Jeffrey Vocell

I think every product marketing team should! Ultimately, at Iterable we have 3 key documents: * Product GTM Launch Plan - This is a spreadsheet that includes every team involved in a launch, what set of activities are being done, where they are in the development process, and more. It's really a central resource for the entire launch. * Positioning & Campaign Kick-Off - This document should be filled out first before everything else. It includes all of the foundational details that will help create positioning, and what should go into your launch campaign (in the spreadsheet mentioned above). * GTM Launch Process - This is a step-by-step process for how to do every single element of a launch, and what's required to move between the four phases. If a new PMM comes onto the team, or an executive is curious about how we handle launches, this document comes in really valuable. Ultimately the core GTM plan has to include every aspect of bringing your product to market - pricing/packaging, positioning/messaging, launch campaign, enablement, and promotion. And it needs to include or involve all of the teams that touch every aspect of that work as well.

Yes! At HubSpot we had a template for this, and I’ve created one at Iterable as well. I think there are a few phases of a launch that include different people from your organization. Phase 1: Research - Every product launch HAS to start with research. This is a phase I find many PMMs skip, but the importance can’t be overstated - it’s where you get all the detail that will inform all your next steps. Typically this phase includes PMM, PM, Customer Marketing (if you’re surveying existing customers), and CSMs (if you’re talking to existing customers). Phase 2: Execution - Typically this is when the product team is building a product/feature, and as a PMM you should be working on positioning, messaging, launch plan, and beginning to get buy-in across teams. Towards the middle-to-end of this phase you’ll want to get Sales & Services/Support Enablement, Customer Marketing, Demand Gen, Brand/PR, Content Marketing, PM, and Analytics/BI all bought-in. Ideally you can start a cross functional meeting with a representative from each of these groups to discuss the launch. Phase 3: (Public) Beta - Generally when a product goes to public beta, it’s not too far away from a full launch. Your positioning should be finalized, your launch plan should be buttoned up, and you should be having those cross-functional meetings more frequently now that the launch is approaching you’ll need to get approval, and begin to plan actual go-live times. Phase 4: Launch - Plan a launch day “war room” with all of the key stakeholders needed from the teams mentioned in Phase 2. I’d also make sure executives are included here. Also as a PMM, you should think about what the post-launch growth plan looks like (again, for large launches). It’s very likely you’ll need help from many of the teams I’ve mentioned here so you can keep up the momentum by having this plan early and getting their buy-in.

The best way I've found is to start small, and grow over-time. To explain that further, when a brand-new product marketer starts I will typically walk through step-by-step the messaging process with them at a granular feature level just to get them some repetition practicing. After doing that a number of times, I'll let them take on some of those (very) small releases on their own and will read messaging (i.e. blog content, in-app messaging, etc) ahead of time to make sure they're on the right track. Once a new product marketer feels comfortable handling the smallest scale feature-releases and messaging, I'll ask them to take on a component of a larger launch (i.e. customer marketing). This gives them a defined chunk of work for a larger launch, without being overwhelming and is still contained. Much like I mentioned above, I'll still read through their copy ahead of time to ensure it's hitting the right tone. After time of essentially repeating this process throughout multiple aspects of a launch or campaign, then a PMM should be ready to try this on their own. As a manager, it's important to be available for help - but it's also critical to let your team push themselves and rise to a challenge. Lastly, while the process above has worked very well for me at HubSpot it's always supplemented with core book recommendations like Positioning, and then follow-up discussions around the book and key concepts. I've found that these things combined can be a really effective way to bring someone who may not have any formal product marketing experience onto the team and coach them on how to write great messaging. Good luck!

I think it’s hard to showcase messaging in an interview unless you’re specifically bringing up documented work. At HubSpot, we like to give candidates an exercise before an interview that typically ties into positioning and messaging. Oftentimes this exercise will tie back to a recently released product or feature, and we’ll ask the candidate how they would position the product and bring that positioning to life through a launch campaign. This approach has actually worked really well and taught us some new ways of approaching messaging that we hadn’t considered before. Once a new PMM comes on-board, we have standard templates for positioning we use and will share them with product marketers so they can see how a particular product came to life and what the process was like. In an interview, I think there are numerous questions you can ask to understand the adeptness of creating positioning or messaging, but from what I’ve seen it’s ideal to have an exercise and actually put those skills to the test.

There's a lot of potential variability here depending on company, exact role, industry, and more. That said, here are a few ideas of what you can show: * Cross-functional Initiative: If you've directly led a cross-functional initiatve that drovesome key business results, showcase them! For example, a sales deck that you created that drove win rates in that vertical. Talk through how you worked with Sales to create the deck and enabled the team doing so. * Launch campagin: This is similar to above, but showcase a launch campaign that you worked on and the results it had on the business. If you haven't worked on a product launch, that's OK. Instead show a piece of content that went through your development cycle, or virtually anything else that relates to a launch. * Content you've written: One of the ways I evaluate new PMMs is to look at a piece they've written, or in a writing sample. Showing that you've thought about how to talk about the business or a key aspect of your product and the value it provides is important here and doesn't require a formal Product Marketing title to do. * Write a launch restrospective and plan: I've advised dozens of aspiring PMMs on this one in particular, and they've picked an industry or a particular company and a recent launch, and recapped what they think worked well, and what could have been improved. The important part is this shouldn't be punitive, but it shows you're thinking strategically about the business and the market and those are two critical aspects to breaking into product marketing. Hope these help! As I mentioned in another answer, don't hesitate to reach out 1:1 and I"m happy to help with this.

