How do you think about KPI's for product launches, balancing awareness, demand gen and pipeline?

Going to take my time with this one, as I think it combines a number of the other topics, but it's also critical, because PMM often sits at the center of all these things.

• Product launches are a big tentpole event in the lifecycle of a company and a product. Done right, they should drive traffic, leads, and opportunity creation (awareness, demand gen, and pipeline). 
• These are massive, coordinated efforts, but they're also not a point in time. No single day or event should make or break the future of a business. It's certainly a major note in the story, but not even the only crescendo. 

I coach my teams (and other execs) to think of product launches as the conclusion of a chapter or phase, and not the starting point. This solves for several problems. By the time you get to a launch, it should be almost a foregone conclusion to your customers, with the delighters in the annoucement taking center stage (the special or unexpected). You should have programs and campaigns pre-wired to carry it forward. Sales should be prepped and ready to go and carry the message forward. And you should probaly hat-tip your next move in the copy somewhere.

So, around a launch, you're really measuring three things:

• Short-term awareness. Views, reads, time on site, all relative to the prior comparable period
• Medium-term engagement. Downloads, trials, attendance at that webinar, customer meetings
• Long-term value. New opportunity creation, Qualified Pipeline, Average Deal Size 

Product launch KPIs should span the funnel so you can identify what's working and what's not. You also want to understand the customer, media, and sales team's interest in your product. Tracking a variety of KPIs will help you do that;

Awareness:

• Media interviews, Press mentions, clickthrough rates on the press release, website views, social views/interactions;

Demand Gen:

• CTRs on social and paid ads that go to your website so you can track campaign performance and customer journeys; Form-fills on content, demos; Open rates on emails

Pipeline:

• This requires your SKU to be live. So if your announcement predates your actual GA date, it gets harder to track

• Before SKUs are live, you can track number of AEs, SDRs, SEs trained; Track usage/downloads on first call decks, demos, and other internal resources that give you a sense of how often sales teams are using your content; You can use hashtags on opportunities to get a ballpark idea of whether the field is having customer conversations about your product

• Once SKUs are live, tracking pure pipeline and revenue tied to your product; number of customer meetings; time to close;

For product launches, I break down KPIs into three phases: 

• Awareness Phase: At this phase, I want to look at how our exciting launch communications are landing with the market! So I like to specially assess engagement across TOFU assets like press releases, social posts, and blog posts. This phase is about building buzz and visibility for the launch.

• Demand Gen Phase: As awareness builds, I'll then focus on lead gen - tracking sign-ups for webinars, demo requests, and content downloads. Our Hot Sauce Releases webinars have been a great tool for capturing leads and building interest in new features. Feel free to reach out - and Ill share the link to the series!

• Pipeline Generation Phase: Finally, I measure how much qualified pipeline we’ve generated and influenced through launch activities. I work with sales to review opportunities and track how new deals progress, focusing on those including the new product or feature.