Determining Announcement Priority & Tactics
Releasing new product is the absolute best opportunity to engage with your target audience. Make the most of your precious opportunity by making a splash with a comprehensive, compelling announcement. Here is a quick guide on how to determine how much effort, what tactics you should leverage, and how it might all work together to drive action.
Announcement Priority
How much muscle should you put behind your product announcement? All features are not created equally and not every launch will deserve all of the bells and whistles of a big announcement. So, one of the most important questions you’ll answer when thinking about making an announcement is, ‘What should the announcement priority level be?’
Once you define this, you can follow the announcement plan for that priority level. The announcement priority chart below will help you define whether your announcement should be P1 (top priority), P2, P3 or P4 (lowest priority):
Determining the announcement priority level
| P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | New product / major updates to existing products. Introduces brand new functionality. Enables new use cases / jobs to be done within product relevant to existing users and new users. Drives new demand for product. | Broad impact to existing users. May have some relevance to new users. Introduces new functionality or expands / enhances existing functionality. | Small new feature / improvement. New functionality is limited. Mostly enhances existing functionality | Minor improvements made to the product. No new functionality. Perhaps a bug that customers reported. |
| Primary Audience | Prospective customers | Existing Customers | Existing Customers | Existing Customers |
| Secondary Audience | Existing Customers | Prospective customers | - | - |
| Goal | Big ↑ traffic; Big ↑ signups; Media coverage; New user behavior; Cross-sell / Upsell | Small ↑ traffic; Small ↑ signups; New user behavior; Feature adoption; Cross-sell / Upsell | Awareness; Customer satisfaction; Feature adoption; Upsell | Awareness; Customer satisfaction |
| Examples | New product, funding | Key feature | Feature for subset of users | Bug fix |
Announcement Tactics
Changelog
The lowest possible effort announcement—only recommended for bug fixes and small feature changes. This can be as simple as a page on your site, or you can use a tool like Beamer.
In-app
An in-app message that shows to users when they log into your product. Great for products with a larger existing user base who log infrequently.
Website banner
A temporary banner that lives at the top of your website so that all visitors to your site see the announcement and can click through to the blog post or product page.
Blog
An editorial post on your blog explaining what’s new, the thinking behind it, and maybe even what’s next.
An email, usually designed (not plain text, though that works well in certain scenarios) announcing your new product with a call to action to learn more.
Great for B2B companies—LinkedIn has certainly changed over the past few years from a place you only go when you’re job hunting to a social platform with a professional tone (although even that is devolving). Don’t be shy to direct message people in your network and inviting your followers/connections to follow your business page.
Here’s a guide to making announcements on Twitter that build engagement.
I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. While it feels like 90% of the content there is political dribble and I hate posting there, it does consistently drive traffic, more so than Instagram. Depends on your audience, of course, but don’t skip this channel.
The breakdown of Facebook demographics by age include:
51% of 13–17 year olds use Facebook
76% of 18–24 year olds use Facebook
84% of 25–30 year olds use Facebook
79% of 30–49 year olds use Facebook
68% of 50–64 year olds use Facebook
46% of 65+ year olds use Facebook
Great for consumer brands—B2B companies don’t typically invest in an Instagram strategy early on. That said, it’s not hard to create a profile and post 9 images so you have a full grid so it might be worth at least having a basic Instagram profile if people look for you there. At the very least, to lock down your handle.
TikTok
TikTok is a nascent but exponentially growing social video-sharing platform focussing on short, authentic videos—great to consider for B2C companies. The reach can be huge. For example, a friend of mine who does character comedy has 9,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 150,000 on TikTok. Same person, same content.
YouTube
If you have any video at all, upload it to YouTube. I used to use Wistia for embedding videos on a website, but now that YouTube has better settings and controls, I think it’s better not to split your traffic.
Medium
Similar to a blog post, writing on Medium can be a great way to cross-post a product announcement to reach new audiences.
Product Hunt
Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.
Podcast Guest
You could make a guest appearance on a podcast talking about thought leadership related to your product space and in your opening let people know about the product launch and offer a discount for those who sign up with a unique podcast code.
Live Event
Announce your product while on stage giving a talk at a conference or host a virtual live event (not recommended for early-stage companies).
Press
The holy grail of product announcements! If you can get the press to write about you, tell me how! Typically you need to be a big deal for the press to cover a product announcement. If you’re a little less of a big deal, sometimes you can land press by coupling a funding announcement with a product announcement. What’s easier to land, is a mention in an article that a journalist is already writing in the space you’re in.
For example, FMP Founder, Ambika Nigam is building Zeit, a career path discovery platform, and she was featured in the Fortune article: Now is a great time for a drastic career change.
