Review

The 50 questions in this book are thought provoking - the answers less so. The entire book feels like a lead generation tool for ‘Product Marketing Debunked’ - which is referenced multiple times.

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Obviously Awesome

I’ve seen April speak at a conference and she was truly captivating. April is a great communicator, and is shows in this book.

andrewclark.co.uk

Evidence Guided

Directionally I think the advice in this book is spot on - we need more evidence guided product management. The author lays down one of the cleanest arguments to why an evidence guided approach is needed, and why opinion driven product is hopeless. The author also does a good job of hooking this approach into more traditional product development ways of working.

andrewclark.co.uk

Go-To-Market Strategist

A must-read those launching new products wether at a startup or inside a larger organisation. A great resource that can help you structure your GTM approach and be more precise with your strategy and risk taking approach.

andrewclark.co.uk

Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

50 Questions to Validate Your Next Product Launch

Launching a new product is a complex undertaking that requires thoughtful planning, cross-functional collaboration, and a deep understanding of your target market and customers.

The book is organised around 50 key questions across four key areas: understanding your market, validating your messaging and positioning, developing a solid go-to-market plan, and adapting your strategy based on customer feedback and market response. By thoroughly addressing these questions, product and marketing teams can avoid common launch pitfalls and set their new offerings up for success.

Understanding Your Market and Customers Successful product launches start with a deep understanding of your target market, ideal customer profile, and the specific pain points your product aims to address. Key questions to answer include:

• Who exactly are you building this product for? Have you developed detailed customer personas?
• How acute is the pain point you're solving? Will customers view your product as a "must-have" or just a "nice-to-have"?
• Who are your competitors and alternatives? How is your product uniquely positioned?
• Where do your target customers spend time and consume information about products like yours?

By speaking directly with target customers, observing their behaviours, and pressure-testing your product and positioning with them, you'll gain confidence that you're building something people actually want and need. The author recommends doing at least 5-7 in-depth customer interviews per market segment before launching.

Nailing Your Product Messaging and Positioning With a solid understanding of your market and customers, the next step is to craft clear and compelling messaging and positioning for your new product. Important questions to consider:

• Can you articulate your product's value proposition in simple terms that resonate with customers?
• What is your company's overarching purpose and "why"? How does this product support that mission?
• Do customers understand your messaging or do they find it confusing? Have you tested it with them?
• Can you own a particular word or phrase in your market category? Does your messaging use the same language as your customers?
• Have you mapped out your company's overall product architecture and how this new offering fits in?

Product marketers must go beyond just listing features and functionality. To really connect with customers, you need to craft a strategic narrative that illustrates how your product solves real problems. Messaging should appeal not just on a rational basis but also emotionally. And the entire GTM team needs to rally around a consistent way of telling your product's story in the market.

Developing Your Go-To-Market Game Plan Armed with strong positioning and messaging, it's time to build out a comprehensive GTM plan covering all the tactical elements required for a smooth launch. Questions to guide this planning:

• What are your primary objectives and success metrics for this launch? How do they align with overall company goals?
• Who are the key stakeholders and cross-functional partners you need to align? How will you secure their buy-in?
• What specific marketing assets and sales enablement materials will be needed? Who is responsible for each deliverable?
• What does your promotional plan look like across PR, content marketing, demand gen, events, etc.?
• How will you enable your sales team and other customer-facing roles like support? Do you have adequate training planned?
• What systems are you using to coordinate launch activities and track progress? Is everyone clear on timelines and dependencies?

This GTM plan should serve as a centralised roadmap to align the entire organisation around launch goals and activities. It's a living document that will inevitably evolve as you move towards launch. The key is to maintain open communication across teams, quickly adapt to new information, and keep all your cross-functional partners rowing together in the same direction.

Iterating Based on Market Feedback Even the best laid GTM plans rarely survive first contact with the market. That's why it is important to build feedback loops to capture customer reactions and quickly iterate both your product and your GTM approach. Ask:

• What quantitative and qualitative signals will you use to gauge the success of your launch? How will these be tracked and shared?
• At what points in the customer journey are you seeing drop-off? Is this due to product issues or communication gaps?
• What new objections, concerns, or sources of confusion are you uncovering? How can you address these in your messaging and enablement?
• Which marketing and sales assets are most effective? Which should be optimised or retired?
• How are your internal teams holding up through the launch period? Where are the biggest points of friction or burnout risk?

