John Hurley

When it comes to defining goals for product launches, we tend to consider both short-term and long-term objectives. In the short-term, our goals may be centered around acquisition, engagement, and awareness. For example, we might aim to gain a certain number of new users, or to generate a certain amount of buzz on social media in the weeks following the launch. These early indicators can help us understand whether our product is resonating with our target audience, and can give us some early feedback on potential areas for improvement. Long-term goals, on the other hand, are focused on driving sustained usage and adoption. We want users to not only try our product, but to continue using it over time. This may involve goals around user retention or activation rates, as well as measuring how frequently users are engaging with our product. Ultimately, our goals for product launches are tailored to each specific product and our broader company objectives, but it is important that we consider both short-term and long-term goals in order to create a successful launch.

One approach to proactively identifying areas where PMM can add value is to conduct a thorough analysis of the market, competitors, and customers. This includes identifying gaps in the market and opportunities to differentiate, understanding the competitive landscape, and gathering insights on customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. Some questions to consider when conducting this analysis include: * What are the key trends and challenges in the market? * What are the biggest unmet customer needs and pain points? * How do our competitors position themselves and differentiate? * What are our key strengths and weaknesses as a business? * How can we leverage our strengths to address unmet customer needs and differentiate in the market? By answering these questions, you can identify areas where PMM can make the biggest impact and develop strategies to address these areas. It's important to keep in mind that the analysis should be an ongoing process, as markets and customer needs are constantly evolving.

I like to frame questions in two parts. 1) Walk me through (WMT) an example of...XYZ. I do several of these that each map to the key responsibilities I'm looking for. I want to hear real-life stories – both for experience and ability to articulate. This was inspired by my product partner at Amplitude. Great article here: https://runthebusiness.substack.com/p/wmt-interview-questions 2) Follow the WMT question with some form of why, what did you learn, what would you have done differently? Somethings they answer this in #1. But I want to get into the first principles thinking, self-awareness, and ability to iterate on thinking on the fly. Finally, a fun one. I always ask for "What are your PMM brand crushes?" Who do they look to for inspiration? If they dont have any, they're not engaged enough in their work for the types of highly engaged teams Iike to build.

Marrying company objectives and vision with customer pain and value – which is informed by user/buyer research and market research. Leads to themes that will help drive value with company and customers. Within those timebound themes, you have product innovation (bundles of features, new products) that teams will be involved in. So you can think of it like this * Company objectives and vision with customer pain and value > Themes > New/Improved Capabilities > Launches Features do not necessarily mean launch. Here is how I differentiate the two. Releases are the individual features, enhancements, and updates shipped into our product on a continuous basis. Supported by Release Marketing function (ex. Feature Release emails). Product Launches are multi-channel promotion campaigns to announce a marquee release or bundling of releases to the market, generate interest, and illustrate how your product delivers value to customers and the business in significant ways. On Tiering – Here is a summary of how my teams have approached tiering: Tier 1 (New Markets or Product Launch ): New major feature/product that will drive significant revenue by attracting new customers to Amplitude. This set of capabilities or product enables access to new markets or win existing segments by substantially differentiating you from the competition. * 1-2 Per Year, 12-18 Wk Timeline, High Revenue Impact Tier 2 (Differentiation Launch): A large new capability or set of features that can drive revenue primarily from our existing customer base through upsells, cross-sells, and attract new customers by increasing the value of existing products. This affects win rates and helps you differentiate from our competition. * 1-2 Per Quarter, 8 Wk Timeline, Medium Revenue Impact Tier 3 (Painkiller Launch): A capability that solves a major pain point that impacts a large portion of users. Could help drive adoption at one of our top customers. Or is strategically aligned with company key bets. * 2-3 Per Quarter, 4 Wk Timeline, >20% Customers Impacted

Align on needs and get buy-in on the program from key stakeholders upfront, otherwise, you will just be reactive and the expectations will be that every request is handled and every asset is up to date. By setting a strategy upfront, defining the set of deliverables and the cadence at which they'll be updated, and creating rules of engagement and set venues / channels for to communicate with teams, you can create a scalable system. For larger orgs, you may have to create SLAs between your team and sales and product. Specifically with competitive, I really believe you need to define ourselves based on problems you solve and value you provide, not your competition. But also equip teams to stand out from competition and win against them. Competitive can become a crutch for not having confidence in your own message and story. Some of the most impactful interactions I've seen between a vendor and buyer is when the vendor says, "I don't work for that company. I work here, I know we do this really well, and I think I understand your problem and how we solve it." That's refreshing to hear versus bashing the competition.

