How do you prioritize your product launches?

[Ashley Faus]

I recently participated in a rousing roundtable discussion about getting everyone on the same page for product launches, navigating which activities to include in a launch, and how to prioritize different levels of launches, so I figured I'd keep the discussion going 😀

One key point: I recommend a tiering system for product vs. feature launches. The tiers include criteria about the impact of the feature that's launching (or series of capabilities, in the case of a full product launch), and the activities associated with each tier.

For example:

Tier 1: Impact: All customers, market-level, significant company revenue

Activities: Press, social media (product and brand handles, personal handles), newsletters, blog (executive byline), Community series, website update, event keynote, multiple demos, paid promotion (ads, boosting social media, sponsored content, etc.), in-product notifications and/or navigation updates

Tier 4: Impact: small sub-set of users, minimal revenue, limited/no market

Activities: limited social media, single Community post, limited newsletter promotion

The key is how much awareness and attention you want to drive to the new feature or product. If this is creating a new category and/or a new capability, you want to use pull all the marketing levers.

You can also grab free templates:https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/product-launchhttps://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/templates/go-to-market

[Teodora V]

I find this very useful @Ashley Faus,

we work with a tiered approach for our marketing campaigns (which often include product or big feature launches), but I feel that's a relatively new thing (I've been in my new company for about 10 months now), and it's still being figured out.

It's relatively easy for minor features, but for big Tier 1 campaigns, the amount of people, departments, and communication channels involved is so significant that you barely escape complexity and misunderstanding along the way. 🫠

[Ashley Faus]

So glad it's helpful! 

And YES, the complexity and communication gets tricky when you're working on a big launch 😅