AMA: Quizlet Head of Product Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Product Launches

I think it really depends on the scope and scale of launch and your launch cadence. It’s important to strategize with company leaders and your head of PR to agree on an ideal product launch cadence in a given year so that PR has enough substance to work with (and enough notice to plan for it). For example, if your industry has any key dates, seasonal moments, or editorial debates going on, you’ll likely want to align at least once a year with one of those. That can magnify your PR team’s likelihood of gaining traction. All in all, I’ve found PR colleagues to be helpful partners in my launches, but unless you’re really going all-in on large launch (brand new tech, new audience, new business model), I think you need to create a pretty big “platform” moment to capture the kind of attention that’s going to make a big difference. For launches at Quizlet, I see PR as one part of a bigger puzzle and I trust the Comms team to advise on what makes the most sense, since the corporate comms narrative is usually much bigger than one key launch. For those reasons, I tend to spend a lot more time focusing on channels that connect to my direct target audience on- and off-platform. A few ideas: * As your company invests more in a thought leadership platform, you can think about launches as a great opportunity to create a big event like a conference to bring together leaders in your field and inspire your customer advocates. * If your launch isn't suitable for top tier coverage, consider scoping your PR plan to the spaces where your launch will gain most interest. What industry publications are worth pursuing? * Think about types of external validation that could be worth pursuing such as efficacy studies or reviews by experts in the field. * It can be worth gathering inspiring customer stories with a human interest angle, especially if you have a beta launch and have to time to pull those together ahead of launch.

If your industry thrives on frequent technology updates, quarterly can make sense, or potentially even more frequently than that. It really comes down to how you balance out your marketing and product calendars. What events or “moments” has your company established that serve as anchors your loyal customers begin to rely on? Try to rally around those. You may also need to invent new moments that position your brand relative to other industry events, typical purchase cycles, and news. How tech savvy is your buyer and end user? Orient to a cadence that feeds their appetite -- meaning don’t overwhelm non-tech people with tons of feature launches if you can instead group and simplify the message. But if your typical audience is really deep into using the product, it can be a strategic benefit to show you’re always innovating and improving. That said, a lot of features aren’t worth a big “launch.” You still want to take a number of steps in the launch process, but making noise about everything you do can backfire. If I’m reading between the lines, it sounds like your company might be launching more frequently than you think is ideal. That could be true. You have to zoom out as well and make sure that the key launch messages are laddering up to a broader brand platform. If you’re “launching just to launch something” that will come through and can erode your currency and customer trust when it’s time to market the “really important product” and message.

1. No clear messaging target - it’s almost impossible to write copy for everyone, so it ends up being for no one. In this scenario, we also become more tempted to use our internal lingo in absence of anything more specific, which almost never works. Even if you want to reach a broad audience, decide who is most important to influence and write to them. 2. Adding more features or products to a page rather than recontextualizing the whole. Make sure you’re not just positioning the feature or single product. Stuffing a page with more info sometimes works, but it's a strategy with diminishing returns. What does this launch change or shift about the story you’re telling as a brand (across your portfolio)? You don’t necessarily need to reskin everything, but make sure to take a step back to see if there are opportunities to simplify, even as you add more complexity. 3. Putting a lot of effort into a low tier improvement. Hey, let’s be real, I’ve done this several times before. We do it because we want to appease that PM or because your manager asked you to. But before you plan a whole GTM launch motion, think twice. Your time is valuable! Not all features/products are created equal. 4. Forgetting to schedule a premortem + an internal kickoff. Your support and CS team will thank you! We lead busy lives as PMMs and already have so many meetings, but as you zoom towards launch, you need to make sure internal stakeholders are informed with plenty of time to get up to speed, create plans and macros, and assign owners to monitor higher risk issues. PMM doesn’t have to always own this step, but since you’re working to prepare everyone with common language and external plans for launch day, you’re usually going to be a trusted leader who can rally the crew, ask for feedback, and get people pumped up. 5. Failing to define success metrics for PMM. As a business you probably have some OKRs or KPIs associated with this launch. Are any of them marketing driven? Whether it’s % of active users who reach an upgrade page, # of MQLs, and/or seeing a X% lift in conversion for key segments, you need to pick something you can influence directly. Doing this is important for visibility and helps make sure you’re really learning rather than feeling anxious about secondary metrics (which are important but dependent on many other inputs).

