Stephanie Kelman

I've seen many product marketers who work really hard on a product launch, ship a beautiful campaign, and report back on their email open rates, click thru, page views, etc. While these types of metrics can be useful for an early signal of the product launch's success, they are not the best way to measure success and influence the future product roadmap. The best measure of success is true product adoption that can be attributed to you launch activities. Are customers using the product that you launched because they engaged with your email? Are your top product KPIs impacted because of this new product? Feature releases need to have really clear metrics for success that are aligned on with product ahead of time. In my experience, the more impactful metrics are the same ones that product is using to measure success. Help tip - keep measuring the impact after the launch for 3, 6, 12 months. You'll start to see trends and find opportunities to grow adoption. Let's talk about influencing the product roadmap. I always tell my PMMs that your superpower needs to be the voice of the customer. PMMs should know their customer better than anyone and use that information like a secret weapon. Think about it - you're in a product roadmap review and you're discussing prioritization. If you're able to tell your product team that customers prefer feature A over feature B based on data and learnings, then it's going to be hard for someone to argue with that. Here are some ways to dig into the voice of the customer: * Customer feedback through support tickets, success managers, sales * Chatter and comments on social media * Sales deals in the pipeline and their feature requests * Close lost reasons

The best messaging needs to be closed-loop, meaning that it is used throughout all of the areas of business and receives regular feedback. Product marketing needs to be the owners and drivers of this messaging. * It starts with a solid messaging framework. Make sure your cross-functional teams have buy in to this messaging and are aligned. This will make it easier to carry it throughout the company. * Another sure bet way to get your messaging used throughout various teams is to craft the sales assets and supporting tools, or be a strong contributor to this work stream. In my experience, a product marketer is successful at creating closed-loop product messaging when they are the crafters of the messaging and enablement material that is used by other teams. * Finally, create feedback loops with these various teams. Create regular cadences for when you will check in to learn if the messaging is resonating with the intended audience. These feedback loops are most successful when they are easy to access. My favorite is a dedicated slack channel or monthly office hours. Make sure you're asking cross-functional team members exactly what is working and what is not working. Did they close a high value deal this month? Great! Which messaging points or benefits resonated the most with that particular customer?

The most effective approach to rolling out messaging that internal GTM teams will use is to bring them along on the journey with you. It's important to build trust and show them that you have validated the messaging through market and customer research. * Make sure your messaging framework is already locked down and your close cross-functional partners are aligned (i.e. product). Your specific product messaging needs to be in line with the overall company or product positioning. * Meet with your GTM teams and internal stakeholders to talk them through how you crafted and validated this messaging. * Show them that you are the expert on messaging your product because you’ve spoken first-hand to your customers and done in-depth market research. * If your internal teams feel like the messaging has been validated by customers and aligns to the company’s messaging, it will help them get on board. * Get their buy in, ask them what they think, get their thoughts, make it an open conversation. * Finally, the best way to ensure teams use your messaging is to create impactful assets for them to use. This can include pitch decks (internal and external), sales one pagers, talking points, campaign briefs, etc.

Using the product UI as one of your marketing channels for a launch can be so effective because you are meeting your customer where they are. It also reduces friction in the customer journey and lends to more seamless adoption. However, you must be very careful with marketing directly in the product UI because it’s easy to abuse the channel and create excess noise for your customers. Remember, at the end of the day, you want your customer to find value in the product and not be bombarded with marketing. Make sure your messaging in the UI is succinct and to the point. Don’t inflate it with marketing fluff. Here are some effective ways to launch and message new features within the product UI: * “What’s new”: Utilize the change log or news feed in the product UI as a central place for users to go to learn about new releases and get educated. You are teaching your users to go to this feed regularly so make sure you update it frequently. * Tool tips: Add tool tips to existing features or modals in your UI to highlight a new functionality. You have the user’s attention and it’s a more seemless adoption path. * AI assistant: Many SaaS products are introducing AI assistants directly in the UI. This is a great channel to use to let a user know about a new feature or enhancement to their existing workstream. It needs to appear like a natural and relevant suggestion so make sure you work closely with your AI team to incorporate the new feature into the AI data set. 