This is a great question. As product marketers, I think we often confuse this terminology, and due to the common use of these terms it amplifies the perception they are different. From my point of view, there are differences between positioning and messaging which I’ll cover here, but everything else you mentioned — story, pitch, etc — is either an output of positioning and messaging, or is one and the same. First, positioning is an internal resource that covers how your product is uniquely different from other solutions on the market and addresses key buyer pain points. At HubSpot, we believe that this positioning comes to life through a story and is often written in narrative form. Messaging, on the other hand, is the external-facing version of that positioning. Messaging needs to carry the essence of your positioning but should be more concise and oriented around driving the activity you want (free user signups, conversions, etc). At HubSpot, we’ll usually create a pitch deck that carries the messaging of our product/launch but exists as a separate document used by various teams.

At HubSpot we have a “master” positioning guide that exists for every core product and is shared on a central wiki that everyone can access. This positioning guide helps inform the work of marketers, sales enablement, and many other customer-facing teams. To ensure alignment we work closely with these other teams, such as sales enablement, to build assets like “Demo Like a Pro” that carry our positioning and messaging and transform it into an actual sample demo from a sales rep. This is just one example, but we typically carry this across departments to ensure messaging stays consistent.

I feel like the answer to this could be it's own book. 😊 Ultimately, a PMM should be the "quarterback" of a launch and should be driving success at each stage. From the moment you hear about a large launch coming you should focus on: * Aligning the team around that product * Communicating clearly and effectively * Sharing information about what the product is, and why it matters * Holding team members responsible for their part in the launch * Organizing feedback, and day-of launch activities * Doing a retrospective on what worked well, and what needs to be improved from the launch In my answer below about product launch templates, I mention the four phases of a launch - and the bullets above tie into all of those. At each phase that looks different, for example, with phase 1 it means determining what research needs to be done, collaborating with the teams necessary to execute that, and then sharing your learnings with the appropriate team internally. Ultimately it's the same for every part of your launch.

It depends on the launch, but I will usually do a mix of these: Customer Research: Talk with existing customers, or survey your existing customer base (or a segment of it) if a solution your launching is directly related or adjacent to an existing product you have. If you need deep insight into the pain points a customer is facing a 1:1 conversation would likely be best. There’s no magic number of conversation to have - but once you start noticing trends in a lot of answers you can generally stop. In my experience it’s usually between 10-15, but can be more or less. If you are launching your first product, or entering a totally new market - refer to the other research types as well. Stakeholder Research: Talk with internal stakeholders across teams. Ideally people who are customer-facing and hear feedback from customers day-in, and day-out. They can be a wealth of knowledge and give you really good feedback. Analyst Research: If you work with Analysts they can be a great resource for insight into questions coming-up from buyers, and help you consider different product directions or messaging. Market Research: Using various tools like QuestionPro, or SurveyMonkey, you can reach people in your target market that are not existing customers. This can be a fantastic resource to get broader insight into the pain points and challenges your buyers face, what they’re looking for, and trends in their business. For a really large launch, I will usually do all four of the above and will lean very deeply into market research, and customer research. As launches get smaller, I will scale back the amount of research. Also, I’d be remiss not to say if there are analyst reports or industry reports already published - read them! Use a filetype search in Google to dig-up some reports, look on sites like G2 or TrustRadius for actual user reviews to learn what people are experiencing (and potentially where your solution fits in). Lastly, look at what your competitors are doing. I want to be clear that I don’t advocate for following competition, but you should be aware of what they’re doing and how they are talking about their company/product so you can differentiate your company. Some of these “passive” methods of research can fill gaps, or replace some of the options above as well.

Great questions. Product Marketing should be involved, or at least aware of, every launch in my opinion. I think it's important to establish launch levels, or some process around it though - a very minor feature update shouldn't get the same amount of time dedicated as an all-new product line. At Iterable we have extra small, small, medium, and large launches and the set of activities we do for each is different - and shared with the product team as well so they're aware. As far as tools, it's always evolving. Here are some that I use frequently though: * Google Docs/Spreadsheets: This is where a lot of the templates, process docs, and ideation for a launch takes place. We use Google Spreadsheets for our launch plan template so it's collaborative and everyone involved in the launch can hop-in and add/edit content. * Google Slides: Called this out separately because it's typically used for sharing messaging, organizing meeting agenda's, or things like that. It's definitely one of the top tools we use. * SurveyMonkey (in the past I used QuestionPro though - both are excellent): Having a survey tool will be a priceless resource as you conduct research. * Slack: We have a specific team channel for PMMs, and separate channels for bigger launches that we can easily communicate in. * Spotify/Apple Music: We all need time to get work done and focus, right? Also, it goes without saying we use our own product at Iterable to help promote launches.