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

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 Francisco (or somewhere close to HQ), we decided to launch it at our customer event in Brazil and it resonated very well with the audience. We were able to capture the interest of the audience because we decided to leave behind the playbook (of typically announcing big product launches in HQ) and instead launched it in the region where the product-market fit was the best, capturing a lot more attention and interest in our product announcement.

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 miss out testimonials (yes, even for betas!) as they are a great proof point to use in your internal and external marketing materials!

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: 1. Product: Product Managers, Product Strategy & Ops/Product Data team, Engineering, Advocacy, Pricing 2. Core marketing: Campaigns & Events, Field / Regional, Customer Lifecycle Marketing, Web & SEO, SEM/Ads team, PR/AR/Comms, Social, Content, Brand, customer marketing 3. GTM: Enablement, Sales, Pre-sales, Post-sales (e.g. CS), Partners, Premier Services For the second part of the question - Sales enablement is extremely crucial for B2B product marketing launches because the sales team is the primary method for selling in B2B businesses. It's important for them to understand the product, articulate it's value, demo it and be able to defend it confidently with prospects and customers. I consider Sales to be just an important of a customer for product marketers as a prospect, or existing customer might be. 

When I think of a successful feature launch, I think of a couple of aspects: 1. 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? 2. 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? 3. Sales understanding: Can sales easily sell the value of the feature to customers and prospects? Having a good grip of these aspects will ensure you have a good feature launch.

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, AR, PR, social media teams, etc. who are helping with the product launch to remain consistent in how to talk about the product, how to write about the product, and how to market the product.

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 the product. * Launch tactics: Given the different sales motions, the two types of product launches have different tactics as well. A very important part of B2B product launches is sales enablement. Making sure the sales team is well-equipped to sell the product is crucial in B2B product marketing, in addition to other tactics like campaigns, webinars, SEM, social, emails, IPMs. In B2C product launches, you don’t have to worry about the sales enablement aspect of it since the product is being sold directly to the customer or prospect. This blog on the LinkedIn has some helpful difference between the two as well. 

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 bug fix, etc.

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: 1. 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 do they all outcome in a common benefit for the customer? 2. Uplevel the narrative and put a wrapper around it - the multiple products are hopefully opening the door to tell a more “solution” oriented story at a higher level instead of simply talking about each individual product capability. 3. Test internally first, then externally - reach out to a couple of reliable sources on customer-facing teams in your business. Pitch the uplevel-ed narrative to them and see how it resonates and how to make it better. After that you can pitch to a couple of trusted customers, and analysts to get their input as well. 4. Iterate - get comfortable with the idea of tweaking your narrative every couple of months as you gain more data and insight on what’s resonating and what’s not. 5. Working on a problem like this is like putting puzzle pieces together - tough, but very rewarding so be patient with the process.

Typically, I think about goals throughout the funnel for a big product launch, for example: * At the Awareness level you might want to track goals around: 1. # of media outlets covering the announcement 2. # of impressions (aggregating email, blog view, etc.) 3. # of social impressions * At the Consideration level it might be: 1. Pipeline 2. CSAT 3. Enablement metrics (e.g. certification pass rate) * At the Adoption level, you can have goals around 1. Bookings 2. Adoption rate

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 match your messaging. For qualitative, try to run small focus-groups of customers using the product and similarly try to understand how customers describe the benefits of the product. You may also want to reach out to a couple of customers who churned off your product to understand what did not resonate well with them as far as the messaging and product experience. * Talk to your customer-facing teams: You can reach out to trusted contacts from all levels of sales, success, advocacy and ask them if you can listen into their customer calls to see how they pitch it to their customers or prospects. Are they using the same messaging? What’s resonating? What’s not? * Do some user testing: You can work with your UX Research team to do some user testing of the messaging, or you can do A/B test of things like in-product messages or emails to see if the messaging hits the right chord.