No launch is perfect, but by instrumenting your GTM process to detect issues early, you can adapt quickly and keep things on track. It's also critical to run a thorough post-mortem to document wins, losses, and key learnings that can inform your next launch.

Perhaps the most important theme throughout 50 Questions is the need to put people at the centre of everything you do. Yes, you need tight process and skilled execution to succeed, but at the end of the day, it's all about solving real problems for customers and fostering genuine human connections - both externally and within your own organisation.

How you achieve your launch goals is just as important as whether you achieve them. By taking an empathetic approach that respects your customers' wants and needs, as well as your internal team's well-being and professional growth, you'll be able to navigate the considerable challenges of bringing new products to market.

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Chapter 1: Why So Many Companies Make Mistakes When It Comes to Launch

• We know we should be thinking about how to quantify success as soon as we have a basic product hypothesis - but it’s hard to know how good you are at ‘Go-To-Market’. It’s not just about launch day numbers. External metrics aren’t the whole story either, we want to avoid the internal anti-patterns that create high colleague turnover after a product launch.
• We must balance creating GTM deliverables with managing internal comms. Communicating cross-functionally across the organisation and with executives is a key part of GTM.
• It’s best practice to assign a clear owner for the entire GTM process. Internal stakeholders can have competing and conflicting interests.
• A go-to-market plan is the strategy for how a company plans to reach customers within a given market. A solid GTM plan asks what, why, when, who, and how a company will launch a product or service.
• A big misconception is knowing the difference between a company go-to-market plan, and a product go-to-market plan.
• Common Mistakes:
• Inconsistent marketing messaging between sales, product and support documentation
• Bad communication between different stakeholders
• No process to bridge customer feedback into a product roadmap or marketing strategy
• No understanding of how the marketing funnel should be optimised
• You will need to create a GTM plan and strategy for all of the highest priority products and new features.
• A lot of due diligence is required to launch - involve product marketing as early as possible.
• Siloed goals and misunderstandings between teams slow down progress - reducing velocity.
• Avoid adversarial internal politics, competition and hierarchy - instead empower individuals through trust and team-building.
• Managing time and the priority of GTM deliverables is critical.
• This book poses 50 questions that will give you the foundation you need for a successful product launch. Your challenge is aligning everyone in your organisation so they’d all give the same answer.

Chapter 2: Questions to Validate Your Market and Product

Understanding Your Market

1.Have you identified your target market and market segments?

Identify exactly who your customers are:

• Who are they?
• Where do they spend their time?
• Have you created a character profile of your target customer?
• Have you created and identified market segments?
• What is the size of each segment?
• Is the market big enough and worth selling to?

You need to create a feedback loop to measure customer input throughout the product lifecycle. Involve marketing at every stage so they understand which features are resonating for their target market.

2.Who is your dream customer? Is there a specific type of customer you want to work with

• You need to know who to interview and who to sell to.
• You can narrow to a specific customer type - or try and serve a variety of customers. Either way you need to decide who your dream customer is.

3. How big of a pain point are you solving in your target market? (On a scale of 1-low to 5- high)

• What customers say they want (qualitative response) needs to be validated with their need (quantitative response).
• Get a 3 or less consistently and it’ll be difficult to sell your product - there’s a difference between a desire and a need.
• Be diligent about inquiry on the pain point. Do customers purchase your product after free versions or testing?

4.Do you understand your customers' emotions when it comes to this pain point? Are you appealing to head thinkers, heart thinkers, and full body thinkers?

Capture your customers' pain points and emotions. Dissect what they’re saying and the words they’re using. You’ll then be able to create messaging that connects with your customers on an emotional level. Aim to create messaging that appeals to all types of thinkers (head, heart, gut).

Your customers are at the centre of the process. We live in a time of unlimited choice. Whereas we used to have a few options to choose from, suddenly we're overwhelmed with seemingly endless possibilities. It also doesn't help that we're bombarded with over 10,000 marketing messages a day. Brands face the challenge of rising above the din and proving their worth. Frelicio Miller

5.Do you know the customer's journey intimately? Do you understand how many touch points exist in your customer's journey? Do you know how many touch points customers are willing to engage in before they drop off?

