AMA: Notion Head of Product Marketing, John Hurley on Product Launches

Yes, beta programs are critical to successfully bringing products to market. First, they allow you to gather feedback from early users, which can help you identify and address any issues or concerns before the full launch. This is both related to the product completness and usability, but gaining a deeper understanding of value, the messaging, the target audienc, and informing HOW to launch – not just what to launch. Additionally, beta products can help generate excitement and anticipation around your product, as people may be eager to get early access and be among the first to try it out. For feedback, there is no silver bullet – just intentionality: * In-product survey are good – but product usage data (shoutout my former employer Amplitude) is as if not more important. What do people actually do versus say after the fact in a survey * Must have live conversations with users. "Customer is part of the team". * Market research - what is the broader opportunity, market perception, competitive landscape. This should start before beta but still can inform beta.

I think less about which teams since each organization is different, and more about the functional workstreams and then mapping people to workstreams. I also recommended some models like DACI and RACI. * Positioning / Messaging * Business Case / Modeling * Campaigns * Field & Events * Content * Growth Channels * Comms / PR * AR * Brand * Web * Enablement * Packaging & Pricing * Customer Success (Services, Support, Education) * Partners * Customer Marketing * Technical Marketing (Enablement, Content) Enablement scope really depends on your organization! If youre more product-led / bottoms-up, less important even for large launches. If sales-led, critical since that is your #1 channel and internal customer. 

Decisions on channels starts with segmentation (dividing the market into different segments with specific needs/characteristics) and targeting (analyzing the sectors and choosing which ones to direct marketing efforts towards). Most PMMs then focus most of their energy on the positioning and messaging (developing a strategy or image for a product/service to make it stand out to the target audience). However, determining channel-market fit for the target audience is just as critical. This comes with developing deep subject matter expertise on the target audience – understanding where and how they show so that you can meet them where they are. If you want to get more sophisticated, map those target audiences and channels across a buyer / customer journey. No surprise, Reforge and Brian Balfour have created some great content on this thinking. https://www.reforge.com/resources/marketing-channels https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-channel-fit-for-growth Lastly, don't forget in-product. That's often the best channel to engage with existing customers! We spend overweighted time on email, social, ads compared to engaging in the product. 

Marrying company objectives and vision with customer pain and value – which is informed by user/buyer research and market research. Leads to themes that will help drive value with company and customers. Within those timebound themes, you have product innovation (bundles of features, new products) that teams will be involved in. So you can think of it like this * Company objectives and vision with customer pain and value > Themes > New/Improved Capabilities > Launches Features do not necessarily mean launch. Here is how I differentiate the two. Releases are the individual features, enhancements, and updates shipped into our product on a continuous basis. Supported by Release Marketing function (ex. Feature Release emails). Product Launches are multi-channel promotion campaigns to announce a marquee release or bundling of releases to the market, generate interest, and illustrate how your product delivers value to customers and the business in significant ways. On Tiering – Here is a summary of how my teams have approached tiering: Tier 1 (New Markets or Product Launch ): New major feature/product that will drive significant revenue by attracting new customers to Amplitude. This set of capabilities or product enables access to new markets or win existing segments by substantially differentiating you from the competition. * 1-2 Per Year, 12-18 Wk Timeline, High Revenue Impact Tier 2 (Differentiation Launch): A large new capability or set of features that can drive revenue primarily from our existing customer base through upsells, cross-sells, and attract new customers by increasing the value of existing products. This affects win rates and helps you differentiate from our competition. * 1-2 Per Quarter, 8 Wk Timeline, Medium Revenue Impact Tier 3 (Painkiller Launch): A capability that solves a major pain point that impacts a large portion of users. Could help drive adoption at one of our top customers. Or is strategically aligned with company key bets. * 2-3 Per Quarter, 4 Wk Timeline, >20% Customers Impacted

When it comes to defining goals for product launches, we tend to consider both short-term and long-term objectives. In the short-term, our goals may be centered around acquisition, engagement, and awareness. For example, we might aim to gain a certain number of new users, or to generate a certain amount of buzz on social media in the weeks following the launch. These early indicators can help us understand whether our product is resonating with our target audience, and can give us some early feedback on potential areas for improvement. Long-term goals, on the other hand, are focused on driving sustained usage and adoption. We want users to not only try our product, but to continue using it over time. This may involve goals around user retention or activation rates, as well as measuring how frequently users are engaging with our product. Ultimately, our goals for product launches are tailored to each specific product and our broader company objectives, but it is important that we consider both short-term and long-term goals in order to create a successful launch.

Simple answer here is a great Tiered model, a NPI process (for larger companies), and differentiating between Launches and Releases. Often see many product launches that are really more release marketing versus integrated product launches. You have the greatest outbound marketing launch in the world, but ultimately all the launch and growth levers in the world won’t make new products successful in market without 4 things… * Top-Down Accountability: Executives setting and aligning around targets, and holding each other and stakeholders accountable. * Field/Business Incentives: Who is going to profit from putting the effort into this new product? Iconic incentives (SPIFFs), Quota Accelerators * Specialized Expertise: Especially in SC org and CS expansion, and when sales-led. SC Experts (SME program, Evangelists, PMMs. * Inspiration: Product vision, internal win stories, bottoms-up momentum from field, inbound demand. * Strong NPI: Operational rigor bring products to market

PMM is hard (and awesome) because we are a hub, not a spoke that often controls the final outputs. We’re not growth marketers, or demand gen manager, or brand marketers. However we do influence, inform, manifest, and/or articulate growth strategies and campaigns. Product marketing needs other growth teams to commit and execute. Same goes for traditional demand gen and campaigns – we have a bit more influence there and ability to define demand programs and contribute content, but still heavy reliance on others for execution (campaigns team, ops, etc.). We don’t own channels or many of the teams required for execution. Our role and responsibility are to develop (and coalesce) a GTM (and specifically marketing) plan to propose to cross-functional teams, surface the requirements/dependencies/roles, and coordinate and monitor the cross-functional workstreams. That GTM marketing strategy– along with positioning/messaging, enablement, launches, and research input into product strategy – are our core roles and responsibilities. Product Marketing can bring together all the growth/demand investments into a single view (ex. a Campaign Brief), come to the table with recommendations, and aide in the orchestration of various teams efforts (expose leverage points or conflicts). We can create messaging and content that supports the campaign. But we can not also be the sole execution side (not our expertise, not our area of ownership – literally don't own the distribution channels). This is part of what makes Product Marketing so hard. We’d love to work with Growth to help them refine their programs and tactics, and contribute to areas like messaging (ex. copy for an in-app test, or keywords and copy for SEO/SEM programs).