* Data! Everything you do once the launch has started should be about strengthening the feedback loop between your tactics and your outputs. Make sure to have everything you need and want to track in a built-out dashboard or in the form of queries you can run daily or at least a few times a week during launch. If you’re delayed on measurement, you’ll be slower to diagnose problems and learn from what’s working/not. * Conduct user research. If you had a pre-launch beta group great, follow up with them, but also reach out to new folks who have considered, purchased, or churned from your product post-launch. Pulling for feedback about what’s standing out and what’s falling short can help your product team know what to prioritize in future releases. Products often need more polish after initial launch, so improve the interpretation of your quant metrics with qualitative insights. * Make use of high visibility real estate. If you have certain sections of your app or site dedicated to “new and noteworthy” highlights, negotiate to use those and make a plan for how long you’ll have messaging in those high visibility spaces. * Lifecycle. Nothing shocking here. Make sure the product or feature makes its way into important nurture flows. And beyond that, if you didn’t already do so before launch, consider what new behavioral and time-based triggers would be a good fit for your target audience’s natural purchase or adoption motion. * Empower your cross-functional team to collect success stories. Can any of them be evangelists? Are they organically sharing or educating others about it? If so, amplify their messages. If not, even if you have to do a little more digging, can you test using testimonials, case studies, and mini stories to illuminate value?

I don’t have a framework, per se, but here’s a list of actions I tend to go through when creating the plan. Strategy steps (Pre-tactics) * Give the thing a name and decide how important it is. Obviously this should be a given, and it’s not really a tactic, but I find it can be a difficult step, depending on how established your guidelines are here. Is it a whole new product? A feature? What else is it like amongst your portfolio? Start thinking through some basic name usage guidelines. Then, don’t forget to come back and edit these once you’ve gone further through the process. Once they are locked in: share, share, share. You can avoid future blunders across teams with well-written cheat-sheets. * This is the step where you also define what kind of launch you’re doing (minimal, beta, soft, full) and whether it’s going to be a slow roll out or designed to reach most eligible users at once. * Target audience, core positioning, and messaging always come first. Again, not a tactic, but don’t skip this step. It informs what tactics could be a good fit. * Figure out how and when to build a “moment.” Now that you have your key message and audience defined, plan a date that you can think of as a real “event.” Brainstorm with colleagues about how to infuse the moment with inspiration and connect it to your brand story. Make sure to include creative folks at this stage as they can help you think big about a number of options for “big ideas” that effectively communicate the “so what” of your launch. For example, do you want to create a sense of suspense and exclusivity? Do you want it to feel like a big party? Do you want to come off as authoritative and highly trusted thought leaders? Think through the right kind of emotion and atmosphere for your message, audience, and timing. Getting more tactical * Do a quick channel audit. What channels have you used in the past? Was the ROI on time and money there? Are there channels that you’ve kept using, despite mediocre performance? Also, what channels work best for different stages of the marketing funnel? Make sure you have a good mix of awareness-building and conversion-supporting channels. * Pick a few experimental bets. Talk to folks in your growth marketing and channel org (if you have them). These could be new social or ads channels, events, or even high visibility partnerships. Note: I recommend doing this for bigger launches or those with niche audiences that are new for your company and harder to reach. It probably doesn’t make sense for smaller launches. * Discuss the right PR strategy. If you have an expert comms person, talk to them about whether your launch could be considered newsworthy if contextualized in a broader story the company or the industry are trying to tell. * Establish a sense of timing that fits with your message(s), your moment and your audience. * Don’t forget the guts of your existing customer experience. What about your existing experience needs to be redone? With a big change you may have to audit all your evergreen lifecycle comms and help center content. If you’re in B2B, rework all your sales collateral. Beyond basic updates, consider picking some key comms and pieces of content to use to really feature this new product or feature. * Creative strategy and campaign building. Imagination counts! Don’t be like everyone else, stretch yourself with out of the box ideas. Think about attention-grabbing and entertaining tactics. This is where there are no rules -- which is the fun part, just ensure you have some budget (and exec buy-in) on any bigger swings.