What happens on the journey to purchase. Sit down and map out each and every touchpoint in your funnel prior to conversion and then to advocacy/loyalty.

• Awareness → Introduction
• Consideration → Explanation
• Evaluation → Opportunity
• Purchase → Affordability
• Activation / Delivery → Trust & Accuracy
• Consumption → Enjoyment
• Advocacy → Appreciation

6. Do you know which offers are likely to convert your customers? How can you make your offers more compelling?

• Creating tiers and variety in your product offering can help you capture customers with different needs and budgets.
• Think about ways to make your offering more compelling.
• Think about how you’re different int the market?
• A freemium offering can be an important tier for customers who may be interested in your product but not yet ready to purchase. Give folks an option to sit at the top of the funnel and learn more about your product before making a decision. Capture emails and create an email marketing strategy that speaks to each segment of the market.
• Email campaigns (and marketing in general) has low engagement - so think about what value you can give your audience rather than what you want to get from them.

7. Do you know who your main competitors are? How much are they pricing a similar product or feature? Do you know what alternatives your customers are using?

• Track your competitors to avoid loosing touch with the market and getting leapfrogged.
• Follow them on social, subscribe to their newsletters, visit them at industry events, try out their products, check reddit, hacker news, discord, and other chat forums.
• Watch prospects go through your competitor's customer funnel and yours.

8. How much can your customer afford to pay for your product?

• Pricing is one of the most complex parts of the go-to-market process, try and learn as much as possible about competitive products and their offerings.
• Understanding how your features and value proposition line up with the rest of the market can help you create a range of prices for your product.
• Do you have a feature that is a differentiator in the market? Is there anything else you can add to your offer that will make it more valuable? What can make your offer stronger than other offers in the market? Perhaps there is a customer service
• SaaS companies have higher valuations because of their recurring revenue models.

9. How are you generating new ideas that differentiate you in the market? Do you have a team dedicated to creating hypotheses and innovations in your market? How are you sourcing new ideas for the product roadmap?

• Engage in creative ideation and test your ideas early with customers to see what’s resonating. Learn their pain points to increase your hit rate.
• Don’t waste a good product idea - keep track of them.

10. Who is in your ecosystem? Do you know your decision-maker and the influencer in the buying process?

• Knowing the players in your ecosystem is as important as knowing your customer (partners, influencers etc). They can impact the decision-making journey.
• In B2B the decision-maker is usually not the end user, so create sales material for both.

11. Have you prioritised feature feedback from your customers and internal stakeholders? Do you have evidence from your market on the features they'd like to see going forward?

• Do proper discovery and analysis of the market and your potential customers before building a product - it’ll save you a lot of time and capital trying to fix issues that could have been prevented.
• Test your product hypothesis with a target audience → confirm that people are interested in your new product or service. A short survey can help gauge the market interest for your idea and gather feedback from your audience to validate your concept.

12. How many customers have you tested your product with? Have you sat down with at least 5-7 customers or prospects from your target market and shared this feedback with other cross-functional teams?

• You need to see your product from your customers' perspective - ideally where they use it.
• Don’t bombard them with requests - instead make the most of the time you have, document the interactions and conduct strategic follow-ups when it makes sense (given the roadmap and company initiatives).
• Run 5-7 customer interviews per segment. 60-90 minute interviews give enough time to understand their perspective and get some feedback on the pain point the company believes it's trying to alleviate and the business use case.
• Anecdotally the author finds people let their pretences down after 30 minutes and start to divulge the truth.

You'll learn more in a day talking with your customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research. Aaron Levie

13. Have you built a customer persona for your target market and shared it with other teams?

Few companies actually create personas. They’re good to get a sense of your target customers before diving into research questions. Some of these key audience traits include the following:

1. Vertical / Category
2. Demographic (age and sex)
3. Income
4. Occupation
5. Education
6. Relationship status
7. Language
8. Ethnicity
9. Interests
10. Social media platforms
11. News and other media sources

14. Where do your customers consume their information? How do they acquire knowledge about your product?

• Know where your customers are spending their time both online and offline.
• Adapt your marketing strategy and research activities accordingly.
• Observe them as they're moving through the funnel.
• Social validation and social proof is incredibly powerful. A customer testimonial or an enthusiastic fan can create immediate trust in a crowded market today.
• How can you build a natural viral loop so your prospects start to trust your brand?

