How does Product Marketing communicate product improvements and product launches?

If you'd like to read about the traditional way to communicate the product improvement process, I recommend reading about the product lifecycle process.

Essentially what you are looking for is a regular (perhaps every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks) method of understanding what's new in the company and is the change notable, sellable, serviceable, and disruptive?

Depending upon your answer you will have a different mix of materials you develop for internal and external consumption. Start with a method to communicate internally what's going on so that your team is on the same page (what's the name we've decided for a feature? what does it do? When does it launch? How do I use it).

If you start with a feature brief containing the talking points for support and sales, a description or outline for external communications like a knowledge article or a press release or blog, you will have a good start. If the change is sellable, you might create additional sales enablement materials like a presentation, a few slides, or a data sheet for your sales team. If the change causes an impact to service you may bullet typical FAQs and write them up as knowledge articles.

Finally, if the change is disruptive you may think about training and communication plans needed for external customers so that they are not surprised by the change and have a clear timeline to prepare.

I’d break this up into thinking about the 📝 Content and the 📤 Channels:

📝 Content:

• Create a central hub for you launch planning (a wiki page / Notion doc etc.) where you can collaborate with your team for any launches

  • This can serve as a key pillar of your internal communication

  • You can have a single doc per quarter / year and then have sections for individual feature launches

  • Go deeper based on how big the launch is; smaller updates don't need all the below

• This doc should answer key questions, such as:

  • Which types of users/customers/prospects will care about this?

  • What value does this unlock / what job does this help them do?

  • What internal enablement needs to happen (e.g. help docs, sales training, team demos etc.)

  • Plan of action for communicating (see below)
    

📤 Channels (+ tips) for external/user comms:

Each channel has unique strengths so important to customize your messaging (more important than simply having "consistent" messaging):

• Email: Focus on value & benefits, not how-to.
  Users will mostly scan, and may be reading on-the-go, so don’t try to teach users “how” to use the feature, but aim to compel them to re-engage, or to remember your point for next time.
  

• In-app: Hook users with a clear title and CTA.
  In-product messaging can be risky; avoid interrupting the user, and ensure your message displays in context. Users often just scan, so ensure your title stands out and immediately makes them interested. Ensure the CTA is simple and oriented around action. 🦎 Chameleon can help.

• Webinar: Connecting via events deepens relationships.
  It’s ideal to engage middle-of-funnel opportunities and customers beyond email so a live webinar (that you can then repurpose) can be great to showcase product updates. You may roll in many recent updates into a monthly or quarterly webinar.
  

• Social: The best channel for some customers (and prospects)
  If your users or target market are active on social channels (e.g. LinkedIn) then it’s imperative to make use of this channel, and showcasing product updates is great. Re-use existing content, but follow best practices and common formats for the relevant channel. Here's an example post from me.
  

• Website/Blog/Release notes/Landing pages etc.
  You may write up the update into a blog post, but it’s also important to update prior blog posts and other web pages (landing pages, feature pages etc.) in addition to any release notes. Here's an example release notes log from us.

There's a lot on this topic so happy to help with follow-up questions or to do deeper on this topic! I also wrote a more detailed post on how to announce new features here which you may find helpful; a bit more theory/framework in that.