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19.1 Product Marketing 🎯

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This section includes an Activity 🎯

Learning objective

So far, you've focused on the planning, designing, and building of a product. But what happens when that product is built and functioning? How do you make sure that users know about it? Getting the information out to users is where your marketing team comes in. Marketing is an especially important part of product work when you are launching a new product or a significant update. In these situations, you'll work closely with the marketing team on tasks to promote the product. As a product manager, you will be involved in creating the marketing message to ensure that your product succeeds.

In this checkpoint, you will learn about the work that marketing teams and other internal partners do to prepare for a product or enhancement launch, and how PMs are involved.

By the end of this checkpoint, you should be able to successfully do the following:

  • Explain how PMs collaborate with marketing teams during product launches
  • Write effective product launch documentation

Ok, before we dive in any deeper, we're going to say this once and for all, Seth Godin is one of the greatest marketing gurus of all time. Check out this Forum video of his.

Marketing and Product Marketing​

A PM's marketing responsibilities and collaborators will depend on the size and structure of the company where they work. Product launches might be handled by the general marketing and support teams (typical for B2B companies) or be led by a dedicated product marketing team (typical of larger or B2C companies). At an early-stage startup, the marketing team can be as small as one person, and the PM will share product marketing responsibilities with them.

If your company has a product marketing team, you might be collaborating with a product marketing manager, or PMM. PMMs are product managers of a specific kind; they are not involved with creating products but are instead dedicated to the marketing side of product work. They work closely with the sales and marketing teams to improve adoption and retention rates. For example, before a product launches, PMMs work on the positioning, messaging, and strategy for launching a product. This is called the go-to-market strategy.

After a product launches, PMMs are responsible for creating demand, increasing user adoption, and helping the product achieve success. Many of these responsibilities overlap with PM responsibilities, and in some companies (especially B2B companies where clients are larger organizations) the PM also acts as the PMM and assumes these responsibilities.

If you work at a company that has a PMM, you'll coordinate closely with them. They serve as an amplifier that spreads your product objectives to your clients. It is in your interests for them to understand your product vision and for you to understand their responsibilities. They can also be an invaluable source of user information to improve your products.

However, in the absence of a product marketing team, PMM responsibilities are shared with the product and marketing teams. In this case, the PM will generate the initial marketing content. The marketing team will revise it and oversee its communication to users.

Whatever your marketing responsibilities are, you need to understand all the considerations involved when your product goes to market. How do you know the product is ready to launch? What should you do to prepare for the launch? What will you need for the launch itself? And what happens after your product has launched? This module will answer all of these questions.

Getting ready to launch​

Your product launch is the date that you make the enhancements or the new product available to people outside your organization. It could be a full launch to all your users, an A/B test launch to see the impact of a change, or a beta launch for select users of your product. There are numerous tasks that will need to be tracked as you get closer to the launch. These include preparing announcements, training users, and creating documentation.

The most basic measure that indicates that you're ready to launch is that your product's features have been thoroughly tested. You are confident that they'll work as expected when launched. That means all the stories for the epic are complete, the stories meet their acceptance criteria, and the features have been tested to ensure they work as expected on different devices.

But simply having working features is not enough for a launch. There are several additional items to consider as you prepare your launch.

Evaluating the impact of your launch​

Most launches will involve releasing new features or updates to features in your product. Some launches are not about new features but will still impact your users. The most common of these types of launches is product maintenance. Product maintenance launches can include database maintenance, operating system upgrades, or hardware upgrades. Such launches are very necessary, but they are not super exciting to the user.

As your team completes their work, consult with the development (dev) and infrastructure (infra) teams to evaluate how the launch will impact your users. As PM, you should already have a sense of these issues, but good questions to review with the team include the following:

  • Will users recognize that something changed?
  • Will users need to take special actions after the upgrade is complete (for example, upgrading an app or changing new settings)?
  • Will there be downtime when your product is unavailable or offline?
  • If there's no downtime, will there be any performance issues during the release (such as slowdowns)?
  • If there are user-facing impacts, which users will be affected? And which parts of the product will be impacted?
  • Do you have any obligations to customers to keep your product working through upgrades? Do you need to maintain another version?

Answering these questions can help determine other considerations, such as when the launch should be scheduled or how the changes should be announced.

Creating announcements​

PMs typically write the first version of a new feature announcement. This is a written summary that the marketing team will revise and send out through an email, blog post, or other user communication so that users can learn about what launched. Your marketing, sales, and other partner teams will provide input and review these for maximum impact and clarity. You will practice writing these types of announcements in this checkpoint's assignment.