Always have the customer top of mind throughout the ideation, build and launch phase. Sometimes we assume we know what customers want and how they will react to a launch but there are so many insights that can be gained by speaking to them. Leveraging user interviews and beta forums can help you pivot a product market fit or marketing tactic and those data points can also help get buy-in with PMs, engineers, designers to react and pivot quickly for a more successful launch. Jane Kim

15. What is your competitive advantage? What makes you better than anything else in the market? How big of a competitive advantage do you have?

• Know which features differentiate you from other competitors AND alternatives
• Assign weight to each feature so you recognise which features have a bigger market impact than others.
• Stay connected to what’s happening in the market - without losing sight of your own goal, dream and vision.

16. Have you created a competitive battlecard to equip your internal teams to position themselves against alternatives?

• Marketing and sales teams should be well informed about the competition.

17. What do you visualise when you imagine your launch and some of the creative new features for your product roadmap? Does it feel expansive or contracted? What does your intuition say about your product?

• Incorporate intuition into your decision-making process. Rely on historical data alone and you’ll miss out on some of your instincts and intuition.
• Linear thinking using logic often uses past data, patterns, and experiences to create a model for the future. And because it assumes historical data using an existing framework, linear thinking is limited to the preexisting construct and toolkits available to us.

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile. Nikola Tesla

• We have the capacity to grow, learn, and expand our intuitive thinking.
• Spend some time each day before your launch to sense what feels right with the product and the upcoming launch. Ask your teams to weigh in and come together in a visualisation exercise to determine exactly what success looks like and feels like.

Chapter 3: Questions to Validate your Message

Positioning and Packaging

18. Do you understand your value proposition and how your customer perceives it?

• Do you understand your customer's pain points from their perspective?
• Do you know how they perceive your value proposition?

Customers need to be able to easily understand what your product is, why it is special, and why it matters to them. April Dunford - Obviously Awesome

• Inexperienced founders go straight into tactics - instead set your long-term messaging goals and GTM strategy.
• Having a single internal messaging document can help you keep your message and story consistent and avoid disconnected and confusing marketing.
• All cross-functional stakeholders need to agree on a central and consistent way to tell your product story and narrative - it should then be tested with your target market prior to launch.

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from 'What information do I need to convey?' to 'What questions do I want my audience to ask? Chip Heath

19. Why do you exist as a company? What's your Why?

• You should be able to answer why you’re building your product or service. Know why you exist - your employees need to rally behind a meaningful cause
• If you don’t know why you’re building what you’re building, then your customers won’t either.

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. Simon Sinek

20. Do your customers understand your messaging, or is it confusing? Have you created a positioning framework? Do you have the right Call to Action (CTA)?

• The author plays a game called "What does this website copy mean?" Often they don’t

A confused mind always says no. Russell Brunson

• To set your company and product suite up for success in the long term, you must have a messaging document that creates a cohesive story in the market.

In every line of copy we write, we're either serving the customer's story or descending into confusion; we're either making music or making noise. Donald Miller

• Create a positioning framework - to put structure around your product offering.
• State the value proposition and the unique benefits and pillars that support the benefits.
• Focus on the benefits to the customer rather than the new features of the product.
• Positioning statement: A clear explanation of why the product exists, who it is for, and what customers can do with it.
• Identify which competitors or alternatives exist in the market today. Based on the market alternatives, craft a narrative that makes your company stand out.
• Positioning frameworks aren’t “set and forget" instead - edit at regular intervals

• For companies with one product - positioning your product and your company are synonymous.
• Have different products of offerings? You’ll need to position your company too.
• If your name is synonymous with your main product - you can get into a situation where your company name is tied to one product. Getting beyond one product often requires a re-brand, or product naming exercise to differentiate a main product offering with other new product offerings.

21. Have you built trust with your customers?

• Trust can help in a crowded market.
• Never lose sight of the truth, and insist that your teams always tell the truth.

