Caroline Walthall

If your industry thrives on frequent technology updates, quarterly can make sense, or potentially even more frequently than that. It really comes down to how you balance out your marketing and product calendars. What events or “moments” has your company established that serve as anchors your loyal customers begin to rely on? Try to rally around those. You may also need to invent new moments that position your brand relative to other industry events, typical purchase cycles, and news. How tech savvy is your buyer and end user? Orient to a cadence that feeds their appetite -- meaning don’t overwhelm non-tech people with tons of feature launches if you can instead group and simplify the message. But if your typical audience is really deep into using the product, it can be a strategic benefit to show you’re always innovating and improving. That said, a lot of features aren’t worth a big “launch.” You still want to take a number of steps in the launch process, but making noise about everything you do can backfire. If I’m reading between the lines, it sounds like your company might be launching more frequently than you think is ideal. That could be true. You have to zoom out as well and make sure that the key launch messages are laddering up to a broader brand platform. If you’re “launching just to launch something” that will come through and can erode your currency and customer trust when it’s time to market the “really important product” and message.

We have a product pod structure at Quizlet. Each product pod has 1-2 very clear business goals and usually owns certain product lines or domain areas. Every pod has a PM, a PMM, a designer, a product analyst, a product support specialist, an engineering manager, and an engineering team. This structure allows teams to determine the best working cadences and divisions of labor that work for them. I've found it to be a very liberating structure because it gives the teams a lot of autonomy over decision making and it promotes true cross-functional collaboration. Each PM I've worked with has been different. The pod structure has given us the space we need to negotiate our divisions of labor in the ways that make the most sense for us as individuals and to help us meet the team's business goals.

Beyond the 5 “don’t”s I listed in another question, here are two others: * Not having tight enough clarity and communication about what the launch stages look like for all stakeholders. Sometimes it’s fine to have a more decoupled feature/product release and marketing launch, but oftentimes that creates a poor experience for users and steals some of the thunder from your "moment." Not to mention, it tends to create some internal churn and chaos. This one seems like a given, but it's common for engineering, product, and marketing to interpret launch terminology differently. Even if your system for tiering launches is super codified, you’ll often have new folks on the team and so it is really important to work with your PM or PO to explicitly describe the scope and rules for each stage of rollout. It’s also important for those folks to update your changelog as those things happen, since many other parts of the launch are dependent on these stages. A lot of teams use a PMM launch “tiers” rubric to better define this, but I see that as just a starting point. I recommend you make the scale and scope really explicit for each launch, and check in for alignment, often. Here’s how I think about some of the options - but this is only a starting place as every launch is different, with different goals and requirements. * Minimal launch - Usually this is more of a direct release that doesn’t involve much from marketing except updating a few evergreen marketing pages/placements. Decide if this will be a rolling launch or if it will be released to everyone at once. * Beta launch - When you are investing more into a product and want to continue making improvements prior to your moment of big fanfare, you can launch in beta to get feedback before going big. These can be closed (by invitation) or open. Decide if this will become a minimal, soft, or full launch following the beta period. Decide if beta participants will be part of creating buzz and influence at your real launch or if it’s mainly for research and development. * Soft launch - Pick one or two channels and/or scope your target to portions of your audience who will appreciate it most. Decide if this will be a rolling launch or if it will be released to everyone at once. * Full launch - Go big with your message through as many channels as are appropriate for your target audience and through a strong concentration of internal team resources and alignment. This should ideally be launched to all eligible users at once (post QA). * Not investing in the right creative and using too many words. As much as we wish it, people don’t read. Distill your message down to a simple story and then find a way to communicate that with very few words. Test out different approaches with marketing and product design to illuminate the value. If you’re reading this, you probably already know this key point, but I’ll say it anyway because we all need reminding: demonstrate benefits, don’t yammer on about features.

If you can get it, the most important thing is executive buy-in for a team structure that honors marketing not just in the end phase, but also as a crucial thought partner to product and design. If you’ve had product launches that haven’t landed with the impact expected, those are great case studies to use to ask for that. After executive buy-in and team structure, pure relationship building can get you a long way. If you get to know your PMs and show your support in other ways they are more likely to have you top of mind when they are making important decisions. Another way to go about it is to take initiative on market research when you hear murmurings about a product direction. You can do competitive research and/or user research to bring tangible value to the questions at hand, which shows you can be a real collaborator worth having in early stage meetings. Lastly, if you can show your value in helping provide structured thinking in the form of slides, problem statements, and useful data, PMs will generally be really happy to have you in the room at earlier stages.

