How do you make decisions around channels to use for new product launches?

At Asana, customers are our #1 inspiration - so deeply understanding your target audience (across existing customers and prospects) and what matters most to them would be my first priority. 

• What are we hearing from customer interviews, and/or customer-facing teams?
• What third-party research can we source based on target demographics,
  firmographics, and/or stage of customer journey? (consider industry analysts like Gartner, Forrester, or IDC, or for those not in tech try eMarketer or MarketingProfs)
• What have we learned from past launches and campaigns to this audience?
• Can we conduct tests with a small % of the target audience to validate hypotheses?
• Based on the primary launch goal, which channels will be most impactful for this stage of the customer journey? 

I also ask questions like: 

• Where is the competition focusing, and where are they absent? 
• What budget and creative resources do we have available?

Decisions on channels starts with segmentation (dividing the market into different segments with specific needs/characteristics) and targeting (analyzing the sectors and choosing which ones to direct marketing efforts towards). Most PMMs then focus most of their energy on the positioning and messaging (developing a strategy or image for a product/service to make it stand out to the target audience). However, determining channel-market fit for the target audience is just as critical. This comes with developing deep subject matter expertise on the target audience – understanding where and how they show so that you can meet them where they are. If you want to get more sophisticated, map those target audiences and channels across a buyer / customer journey. 

No surprise, Reforge and Brian Balfour have created some great content on this thinking.

https://www.reforge.com/resources/marketing-channels

https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-channel-fit-for-growth

Lastly, don't forget in-product. That's often the best channel to engage with existing customers! We spend overweighted time on email, social, ads compared to engaging in the product. 

The biggest key is where does your audience spend time, consume content, and engage?

We use a mix of in-product notifications, emails, social media, blogs, events, and press to notify our audience about new features and products.

But, we adapt the format, message, and frequency, based on the audience needs and potential impact of the launch.

For example, we have a large existing customer base, so we tend to see strong performance when we email them with information about new features. We're cautious about in-product notifications because we don't want to annoy someone who is already using an existing product. Constant pop-ups or notification bells distract from the core experience, so we use those selectively.

I work in Agile and DevOps, so I know that most of the product managers, developers, and technical team leads I want to target are not hanging out on Instagram and TikTok, but they do spend time on Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, and HackerNews. I prioritize content and outreach in those channels because that's where my audience is more likely to see the information.

If you have historical data about past launches, industry benchmarks, and/or research about competitors in your space, you can use that to create an initial recommendation for which channels to prioritize. If you have limited budget and bandwidth, I recommend starting with one long-form channel and one short-form channel to build an audience, test the messaging, and get a baseline for your results. The specific channels will depend on your industry and audience.

Decisions around which channels to use for a product launch should be driven by the same two fundamental questions you need to craft a launch strategy:

1. "What problems are we solving for whom and why are we uniquely set up to win here?"

2. "How exactly will we capture the additional value we're creating and what does that mean to our business?"

Your channels are a function of who you want to reach with what message and what your want them to do once they receive that message. So if you're launching something that incremental that will strongly resonate with your existing customers, you can focus heavily on owned channels like your website, blog, email, social, forums - even in-product messaging. Those are cost-effective channels that build on past campaign and launch messaging that can improve overall renewal rates, expansion rates and share of wallet with your customers. If you're launching something brand new, potentially even to a new set of customers (either by persona or by industry), you can't rely on owned channels. For "new to new," you need to meet those prospects where they are, ideally with a strong tail-wind of influencers and 3rd-party validation (awards, rankings, etc). Those channels can be expensive to operate in, particularly when you're establishing a foothold but can be key to expanding the customer base, and thus the TAM, for your company.

Work backward: define your goal -> understand where your users are more likely to be and convert -> understand which channels provide the best ROI.

The first step is always to understand what should be achieved by a particular launch. Is it new signups? Feature adoption? Upselling?

Based on this segmentation, use your data to understand what the best-performing channels could be based on historical information.

Add to the equation competitive intel: is there anything you could steal and test with this launch?

Add to the equation your own hypothesis: do you have an idea that could raise the bar?

Focus on what worked before for similar segments (both yours and from your competition), and dedicate a portion of your budget / time to test new channels and ideas.

Working based on historical data only works when you keep experimenting to update it and enrich it.

First, you should come up with a matrix for your channels, helping frame what each is good for; something like this example matrix. Then for each product launch, specify: (a) goal (b) target audience (c) priority

Once you have these two building blocks it'll become a lot easier to determine both the right channels to use, but ALSO the different goal, approach, content etc. that's most suitable for each channel.

Two other considerations:

1️⃣ A key mistake I see teams make is not delineating goals between awareness and adoption. Awareness can be as simple as someone seeing something, but adoption requires action. Prompting action can be hard, especially if the user is not in the correct environment.

📌 If you're trying to drive adoption then you should almost certainly be using in-product campaigns.

2️⃣ Flip the question and consider what product launches do the channels deserve. Obviously you can't overload your channels and so there is a real scarcity about how to best use your real estate. The prioritization of your launches helps here, but it can be a useful thought or visual experiment!

📌 Remember any attention taken that isn't valuable to the viewer is a negative outcome, so be sure to get as targeted and contextual as possible!