"Be interesting. Tell the truth. And if you can't tell the truth, change what you're doing so you can. In other words, live the truth." -Jonah sacs, Winnino the Scory Wors

• You can lose credibility with customers if you over-promise and under-deliver - don’t promise things if the wait period is beyond reasonable.
• Hold yourselves to the highest standard and tell stories that are authentic and generative. Many products have the power to encourage, motivate, and educate, as well as help us relate to and understand each other.
• Hold yourself to your mission and purpose when building your marketing story.
• Consumers want to know who you are and what you stand for.

22. What word or phrase can you own in your industry? How can you make it simple for folks to find you? What words do they use to search for what they need?

• Own a word in your category (Google → Search)
• What words or phrases are your customers using to find you? What words define your mission?
• If you don't take control of your brand - you risk getting branded with a label you don't like.

It takes time for people to make associations and create patterns, so you need to start creating the words and associations you want in the market as soon as possible.

23. Have you tiered your product features to understand how to package them?

• You can create tiers, from Tier 0 to Tier 3, to identify and categorise the significance of each product or feature your product team is building.
• Tier 0 is a big release that is game-changing for your industry and market. It often requires a huge amount of marketing and GTM preparation, from press releases to company website updates, as well as sales material, email announcements to your current and prospective clients, and more.
• A Tier 3, is just a feature that has little to no impact on the market and might require some light touch training internally.
• Tiering allows the marketing team to set aside the right number of resources for each product release since not all product and feature launches are created equal.
• Once products are tiered, package all the products and features that can be announced together based on theme, customer impact, and timing.

24. What messaging hook is resonating with your customer? Do you know the story arc you want to use when telling your story in the market?

• We tend to focus too much on the product and too little on the messaging. Split your time and make sure you’re getting the messaging hook right - so you’re able to talk to the market about the pain point you’re solving effectively.
• Knowing exactly which hook is resonating with your customers is incredibly important.

"A big mistake is being too focused on features and functionality (speeds and feeds) rather than the strategic narrative and the problem that the product is solving. (solution marketing vs. feature marketing)." Dave Steer

• It is equally important if not most important for product- and engineering-led companies to hire storytellers and marketers to help them craft a narrative that is compelling and interesting for their audience

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. Muriel Rukeyser

• Powerful stories can capture the attention of your customers.
• Marketing pitches can be confusing if the customer doesn't understand how they fit into the hero's journey.
• Find out which marketing collateral resonates the most and which campaigns led to the highest conversion rate.

25. Have you named your products and features? Do they fit under your brand architecture?

• Product names should be easy to pronounce, memorable, understandable, and have positive associations.
• When generating new names create a naming scorecard - a spreadsheet with a list of potential names and a few categories such as "easy to pronounce," "relevant to product meaning," and "relevant to company architecture."
• It can help to create names for each major product since over time it will be difficult to discern products versus features. Product roadmaps should clearly define product names, but they can be renamed once the product is ready for a commercial launch and GTM.

26. Have you created your press pitch (if necessary)?

• Add PR to your GTM plan from the beginning.
• Work with a PR professional to help craft a press pitch and press release - look for well established communication connections and credibility with the media.

Key Takeaways:

1. The press cares about companies solving major pain points or how they compare to well-known companies.
2. When researching PR agencies, ask for specific press releases to gauge their expertise. Ensure experienced consultants will be involved.
3. Before hiring an agency, craft a compelling 63-70 character headline that conveys your competitive advantage. The next 100 characters provide subtext.
4. PR is more effective for B2C than B2B. People care more about how products impact their lives and productivity.
5. Reach media via short emails with a headline and quick intro. Follow up by phone to provide context and sell your story.
6. Focus on your goal for each announcement. Press releases often fail to significantly impact B2B metrics.
7. Engage with analysts early, well before pitching a story. Provide quarterly updates so they understand the problem you're solving.

27. Do you have a content strategy that is aligned with your product roadmap and marketing strategy?

• Think through a thoughtful strategy that aligns the product roadmap with the greater company mission and long-term marketing strategy.
• Ideally the content strategy maps to the product roadmap. If a company has a problem converting customers after they learn about the product - then content teams should index toward mid-funnel to late-stage funnel marketing materials.

Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Purchase

• Ask the following before creating content:
1. What is the company goal for this quarter and year?
2. How is the content strategy going to advance this goal?
3. What are the KPIs and metrics we want to use to measure whether we are in alignment with these goals?
4. What big releases should we be aware of, and how can we support a full-funnel marketing strategy?
5. How can we reward our fans for using our product early and sharing their experience of the product in-market in a piece of content?
• Owned Content: Created in-house and hard-earned. Content your customers find online through channels you have built. It could be content you've created on your website or blog or direct mail, for example.
• Earned Content: Content customers find through SEO and brand mentions in the news through PR and media. It includes things such as reposts or customer reviews. You often don't control the message.
• Paid Content: Found by customers who are brought in from an advertising channel and includes retargeting, paid content promotion, display ads, social media ads, TV, and radio. Companies often control this message since they're usually the ones disseminating the messages with advertisers and digital marketers.
• Your content strategy should be carefully crafted by looking at company goals for the quarter and year, the product roadmap, and the budget.

Content is where the rubber hits the road for any product, business strategy, or marketing plan. Investing in content early and giving a content expert the space and seat at the table to think deeply about the content in product and in campaigns means you'll have a consistent voice and story everywhere, and give you a huge advantage in being able to learn quickly and adjust content to optimise conversion." Aubrey Bach

Chapter 4: Questions To Validate Your Go-To-Market Plan

Go-to-Market and Marketing Strategy

28. What is your main long-term goal with this product launch, and how does it align with your company goal and vision?

• Execs often share the long-term company goals and mission with the rest of the organisation.

"Understand your goals and what the product should be able to achieve, so you can diagnose if there is something wrong. Iterate with a prioritisation process." Susan Park

• Is this launch in alignment with your company mission and purpose?
• Before working on anything, always ask, "Why am I doing this?"

"There is an alternative approach to being wrong as fast as you can. It is the notion that if you carefully think everything through, if you are meticulous and plan well and consider all possible outcomes, you are more likely to create a lasting product. But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them-if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line-well, you're deluding yourself. For one thing, it's easier to plan derivative work-things that copy or repeat something already out there." Ed Catmull - Pixar

• The assumption that every product built should be shipped is one that has led to a lot of mediocre launches.

29. Have you created a GTM plan and checklist and prioritised that checklist based on company priorities and company resources?

• Create a go-to-market plan to help understand who does what and how you’re going to win.
• Move from reactive to proactive, from misaligned to aligned.
• A GTM plan evolves and is always changing
• The GTM plan is a cross-functional doc that represents the work and goals of different departments
• Business: Ensures the operational and business goals are set for the product launch
• Marketing: Ensures that all collateral, PR, and external communication plans line up with the product launch
• Product: Ensures that the build of the product functionally works and is accessible to all customers

30. What GTM tools are you using to track the GTM process internally?

• You need realtime tools so teams must create a central repository with a GTM plan.
• Technology only gets you so far when it comes to cross-functional communication.
• Review all the deliverables and interdependencies on a regular basis.

31. Do you have a robust go-to-market plan with the perspective of key internal and stakeholders, including your business, financial, and sales teams?

• Get cross-functional input on how to launch a product, including operations, support, marketing, press, content strategy, engineering, product, business development, and sales.

A GTM Answers the 5 Ws + H of a Product Launch

• Who - Who is the target customer
• What - What is the target’s key problem that our product solves?
• Why - Why would customers want to use our product? What differentiates it from other options?
• Where - Where will we reach our target customers? Which channels?
• When - When is the right time to reach customers in their decision-making process?
• How - How will we reach customers? How will we position and message the product?

32. Do all cross-functional stakeholders understand how the product they are working on contributes to the success of the launch?

• Cross-functional department buy-in is incredibly important and should not be understated.
• Curate a group of customers, partners and stakeholders to meet on a regular basis and provide product feedback - else it's nearly impossible to create a successful plan.
• You need to do internal and external due diligence (i.e., an understanding of internal company dynamics, the market, and the customer).
• The GTM plan and process are never static and can and should change all the time.
• Check in in with teams on a weekly basis as new milestones are achieved, new data is introduced, and new risks and opportunities emerge internally and externally.