Other than the things already mentioned throughout my answers (relationship building, offering to facilitate planning sessions, etc.), I would also try to show them your own marketing calendar/roadmap. Share what you think your goals will be and ask to compare it to the rough product roadmap. Start by asking questions and sparking discussion. As you gain rapport and trust with your product teammates, they'll be more likely to bring you in at early stages, knowing that you are there to be a partner rather than an antagonist.

Yes! I can relate! Feature-level messages are so limited on the marketing side. Part of your job as PMM is help recommend the best way to 1) connect features benefits, 2) roll benefits into value props, and 3) provide positioning statements for your target markets. PMMs can take the lead on drafting this work but it's really beneficial to include your PM and other key stakeholders in the process to get their buy in. Once you settle on the place you want to go with regard to value prop, consider testing the messaging and putting it in front of customers. As you validate the strength of leading with higher level benefits and storylines, you can bring that as a key filter for product planning. Ask, "does this new feature help us shore up our core value proposition?" If not, "how does it tie into our marketing platform? Is it truly additive or does it complicate things unneccessarily?"

It depends on your product and business model. Since Quizlet is a freemium model that offers a ton of value to more than 50 million students each month, we focus a lot on the onsite placements that capture active user attention. Pop up modals and banners can be really useful to get your message out there, as long as you reserve them for special launches (so as not to diminish their attention grabbing value). We often build these placements with a feature flag so we can easily turn them off if they are too aggressive against other health metrics, but on the whole they've been great surfaces to drive awareness and consideration. Also, shameless plug -- if you're curious about Quizlet, we're hiring on the PMM team!

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).

Build from what you know If you’re doing this to prepare for a launch, I’d consider whether this new feature or product is for a similar audience that you already target. If are marketing to a large portion of your existing customers, you may already have some journey insights. It helps to plot these on a buyer/customer journey map. Consider learning more about the competitor journey If you are expanding to a new audience and/or a new category, you’ll want to analyze the customer journey of comparable competitor products. I'd do this first through surveys and then through follow up interviews. What are the key trigger points that move a customer further towards a purchase, an action, or a renewal? What are the failure points? Prioritize the areas that need attention most Once you have your map of the most common pathways for each major segment, it helps to label sections of the journey map that are more consistent. To the extent you can quantify drop off at each micro-step of the funnel, that's ideal. Often these are moments after they’ve bounced from a sales page and when they haven’t returned to your product in some time. Are the majority of users dropping off at a key step or just one segment? Is that a key segment? Make sure to keep testing the flow yourself so you can find any big technical barriers or intuit points that could be confusing or adding too much friction. Continuing building stronger/clearer analytics Then there are moments in the funnel where it's much harder to tell what's going. These are moments when you can't tell if customers are “on track” anymore. What bridges are missing there? Why didn’t they find what they were looking for? What data aren't you tracking that could provide more insight into what's going on? User test new designs before going all in on them Conduct quick user research to hear potential customers share the honest opinions of how they experience your new version of the upgrade page (or whatever the experience is you're testing). Is there something lacking that is making them feel skeptical? Once you learn that, figure out how to proactively provide answers to customers at the right stage of their purchase decison.

Set super clear research goals whenever you talk to customers or conduct a research study. As part of those goals, explain what the physical output of the research will be and articulate next actions the team should be able to take. Examples might be something like "create a customer journey map that highlights key gaps that we aren't serving well today" or "stack rank potential core value propositions based on what resonates most with customers." For the "fuzzier" insights about your audience such as personas, you have to do more work to make these relevant and actionable. I've seen product marketers or researchers create personas before that just don't "stick" or gain widespread adoption throughout the org. Part of that is because personas aren't always as validated as they should be. As much as you can, for these types of insights, try to back up your qualitative insights with behavioral data analytics to help prove it's more than just "marketing fluff." The best way is to really loop in your product and design org along the way and ask for feedback often. In your final synthesis deck for any research you conduct, try to propose potential "next actions" or "fast follow tests" that help put your more informed hypotheses to the test in the wild.