PMM is hard (and awesome) because we are a hub, not a spoke that often controls the final outputs. We’re not growth marketers, or demand gen manager, or brand marketers. However we do influence, inform, manifest, and/or articulate growth strategies and campaigns. Product marketing needs other growth teams to commit and execute. Same goes for traditional demand gen and campaigns – we have a bit more influence there and ability to define demand programs and contribute content, but still heavy reliance on others for execution (campaigns team, ops, etc.). We don’t own channels or many of the teams required for execution. Our role and responsibility are to develop (and coalesce) a GTM (and specifically marketing) plan to propose to cross-functional teams, surface the requirements/dependencies/roles, and coordinate and monitor the cross-functional workstreams. That GTM marketing strategy– along with positioning/messaging, enablement, launches, and research input into product strategy – are our core roles and responsibilities. Product Marketing can bring together all the growth/demand investments into a single view (ex. a Campaign Brief), come to the table with recommendations, and aide in the orchestration of various teams efforts (expose leverage points or conflicts). We can create messaging and content that supports the campaign. But we can not also be the sole execution side (not our expertise, not our area of ownership – literally don't own the distribution channels). This is part of what makes Product Marketing so hard. We’d love to work with Growth to help them refine their programs and tactics, and contribute to areas like messaging (ex. copy for an in-app test, or keywords and copy for SEO/SEM programs).

When scaling from 5 PMMs to 20+ PMMs, it becomes increasingly important to have a well-defined team structure and organization. One approach is to ladder individuals into verticals based on their area of ownership and area of expertise. As the team grows, it may be necessary to have discipline leads and managers to help with collaboration and alignment. Here is a simple little progression: How PMM teams grow and mature over time… * Generalists (with some diversity but broad and deep ownership and expertise). Can be SMEs or just great PMMs depending on product. * Generalists with product ownership and disciplines * Product (vertical) and GTM (horizontals) PMMs, each owning some discipline. * Product and GTM and Discipline (horizontal and vertical; ex Competitive, release, AR, P&P). Discipline become a hub for specific work types (shared service). * Product broken into Core and new Products with managers…and rest gets custom from there. The decision to have a manager versus a collection of individual contributors (ICs) depends on the needs of the team. Generally, once a team reaches a certain size, it becomes necessary to have managers in order to provide leadership, direction, and support for the team. However, it's important to consider the specific needs of the team and the individuals involved when making this decision.

I like to create what I call an Opportunity Assessment. Here is the general table of content for the presentation: - Problem Hypothesis - Target Market - Market Opportunity - Business Metrics / Revenue Strategy - Competitive Landscape - Our Differentiated Solution - Basic Solution Requirements - Go-to-Market Overview (Timing and Concept) If it's an existing market, include - Competitive Feature Comparison - SWOT Analysis for top competitor Looks like the formatting is a bit off, but attached you can find the template. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17WP6mzinluezqh1AF0HMcOFe_ucL7LDApQQJG1HZlno/edit?usp=sharing Opportunity Assessment 

Here is the competitive intelligence mission statement I've used for several years (repeat from previous post but will add more detail). “Define ourselves based on problems we solve and value we provide, not your competition. But also equip ourselves to stand out from competition and win against them.” Sales: Equip teams with knowledge and tools to win against the competition. Product: Equip teams insight into competitive product sets so we can build better, differentiated product. Marketing: Deep knowledge of competitive brand, message, and product so we can raise above with best in class product marketing and demand campaigns. Executive: Provide regular updates on competitive landscape to inform strategy For the most part, all vendor comparisons do is create confusion. If buyers have 3 conversations, they come away more confused. Shift the focus to ‘If we can show that we can do X for you, would that be valuable? And we’re great to work with, proven by our customer base and success.’ I often see buyers that see vendor comparisons as a big turn off. You also are going to be wrong a lot of the time. Your intel from a company’s website probably wasnt accurate to start with and it has changed. Vendor comparisons frequently slow down sales cycles.

Simple answer here is a great Tiered model, a NPI process (for larger companies), and differentiating between Launches and Releases. Often see many product launches that are really more release marketing versus integrated product launches. You have the greatest outbound marketing launch in the world, but ultimately all the launch and growth levers in the world won’t make new products successful in market without 4 things… * Top-Down Accountability: Executives setting and aligning around targets, and holding each other and stakeholders accountable. * Field/Business Incentives: Who is going to profit from putting the effort into this new product? Iconic incentives (SPIFFs), Quota Accelerators * Specialized Expertise: Especially in SC org and CS expansion, and when sales-led. SC Experts (SME program, Evangelists, PMMs. * Inspiration: Product vision, internal win stories, bottoms-up momentum from field, inbound demand. * Strong NPI: Operational rigor bring products to market