AMA: Loom Head of Product Marketing, Julia Szatar on Product Launches

One question to start with is – is the goal to target existing customers or attract new ones (or both)? Then figure out where that audience is and how you can most effectively reach them. Another is resourcing and scope - what can you pull off in the timeframe you have, and prioritize from there. Another would be, do you want to experiment with new channels (and do you have the resources/risk appetite/budget)? For example, we have an upcoming launch and we're looking into new social channels: Instagram and TikTok. But we've made it a P1-2 priority. We're focused on the channels we know are effective for us and will make a game-time decision on TikTok if we have the bandwidth. 

Product announcements are a growth lever, and everything the product team ships is a marketing opportunity. But, not all opportunities should be treated equally, especially if your product team is shipping at a high velocity (like we do at Loom). We use a tiering system from 1-4, 1 being the most important type of launch. To determine what tier a product or feature launch is in, we ask ourselves two questions. 1. Will this retain customers or attract customers? 2. Is this a new invention or is it a table-stakes feature? It's best to visualize it, there is a good blog post on this by Matt Hodges: https://www.intercom.com/blog/prioritizing-product-announcements-saas-world/. We used this approach when determining the scale of our loomSDK launch back in June this year. So we asked ourselves the above questions. The answer was yes, the loomSDK will attract a new audience for us – Partners & Developers. And, yes, it's a new invention - the ability to integrate async video into your application. Yes + Yes = Tier 1 launch! (See the 2 by 2 in via the link for clarity). Tier 1 launch meant that we used all channels available to us at the time: Press, Social, Email, Product Hunt, Paid Advertising, etc. 

Usually, your existing customers are the most impacted by pricing and packaging changes – so you may need to focus on communicating any updates clearly to your users. If all the changes are positive (e.g. they get more for the same) your job is much easier. If there are negative impacts, you need to diligently segment all your cohorts and identify how each group will be impacted, and then create a comms strategy from there. A blog explaining the changes and customized emails to each group is how we have approached this before. 

We don't call it a pre-mortem, but we have two documents that help us facilitate constructive discussion. A GTM handover document that the PM fills out, and a product launch template that we fill out in detail that includes messaging, goals, risks, channels. Once we craft the messaging and general strategy and we run it past the product team and head of product to make sure we are aligned before executing. We usually record a Loom explaining the approach and share it in Slack. Another major partner during a launch is the brand design team. We try to include them as early as possible to leverage their creative ideas and give them enough time to contribute to the success of the launch. 

This starts with aligning with the product on what this means for your product and company. This probably involves meeting live to discuss the product direction etc. More tactically, we have a GTM handover template that the PM completes. And then, your job as a Product Marketer is to be a filter between the product team and GTM team, and simplify the new features to focus on the value prop vs. going deep on how it works. What we've done before is package/synthesize all the updates in one succinct deck, record a Loom walking through all the updates as a detailed pre-watch, and then set up a live session where the GTM teams can ask questions. We capture the questions and deliver an FAQ after the live session as well as a reference guide. Depending on how complex the changes are you may need to schedule more than one session etc. One thing to note is that the Support team usually need more details on how the new features work. Either the PM can handle the handover to support or it needs to be a different session. 

See answer about Launch Frameworks! Product announcements are a growth lever, and everything the product team ships is a marketing opportunity. But, not all opportunities should be treated equally, especially if your product team is shipping at a high velocity (like we do at Loom). We use a tiering system from 1-4, 1 being the most important type of launch. To determine what tier a product or feature launch is in, we ask ourselves two questions. 1. Will this retain customers or attract customers? 2. Is this a new invention or is it a table-stakes feature? It's best to visualize it, there is a good blog post on this by Matt Hodges: https://www.intercom.com/blog/prioritizing-product-announcements-saas-world/. We used this approach when determining the scale of our loomSDK launch back in June this year. So we asked ourselves the above questions. The answer was yes, the loomSDK will attract a new audience for us – Partners & Developers. And, yes, it's a new invention - the ability to integrate async video into your application. Yes + Yes = Tier 1 launch! (See the 2 by 2 in via the link for clarity). Tier 1 launch meant that we used all channels available to us at the time: Press, Social, Email, Product Hunt, Paid Advertising, etc.

A lot of companies use a Changelog for these smaller launches. Your most engaged users will subscribe to the Changelog and get notified when you update it. There are tools like LaunchNotes you can use for this. https://www.launchnotes.com/ And then some features are self-explanatory and you may not have to communicate about them proactively at all. People should be able to discover them in-product (with a "new" label, or just from using your product). 

There are three things to focus on: process, qualitative, and quantitative. A launch is very cross-functional – so you can ask yourself, how did the process go? Are there improvements to be made for next time? Especially when you are at a startup and the team and processes are still evolving and maturing. On the qualitative side, it's harder to measure but – you can ask, did the message resonate? We launched our loomSDK back in June 2021, and we called it the "Record Button for the Internet" (thank you, brand team!). People were referencing this on social over and over, so we could "tell" that the message had resonated. At the end of the day, the quantitative metrics are most important and you need to determine these upfront. It really depends on the launch and target audience. It can be as basic as email open and click-through rates for existing users to sign-ups. It also depends on how sophisticated your data is, we are still working on attribution and it isn't always easy to show that a launch drove sign-ups, for example. 

One example is not identifying a potential risk and failing to address it proactively, then having it flare up during the launch. We've had this happen before when we had a lot of pressure to move fast. We kind of knew about the risk in the back of our minds but forgot to address it / flag it early. Since then I've added a "risks" section in our product launch template and we take the time to call them out early and proactively address them with the product team and exec team where relevant.

This one is tough to answer without more details :) Some questions to ask yourself: * Do we already have users and can we leverage them to drive new sign-ups? Through testimonials, customer stories, and by incentivizing them to spread the word? * Do we want to focus on existing or new users? Free or paid users? * Where might we find new users? * What are some low-cost ways/channels we can get the word out? E.g. Press or Product Hunt? * Can we leverage our investors? Do they have channels we can use? E.g. the most basic being can they reshare your social posts / press? * Are there paid channels relevant to my audience? What's our appetite for experimentation?

It depends on your resources and the skills of your team. A larger company might be able to tap into more channels successfully or might already have more users and so the launch will inherently be more amplified. You can still do a successful launch as a small company with some creativity and good storytelling! Try to think about the channels that will have the most impact given your constraints and work with a good designer to make compelling assets, and use Loom to create fun demos...(shameless plug!). 

The general timing is mostly driven by the product team and then the specifics around it are driven by the PMM team to try to optimize. We want to launch as close to the product being shipped to get value to our users as soon as we can. However we also want to ensure there is a story that resonates, and this might mean bundling features. We definitely try to avoid holidays and major events if we know they are happening. Having a buffer between shipping and launching also helps to create effective assets (screenshots, videos, demos etc) and fix bugs. This could simply be an internal release first before rolling out to users. It's helpful if your product team can share a general/directional product roadmap a quarter in advance so you have time to plan and get the messaging crisp.