There was a similar question below, so I encourage you to check that out, but otherwise here’s a list of other thoughts that come to mind: * For initial launch campaigns I always try to consider what can be repurposed and reskinned post-launch for use in lifecycle campaigns, ad campaigns, and user education. That means build things in a modular way so you can take out any key dates or "brand spanking new" launch messaging without having to fully redesign collateral. * Post launch try conducting a survey or a handful of interviews with users who have organically discovered and used the new feature/product as well as a handful of users who you thought would have discovered it organically (because they’re active users in your target audience). Figure out how people discovered and “missed it.” Plan A/B tests with more informed hypotheses. * Set ongoing goals around feature/product awareness and adoption. If these goals aren't visible and prioritized, it'll be harder to get the resources you need to continue to invest. * What changes can you make in your product to help increase awareness and adoption? Do you have a product tour? Do you use badges to indicate when something is new or “popular”? * Also make sure you set expectations with leadership and stakeholders. Some releases will come and fade quickly because they aren’t big enough, they’re table stakes, or they aren’t differentiated from competitors. Ideally as a PMM, you're influencing the roadmap enough to ensure that those things are happening, but if it’s a “minimal launch,” make sure to set expectations that this product/feature not likely to hold sustained attention. * Consider building an ongoing buzz campaign that lets you build continued credibility with this product, such as a speaker series or a sustained influencer campaign. * Especially if you’re making continued improvements to the product, plan a few post-launch comms to users who didn’t convert. * Keep refreshing your creative to speak to improved benefits in your paid ads and more evergreen campaigns. No rest for the weary! It’s easy to push this to the bottom of the list, but if it’s an important product/feature, you need to keep honing and refining messaging until you see that “click” with the market. * Work with your data analysts to gather proof points and marketing claims to your sales pages. * Gather customer quotes and testimonials, especially if you can ask them how you compare to a competitor. In your follow-up surveys, consider asking sentiment-based questions (like CSAT) and outcome-oriented questions in a format that you can use as a proof point. For example, ask how they feel about their grades since using the product. Then you can share, "XX% of students report better grades!" 

Beyond the 5 “don’t”s I listed in another question, here are two others: * Not having tight enough clarity and communication about what the launch stages look like for all stakeholders. Sometimes it’s fine to have a more decoupled feature/product release and marketing launch, but oftentimes that creates a poor experience for users and steals some of the thunder from your "moment." Not to mention, it tends to create some internal churn and chaos. This one seems like a given, but it's common for engineering, product, and marketing to interpret launch terminology differently. Even if your system for tiering launches is super codified, you’ll often have new folks on the team and so it is really important to work with your PM or PO to explicitly describe the scope and rules for each stage of rollout. It’s also important for those folks to update your changelog as those things happen, since many other parts of the launch are dependent on these stages. A lot of teams use a PMM launch “tiers” rubric to better define this, but I see that as just a starting point. I recommend you make the scale and scope really explicit for each launch, and check in for alignment, often. Here’s how I think about some of the options - but this is only a starting place as every launch is different, with different goals and requirements. * Minimal launch - Usually this is more of a direct release that doesn’t involve much from marketing except updating a few evergreen marketing pages/placements. Decide if this will be a rolling launch or if it will be released to everyone at once. * Beta launch - When you are investing more into a product and want to continue making improvements prior to your moment of big fanfare, you can launch in beta to get feedback before going big. These can be closed (by invitation) or open. Decide if this will become a minimal, soft, or full launch following the beta period. Decide if beta participants will be part of creating buzz and influence at your real launch or if it’s mainly for research and development. * Soft launch - Pick one or two channels and/or scope your target to portions of your audience who will appreciate it most. Decide if this will be a rolling launch or if it will be released to everyone at once. * Full launch - Go big with your message through as many channels as are appropriate for your target audience and through a strong concentration of internal team resources and alignment. This should ideally be launched to all eligible users at once (post QA). * Not investing in the right creative and using too many words. As much as we wish it, people don’t read. Distill your message down to a simple story and then find a way to communicate that with very few words. Test out different approaches with marketing and product design to illuminate the value. If you’re reading this, you probably already know this key point, but I’ll say it anyway because we all need reminding: demonstrate benefits, don’t yammer on about features.

