How to Launch a Product | Derek Osgood, CEO of Ignition
Summary
TLDRThe transcript discusses the intricacies of product launches, emphasizing the importance of having a structured process. It suggests that either a product marketer or product manager should lead the launch, depending on their strategic and operational capabilities. The ideal launch process includes alpha, beta, and general availability phases, with a focus on research, strategic development, and execution. The speaker highlights the significance of setting clear goals, effective internal communication, and ongoing momentum post-launch to ensure success.
Takeaways
- 🤔 Product launches should generally be led by a product marketer, but if the product marketer lacks certain skills, a product manager could lead.
- 📝 Successful product launches require thorough pre-launch research, including understanding customer needs and conducting competitive analysis.
- 🚀 Product launches typically follow three phases: Alpha (internal testing), Beta (wider external testing), and GA (general availability).
- 📊 During the Alpha phase, close stakeholders like trusted customers, partners, or investors can help gauge the product's value.
- 🛠 In the Beta phase, focus on strategic development, positioning, messaging, and preparing assets for the public launch.
- 📅 Internal training and enablement are crucial prior to launch day to ensure all teams, especially sales and marketing, are aligned and prepared.
- 🎯 Launch success can be measured through business metrics (revenue impact), marketing goals (category penetration), and communication goals (message influence).
- 💡 The post-launch phase should include ongoing content and efforts to maintain momentum, such as blogs or other collateral that extends the product story.
- ⚠️ A common breakdown in launches occurs when companies lack a defined process, leading to last-minute scrambling and underwhelming results.
- 📢 Effective communication and cross-team collaboration are key to ensuring all stakeholders are aligned and equipped with the right information for a successful launch.
Q & A
Who should typically lead a product launch?
-A product marketer should typically lead a product launch, but this depends on the skill set of the product marketer. If the product marketer is not strategic or operational enough, then the product manager, who is closest to the product and has a holistic view of the customer, should lead.
What are the typical phases of a product launch?
-The typical phases of a product launch are Alpha, Beta, and GA (general availability). Each phase involves different activities such as research, onboarding early users, and developing core strategies like positioning and messaging before executing the final launch.
What should be done before the Alpha phase?
-Before the Alpha phase, product marketing should be tightly embedded with product teams to perform customer discovery, understand customer problems, conduct competitive intelligence, and expand the roadmap.
What is the purpose of the Beta phase in a product launch?
-During the Beta phase, the focus is on more executional work. This includes creating collateral, conducting pre-promotion, and possibly offering beta programs to a broader group of users to gauge product readiness.
Why is internal training important before a product launch?
-Internal training is crucial to ensure that teams like sales, customer success, and marketing are fully equipped with the knowledge and materials they need to discuss and sell the product effectively for the next 6-12 months.
What is a 'Rolling Thunder' approach in product marketing?
-The 'Rolling Thunder' approach refers to continuing to release content and collateral related to the product after the official launch, maintaining momentum and keeping the product top of mind for months after launch.
How should the success of a product launch be measured?
-Success should be measured through a combination of revenue metrics, marketing targets (such as category penetration or market growth), and communications goals (how well the product’s message was received by customers).
What are common reasons product launches fail?
-Product launches often fail due to the lack of a clear process, inadequate research, poor communication between teams, or neglecting internal enablement for key stakeholders such as sales and customer success.
What role does research play in a successful product launch?
-Research helps define the target audience, understand customer problems, analyze competitors, and clarify the product’s unique value proposition. This sets the foundation for a well-informed product launch.
How should different teams be enabled during a product launch?
-Each team, such as sales, marketing, and customer success, requires different information and assets. A successful launch ensures that each team has the right enablement materials at the right time to effectively communicate with customers.
