Sarah Scharf

Yes, it's important to run a different playbook for major launches versus minor ones. Rather than thinking just around "product" vs "feature", I'd recommend developing a common definition for different tiers of launches. These are roughly the tiers we use: Tier 1: Expands capabilities with a distinct, new product offering. New product SKU. Significant competitive differentiation. Tier 2: New, incremental functionality/capability that extends your offering its current target market. Competitive differentiation. Tier 3: Updated functionality/capability for an existing product. Tier 4: Release of bug fixes and minor updates to the UX. Tier 5: Functionality that is necessary (and requires resourcing), but does not have customer/partner-facing visibility. Once you've agreed upon these definitions, you can develop a bill of materials around each of them to make the launch process repeatable. 

Every organization thinks about this differently, and I’ve worked across the spectrum from a single, annual release (Android OS) to continuous release (B2C startup). So what cadence is right? If you pressed me for a single answer, I would say a quarterly release (I didn’t make this up, I just happen to agree with this post by David Sacks: https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8). Quarterly tends to be long enough to bundle together several meaningful product updates and develop a "through line", but regular enough to show your customers you are responding quickly to their feedback. For PMMs, it allows you to organize around a cohesive launch - whether that takes the form of an event, a “What’s new” webinar, a customer activation, or something else. But if you’re at a scaling startup, and especially one that’s focused on consumers or SMBs, you may find quarterly releases feel too slow at first. At Vanta, we’ve found success with creating a cadence of launches throughout the quarter, aiming for several mini-launches and a larger release every ~month that receives integrated marketing support. If you are grappling with this at your company, some ideas are: * Create delineation between bigger and smaller launches - ideally through a formal tiering process, but even a quick T-shirt sizing on impact is helpful * Agree to a cadence of those larger/smaller launches that matches both your product development cycle and your customers’ expectations * If you don’t know what that cadence should be… test and iterate! * Remember that pushing code ≠ a release. You can “release” things before or after they are shipped - or even re-release them.

Naming and pricing are always the two most controversial decisions! Everyone comes to naming with their own strong preferences, and it can sometimes be an emotionally charged discussion. There are a few different axes you can consider for naming strategy: * Fanciful versus descriptive? Most features don't even need names (I know, boo). You can describe the functionality it provides without giving it a formal name. If you are going with a name, especially a fanciful one, you'll need to devote significant resources to building awareness and understanding of what that feature does. * How close does this name need to be associated with your company? For instance, "Vanta [X]" links a new product back to our master brand much more closely than "[X] by Vanta" or just "[X]". * What do others call it? This is a double edged sword - of course, you want to explain why your product is different than other competitive solutions in the market. But if there is an industry standard term, you should strongly consider using it, both for recognition and for SEO/performance. * How future proofed is this name? I have seen this mistake a lot with more fanciful AI-suites that are rolling out. If you assume that AI is becoming the norm, and the default expectation, why does your solution need some outrageous name? Ultimately, though, naming is an art not a science. Good luck!

Even in the age of endless message testing and optimization, nothing beats talking to customers. Get on customer and sales calls and use your own messaging - do their eyes glaze over? Or do they lean in and ask questions? Aside from this, it's critical to be locked at the hip with your demand gen team to see which messages are performing at which stages of the funnel. If a value prop is not resonating, it may be you are surfacing it too early in the funnel - or that customers do not care. The qualitative work you do on calls will be critical to helping you contextualize and interpret this data.

Going from single to multi product is a great challenge to have! Rather than ask how you can align people internally, I'd challenge you to take the outside in view first: why would your customers care? Which personas of yours fit with each offering (primary, secondary) and what are the problems they are looking to solve? Once you have created a map between your product lines and your personas, you can think about putting a wrapper around the combined solutions for each audience: * What is the 'better together' story between all your offerings? * What do you even call that combined offering? * What assets does your sales need to explain that combined value? Rather than just a list of product offerings, it's your job as a PMM to find or create the red thread that links them together for your audience. Don't underestimate the power of storytelling - for either an internal or external audience.

Positioning is the framing of the house - it defines the structure and heavily influences the overall style (for instance, low and long like a midcentury modern or up and down like a townhome) Messaging is the design choices you make once the structure is built. If your messaging feels very discordant from your positioning, it will be confusing. But, you can make certain unexpected choices in messaging that are not purely defined by your positioning. I'm not sure this analogy fully works for the "5 year old" described in the question, but hopefully it is illustrative!

This is a really good question and a real pain point. My recommendation is to form a Customer Advisory Board (exec level) and a Product Advisory Board (power users) who you can run messaging past and form a long-term, trusted relationship with. It will cost some money to convene the groups 1-2x per year, but in addition to giving feedback on messaging, they can also give input on product features and overall corporate strategy. Well worth the investment. For more scale, are also lower cost platforms, like User Testing and others, that can help you conduct some of this message testing online.

Maybe a cop out answer but - I think it has to be both! Prior to Vanta, I worked at Google where the adage for good marketing was: "Know the user, know the magic, connect the two." I use this line of thinking all the time in my messaging work: Know the user: what are their challenges (really, not just in general terms like "they are busy!")? What are their ambitions and goals? What would motivate them to evaluate a solution in your space? Know the magic: What are the key capabilities that your offering provides? How are they unique to anything else on the market? Connect the two: Why do these unique capabilities help solve the uniques challenges your customer faces? The goal is to get specific and actionable, so you are not landing on messaging that says "Our customers are busy, so our product does [x] to save them time". Good messaging will explore the link between what only your product can do with what your customer truly needs. It should make your reader feel like "wow, these people get me. I want to learn more."

I personally feel like too much is made of the distinction between B2B and B2C. Heads of IT are people too! In either case, the messaging is paramount. As I said above, commit to “Know the user. Know the magic. Connect the two.” And be able to express that in short / shorter / shortest lines of messaging As for placement, I have found B2B a bit easier than B2C. There are many more digital channels to reach people when they are staring at a screen from 9-5. That said, one of our most successful mediums for Vanta has, surprisingly, been out of home! We developed a tagline that captured the product value and user need (“Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much”) and saw our billboards go viral online. If you start with strong messaging, there are a lot of channels and tactics that will work, no matter who your audience is.

Of course! And for the record (and in case my product team is reading this ::waves::) that is a very healthy and constructive tension. Coordinating launches is all about tradeoffs. How I would approach is: * Articulate the tradeoffs: Clearly lay out what PMM and other stakeholders could produce with another <x> weeks vs at the proposed launch date. Ideally, you have examples of launches that have been rushed and ones that have been done “right,” with results you can point to. Make this pre/post as clear as possible. * Understand the urgency: On the flip side, do your diligence as to why the team feels the need to launch ASAP. Is this feature addressing an issue that’s causing churn? Is the sales team begging for it? Once you understand and empathize with the urgency, you can… * Jointly create a plan: Ideally, if the tradeoffs are clear, you can reach a mutually agreeable date. But there are many other ways to find common ground. If the main concern is unblocking sales, you can enable the field to offer the product in certain instances. Or you can agree for the feature to go live on one date and the launch to happen on another (pushing code ≠ a release!). There will be certain launches you will compromise on, and vice versa. But over time, as you go through more launches together, this discussion becomes easier to navigate.