It's not how big it is, it's how you use it

Season 6, Issue 9 product launches

Sawasdee kah Mehketeers,

Everybody wants a big product launch! It’s a fact of life in marketing. Product launches are often moved to the realm of “product marketing” (which, yeah, fair.) but there’s actually a bigger “all hands on deck” attitude to them that I think gets missed.

There’s a lot of blogs and articles that cover the topics like how to decide how important or big a launch should be (see: Hubspot, smartlook, and UserPilot.) The below diagram is also super well known, and there’s a lot of checklists.

Basically the diagram says more effort should go to innovative feature or product launches that will bring in revenue.

I’ve also found that most “guides” to launches are very research and preparation based, but not a lot delve into the execution. I know this is such an “it depends” topic, but there’s still a lot to share about it.

What I want to cover is the smaller ticket items that add up to a lot when sustained over a longer time period (regardless of which launch bucket they fall into according to the diagram). These are things that are more achievable for smaller teams without huge budgets, and when used altogether result in a high polish launch.

1. Audit your marketing channels

Before you start planning a launch, make a list of everything that’s at your disposal, including your channels. There’s obvious ones like paid and organic social, SEO/SEM, your company blog, PR, etc. The less thought about ones include:

• Employee advocacy channels, including personal LinkedIn banner designs and content they can copy/paste

• In-product messaging channels

• All of your different email programs, including lead nuture, customer newsletter, churn or closed lost lists, and onboarding

• If you have partners who list you on their website or could promote you to their customers or audience

• Anywhere your company has a profile, like G2 or other review sites where you have control over the profile and can add content, links, or images that promote your launch

• Website visitor retargeting (maybe even a specific, related page, depends what you’ve got)

These are all places you could possibly drop a mention of your new feature/product, and it’s worth asking “what could we do with this channel?”

2. Slow and steady wins the race

Not all launches have to be big shindigs. Sometimes, it’s just a date where you start rolling out a new business-as-usual, long-term marketing campaign. Mix it into your existing roster of regulars.

New features or products can mean new angles on existing stances, or new topics to talk about. How can you turn this new perspective into new content and PR, or update existing content?

For example, let’s say you’re adding a feature that’s for an underserved user persona - how can you give them more attention or spotlight topics they care about?

Break up how you talk about this new thing and drip feed it across social channels. Choose one thing to highlight for each post:

• The persona

• Different use cases

• Value propositions

• ROI

• Testimonials

• Functionality or how-tos

The tip here is to decide on what you’re going to highlight first and really hone in on it, otherwise it comes across as jumbled and rushed.

Launches aren’t effective if they’re a BANG followed by silence. Think long term how you’ll continue to market this.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel - some examples

This Tweet thread (X thread?) from a Shopify product manager is a great example of 1) employee advocacy as a channel, 2) an example of one tweet for function, one for value, one for the persona, etc etc, and 3) the types of design assets you might want to consider!

Here’s another employee advocacy example, this time from a sales person on LinkedIn:

Shout out to Steve, we used to work together 👋 Here’s the link if you want to see the video.

For videos and product summaries, I always look to Google’s Youtube channel to see what they’re doing. They use quite different styles, and sometimes will focus on value proposition, while other times will focus on the problem statements, and yet others will be more use case focused. Watch a few, see which ones feel right, and then use that to help write the script or storyboard for your own.

The fact that they use so many different styles also speaks to the “there’s no one right way to do it” perspective, so don’t feel overwhelmed by your own launch strategy.

A paid ads anecdote

Sam Kuehnle, VP of Marketing at recruitment software Loxo, shared an interesting anecdote on LinkedIn that ads featuring product screenshots converted lower than other creatives.

I got curious to see if this was a trend across multiple companies or just something that I "felt" as an end user while scrolling through social feeds.

Turned out the hypothesis held weight 🤓

I looked into 10 accounts and within each, when the same audience, budget, etc. was being used, and the only differentiator was the ads that were served...

...the ads that contained product screenshots were often in the bottom half of performers 🤯

Forgive me for copy/pasting that and retaining the LinkedIn clickbait layout.

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Click clack

Another Tweet/X thread on how “blogs are dead” isn’t true, most teams just aren’t investing in them in the most effective ways, with a breakdown of the blog strategy of a fintech SaaS.

This vegan cheese company did an ebook on the ‘future of pizza’ and the website is sick. The home page is a looped side scroll.

A recent blog from Mutiny includes a field marketing dashboard template, if you’re in need of one! (You do have to put an email address in though)

I considered putting the ad for the nipple bra in here, but I think it’s better if you put it in your Google search history.

Lastly, this Halloween costume.

Joob joob,

Kayla