Lindsey Weinig

I love the power of a new perspective. I recommend an inspect, reflect, then suggest approach. Taking time to gather information from and form relationships with teams you support including product, sales, sales enablement/programs, marketing, as well as peers at your level will help you gauge your role's expectations and the business needs. Learning priorities, measures/OKRs/KPIs, recent learnings, challenges, and opportunities from these teams will help inform a perspective that will drive your approach and priorities as you ramp up. 

I don't know about you, but I'm drained from an all-digital environment and love when people add some creativity to their internal enablement. Come up with a tagline, a theme, or some other creative thread you can tie all of the internal activities around. Since it's for internal audiences you can usually have a bit more of a leash without having to stay as aligned with voice and tone for the company brand. For example, years ago SendGrid launched support for handlebars syntax in our email template editor and the PMM team wore fake mustaches when enabling internal teams of the new feature and adjusted messaging. Then activate the new messaging with training as you would for a product launch, with live presentations, added as agenda items for key team meetings, internal communications via email and slack, as well as shared resources to support the new messaging including examples of it being used in the wild. 

I find the jobs to be done framework very useful in order to keep a customer-first mindset. Truly understanding your target audience's needs serves a product marketer targeting any segment or industry. Ultimately all buyers are people whether they're purchasing as a consumer or as a representative of their employer. 

Building strong messaging, aligned across executives and stakeholders can be done using 3 key tactics. 1. First, include and cite trusted datapoints, both qualitative and quantitative, from third party sources as well as directly from your target audience/customers. 2. Second, enlist input from trusted experts in your field. Analyst briefings have been enlightening in my experience and documenting their feedback as a source helps reinforce the market perspective. 3. And finally, face the feedback from key executives and stakeholders head-on. I approach this step formally, by sharing a document citing all of the sources above, with review deadlines and comment access. This allows for conflicting feedback from key execs and stakeholders to become clear early. If necessary, I schedule a meeting to review the comments, specifically the conflicts and settle them live. This way you have input, alignment, and buy-in (or at a minimum disagree + commit) from the teams you need to have onboard to activate the messaging in the market.

Best case, I partner with the product team to define the core KPI(s) for a product launch. Often product adoption is the goal of the launch, but sometimes a product is launched with other intentions like decreasing churn or increasing revenue through other product/feature adoption. Depending on the nature of the product, KPIs may include new signups for free trials, paid upgrades, add-on purchases/total value, NPS, or active users of the new product that was launched. I also like to measure KPIs across marketing activities associated with the product launch in order to continuously improve. This can include email engagement, advertisement and social impressions, landing page traffic and blog post views etc. It's helpful to gather and benchmark these metrics to determine the most successful activation activities driving the core KPI(s) that should be considered for future launches with the same/similar core KPI(s) and target buyer or user.

Each role, level, and business requires a some nuance for product marketing hiring, but I generally focus on a few key characteristics. * First, successful PMMs need to be able to prioritize in complex environments. Through ambiguity, constant change, and conflicting stakeholder pressures, effective PMMs have some sort of framework they use to weigh and decide rapidly what they should focus on and what goes in the backlog. * Second, PMMs need to be influencial communicators. They need to build strong relationships with their stakeholders and collaborators, navigate conflict, and drive to results cross functionally. * Finally, a core quality in great PMMs I've worked with and hired is their ability to build a narrative. Whether building a launch messaging framework, a pitch deck, or a webpage, engaging storytelling with a keen understanding of their target audience is paramount. 

As a Product Marketer, there are a couple considerations for internal launch and enablement that help guide the process, assets and activities including, product readiness stage (Pilot, Beta, GA), and launch size (T-shirt sized). First, we usually take ownership over launch activities when the product has reached a Beta stage. We partner with the product team to stay informed through the earlier product readiness stages to ensure we deeply understand the problem, target, and solution details. We then begin to ramp up our internal and external activities as the product becomes more broadly available and ready for the market. The materials and activities involved in the internal launch of a product also depends on the size. We use T-shirt sizing with considerations for revenue opportunity (competitive differentiation, appetite/TAM, innovation, application to trends etc.) as defined by the product marketer. The larger the size/opportunity the more resources and activities we tend to include with the launch. Internal launches in Beta or later and Medium+ all include a few key assets. * First, the key PMM asset is a Product Launch Brief - this document outlines the positioning, functionality, timeline/milestones, target audience, competitive position, and key deliverables expected for the launch. This resource is then used across teams to develop marketing and internal resources. * Most launches also include an internal FAQ - usually developed in concert with the Product Manager and a few of the key stakeholders (likely account executives or solution engineers). This is a living document that grows throughout the enablement process as new questions are asked and edge cases are uncovered. * A sales-play with target accounts and outreach templates is also an impactful internal resource for launches. * Additional assets can be developed for external audiences, but also used for internal enablement like a pitch deck, one-pager, demo, customer testimonial, and even videos depending on the size of the launch. Finally, the activities included in the internal launch usually include: * Live and recorded webinar training (highlighting the key components of the launch from the brief and the assets available) * Slack/email announcement of the launch * Mention in the next all-hands meeting for the company and/or department.

For a launch of any significant size, the most valuable action on my checklist is a post-launch retro. You will always want to measure KPIs and ensure positioning is accurate, but the retro is often overlooked. A well-run retrospective can uncover meaningful insights to both improve the recent launch success as well as avoid unnecessary challenges and uncover new opportunities in future launches. It also builds partnerships across teams reinforcing the value of the key stakeholders involved in the launch. A retro can take on several formats and be run live virtually, in-person or asynchronously, but the key attribute is open communication and unbiased documentation. I like the 'what worked' 'what didn't go well' and 'Actions/Improvements'. I'm old-school in that I prefer post its on a whiteboard, but you can also use virtual platforms like Figjam.

My number 1 recommendation is documentation. First, identify your key stakeholders across product, marketing and sales and document what is working and what isn't in recent launches. Then gather any process or standardization used across the product team for their launches. Ask questions like: * how do they document the value of their launch? * how do they share the status across launches? * how do they determine product readiness (Pilot, Beta, GA) Then, consolidate your internal research findings into a proposal with definitions for product readiness, sizing, and suggested deliverables for future launches. Share with your key stakeholders for their feedback. Pilot your new process to test and iterate with your next launch, ensuring that you include a retro post-launch to ensure continuous improvement. If your startup is like those I've worked at in the past, there may be hesitation about over-engineering your new process, so you may need to prioritize the parts that will impact the biggest pain points from your research.

Unfortunately there are many reasons a product launch can fail or underperform: * Doesn't solve a felt problem by the target audience * Solves a problem for a different target audience * Is not differentiated enough in a competitive market * Is not priced correctly * Doesn't function as expected (bad UX, unreliable, etc.) * Target audience doesn't know about it (isn't marketed well or discoverable) In my experience the most likely reason a product launch fails or underperforms is when it is solving an internally-defined problem vs. a problem felt by the target audience. Sometimes these can converge into a successful launch but often this internally-focused type of launch is destined for failure.