While a PMM with experience and expertise launching products is preferred, the ability to set clear objectives and build an actionable project plan isn't a skill unique to PMMs. Focus on that piece first, then pull in the right resources internally+externally to help deliver against each action on the project plan. 

Many ways to slice this one, but let's look at it inside-out via a launch perspective. A typical launch goal is to drive adoption. Adoption benchmarks will vary across B2B vs B2C businesses. Ultimately, the product you launched has technically crossed into the majority if >50% of you user base has adopted / upgraded / migrated to the new solution. On the pre-sale or new sales front it's a bit tougher to specify, but generally a strong close rate indicating deal efficiency is the right signal for strong market acceptance by the laggards.