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 MarketingPr ...Read More

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 w ...Read More

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 cauti ...Read More

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

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 tes ...Read More

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 ...Read More