What are the top 5 "don't"s you see too many PMMs doing when launching a new product as a product marketing manager?

* not getting involved in the product development process early enough
* not talking to customers directly
* not asking “how might this NOT work out” aka a "Pre-Mortem" (and developing mitigation plans accordingly)
* not spending enough time thinking about a “day 2” strategy
* being too precious about messaging - test it! A great way to validate messaging is with sales - they can be a secret weapon as they’re essentially testing messaging all day every day on their own.

When I interview candidates for PMM positions, one of the “x factors” that I always look for is humility — but not just because I want to hire good team players. 

People with intellectual humility know that they don’t always have all the answers, which gives them the openness to new information and new ideas that is so key to long-term PMM success. If you don’t have intellectual humility, you’re at risk of making assumptions that can come back to bite you later on. 

So, my top 5 “don’t”s are all assumptions to avoid:

1. Don’t assume you know everything (or really, anything) about how a customer would articulate the value they get from your product. Talk to people! Listen to the words they use and what they say when you ask them about their problems. Ask your current customers what their favorite thing about your product is. They’re often better marketers than we are (don’t take it personally).
2. Don’t assume everyone at your company believes a launch is important just because you do. We’re lucky to have a vantage point in PMM where we see the strategy behind a feature, the impact we expect from it, the competitive landscape, and the customer value. It’s easy to get excited once we know those things. But if you don’t drum up excitement within your company, how do you expect to do so with your customers? Make sure to give your colleagues outside PMM context where necessary.
3. Don’t assume that you should do something just because you’ve done it that way before. I love a good framework, but don’t use your launch tiers as a crutch to avoid creativity. 
4. Don’t assume that a launch is a one-time thing. The moment a product moves from POC to real is incredibly exciting, but your customers’ attention doesn’t always line up with your launch calendar. Don’t get distracted by your to-do list or by shiny objects once your press release is out. The game is really won on the ground. Do refresher sessions with your team. Repetition is okay. 
5. Don’t assume people are waiting with bated breath to hear about your latest announcements. We can’t all be Apple, with an army of superfans counting down the seconds until our next launch event. Especially if you’re in the B2B space, you’re always going to have to compete for people’s attention — they have their own jobs to do!

I’ll finish off this answer and build on #5 with a mantra that I find myself returning to over and over again: Your marketing isn’t for you — it’s for your customers. Tell them what THEY are going to get, not just what YOU are doing. Simplistic example, but consider these two subject lines. Which email would you be more likely to open? 

• “We launched a thing!”
• “Your life is about to get a lot easier!”

1. No clear messaging target - it’s almost impossible to write copy for everyone, so it ends up being for no one. In this scenario, we also become more tempted to use our internal lingo in absence of anything more specific, which almost never works. Even if you want to reach a broad audience, decide who is most important to influence and write to them.
2. Adding more features or products to a page rather than recontextualizing the whole. Make sure you’re not just positioning the feature or single product. Stuffing a page with more info sometimes works, but it's a strategy with diminishing returns. What does this launch change or shift about the story you’re telling as a brand (across your portfolio)? You don’t necessarily need to reskin everything, but make sure to take a step back to see if there are opportunities to simplify, even as you add more complexity.
3. Putting a lot of effort into a low tier improvement. Hey, let’s be real, I’ve done this several times before. We do it because we want to appease that PM or because your manager asked you to. But before you plan a whole GTM launch motion, think twice. Your time is valuable! Not all features/products are created equal.
4. Forgetting to schedule a premortem + an internal kickoff. Your support and CS team will thank you! We lead busy lives as PMMs and already have so many meetings, but as you zoom towards launch, you need to make sure internal stakeholders are informed with plenty of time to get up to speed, create plans and macros, and assign owners to monitor higher risk issues. PMM doesn’t have to always own this step, but since you’re working to prepare everyone with common language and external plans for launch day, you’re usually going to be a trusted leader who can rally the crew, ask for feedback, and get people pumped up.
5. Failing to define success metrics for PMM. As a business you probably have some OKRs or KPIs associated with this launch. Are any of them marketing driven? Whether it’s % of active users who reach an upgrade page, # of MQLs, and/or seeing a X% lift in conversion for key segments, you need to pick something you can influence directly. Doing this is important for visibility and helps make sure you’re really learning rather than feeling anxious about secondary metrics (which are important but dependent on many other inputs).

We product marketers all have PTSD from product launches that didn't go as planned!

So let’s talk about a few common pitfalls.

The biggest one is probably the lack of exec buy-in. If you don't have a strong sponsor, don't even try launching a new product.

Another big one is not being able to communicate broadly enough. But at the same time, you don't want to fall into the trap of having cross functional meetings with a lot of people where nothing actually gets done and you have too much noise and too many voices.

Another big one is not really doing value-based messaging and selling features, not benefits. Over indexing on the product versus the business pains.

Another one is to change things the week prior, change messaging the week prior or even the night prior! That has happened to me… more than I’d like to admit!

And finally, I would say having a lot of competing outbound activities could be a challenge. So really pick the date that works the best for your product launch.