Every product is important. Not every product is newsworthy.

Everyone knows that on an intellectual level, but in real-time, when a new feature or product is about to launch, it’s really hard to resist asking Marketing or PR to please pitch it to reporters, to put paid media against it, to send out a press release. At the end of the day, everyone wants their name in the paper. 

And, the problem is, this can be a real misalignment of resources, goals, and outcomes. It feels good, but it doesn’t always make a successful launch. Here’s a different approach…

The Tier System

In past lives, I’ve implemented a tier-system for assigning marketing resources to launches. I’ve laid out precisely what marketing resources are assigned to a product or feature based on specific characteristics and criteria - is it a tablestakes, shared competitive, or unique competitive feature? Does it have its own line item and add direct revenue to a sale? How many of our customers will use it? Better yet, does it open up new markets or audiences for us? There are myriad ways to suss out how many marketing resources should be allocated to a product launch, but, at the end of the day, it’s going to be really disappointing to your internal teams that they’re not getting the full boat of resources because everyone wants their name in the paper.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, because I’ve struggled - not with penciling out the allocation of resources - but with creating an internal framework in which everyone knows that the company’s success depends equally on big, PR-blast launches, and other, less-newsworthy, but equally important feature releases that contribute to customer retention, add to the bottom-line, or,  just simply, make things work better.

One of the clarifying moments for me in realizing that I had to change my tier-system, to make it less about bean-counting and more strategic, was when my first baby became a toddler, and, more specifically, a toddler who was dead-set on flooding our kitchen with the automatic water dispenser on our fridge. Before having children, I always wondered what the lock feature on refrigerator water dispensers was all about. Were there people out there that needed to cut back on their hydration, and could only control their insatiable thirst with a locking mechanism on the fridge? It truly perplexed me. And then I had children.

For months, every day, I have sent a silent, deeply grateful thank you to the brilliant product people at GE for including a locking mechanism on our water dispenser (I know that this is not a unique feature to this brand, but I’d like to thank them anyway). Our fridge is a relatively recent purchase, and that little, unnewsworthy feature has engendered so much gratitude and satisfaction, we would probably buy another GE when the time comes. And that matters. That’s more important, in a lot of ways, than getting your name in the paper. 

The 3 (or 4 or 5) Legged Stool

So, I started thinking about how to put all product and feature launches on equal-footing internally - how to convey that delighting our customers with a modest feature release and impressing a cub reporter at TechCrunch work in concert to achieve a grander strategy - and the answer was: to count all of the truly important metrics in concert and to view launch success as something that happens over time, not on one specific day.

“The value of the product lies in customers’ willingness to pay for it and use it.”

I’ve done plenty of launches where the team is feverishly counting site visits, number of journos that have picked up the story, reposts and retweets; and, let me tell you, it’s exciting. I love that feeling. And teams love that feeling because the work is recognized so publicly, so loudly, all in a condensed period of time. It’s exhilarating. But, we all know that that’s not really where the value of the product lies - it lies in customers’ willingness to pay for and use it. Period. End of story.

So, as marketers, rather than framing product launches as important —> less important by the amount of marketing and PR resources, I suggest creating the three-legged stool (or 4 or 5, whatever works for your organization) with the answer to the statement: Our company will be successful if the products we launch _______. 

Answers can be anything like “increase our visibility”, “increase customer loyalty”, “contribute X to revenue”, etc. But the important next steps are to decide how you’re going to measure that impact, and then align your product launch strategy to that measurement, and, importantly, push all of the other launch actions that don’t align with your strategy to the side.

Break the @Mentions Habit

If you’re launching a product that you think will increase satisfaction among your SMB customers, and measuring usage of that product is how you’re going to determine success or failure, why are you spending your time pitching the product to a bunch of reporters? Why are you counting retweets when that sort of low-touch, high-visibility metric isn’t relevant to the product’s - and by extension, the company’s - success?

The answer is, because it feels good, and it feels like success, and, even if no one uses the product, at least you got your name in the paper. 

I don’t want to say that this thinking is wrong, but… It’s kind of wrong. It tells internal teams - product, engineering, and marketing - that PR mentions validate a product, when they only sometimes do. Sometimes you have a gem of a product that wouldn’t get a reporter’s attention, no matter how wonderfully it was pitched. And that’s ok. As long as you’re setting goals that move the company in a successful direction, articulate how each launch on the product roadmap contributes to that, and set up the systems to measure the success, every launch will get precisely the resources and attention it needs.

Disagree? Great! Did you read this and think “duh!” Great! I’d love to hear from you, especially GTM folks that have successfully implemented a successful 3 (4 or 5) legged stool. Email me at jessica@foundationalco.com.