How does Product Marketing measure the success of a launch?

I think measuring success is relatively easy - you have GA, Tableau and similar tools to measure web traffic, purchases, etc. I think the most difficult thing is to define success ahead of a product launch. At my current company, we had large amounts of historical data from previous product launches such as page visits, page visits from the specific channels, paid vs organic traffic, revenue from every channel, etc. So we built a forecasting model that predicted the revenue forecast for Day 1, Day 30 and lifetime (1-year) for every product launch. The model was pretty accurate in predicting this, mainly because we had a large amount of historical data. You could get even more sophisticated in terms of adding external variables to this forecasting model - e.g.seasonaility, marketing events, adding new channels, etc. 

Although it gets a little tricky when you don't have historical data and are launching a completely new product. But you can still come up with a model which predicts some quantifiable goal (revenue, visits, etc), make assumptions based on your research. 

This totally depends on the product. Some launches are meant to grow top of funnel signups, others drive expansion with your current customer base, others reduce churn or expand product stickiness. Your goals should line up with the problems you’re solving. They should also have a tie back to your company strategy.

At a high level, we usually have some awareness goals around web traffic, press pickup/message pull through, and signup rate. We’ll also usually set product usage goals within about 3 months of launch to help us determine if our customers know about what we launch and if they’re using it. We’ll often look at CSAT and NPS as well to see if the launch improved customer sentiment. If the feature is an upgrade driver, there may be an upgrade rate, sales pipeline number, or even a dollar amount that we set a goal around. I hesitate around setting revenue targets for launches unless we have something analogous to compare to. Without those, it’s often a guessing game more than a clear way to set goals.

My big advice is to have a small number of clear, ambitious but achievable goals for your launch, then set one stretch goal that you've clearly labeled as a stretch. Get alignment with your product partners to ensure that you're both bought in on those goals. I usually have a shared KR with product to ensure we continue to work well together.

From there, select a group of "monitor" metrics related to your launch. You don't need to set goals around those, you need to monitor what happens to them to help you understand how your product is being used and influence follow-up product improvements and education/activation activities. 

How you should measure the success of 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?"

Looking particularly at question #2, you have to work backwards from what success for the business ultimately looks like. Is it about generating leads and contributing pipeline for a managed sales team? Then focus on total marketing-contribtuted pipeline (MCP), Marketing-driven sales (if measurable), Return on Spend (for marketing-driven sales), Pipe-to-spend ratio (for MCP), sales enablement effectiveness (as measured by usage or demonstrating acumen across the sales org), improvement to average win rates, average deal size, and velocity/time-to-close for closed-won opportunities. These metrics should be shared across PMM and Demend Gen/Growth/Revenue Marketing. If the goal is more about driving prospects to self-service and activate/buy online, then focus on Product-led-growth metrics like sign-ups, activation and progression through usage to broader buying behavior. If the launch is more about introducing your company or a product line to a new persona or industry/vertical (or in the case of a start-up, the market overall), you can focus on awareness metrics like share-of-voice, inclusion in market research and reports, target buyer consideration and traffic/egagement metrics across your website, social and key forums/community outlets.