Training and documentation​

Will it be clear to users how to use new features? Ensuring this clarity is part of your job. Make sure there's proper documentation for new features and that the right people have been trained on how to use the new features.

Every product has its own way of documenting how it works. If you're at a startup, it might be an FAQ or other brief summary of product use. More mature companies will have a robust documentation system or, if you're lucky, a team who creates documentation. It's a best practice to write documentation early. You can start this process by drafting notes while the feature is in development and fresh in your mind. Later, you can turn these notes into more official documentation to publish and link to in your product announcements.

For training, identify the internal groups that need to understand a new feature. Often, this includes your sales, marketing, and support teams. However, the groups can vary based on your company's organization or the nature of the changes. A good way to inform these teams is to attend their team meetings and provide a preview of new features. You can also use internal communication tools like email, your company's messaging apps, or company-wide meetings to communicate upcoming product changes.

Prepare tracking and dashboards​

Identify and prepare to gather all the tracking data you'll want to monitor to ensure the new feature is working correctly. You'll use your data warehouse or analytics apps to create reports for tracking this data or request the needed tracking from your analytics team if you have one. After the product launches, this tracking will ensure that you have the information you need to track the launch's success from the first moment it's live. You did test the analytics tracking during the quality assurance (QA) step, right?

The launch itself​

When it's time to launch, run through these steps to make sure the launch is successful.

This video by Y-Combinator is super amazing. Do watch it even if you don't plan to start your own company.

  • If the launch requires downtime, make sure that the site is down (for example, disable the tool, notify any users in the tool, and terminate their session). Make sure there's appropriate messaging for why the product is unavailable and when it's expected to be available.
  • After the launch is complete but before the product is made available to all users, test the new features in production to ensure they work. Test the happy path through your site to ensure that there were no regressions of any major features.
  • When you re-enable the product for users, start monitoring the product's analytics to ensure that they are performing as expected. If there are any anomalies—bug reports, irregular user behavior trends emerging, big changes in your key performance indicators , or unexpected outcomes from the new features—investigate them immediately.



Product launches by team​

In planning for a product launch, a best practice is to go to each of your internal partner teams and ask what they need for the launch to be successful. Your product launch benefits when you maximize the chance that other teams will be successful. As the PM, it's your responsibility to prepare and rally the resources needed between the teams.

Who will be your internal partners? Here's a rundown of the teams that are most likely to be involved.

Marketing​

The marketing team is the team that is most concerned about how users find out about what's changed and how it fits with the organization's overall marketing messages. Their work can include the following tasks:

  • Creating customer communications about new features
  • Advertising online
  • Creating website, social media, and PR content around the new launches
  • Creating collateral for sales teams to present to clients
  • Identifying conference and industry opportunities to showcase the product

Sales​

Sales teams, especially in B2B sales, want to know what's changing and how it impacts their ability to sell the product. Their needs and responsibilities can include the following duties:

  • Training on the new features
  • Collateral and documentation about the new features
  • Information about pricing and availability
  • Opportunities to give their clients and prospective clients advance access or roadmap information about upcoming product enhancements

Support​

Support teams need to be experts on new changes as soon as they are launched so that they can seamlessly support your users in using the new feature. You can help them with the following tasks:

  • Prelaunch training on the product updates (remember, the support team is on the front line with clients, so never leave them unprepared!)
  • Internal documentation and guidance for how to handle any expected user issues
  • A process to provide feedback about the launch
  • In-product announcements about new features for users
  • Product help and documentation for users (helping address user issues so they may not need to contact support)

Analytics​

Whether you have an analytics team or you're doing analytics yourself, set up tracking for the launch's new features by taking the following steps:

  • Test all your analytics to make sure any new events or tracking is working correctly.
  • Identify any user flows where there is an unusual drop-off in user engagement.
  • If the launch features sought to address user issues that were observable in the reporting (such as making upgrades in Gmail's spam filtering algorithm check that result in users reporting fewer incoming emails as spam), monitor how that trend has changed.
  • Set up dashboards, alerts, and other automated tracking features for your product.

A future module will go deeper into the legal and ethical issues of product work, but for now you should focus on launch-related issues. If your products handle medical data or financial services, you will review any product changes with the company's compliance team much earlier in the process (such as while defining the user story). When defining user stories, you will need to be aware of terms of service or client contract commitments that might need to be addressed. Examples of such commitments could be updating terms, renegotiating terms, or navigating around defined limitations.

