AMA: Lyra Health Group Product Marketing Manager, Arianna Schatzki-McClain on Go-to-Market Strategy

Market research is near and dear to my heart and at the core of any strong product and go-to-market plan. I have many examples of how you can use research to inform vertical strategy, but my first tip is to just get started. If you are on a small but mighty PMM team (or perhaps you're the only PMM), any data is better than none. Verticals might mean prioritizing based on industry, company size, persona (or often a combination). I recommend trying to define what an early adopter looks like in your industry and prioritizing them early. My experience is primarily in B2B, but much of this can be generalized. Market research - Review trends in your industry, new legislation that may drive new consumer/buyer behaviors, join all the relevant newsletters etc. Industry - Often times certain industries have more of an urgent need for your product than others, I've utilized tons of third party reports put our by industry groups to understand broadly which industries to do a deeper dive into. Consumer groups or industry groups are great and they host events, conferences, and trade-shows. engagement with certain industries in the past and if so, how did they convert? Customer - To get insights on customers I've run focus groups, hosted 1:1 research calls, conducted surveys and worked with customer advocacy marketing teams to get feedback from customer councils. You can also take a look at your CRM system to mine for data based on past customer activities, feedback, and purchasing decisions. And of course, if all else fails (or is not an option) you can talk to your customer success team members, who talk to customers every day. Prospects - Yes, users/buyers who have not purchased with you before may have a different perspective than your current customers, so it's important to understand their perspective. Joining sales calls, attending tradeshow/conferences, and trying to talk to as many prospects is important. If you have a tool like Gong, this is gold for learning about prospect needs and interest. Competitive - Check out what your competitors are focused on from a vertical perspective. You can often tell based on their messaging, case studies, ads, landing pages, and content they are producing. Depending on your strategy (and the other data you collect), you may want to go after a different segment or choose to compete. Once you've collected all your research, you need to synthesize it. One way to do this is to create a score-card and then prioritize each potential verticals into tiers based on most attractive to least attractive.

Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan. To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust post-launch. 1. Making sure there is product market fit is make or break. By that I mean, the buyer you've identified has a clear pain point and the product that was build addresses that pain point. I've seen launches across different companies struggle because a product was built before fully understanding the buyer need. 2. Lack of alignment on decision makers can derail a launch plan. If decisions makers and decisions that have been made aren't clearly communicated, you could accidentally move forward with the wrong GTM plan without even knowing. I've used the RACI matrix structure to define rolls as well as RAPID. It's not a very sexy topic, but can be highly effective. 3. Pricing is another risky item. If you don't properly research and test your pricing, your product could be underpriced (losing you money), overpriced (causing adoption issues), or could even have the wrong pricing model.

The framework itself for a global product launch doesn't differ from the standard, but the strategy for rollout will very much depend on what you are selling and how your buyer likes to buy. Many companies choose to do phased rollouts or more officially break a global launch down into a collection of smaller launches. This helps de-risk the launch and gives companies a chance to test things out. Here are some factor to keep in mind for a global rollout strategy: * Consider how your buyer makes purchases today and how they want to make them in the future. For example, I've worked on products where historically buyers made purchasing decisions either from a regional perspective, or even at the individual country level, but the trend was to make more decisions at the global level. * Factor in where your existing customers are located globally and if there are any potential pilot or beta partners. It's always nice to have a friendly partner when launching globally so consider if this approach might work for you. * Every country around the world has different language preferences, cultural norms, privacy and security regulations, health systems, and other considerations that are critical to fully understand before launching a global product. You might group launches by countries with similar privacy and security considerations for operational and technical reasons or you could group countries by another factor that's important to your buyer such as language. 