Some of our success is up to us, and there are also conditions for success that are out of our control. You can learn to recognize when those conditions are and aren't present to advocate for what you need to increase your chances of having an awesome launch. I'll try to speak briefly to both. Conditions for success (out of your control) 1. You and others having real confidence that the product/feature is providing meaningful user value 2. Singular company or group focus on making the most out of a key moment and organzing resources around that 3. Company commitment of resources and imagination to keep investing in the product (post-launch) It's possible to get your way to success without one or two of these, but it's rare and the internal alignment works wonders for momentum and decision making! What I got right 1. Understood my target audience really well to inform messaging 2. Understood historical performance of channels and thought through what would work with my audience to nail the right channel mix 3. Planned far enough ahead to invest in telling the story through meaningful creative (showing more than telling) 4. Brought all stakeholders along throughout the journey (I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get this fully right, but attention to the question, "who needs to know?" is essential) 5. Planned ongoing engagement and adoption measures beyond launch

This is a good question. It depends how much buffer time you have leading to launch and whether you’re in a comfortable place to execute on each phase and collect feedback at each step. For me, I often need different people’s input at different stages. The two stages I need input in most are 1) after drafting positioning, messaging, and high level launch tactics and 2) about a four to two weeks ahead of the launch to ensure there’s time to make any last minute adjustments. That said, stakeholders who are key to executing on that plan should be looped in much more frequently in the stages between step 1 and 2 above. Marketing colleagues and product and engineering stakeholders who own marketing surfaces should be consulted often. One thing I’ve learned the hard way, is that you need to be very explicit about the type of feedback you’re looking for in a given stage. It can also be good to note if there’s a particular portion of the plan you’d like stakeholders to look closely at or if there’s a deadline for feedback. I’ve found it helps to have a living document that you update as needed. If I make any bigger changes to the plan of record, I tag stakeholders who need to know and/or message a broader group in the Slack channel about the launch.

Build from what you know If you’re doing this to prepare for a launch, I’d consider whether this new feature or product is for a similar audience that you already target. If are marketing to a large portion of your existing customers, you may already have some journey insights. It helps to plot these on a buyer/customer journey map. Consider learning more about the competitor journey If you are expanding to a new audience and/or a new category, you’ll want to analyze the customer journey of comparable competitor products. I'd do this first through surveys and then through follow up interviews. What are the key trigger points that move a customer further towards a purchase, an action, or a renewal? What are the failure points? Prioritize the areas that need attention most Once you have your map of the most common pathways for each major segment, it helps to label sections of the journey map that are more consistent. To the extent you can quantify drop off at each micro-step of the funnel, that's ideal. Often these are moments after they’ve bounced from a sales page and when they haven’t returned to your product in some time. Are the majority of users dropping off at a key step or just one segment? Is that a key segment? Make sure to keep testing the flow yourself so you can find any big technical barriers or intuit points that could be confusing or adding too much friction. Continuing building stronger/clearer analytics Then there are moments in the funnel where it's much harder to tell what's going. These are moments when you can't tell if customers are “on track” anymore. What bridges are missing there? Why didn’t they find what they were looking for? What data aren't you tracking that could provide more insight into what's going on? User test new designs before going all in on them Conduct quick user research to hear potential customers share the honest opinions of how they experience your new version of the upgrade page (or whatever the experience is you're testing). Is there something lacking that is making them feel skeptical? Once you learn that, figure out how to proactively provide answers to customers at the right stage of their purchase decison.

It depends on your product and business model. Since Quizlet is a freemium model that offers a ton of value to more than 50 million students each month, we focus a lot on the onsite placements that capture active user attention. Pop up modals and banners can be really useful to get your message out there, as long as you reserve them for special launches (so as not to diminish their attention grabbing value). We often build these placements with a feature flag so we can easily turn them off if they are too aggressive against other health metrics, but on the whole they've been great surfaces to drive awareness and consideration. Also, shameless plug -- if you're curious about Quizlet, we're hiring on the PMM team!

I'd love to ask folks the same question! We haven't had a lot of luck with solutions that cater specifically to PMs or PMMs. Our product and eng teams use Jira most and marketing dabbles in it, but I think the most valuable tool is the one that holds us together (especially with a completely decentralized workforce). So it's the tools that facilitate quick and clear communication that are most indispensable for me. For me that's Slack because I can orient different channels for a few key stakeholder groups. These groups usually are: * One channel for all product, design, engineering, and user operations stakeholders (and anyone else who wants to join) * One channel for all marketing and go-to-market folks which usually includes a PM and a few engineers * A channel or standing meeting with executive stakeholders that's only for reporting on big changes or decisions to get a "head nod" and keep them informed * A changelog for the whole company to track real time updates to the product Beyond that you need a marketing calendar of some kind. But I have yet to find an awesome tool for that, so we keep using Google Sheets. Again -- please comment if you have tools you've found flexible that doesn't add bloat! I also keep a launch plan deck in Google Slides that I update as the primary source of truth when it comes to roles, responsibilities, messaging, target audience, etc.