Below are some issues to review with your internal legal and compliance teams:

  • Any changes to data sharing because of new tracking, third party integrations, or use of user information in the product
  • Changes to the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy needed to cover product changes
  • Any B2B client contracts that might be affected by the product updates in the launch

At the very least, you want these teams to clearly understand any updates you're about to launch. This will help them best protect the company should any concerns arise.

Creating great announcements​

As a PM, you are the world's leading expert on your product. You will therefore be central in creating announcements for your product's launches. There are two kinds of announcements you might need to create when launching a product or feature: launch announcements and downtime announcements.

A launch announcement briefly explains the new feature or features. For example, many products will show a brief announcement in the app the first time a user launches it following a new release. These announcements typically include the following features:

  • A summary of the new feature
  • Any details relevant to target users
  • Images or a link to a video explaining how to use the new feature or features
  • Links to documentation to learn more about it

The second kind of announcement is a downtime announcement. If the launch will have any impact on your users, let them know early on. See below for some specific items you should include in your announcement:

  • When the downtime will happen and when the product will be available again
  • What parts of the product will be impacted (for example, larger platform tools have releases that only impact specific functional areas)
  • Who will be impacted—everyone or just some users?

How to announce​

Announcements should be communicated widely and in a manner that will be most effective for users. Here are some options for sharing information with your users:

  • Traditional mail
  • Emails to your users
  • A blog post
  • Twitter or other social media with a link to your blog
  • Notifications or messages that appear in your application

Use a combination of these methods to increase the likelihood that users will be exposed to the information. For example, some users might have unsubscribed from your emails or don't check their email often. To reach those users, you might consider using other forms of communication, like a notification in the product, to ensure that more users know what to expect.

Think carefully about when to make your announcements. If you want to put out a new feature announcement, the best time to share it is immediately after the feature has launched. This timing lets users try the new features right away. However, if users need to prepare for the features in any way (such as changing settings to ensure a proper migration to a new version), you should inform them well in advance. You might also consider using analytics to identify users that haven't made those changes and follow up with them as needed.

It is especially important to give users sufficient notice to prepare for product downtime. Good times to inform your users include a week before, the day before, and immediately after the site is back up. Informing users will also reduce the number of support requests; if users don't know what's happening, they will be confused about why the site is down.

Work with your dev and infra teams to schedule downtime when it will have the least impact on your users. For example, if you know the product has the lowest user engagement after 9 PM your local time, that's when you should schedule any downtime. It might be inconvenient for your team to work late, but users will appreciate—and expect—every effort to reduce downtime inconveniences.




Announcement structure​

A great announcement includes all of the following features:

Direct subject line or title. Use six to eight words to briefly describe the new feature or features. If you write this effectively, you'll capture the attention of users. Imagine seeing the subject line in your inbox, and make sure it's something that your users would want to open.

Brief summary. The first few lines of your announcement should be a brief summary of the new feature. If there are several different things you're announcing, list them out in short bullet points so that users can easily skim the list and decide if they want more details.

More details. After the main points are communicated, you can write a few lines giving more details, as well as including pictures or video of the changes. You should provide enough information so that users can dive in and try using the new feature. This announcement is also where you should provide links to additional documentation or information for where users can learn more about the new feature.

How can they get it? If there are specific changes or tasks users need to complete to get the feature, include them in the announcement. If this change is coming soon, let users know when it's coming or how they can learn more about it.

Tips to make your announcement better​

Try these best practices to make your announcements more effective:

  • Keep it brief. Focus on the one or two points you want users to know. You can always include links to additional documentation or detailed instructions.
  • Show, don't tell. You can avoid a lot of text by using well-placed photos or links to videos that don't just explain what's new, but actually demonstrate it.
  • Focus on the value, not the function. Tell a story that helps users understand why this is valuable for them. You might be excited about the details of the technology, but your users don't necessarily share that excitement. Tell them why this launch will make their life better.
  • You, not we. Keep the messages focused on the customer. Messaging like "We're proud to announce…" puts the focus on your company or team. That's fine for internal communications, but when you are talking to your customer, your focus should always be on them: You, the user, gets these improvements. Let your customers know that this announcement is about them, not you.

Product launch examples​

Below, you can find a few linked examples of how leading companies manage their product announcements. Explore these examples in depth to see the above-described best practices in action:

Activity 🎯​

Respond to the following prompts:

  • Write a launch announcement email draft for the iPhone fingerprint unlock. Review it against the best practices described in the checkpoint to make sure it's effective.
  • You run a financial software product for enterprise clients. Your system is going through a major update, and will be down for three days. Write up your plan for communicating this. When will you schedule the release? How will you inform clients? Which internal partners should you plan to include, and how?

Add a link to your work in your Notion page or notebook.