Product Launches

I really like the story brand framework by Donald Miller. The narrative structure puts the customer as the hero of the story and your solution as the guide to their problem. The book also talks about picking a fight for your product with a focus on vilifying the issues your customers are having. This framework can be applied across stakeholders and performs very well from pitch decks to landing page copy. 

It certainly depends on the launch tier along with other market factors/customer dimensions, but typically I am looking at the data to inform next steps. Did we hit our product usage target? Is the narrative landing in sales calls (listening to gong recordings)? Is the pitch deck working (checking deal velocity in SFDC)? I am continually tweaking to ensure we are landing in a place of impact and not stagnation. Aside from this, the mission critical post-launch activity should be - the RETROSPECTIVE! Get your GTM teams together to chat about what you should "start, stop, continue" so you're ...

The first step is defining the customer journey and making sure your key functiona teams understand that journey. Then, recognizing that there may be stop gaps that need to be implemented to ensure customers can take advantage of the feature. What needs to happen on the delivery side of the house so CS and technical teams are enabled? How can we over communicate and document docs and materials for our teams and customers? What kinds of enablement efforts do we need to account for to make sure customers understand the benefits?

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 communicat...

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

Getting everyone on board after you're done is a lot harder if they haven't been involved from the start. Give the GTM plan an iterative process treatment. Start with a rough draft and shop it around. Get people to buy in on it. Ask for feedback and ask questions so they feel involved. Make suggested changes if it makes sense—and if it doesn't, work to reach a consensus.  Once you've gone through a couple of rounds with the primary stakeholders, the GTM plan should be fairly polished. Everyone will believe they had a hand in it and it's easier to work out minor kinks before implementation. 

This question is essentially "how to lead effectively without authority" - or in other words, how to lead your peers and others who aren't necessarily in your organization and/or who don't report to you directly.  Start early - before you plan on rolling out your new launch approach.  Talk with leaders and get their buy-in and then set up recurring meetings with different stakeholders on the Marketing teams, and come prepared to present your plans as well as to ask questions that spark contributions & brainstorming. Share the goals of your new strategy in advance so that stakeholders ...

I think two things really help here.  1. Make sure you're aligned with their incentives and what they want. We went through this recently and found the sales team was really hungry for something new to sell. We gave them a new way to hit their numbers and as a result they really worked hard to learn the new product.  2. Make it a story and make it fun. As PMMs we're uniquely positioned to deliver a powerful interesting story the sales team can copy and make their own. This will keep their attention and help them absorb more info.  

* Instead of focusing on the features, start with the use case -- why are we launching this we sub-product? What problem does it solve for our key personas or existing customers? Do we have examples of users adopting this product? * Once you have an understanding for how/why people are actually using this, then move a step up in the pitch to the messaging. How do we frame the problem that our prospects or current customers are actually having that this new product/enhancement addresses? Ideally, the messaging for this feature will tie into the broader messaging for th...

I’m lucky to partner with a great Enablement team at Yext, so I cannot take credit for everything I mention in this answer! But, we’ve treated our best enablement efforts sort of like a “compliment sandwich” — start with the simple message, then open the hood to see the context and relevant details, and close out once again with the simple message. Wash, rinse, repeat. I think it’s very common in PMM to be afraid of sharing too much detail — we all know how busy our colleagues in sales are, and we want to keep them focused on spending time with customers, rather than distracting them with ...

It depends on how radically different your Enterprise solution actually is and how unfamiliar it will feel to Sales. Something else to consider, is this a new tier or a totally new product?   Often your Enterprise solution isn't radically different from your Standard product, especially at launch. Also, if your sales team has come into contact with enterprise customers they're probably already clamoring for the enterprise functionality. If this isn't the case though and let's say you've acquired or built a more standalone enterprise solution and are trying to train your SMB sales team on ...

This question would likely require more details/specifics for me to answer fully, but I'll do my best!  If you organize your sales team by market segment, then you could focus the enterprise product details on your enterprise segment reps, while the broader set of reps focus on the existing product offering. If you have one sales team that covers all segments, then you'll need to find more of a balance. And with that, I'd make sure you don't over compensate on the new enterprise offering right out of the gates and first pressure test the product-market fit and whether a smaller group ...

