What are common mistakes Product Marketers make when launching products?

This is something I discuss with a lot of product marketing leaders because we naturally want to figure out how to do better. I’ll offer 3 mistakes I see a fair amount - but if you have a particular challenge, reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’m happy to help. Communication: Regardless of the size of your organiztion, you should be communicating relevant updates to all the stakeholders. In some cases, that may mean the entire company or a broader project team - or even an entire team like market ...Read More

Using launch messaging that over-focuses on the nuts and bolts of the product itself, instead of using the launch opportunity to highlight the broader value of the product line. (Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, using launch messaging that is so high-level that customers and prospects can’t figure out what’s new and different and how they can use it for success.)Not writing things down. Not providing broadly-available internal-facing resources to make it easy for stakeholders to learn ab ...Read More

Probably the top one -- and one I've been guilty of in the past -- is not setting objectives and measures of success for a launch. I've seen this most often at companies that are earlier in their maturity, before a formalized business case process is in place to greenlight projects. But you don't need a formal process to at least sit down with your PM counterpart and discuss things like "is this a product that we expect to drive revenue? Or is it about reducing customer churn/increasing stickine ...Read More

1) Waiting for something new from the product team to launch vs. designing a launch around a strategic company goal  2) Going to market with messaging that matches what the produc team gave them vs. coming up with messaging for your target customer 3) Trying to do too many things (emails, content, channels, etc) in the launch vs. focusing on the few things that will get you to your launch goal 4) Not setting an attainable short term launch goal and then delivering on a brilliant launch but not b ...Read More