There are different motivations for launching products. For example, beyond solving a buyer problem a company could launch a product to expand TAM, retain customers, or differentiate from competitors. Based on this business objective you should determine specific goals and KPIs to ensure you are tracking towards success. This may look slightly different whether you are B2B, B2C, or B2B2C. That being said, there are some go-to KPIs that most product marketing care about. As PMMs, a key part of our role is finding product market fit and then communicating value to the market. When it comes to launching new products, this is when we get to find out if all the time spent on research and testing is time well spent. Will buyers/users purchase and engaging with the product? Key metrics to consider 1. Buyer Adoption - did your buyers purchase the product? Or, if it doesn't carry an additional cost, did they adopt the new offering? Depending on the launch, you may want to segment your buyers by persona, industry, or new vs. existing customer. 2. Engagement - is the end user utilizing the product? This one is simple, are users utilizing the product as expected and are they satisfied? 3. Market Engagement - press release engagement and corporate comms engagement (press release, social campaign, blog post etc.). 4. Win/Loss - If the product you are launching is differentiating or intended to compete with a specific competitor, consider setting a specific win/loss goal Once you have your end goals set, I recommend setting some leading indicators to help you understand throughout the launch if you are on track to hit your end goals. A few examples here include email engagement on launch emails, webinar attendance for upsells, or website landing page engagement. 

The product launch cycle and how PMM collaborates with others throughout this process can look different at every organization. In my experience, PMM is involved early when the roadmap is being created to provide insight on market opportunity, build business cases to inform prioritization, and represent the customer's voice in roadmap decisions. Once a product has been prioritized to the roadmap, PMM is involved on a regular basis to help test early prototypes with customers, build out the GTM strategy including pricing/packaging, and put together messaging and positioning. When it comes time to launch, PMM is taking the lead on market rollout strategy and will stay involved post-launch to evaluate success and future plans. If stakeholders don't reach out to involve you, consider how you might be able to provide value to their process and build trust. No stakeholder likes to feel like you are inserting yourself, but they might need some help understanding where you could fit in. Offering research and following through is a good place to start. I absolutely recommend utilizing a framework for product launch, this gives everyone within the organization transparency into the launch process and shared language to help with communication. You can use a formal framework such as Serious Decisions or Pragmatic Institute and then customize it to your org. so it sticks. Frameworks are most useful when everyone across the entire organization uses the same one. Having an executive champion involved in your framework decision making and rollout is critical. 

I strongly believe that every GTM strategy should start with researching and understanding the market, competitive, and buyer/prospect needs. Above, I mentioned more details about what types of data might be interesting to look at for verticle prioritization, but this list can also apply here. Combining market and more internal business data together helps inform your business case, which ideally happens and comes together before a decision is made to prioritize an offering onto the roadmap. If for whatever reason the business case step was skipped early on or not fully completed, you can still complete it. Better surface potential risks/opportunities before launch than wait and learn after the fact. Beyond starting with research, I recommend spending some time establishing a structure and plan to set yourself, your team, and your company up for a successful launch. This probably includes: * Identifying your key stakeholders and hosting a kickoff * Aligning on a framework/process with clear stage-gates * Decide how you want to communicate and share updates, will you meet weekly, bi-weekly? Is there a slack channel or will you use email? * Set goals and decide how you will track progress as a team * Align on who is the final decision maker on key decisions, who is responsible for each GTM task, who is contributing and pitching in, and who needs to stay informed. Often times the "informed" group may be executives so consider how you will share updates with your executive team. 

Across B2B and B2C companies, one of the biggest influencers in a buying decision is a happy customer. Think about it, when you go to buy something that matters to you, how often do you ask a friend who's used the product how they like it, or look for peer reviews online from trusted sources? Peer feedback, case studies, and references can make or break a purchase decision . Buyers want to know that they can trust you as a company and that your product will deliver what you say you will provide. Without having an existing customer or user base, the challenge of setting up a successful launch becomes much more daunting and risky. Instead of having customer testimonials, you'll have to get creative to find ways to build that trust: * Offer a free trial or free beta program * Include a respected industry influencer in your launch process or as an advisor as you build your product and GTM motion * Find ways to include key personas and potential customers in your research process and make sure your buyers know that their voices were included in the process * Consider if there are other companies your buyers trust that might be open to partnering on a webinar or another channel activity * Spend time making sure you test your messaging and positioning with you key personas so it immediately resonates * If you're in the B2B space, offer to include a key prospective customer as part of your roadmap development (but be sure to set clear guardrails) and make sure they feel heard