Kelly Xu

First is to recognize that launch is just the beginning and the work never stops. It’s important to get all the stakeholders aligned on this mentality across the organization, so it’s not a done-and-forget thing.  Second, you need to communicate to the market that your work and commitment have just started and there are a lot more exciting things in the works where you will bring more value to your user. It can be as straightforward as simply acknowledging that “last year we launched A and did B ...Read More

First, be prepared to sound like a broken record and repeat your messaging multiple times across different occasions, channels, and stakeholders.  Second, share wins internally. Ask reps to share how they successfully sold to their customers. This is usually best arranged by a sales leader and at a sales team call or email.  Third, publish external-facing customer stories to show the value the product can bring. Be deliberate about seeking new stories that cover new use cases, product capabiliti ...Read More

"Talking to customers" doesn't always need to happen via a customer call. I have personally found the following ways to be very helpful: 1) Industry reports published by analysts, consulting firms and relevant market research firms in your domain. These reports usually highlight customer priorities, challenges, pain points and top use cases at an aggregated level, and can be a very effective way to understand the broader market trend. 2) Online communities, be that X, Reddit, G2, Medium, LinkedI ...Read More

There are two major ones I’ve used over the years.  The first is pipeline generation--how much pipeline is generated by the campaigns or sales plays that are tied to the launch  The second is use case adoption. There are different tools and ways to measure it but ultimately it’s usually a CRM report you can pull and analyze which use cases are being adopted, and what are customers using your product for. If it’s tied to the key use cases you promoted during the launch, and even better if there’s ...Read More

There are multiple criteria to decide whether a dedicated industry marketing resource is needed. First, does this vertical need distinct, industry specific messaging and GTM motion? Are the use cases very different from other industries? So different that an industry agnostic story wouldn’t be effective?  If an industry needs some industry specific features, or faces industry specific regulations and maturity curve, it might warrant dedicated marketing resources too.  Second, does it have alignm ...Read More

The foundation to success is to thoroughly enable the influencer and key partners. This includes a much wider variety of topics than the product features themselves, it can be technical resources to get influencers started, building relationships between you and the partner beyond just the C level or your initial point of contact, and educating your partners on your messaging, go-to-market strategies and key use cases. Again, if that work is done properly and effectively, the network effect will ...Read More