Tiering and t-shirt sizing a launch should be based on "how impactful is this to my customer and the company?" If it's a brand new product suite, a new offering in the market either for the company or the space, or a material investment/improvement from what exists today--that's a Tier 1, full-court press (whatever that means for your company!)  Moderate improvements, new SKUs, bigger features that are exciting but not totally new and different for the company are the market are more medium-Tier launches. Smaller features and incremental updates can be covered in release marketing only, m...

We JUST revamped our GTM framework & process at Momentive and you're in luck - I drove this process at the company & am coming off the project pretty fresh. Ultimately, product marketing should own the go-to-market launch framework and process. So you or someone on your team should be a driver, with several cross-functional partners consulted. We got drafts in front of product leadership, marketing leadership, sales enablement (whole team in our case), sales & success leadership, and any other critical teams involved in product launches. In the roll out, we included a GTM launch framewor...

When building a tiered product it's important to define the goals of the entire package and each tier. Once you set goals, you'll want to segment your target audience by tier to map benefits to each level. Each tier should have clear benefits and ideally one “hero benefit” to serve as the hook to get customers to sign up for the offering. While the tiers should feel distinct they should also feel connected so that customers feel motivated to earn/pay more to move to higher tiers. A clear example of this approach is building a good/better/best model where the base benefits get increasingly r...

I'd say this can change based on the organization, contributing teams, goals for the launch, market you're in, audience... but a few things I would never launch without: 1. Naming. Sounds simple, but the way that your engineering team refers to something is very often NOT the way you should be communicating it externally. Take the time to name. 2. Pricing and packaging. Work out EARLY whether this should only be available to certain tiers. 3. Target personas. Exactly who is this for, and why do they care. What are their alternatives? 4. Extending from the above— a messaging house that...

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 p...

A good product launch starts with a deep understanding of the customer – who you are building for, their needs/pain points, how to reach them. Building a phased research plan is key — it's important to gather insights to shape both the product value prop and the marketing plan. I find that a lot of teams run research early in product development, but I highly recommend building a testing plan to validate your positioning and creative concept. Concept testing and will help future proof your GTM plan by ensuring you are communicating the value prop in a compelling way that maximizes conversio...

This certainly will vary launch by launch to some degree, however every feature you launch you'll want to track some element of activation and utilization of the feature. Are customers trying the new feature, and are they growing in how they use it? These are also the metrics that you as a product marketer can have a direct impact on. There's always excitement right after a launch where everyone is glued to the dashboards watching the metrics minute by minute! And in those early days after a launch it's healthy to do a 1 week post-launch read out, however it's defintely more important to ...

It's important to define metrics and KPIs pre-launch typically as part of the marketing brief or GTM plan. Based on the goals you’ve set you’ll want to work with XFN teams like product/marketing analytics to set up a measurement plan or dashboard to track progress against these goals. It can be beneficial to track progress early on, a few days post launch and/or 1-2 weeks post launch so that you can adjust your marketing tactics if needed to accelerate or decelerate adoption. Exact metrics will vary for each product/business but a few standard metrics to keep in mind are: 1) product adoptio...

The general timing is mostly driven by the product team and then the specifics around it are driven by the PMM team to try to optimize. We want to launch as close to the product being shipped to get value to our users as soon as we can. However we also want to ensure there is a story that resonates, and this might mean bundling features. We definitely try to avoid holidays and major events if we know they are happening.  Having a buffer between shipping and launching also helps to create effective assets (screenshots, videos, demos etc) and fix bugs. This could simply be an internal releas...

Timing is generally dictated by Product. However, it's always wise to anchor the launch with various stakeholders, both internal and external. For example, sales Enablement gets better traction if it does not happen the last week of the quarter, and a press release announcement will have better coverage if it isn't right in the middle of a large industry conference like RSA. 

Great question. Defining the product roadmap, setting launch criteria, and landing a launch date should be a collaborative process between PMM and Product. Together its key to consider a number of key factors: 1) What is the broader product roadmap for that quarter/half? How does this product fit into the broader plan/portfolio? 2) What is the value prop for this specific product? Have you validated product-market fit? 3) Do you and the team feel confident that the product is ready for primetime? No P0 bugs still open? 4) What does the marketing roadmap/calendar look like across the org/com...