33. How are you measuring the success of your launch? What are your metrics?

• Be sure you know which metrics you should be tracking for each deliverable.
• What's the desired outcome for each piece of the GTM?
• Parts of the GTM plan require more time and energy than others - there should be a prioritisation and schedule associated with each deliverable.
• Map the interdependencies.

34.Have you decided who will own the success of the product post-launch?

• Empower one person to own the end-to-end GTM process, capture metrics for a product launch, and reconcile the value proposition across different functions.
• Without a clear owner, indecision and confusion lead to worse results.
• GTM touches many roles within a company - which is why it's often blamed when a product launch fails.
• GTM owners can start by involving 1 or 2 key stakeholders from each of the different teams, then share the GTM plan in a central location and work with these teams frequently to provide the most up-to-date information on the launch.
• The owner should ensure that everyone in the company is ready for the launch and train all teams on the value proposition, positioning, and how the product aligns with the goals of the company.
• The GTM owner should discover what is not working and what can be done to remedy the situation.

35. Have you built in a feature prioritisation feedback loop?

• Ensure you’re prioritising every feature based on specific criteria such as cost, time to market, effort, innovation etc.

Product Feature / Cost / Time to Market / Effort / Market Impact / Innovative / Prioritisation

36.Have you built a customer feedback loop to understand how customers are interacting with your product in real time?

• It is vital to know what your customer thinks about the entire product experience. Create the loop as soon as possible.
• Can you have real time feedback arrive in slack? There should be a clear, open channel of communication. It is also important this feedback is shared cross-functionally.
• Collecting and sharing feedback is not enough - there should be a feedback loop to strategic product roadmap planning.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late. Reid Hoffman

37.Are you sharing information cross-functionally in real time? Via Slack? Trello? Many internal stakeholders work with very different platforms.

• A product marketer's most important skill is clear, cross-functional communication.
• It takes time to build collaboration and buy-in - start early.
• Diplomacy, influence, listening carefully, and leadership are key to the success of this role as a communicator.
• Sharing a weekly recap via email often makes it easy for everyone in the company to find the latest information about an upcoming launch.

38. Does your marketing strategy align with your product strategy?

• Attack problems in your marketing funnel with both marketing assets and product changes.

39.Where are people dropping off in the product journey in your beta or test period? Do you know why they're dropping off? Is it a product problem or a communication problem? Do your customers know exactly how to access your product?

• Measure the funnel to see where customers get stuck or exit. Else you won’t know what to focus on.
• You should understand the limitations of your product before you exit beta or early access.
• Tracking your funnel will help you unlock valuable time and energy into the right efforts

40.Who is the internal stakeholder most responsible for the success of the launch? Do you have an executive sponsor (often head of product, CEO, or COO) who is your champion and can sit in on GTM meetings from time to time and in a sense sign off on the strategy?

• One individual needs to be assigned the responsibility of owning the success of the launch.
• If there is a success owner, that person will work with the GTM owner to make sure the launch efforts are tracking according to the success metrics. The GTM owner will work with the success owner to review the launch metrics and communicate any red flags or bottlenecks.
• The success owner and GTM owner need to remain neutral and not affiliated to a specific team to avoid bias.
• Those super close to the product might be too close to see the faults.
• Every launch should have a success owner who can act as a guide and mentor - and can champion the GTM launch.

41. What evidence do you have that customers want to pay for your product? Have you looked at pricing of other competitors and a customer's willingness to pay?

• The stronger the pain point you're solving the better.
• Run pricing analysis through discovery and market validation phase to understand exactly what price point feels comfortable for customers.
• Give customers a set of ranges with the middle range a representation of the market.
• Can you create a higher perceived value of your product beyond just the feature set available? Can you add things like high-end customer service, educational tools and materials, community events and programs?

42. What are your biggest risks, and what does your risk profile look like? Is there someone on the legal team who can review all major marketing messaging and campaigns and your product roadmap?

• Account for potential risks or bottlenecks in the launch process and sit with your legal or regulatory team and walk them through the go-to-market plan you've built.
• Some launches involve a tremendous amount of risk, while others do not.
• Use your best judgment when it comes to assessing the risk, and discuss it with your legal team and executive sponsor.