Outlines
🚀 Product Launch Leadership and Strategy
The paragraph discusses the ideal leader for a product launch, suggesting that it should typically be a product marketer due to their strategic and operational alignment with the product. However, it also acknowledges that the suitability depends on the marketer's skillset, with a fallback to the product manager if the marketer is not strategic or operational enough. The discussion then transitions into the phases of a product launch, emphasizing the importance of research and customer discovery before product development. The alpha, beta, and general availability (GA) phases are outlined, with each having specific strategic and executional tasks. The alpha phase focuses on internal testing and strategic development, beta on execution and external pre-promotion, and GA on the public launch and internal team enablement. The paragraph concludes with advice on maintaining momentum post-launch through ongoing content and collateral release.
📊 Measuring Launch Success and Common Pitfalls
This section delves into how to measure the success of a product launch, advocating for setting clear goals and using an OKR structure. It stresses the importance of tying launch efforts to revenue and business metrics, such as customer retention, market penetration, or upsell opportunities. The paragraph outlines a three-tiered goal setting approach: business metrics (like revenue targets), marketing targets (like category growth), and communication goals (influencing customer perception). It also touches on common issues in launch processes, such as the lack of a defined process, poor research, and inadequate communication, which can lead to last-minute scrambling and ineffective launches. The importance of considering all stakeholders and their needs during the launch is highlighted, as neglecting any can doom the launch to failure.
🗣️ The Crucial Role of Communication in Launches
The final paragraph emphasizes the critical nature of communication during product launches. It points out that failures often stem from a lack of effective communication among different teams, such as product management, marketing, sales, and customer service. The paragraph stresses the need to ensure that all stakeholders are informed and enabled with the necessary information and assets at the right time. It likens the go-to-market process to an enablement exercise, where the goal is to disseminate the right information to the right teams to facilitate customer communication. The paragraph concludes with a cautionary note on the potential for launch failure due to communication breakdowns, regardless of the quality of the marketing or messaging.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Product Launch
💡Product Marketer
💡Alpha Phase
💡Beta Phase
💡General Availability (GA)
💡Customer Enablement
💡Positioning
💡Competitive Intelligence
💡Go-to-Market Team
💡Rolling Thunder Approach
Highlights
The importance of having a product marketer lead a product launch due to their strategic and operational skills.
The product manager should lead if the product marketer is not suited for the role.
The necessity of aligning time frames and having a holistic view of the customer for successful launches.
The typical phases of a product launch process: alpha, beta, and general availability (GA).
The significance of research and customer discovery before product development.
The role of competitive intelligence in product launches.
The alpha phase as a time for onboarding friendly customers and internal testing.
Beta phase activities include executing core strategic development and pre-promotion.
The importance of internal training and enablement before the GA launch day.
The concept of a 'big splashy launch day' to capture attention.
The necessity of an ongoing strategy post-launch to maintain momentum.
Creative ways to extend the launch process, such as post-launch blog posts.
Setting up goals and OKRs for a product launch.
The need to tie launch goals back to revenue and business metrics.
The common issue of companies lacking a defined launch process.
The problem of poor communication leading to failed launches.
The need for effective enablement and communication with all stakeholders.
