What's the most important thing to get right when planning a launch?

I believe there are three crucial things that need to be outlined in order for a successful launch: 

• Why are we doing the launch: what are the key metrics, objectives and customer benefits of doing it
• Who's the core team working on the launch
• How are we measuring success post-launch? 

Why are we doing the launch?
If you don’t have a clear understanding of why you’re doing the launch and how you’ll measure success, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. A launch without core objectives and metrics is seemingly pointless. So it’s worthwhile spending time upfront to align on: 

• Why you're doing the launch 
• What you hope to achieve from the launch 
• How you would measure success 
• How the launch is solving problems or adding value to the user
  

Who's the core team working on the launch?
This sounds simple but often is actually one of the hardest things to articulate, especially when you’re in a growing company. Setting up a RASCI matrix and agreeing to the roles of everyone in the core team will help align on project delegation from the start. 

Explicitly map out your GTM team's operating rhythm, collaboration processes, and approval processes at the start of the project so everyone has a clear understanding of what’s expected of them in the project. Setting this up from the start ensures that everyone is accountable for the level of ownership they bought into in the project and helps streamline the ongoing project management process.

How are we measuring success post-launch?
It’s one thing to launch a product, but if you don't market the product again after the launch and don’t drive and users to use it, then what’s the point in building it? Adoption and engagement metrics post-launch are key to the ongoing success of the product. Having these adoption metrics built in from the start of your launch and having processes to monitor, checking and optimize the performance is crucial to the product's ongoing success.  

If I had to pick one thing to absolutely get right it's your planning phase. The work you put it won't be as impactful if you haven't aligned across stakeholders on the story your telling and the goals for the launch.

And while launches are strategic they are also one of the most logistically-heavy activities you can take on as a PMM. These are my three phases:
-planning

-creation

-execution

Planning is about alignment, decision making and timelines.

Creation is about creating and reviewing all necessary launch materials.

Execution is when materials are finalised, and you start and push things out into the world. This also includes all internal comms that should happen (don't forget internal comms!!!).

Here are some things you should align on during planning:

Do you actually have a launch in front of you?
Any product launch is a marketing moment — a moment in time when you take a new product, feature, group of features to market. This is not the same as a product release, and something I like to make a big distinction on within my companies.

• Product launch = a go-to-market (GTM) moment including single or packaged releases intended to make a splash for a given audience in the market; launches are driven by product marketing

• Product release = any code deployment to production; releases are driven by product and engineering

Once you've decided on a launch, make sure to tier it.

• Tier 1 is the largest, involving net new functionality that will be impactful for the top of your funnel (i.e. announcing an entirely new feature set that’s core to your product’s value prop)

• Tier 2 usually includes net new functionality or a significant product update, but likely for functionality that will be most impactful to your existing users (i.e. a major update to a current feature or functionality that is very popular across your user base)

• Tier 3 is a table stakes improvement that, while important, is only something that will impact and be noticed by existing users, if anyone at all. (i.e a subtle UI change that power users have been asking for)

As part of the tiering process, you'll want to understand who your audience is. This will help you decide on prioritisation.

At a very high level there are at least three audience buckets you should consider for every product launch:

• Existing customers: users who are already paying to use your product

• Competitive customers: users who are paying to use a competitive product

• Prospective customers: users who are not yet using you or a competitive product, but who are interested in the space

Then when it comes to the story, it's your job as a PMM to always bring back to 'what's the value to the customer'. It's really easy to tell stories with your company at the center, but when something goes to market, especially if you're targeting prospects, no one cares about x,y,z improvements to Hooli, they care that they get x,y,z value in their day-to-day.

A few years ago I created this launch template! If it's helpful, I can take a pass at revamping it with what i've learned since then but it's a good start for those looking for a template :)

https://www.launchnotes.com/blog/the-ultimate-product-launch-plan-for-new-product-marketers

The most important thing for a launch is to align your company on the number 1 goal of the launch.

Boiling down a launch to one more important thing is tough, but goal alignment will ensure you can optimize your launch activities to achieve your goal. There is also a tendency for companies to throw layer multiple goals onto a launch, but this only serves to dilute the potential of the launch.

Here are some examples of launch goals:

• Attracting new customers

• Upselling existing customers

• Converting free customers to paying customers

• Growing awareness of the company or product

• Increase average contract value

• Reduce churn

Each of these goals will drive different activities during your launch. If you include more than one, multiple downstream effects will dull the impact of your launch.

Happy launching!

You've gotta get the external messaging correct. Anything else can be changed as you go... but the messaging infuses everything you do. In particular, any press you're going to get... you can't change the messaging you use to develop the public facing press elements once you've socialized them to the press.