I love this question because I love using customer quotes and data proof points to craft impactful messaging. You are already in a great position to create a strong sales enablement asset. If it’s only 2 pages - you need to keep things short and succinct. This isn’t the place to write a full case study (but I would do that later if you have time and link to it from this asset). 1. What is the big message that you are trying to get across? This should tie back to your main value prop for your product. 2. Use a single strong data point in your header to drive this message home. Don’t be afraid to be straightforward about the competitor if you have the data to back it up. For example - “Users switched to Product A from Competitor and grew their customer base by an average of 35%.” 3. Add some sub copy or a short paragraph that describes how users grew their customer base. You can lead this paragraph by stating the problem users are trying to solve, why they couldn’t solve it with the competitor, and then describe how your product helps them solve it. Which features did they use? Are there other qualitative outcomes they experienced too? 4. List out additional stats. You can use bullet points to list out these data points in a concise way. It would be really impactful if you used these stats to highlight your supporting value props. For example - increased revenue, time saved, etc. Make sure the stats feel cohesive in terms of theme or metric. 5. Remember, this is a short, punchy sales asset, not a full case study. Avoid big blocks of text. 6. Customer quotes - pepper these in after a section of text or a stat to help drive home the message. For example - if you have a customer quote validating how the user grew their customer base, add it after your header/intro paragraph. Customer quotes need to stand out from your text. You can use a different font size and put a box around the quote.

My favorite product marketing mentor always gave me the best advice to ensure my messaging was differentiated. What is the one thing you can say that your competitor cannot say about this product or feature. If another company's name can easily be swapped out with your own, then your messaging is not differentiated enough. Get specific with data proof points to create solid evidence to support your messaging and build differentiation. If you aren't sure what makes your product differentiated from the rest of the market, talk to your customers. Ask them what improvements or benefits they've discovered using your product.

Trying to position your product as competitive when in reality it’s on par with the market can be so tough. This is especially true if you’re crafting messaging for a new product that hasn’t reached its full potential yet or if your product inherently has table stake features without a true competitive edge. In these situations, if you are really trying to be competitive, you need to lean on other attributes that can carve a differentiated angle in the market. Think about what it is that attracts users to your product or platform in the first place. For example - do users love your platform because it’s easy to use and has great customer service? In reality - not every product needs or can be positioned competitively if the differentiating advantage just isn’t there yet. You can still craft beautiful messaging that leads with benefits, even if these outcomes are expected by the market. This is a good time to really dig into your users needs and market insights to help influence the product roadmap and create a true competitive advantage. Sometimes it’s best to wait until you have competitive features before you take it to market in a big way.

It is the perfect time to iterate and optimize your messaging after you receive strong performance metrics and client feedback. This information will either validate your competitive advantage or highlight a new value prop that your clients clearly resonate with. Once you feel like your value props and messaging hierarchy (i.e. which points are the most important) align to the performance metrics and client feedback, you can use the data to beef it up. Your messaging framework should have a section for proof points. This is where you will add your performance metrics and client feedback. The client feedback should be in the form of a testimonial quote that has been approved by the client to use in marketing material. When you start using your messaging to craft webpages, sales assets, email campaigns, you can add the performance metrics right into your value prop to create an impactful headline. Example - “Clients increased revenue by 55% with Product A.” The customer testimonials can supplement this as well to provide social proof to your audience.

Here are some of my learnings from successful product launches: * Don’t launch a half baked product, you don’t get a 2nd first impression and you will burn trust with your users * Test your messaging with beta users - do your value props align to their feedback? * Re-market the feature with an adoption/growth campaign at a later date. You'll have new use cases, user testimonials, data proof points (which you don’t always have at launch) * Just say the thing - don't get distracted with marketing fluff and repetitive industry lingo.

Yes! There is a template attached to the AMA that I use with my team at Shopify. You can also create your own with these guidelines in mind. * Separate your audiences * Write a really strong main value proposition for each audience. This is the main message you want to get across. Make sure it is outcome and benefit focused. * Support your main value proposition with 3-4 pillars. * Each supporting pillar should have a few messaging points to explain how the product helps users achieve this outcome. * Add data proof points and customer testimonials to really drive it home.