Transcripts
I'd love to spend kind of the the rest
of our time just talking about product
marketing and product launches uh a
little bit more broadly because you're a
wealth of knowledge here and you're
obviously thinking about this stuff all
day long I think my first question is
maybe a basic one like who should lead a
product launch I mean I generally
believe that it should be a product
marketer um it does depend on the
characteristics of that product marketer
like product marketers take a lot of
different shapes and sizes some of them
are not really great at leading launches
because they're either not you know
strategic or not operationalized enough
and they may just be more kind of like
content and sales enablement skewing
Market product marketers so it depends
on the on the skill set if not product
marketing then I generally think that
actually the product manager should
because they're just going to be the
closest to the product itself and like
be able to align time frames and and uh
has the most holistic view of like who
the customer is why they care about it
but it does kind of depend on the
character like the structure of the
marketing orc um so you know if product
marketing is like well built out I would
say product marketing should if they're
not then typically it should be somebody
somebody in product and then what does
kind of like the perfect product launch
process look like like and I'm sure
there it's different for every company
and all that stuff but are there like
typical phases that people can follow or
somebody who's never really launched a
product before like what advice would
you say for them as sort of building a
road map towards that launch I'll try
and give a concise answer on this like
realistically this I could spend four
days and probably not get you through
the whole process because it's a big
chunky one but um you know I think like
typically you kind of think about
product launches as like you have an
alpha you have a beta and you have a ga
phase right so like most people kind of
think about launches through the lens of
the actual product delivery cycle so
upfront like before Alpha you should be
doing a bunch of research you should
like before the products ever even built
product marketing should be tightly
embedded with product actually doing a
lot of the like generative customer
Discovery to understand like who
customers are why they need this thing
what the problems that are being solved
to them are and expanding the road map
so that you should also be doing
competitive Intel that period where
you're understanding like okay what are
the possible Alternatives that customers
could be using for this thing that
you're launching and what are they good
and bad at where are we going to
actually separate ourselves and where
should we be focusing efforts from a
Ming perspective um moving through the
alpha period like Alpha is typically
when you would just start onboarding
like some of your friendlies like you
onboard like a couple of like really
trusted customers usually it's more like
dog fooding internally or working with
like Partners or you know investors to
kind of gauge the um whether the product
is kind of solving the problems that you
set out to solve um during that period
you're really doing a lot of like core
strategic development like positioning
understanding positioning messaging um
you know what your channel plan is going
to look like and how you're actually
going to roll out and communicate that
product to people what assets do you
need to get created in order to launch
it um during beta is when you're like
doing a lot more of the executional work
it's when you're actually like creating
all that c Al and even starting to do
some of the like external pre-promotion
and starting to kind of like set up
teasers or exclusivity programs or beta
or or like Clos betas with a slightly
broader group of customers that you know
may have opted into a beta program and
then you know at GA when you actually
launch it to make it publicly available
you obviously have launch day which is
your big splashy launch but you know a
couple of weeks before that you're doing
a lot of internal training and like so
much of the launch process centers
around enablement for internal teams
like everybody thinks about like the
launch as like the external part of the
launch and like the Splashy what are we
what are we where are we launching to
customers are we getting press you know
are we doing a product hunt launch like
what's our what collateral did we create
but the important thing is really how
did you introduce that product to the
teams that are going to be talking to
customers about it day in day out for
the next 6 to 12 months which is like
sales success your marketing team and
getting the assets and collateral into
their hands that they need in order to
be able to sell it so you know you do a
lot of training leading into launch day
then you do a big splashy day to kind of
just like put a lightning strike in the
ground and make sure that like the world
pays attention to it and then you should
have kind of an ongoing Rolling Thunder
approach after that where you're taking
a lot of the messaging that you used for
that launch and like ideally continuing
to trickle out other content and
collateral to keep momentum on that
launch for you know one two three months
after launch you know I think uh I just
did a podcast earlier today with ten and
from kabi and she was saying that um you
know basically like we were tearing down
equals this recent like AI assistant
launch and one of the creative things
they did is they you know did a blog
post after launch talking about how they
named the product that they had launched
and it's like taking things that are
decisions that you made during your
launch process to extend the launch
process by creating other Downstream
colle Cal is a really like just easy
Ling and fruit creative way for you to
actually be able to like to carry that
momentum Beyond you know the day of
launch itself and and that's the biggest
thing is like when you're thinking about
launch you know the one biggest piece of
advice I would give is like think about
it as a commercialization process like
don't think about it as a process
