Product launches: when should product marketing get involved?
ARTWORK BY Lilit Martirosyan
This post is a recap from last month’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
The tricky part about establishing when product marketing should be involved in product launches is that too often product marketing is either misunderstood or not understood at all. If the product team or the company at-large doesn’t understand product marketing, then you can’t really blame them for not asking for their help in a product launch - what would they even ask for?
It’s our job as product marketers to make sure that our product team counterparts have a clear understanding of what product marketing does and what value it brings.Once that value is established, it’s much easier to move forward and answer questions like, “When should Product Marketing get involved with launching a new product?”
Of course that question is different from, “When does a product marketer expect to get involved in a product launch?” To understand the distinction, I asked product marketers to share if they think they get involved with their product launch processes too early, too late, or at just the right time. Now, this is not an easy topic for product marketers to discuss on social media, but our goal here is to share information that makes everyone’s product launches better. Here are some answers from the community.
As you can see from the responses, the answer is product marketers overwhelmingly believe they’re asked to participate too late in the process. When a product marketer doesn’t get that early invite, they often remember the experience. Here are a few ‘battle scar’ stories from the community about coming in far too late:
But no really, when should product marketing get involved in a product launch?
It’s pretty clear that product marketers want to be informed early and often about a new product launch and can bring more value than just a last minute blog post. So, when is the best time to involve product marketing in a product launch? And why is the answer as early as possible?
The reason product marketing should be added early on in the process is to ensure there’s a differentiated story in place before product development even starts. Thinking about the story first ensures your launch resonates with target personas and that your product is differentiated from competitors based on story and value, not just features.
Minimum Marketable Product - the alternative to MVP
This ‘story-first’ approach is called the Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) process, which is designed to deliver a product or feature set focused on customer value and market viability. This differs from Minimum Viable Product (MVP) process, which focuses on building the table stakes features first, then moving and failing fast to prioritize launching very quickly.
By putting story in the forefront, you’re forced to consider how you’re going to announce the product or feature earlier on in the product development process.
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13 stages of go-to-market strategy:
Understanding customers (When MMP process starts thinking about the story)
Competitor research
Problem statement and solution story
Product positioning
Product messaging
Product development
Beta testing (When MVP process starts thinking about the story)
Develop announcement campaign
End to end user testing
Product QA
Training teammates
Execute announcement
Measure and improve
By thinking about the story earlier, product marketing is empowered to do more than just write the announcement blog once the product is finished. Great product marketing is unlocked when they can partner with the product team from the start of the development process - working in tandem to uncover what customers need, what exists in the market already, and developing a story that will resonate. Once you have a great story, you can start building a product or feature that delivers the value and differentiation you uncovered.
Selling the Minimum Marketable Product Process
Like many product marketers, I’ve been in the situation where I wanted to be involved earlier in the development process, but it doesn’t just happen overnight. You set-up the 1 on 1’s, you maneuver your way into some key product meetings, and you think you’ve done a good job explaining the value you bring to the table. But then you get that Slack message, “Hey! Feature X is ready to go live by the end of the week. Can you write a blog and get an email ready to send?”
Sometimes it takes more than good relationships and clearer explanations of the role of product marketing. Don’t get me wrong, those things are still important, it’s just not a silver bullet solution. One additional tactic to help break down the internal walls and get more buy-in for earlier product marketing involvement is demonstrating your value using the ‘future press release’ test made famous by Amazon.
The idea is to create a future, fictional press release for any new feature or new product to test the story you’re telling the market. Would this Press Release get the attention of our customers? Will it attract new customers? If the Press Release falls flat, then the story of your launch is probably not differentiated. The exercise forces you to think about the story, not just which table-stake features are being built.
Olivine press release template
Try taking this framework to your product counterparts and practice creating press releases with features on the roadmap. Take the story-first thinking to them early and show them the value you could bring to the launch process when you’re able to start from the beginning as opposed to tacking on an announcement blog at the end.
Note:If you’re reading this and you’re a founder or a product-leader, extend the invitation to your product marketer to work on that next big feature - even if you think it’s too early to start.
Product teams and product marketing are designed to work together. The MMP process works to ensure that whatever you’re building tells a compelling and differentiated story to your target market. Bring the teams together from the start and you’ll see the difference in your next launch.
