What are some of the mistakes or challenges you have had with product launches in the past and how did you overcome them?

Challenges I've had seem to stem from lack of customer validation early in the product development process. I once launched 25 apps at once within a new "integrations marketplace" within a new product category. The problem we faced was educating the market on the value of our data within these new apps. It made sense to our users but not the buyer's who had the budget to expand usage. We spent the next several months building enablement for other key personas that we hadn't considered at the start. Moral of the story is to talk to your customer early and validate use cases to inform what's needed to activate the market. For us in this example we could've really shortened the learning curve had we better planned the surrounding market education/implentation that was needed to accelerate adoption. 

Of course there are a number of things that can go wrong when launching a product, but I think the most impactful lesson I’ve learned to date is that you must be prepared for both the good and the bad outcomes of a launch. In a previous position at Adobe, I was working on the CS 5.5 launch that rolled out only a year after the previous one—we’d usually allow for about 2-3 years in between launches. We were so excited about all of the product improvements that would come out of the rollout that we neglected some of the less favorable possibilities, such as people not wanting to make such a large investment in the new product after upgrading only a year ago. Needless to say, some of our expectations were not met for this launch due to this lack of preparation. The best way to overcome this common hurdle is to be sure that you’re over prepared—identify what can possibly go wrong before launching. I recommend putting together a pro’s and con’s list - if these particular things do end up going wrong, how can you be prepared to solve them as quickly as possible?

The biggest mistakes are two sides of the same coin: over-saturating or under-saturating the market with the message at launch.

Under-saturating is pretty obvious: you don't spread the message far enough and often enough. Some teams think that a tweet or two and a single newsletter promotion will be enough to get the word out. Or, they toss a new feature on the product tour, or a new product in the "products" section of the global navigation and call it done. But most of your market WON'T see your message the first time, so you need to share at a regular cadence to boost awareness and adoption.

The flip side is a hidden pitfall: over-saturation. This happens when you spam every channel. Posting on a single social media channel 10x/day is unlikely to yield positive results. The reach and engagement per share goes down, and your followers feel like you're spamming them. The algorithm de-prioritizes the content because no one engages, and it wants to see new content. Or, you include sales-y messages over and over in your newsletter. People start unsubscribing because they thought they would receive educational content, but now, it's just the same product message again and again. Eventually, people feel like there's nothing new in your emails, your social feeds, or your event keynotes. Why tune in or follow or engage if it's just the same sales message again and again.

Striking this balance requires product marketers and their partners in other crafts to pay close attention to the metrics, with a willingness to change course once a tactic goes stale. Don't start with the assumption that tens of blogs, multiple social posts each day, and a newsletter full of product-focused content will perform well. Test different channels, and when you start to see engagement, reach, and/or click-through rate drop, take a break from that type of content, or focus on optimizing vs. creating net-new assets.