leading up to launch day you're doing a
bunch of work leading into launch day
but you're also doing all that work to
support a big postlaunch
you know uh selling
process and how do you know if a launch
is successful do you just look at
Revenue tied back to that as it user
engagement do you recommend people set
up goals ahead of time this is something
I always struggled with and we never
really got right at L us I'm curious you
think yeah so you should definitely like
have goals leading into the launch and
like set up the true kind of okr
structure for that launch and again like
we're talking more about like kind of
bigger product launches there's also
obviously like smaller releases that are
not going to have quite as much up fr
planning but um I think usually like the
way that I launches should be
contributing to revenue like you're not
building things at your company just for
fun and and for Giggles you know it's
like you are doing this stuff because it
is somehow some way going to
meaningfully contribute to the company's
bottom line whether that's retaining
more customers opening a new market and
like having a new Tam to be able to go
after you know creating more upsell
opportunities with your existing
customers and so you should be mapping
to those business metrics and the way
that I like to set goals for launches is
I like to set like a business metric
which is usually some kind of Revenue
Target could be something like an upsell
or cross sell Target if it's if you're
not talking about like Topline Revenue
um and then you set a marketing Target
which is basically the objective at the
Strategic level of like okay we want to
grow this category by this percent or we
want to penetrate this new category that
we're entering by this percent and so
you try and actually get to just kind of
an objective level Target for um you
know what the the approach to marketing
you're going to take is and then you
have like a Communications goal which is
how do we how much did we influence
customers perception of the product into
you know whatever message you're trying
to get across is and you can set up
measurement for each of those different
things right like you know when you're
talking about Revenue targets that's
pretty easy you're looking at like
overall Revenue impact how did that you
know move up or down pre and post launch
on average and like ideally you're
looking at like a revenue growth rate at
the marketing Target level like
depending on what your goal is like
category penetration you're looking at
okay of 10,000 customers in this
category we now have 1,000 of those so
we penetrated the um penetrated the
market 10% and when it comes to um the
communication goal you're really doing
that through like qualitative surveying
and like understanding how customers
regate back to you the message that you
tried to communic in that lach um so
there's a bunch of different ways to do
it I mean there's like you can that's a
rudimentary structure for this you can
go a lot deeper into any one of those
areas but um generally like I I would
always try and tie it back to revenue
because like otherwise why are you
investing the effort in launching the
thing in the first place yeah no I think
it's a really really helpful framework
and you obviously talked to a lot of
companies about launches you see this a
lot is there a trend that you see where
the launch process always breaks down is
there something where yeah there's
always kind of that problem area in the
launch I I mean you can take your pick I
think every single every single company
that I talk to um barring a very very
small set of like exceptions um their
launch processes in some way shape or
form a mess usually it's the biggest
break reason that it breaks down is
because they don't have a process in the
first place they don't actually have a
muscle built out and they don't have a
defined set of steps that they're going
to take they don't have a defined way of
understanding like which launches are we
going to invest effort in and like so
there's no teering framework in place to
actually be able to identify okay this
should be a big launch this should be a
medium launch this should be a small
launch this thing we shouldn't launch at
all um and they that leads to them
actually just kind of scrambling at the
last second because they don't actually
know what time frames look like to be
able to actually launch the thing so
they end up just basically spending you
know a week leading into it and then
they just send one email to customers
and that's their launch and customers
you know 30 % of customers open it most
of them don't actually engage they
forget about it 2 weeks later and then
that product ends up flopping so it's
like it's it's very common um but the
biggest the biggest place that people
break down is they either just don't
have a process or they don't do research
to inform that launch yeah I think
another one I'll add is just
communication in general I feel like
when we were doing launches at lus the
moments where we messed up it was like
the PM thought it was a super important
launch but marketing didn't and then
that was communicated really poorly like
prior ities or like in the launch
process like one team got left behind
like we really focused on the sales team
and like enabling them but like we kind
of forgot about Cs and like new you know
customers were were kind of forgotten
about and like yeah like we just kind of
forgot about each little stakeholder
because it's a lot of work to manage all
these different kind of personas on the
go to market team and across the company
100% And they each need different
subsets of information they each need
different types of enablement I mean go
to market like at the end of the day is
an enablement exercise it's all about
getting the right information into the
right team's hands at the right time so
they can actually go tell customers
about it and so if you don't communicate
effectively if you don't have a motion
for getting those teams visibility and
you don't have motion for getting
information and assets into their hands
like the launch fails no matter what no
matter how good your messeng is no
matter how good your marketing is
[Music]
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