Ready to Launch

Product launches are arguably one of the most critical and strategic cross-functional processes that product marketers must drive.

As I introduced in my last article, “Product Marketing Team-Ups: Product Management,” product launches – and in particular launch tiering – is an important foundational process to define.  This is especially true as your company begins to grow and the number of individuals involved spikes. To recap, launch tiering is the decision that scopes the relative size and impact of the launch to determine the amount of time, resources, and investment required to go to market across sales, marketing, enablement, support, partners, etc.

While launch tiering processes are unique to every tech company, I’ve shared a sample leveling here to share some general approaches, as well as a swag estimate as to how many of these launches would need to be managed annually.  The actual number would clearly depend on the size of your business and product portfolio.

• Tier 1: Major product launch (Maybe 2-4/year). Either a brand new product is being introduced, or a very game-changing upgrade is being released for an existing product.  These launches will typically expect a significant opportunity to gain market share or defend against churn and competitive threats.  They will receive the full court press of go-to-market including major sales, CX, presales, and partner enablement; new content spanning the full marketing and sales funnel; PR and analyst relations outreach; and a diverse marketing campaign involving a variety of demand gen channels.
• Other types of Tier 1 launches: Not every ‘all-hands-on-deck’ launch involves major product deliverables.  Tier 1 can be reserved for any game-changing announcement that needs broad messaging, training, and go-to-market planning. Examples include the launch of a newly acquired product through M&A, professional services offerings, differentiated and value-added expansion of customer support options, the launch of existing products into new markets (e.g., global expansion, vertical expansion, new personas supported), impactful partnership announcements, or major changes to pricing and packaging.
• Tier 2: Major product enhancements (Maybe 10-20 per year). May include a mix of a few new and exciting features, as well as some critical capabilities that were previously lacking and now better positions your business to be competitive and reduce churn. But because you’re not necessarily first, best, or only to market with these capabilities from a competitive perspective, you may not choose to do the full public marketing campaign because you’re not looking to promote the fact that you were behind the competition. But you’ll still likely plan relevant demand gen campaigns, major internal training to support the new capabilities, and major customer communications to let them know about these improvements.
• Other types of Tier 2 launches: Similar to the alternative Tier 1 launches, there may very well be significant new services, support, partnership, pricing, or other announcements that will require significant messaging, training, and communication but may not necessarily merit as many resources or investments to promote based on the anticipated business impact.
• Tier 3: Minor product enhancements (Can be > 100 per year). These can be new features, improved usability or product design, additional technology integrations or APIs, new reports, or any number of enhancements that would improve the overall customer experience.  These enhancements are included in any product roadmap because they address competitive gaps, customer requirements, and adoption challenges, and even may include experimentation with bleeding edge features to test customer interest. While the marketing effort will likely be limited to website copy updates, brochureware, and other bottom-of-funnel documentation, it’s still critical that internal sales, presales, and support stakeholders are fully aware of what’s being delivered, why it’s valuable, and how to deploy, use, and support it.
• Tier 4: Bug fixes (Can be 100s to 1000s per year).  This type of release is not always officially branded as a “real tier” because they most often focus on bug fixes, hotfixes, and patches that are critical to support escalations or known issues with previously launched capabilities.  These releases would not receive go-to-market promotion but may require communications to support other internal technical stakeholders as well as potential account management and customer communications if the issues were known to be causing problems.

Virtual Tiering: When the sum is greater than the parts

One of the most strategically valuable recommendations a product marketer can bring to the table is to identify opportunities to combine multiple lower-tier launches into a major campaign theme, thereby creating a larger virtual tier.  For example, let’s imagine you have two distinct product launches that focus on different products in your portfolio – and the actual product enhancements only really qualify each of these enhancements as a Tier 2 (using the definitions above).

Now imagine if both products are being sold to the same persona, offer some interoperability, and are both pieces to solving a bigger common problem. For example, let’s say these separate products address unique security challenges that a Chief Information Security Officer cares about. I’m oversimplifying here, but what if you created a campaign theme on “Reducing the cost of securing your business” or “Doing more with fewer security resources” and tied both Tier 2 enhancements into a bigger productivity, efficiency, and cost reduction campaign?

Now you can plan a major virtual Tier 1 launch that is focused less on the specific features and enhancements being released, and instead, take the opportunity to drive a major business-value-centric launch that can differentiate your business and provide new sales and marketing entry points.  For more on value-based marketing, check out my article, “A Balancing Act: Product Marketing and Solution Marketing.”

Final recommendations for product marketers

Create a tiering calculator

Document the series of questions and considerations being made when determining appropriate tiering with your product management colleagues.   Question categories will include:

• Customer impact (increasing ROI, addressing gaps, increasing renewal rates)
• Competitive impact (catching up, jumping ahead, improving win/loss rates)
• Adoption impact (improving adoption, reducing churn)
• Enablement complexity (sales, presales, support, partners)
• Business impact (expanding addressable market, increasing average sales price)

Build an activity “Menu” for each tier

Certain activities or deliverables are likely required for every tier (e.g., technical communication), and some that may only be reserved for a major Tier 1 launch (e.g., press release, event keynote).  As the launch manager for most launches – especially Tier 1 and Tier 2 – product marketers should build a complete menu – or checklist – of GTM launch deliverables to consider when planning the unique requirements for each.

Types of common deliverables to consider including in this checklist include:

• Updated product messaging/marketecture
• Campaign messaging
• Website copy
• Competitive battle cards
• Pricing and packaging updates
• Analyst briefing decks and demos
• Press release/media outreach plan
• Corporate blog/social posts
• SDR scripts/email copy
• Sales/presales/support/partner enablement
• High-value content for demand gen, outreach, and website call to action (CTAs) (Top-of-funnel/TOFU thought leadership, middle-of-funnel/MOFU best practices and solutions, bottom-of-funnel/BOFU product-centric information)
• Video content for website, events, CTA (product demo, explainer videos, promotional videos)
• Internal and external FAQs
• Customer communications
• Event decks and demos (e.g., live events, webinars, sponsored events)

I hope this has been valuable – would love any feedback or suggestions to add to help product marketers build and scale their launch management processes!