AMA: Zendesk Director of Product Marketing, Polomi Batra on Product Launches

At Zendesk we use a launch tiering system to determine the level of effort and support we put behind a new product launch. A Tier 1 product launch typically is for a brand new offering, add-on or a major product enhancement that has a substantial revenue, customer or strategic impact A Tier 2 launch is typically reserved for major new feature release(s) that has/have a substantial customer impact And Tier 3 releases are typically updates to an existing product feature with minimal impact, or a b ...Read More

Oh, it takes a village to go to market with a new product launch! At Zendesk, there are many teams invovled in product launches with Product Marketing quarterbacking the entire effort. Here's a breakdown of the teams PMM works with at Zendesk for product launches:  Product: Product Managers, Product Strategy & Ops/Product Data team, Engineering, Advocacy, Pricing Core marketing: Campaigns & Events, Field / Regional, Customer Lifecycle Marketing, Web & SEO, SEM/Ads team, PR/AR/Comms, ...Read More

Great question. At some point in your career you will likely encounter this as your company grows its portfolio of products. Couple of tips that might help in this case that have helped me in the past: Use a consistent messaging template across the different products in your company’s portfolio. Framing your messaging in the same way across different products might help you identify how to tie them together through a common thread. Do the products all help solve a similar challenge perhaps? Or d ...Read More

Generally at Zendesk, we like to do a mix for beta programs. Depending on the size and goal of the beta program, we’ve conducted a mix of surveys through the product + had some live conversations with a select number of customers (or you could even do a focus group by interviewing 2-3 different customers at the same time!) to collect additional qualitative data. During the beta customer feedback process is also a great time to lock in some customer testimonials from happy beta users :) - don’t m ...Read More

When it comes to thinking about how to launch something differently, I look to the main target audience I am trying to cater to and that can create inspiration for new ideas in itself. For example, a couple of years back at Zendesk we launched our WhatsApp integration. One unique part of this launch was the type of channel this was and its target audience. WhatsApp is known to be huge in countries like Brazil and India. Instead of announcing this product at our annual customer event in San Franc ...Read More

For me this has always been what we call the Messaging Source Doc (MSD) at Zendesk, but it can also be called other things depending on where you work. The MSD is the foundation upon which a product launch is built - it holds information about what the product does and how it works, its value props, the ideal target audience, competitor information, pricing, differentiators, what customer challenges it solves, pricing and strategy. It also acts as a map for cross-functional teams like campaigns, ...Read More

When I think of a successful feature launch, I think of a couple of aspects: Business value: Were customers asking for something like this? What problem does it solve for them? Are customers adopting the feature - why or why not? Clear positioning: Is the feature being positioned in a way that clearly articulates its value? Have we carved out the right target audience for the feature - the right segment, the right industry? How is your feature differentiated in the market? Sales understanding: C ...Read More

In my career as a product marketer, I have been always marketed B2B products, but I can outline a few differences that I think exist between a B2C product launch vs. a B2B product launch: The audience: One is targeting consumers (and there can be millions of them!) and the other is targeting businesses (typically smaller number of them) Sales motion: In B2C product launches the selling is typically done directly off a website or an app, whereas in B2B we rely heavily on the sales team to sell th ...Read More

First, I think it’s completely acceptable to not have the perfect messaging ready in time for your launch. It’s ok, and actually, very advisable to keep iterating on your product launch messaging. In order to help you measure the success of product messaging on and after product launches, here are a couple of tips: Take a qualitative + quantitative approach: For quantitative you can survey customers who have used your product. Evaluate if their value props and understanding of the product values ...Read More