43. What are some ways you can give free tools and education to your audience?

• Marketing isn’t just a tool for sales.
• Think of it as opening a relationship - not closing a sale. Look to create sustainable, long-term relationship.
• What can I give my customers? What are some of the educational tools that would be helpful to their business? How can I create a community to help them succeed?
• A thoughtful, inbound strategy can be an incredibly important marketing tool that has major benefits for years to come.

44. Have you taken an emotional pulse of the internal key stakeholders on the launch? Do they want to continue working with the company?

• A launch requires a tremendous amount of emotional bandwidth, especially if cross-functional communication lines haven't already been established prior to launch planning.
• Launches can lead to massive burnout for the product marketer.

"It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius." Simon Sinek

• Launch day rituals are a good place to acknowledge the effort that went into the process.
• Make sure those leading the launch can handover to others when take their inevitable vacation after launch.
• Make sure you’re looking after the mental and emotional health of the team at all times. Reward folks with an off-site event and acknowledge their efforts

45. What is your budget for your channel strategy? Do you know how much you want to allocate to paid versus earned versus owned?

• Marketing budgets are typically aligned with revenue targets
• Early-stage companies often have minimal marketing budgets so focus inbound marketing channels, Email campaigns and Free press
• Focus on delivering high-quality product experience with emotional messaging before investing in paid growth
• Hiring growth marketers too early or investing heavily in paid media before proper market validation can lead to high initial growth but poor retention

46. Distribution: Channel plan for product awareness and activation - what does your distribution plan look like for launch?

• Distribution should be calculated within the marketing funnel strategy.
• Channel distribution includes:
• Press
• Social Media
• Blog
• Email newsletter
• Webinars
• Conferences
• Paid media
• In-app product growth plan
• Partner outreach
• Influencer strategy
• Referrals

47.What KPIs are you using to track the success of the launch after launch day?

• Add metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each piece of the distribution plan
• What part of the funnel do you want to optimise based on company goals? Is it awareness, activation, or retention?
• Where are people dropping off in the product experience? What is the retention rate that is ideal for your business in the long term?
• How do the internal launch team feel? Are they engaged?

48. Have you created post launch activities? Have you prepared for the postmortem weeks or months after launch day? How can they be packaged with future product launches or top-of-funnel marketing news?

• Do a cross-functional postmortem afterwards to learn how to navigate future launches.
• Recognise what worked, what did not, what lines of communication were missing, and how things could change going forward.

Product launches are more than the launch day. Product Marketers should have a plan for sustained marketing of the product after launch day. Dave Steer

49.Has everyone in the company been trained and informed on the product launch? Do they know how it will impact their roles and their longer-term deliverables?

• You need to educate colleagues as well as customers. Everyone in the company should understand what a product does, how it works, where customers can access it, and what's been shared in the media and why.
• It increases engagement and encourages feedback.
• Make sure everyone is ready for launch - train all teams on the value proposition and positioning, and how the product aligns with the goals of the company.

50. Have you created internal buy-in and alignment for the launch?

• Success depends on your ability to work well with and influence the product team, create a product roadmap, get buy-in cross-functionally, lead a postmortem, and ensure cross-functional communication and feedback loops.
• Enable individuals to take ownership and be accountable and feel TRUSTED.

Conclusion: Make Room for an Imperfect Market

• A successful GTM launch requires managing complex human personalities, adapting to changing market conditions, and navigating company politics and culture
• Product marketers can burn out in toxic work environments that make GTM much more difficult
• GTM requires transparency and enthusiasm from the entire cross-functional team, not just the product marketer
• How you achieve a goal matters as much the end result - consider human well-being, not just productivity
• Product marketing requires diverse skills:
• Diplomacy and communication to influence stakeholders
• Strong writing abilities
• Strategic thinking to align with company goals
• Technical understanding of the product and industry
• Emotional intelligence to understand customers
• Product marketers get to work cross-functionally and balance big picture strategy with execution details
• The role is challenging and requires perseverance, as the market, product roadmap and stakeholder demands constantly change
• The most important thing a product marketer can do is reflect the needs and feedback of the customer
• With each launch you learn something new about the GTM process and yourself
• Success requires a human-centric approach that values people's well-being, not just goals and productivity