Voices of Revenue is a monthly newsletter spotlighting revenue operators making waves and sharing best practices.
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By now we’ve all heard Beyoncé's bold transition into country music – it wasn't just a change in tune, but her boldest launch into the genre. She is the first Black woman to have a No. 1 song on the country charts. Beyonce’s loyal fanbase, the “Beyhive” has propelled “Texas Hold ‘Em” to the top of the pop and country charts. Beyonce has dipped her toe in country before, but this time her launch strategy is what set the music industry on fire.
She used her brand’s cultural influence to challenge norms. She anchored in authenticity with the banjo riff in ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ being played by Grammy-winning Rhiannon Giddens who is a legend in Black country music’s roots. Beyonce also remained loyal to her own stylistic roots by fusing R&B with country tropes.?
In the world of SaaS, your product's launch is your hit single, and to make it top the charts, you need a solid strategy and the right set of tools. Just as Beyoncé invites her audience to participate and feel a sense of belonging, your launch strategy must speak authentically with your market and your own brand’s roots.
Let's “just take it to the dance floor” for launch strategy and toolkit inspo.
Launch Strategy
Launch Strategy is NOT a GTM Strategy for Launch. Created by Madison Leonard
Quote: “I'm personally not a huge fan of merging launch and GTM strategy together. In fact, I'm pretty adamant that they are completely separate things.”
- Successful launches require an audience for effective distribution.
- Don’t sleep on spending time and effort figuring out your distribution plan.
- Be intentional about the goals for the product and create a strong GTM strategy with key stakeholders in your organization to support the launch.
- “Build an audience <for your product> before you need one.”
- When we think about launch strategy, so much of the work lives with Product and Marketing teams. When we think about GTM strategy, the work extends to Sales and Customer Success. It is the full GTM engine that must align and fire together to make a launch successful beyond the ‘blip’ of launch day. As Klue prepares for an upcoming launch, we have gotten laser focused on aligning the GTM teams.
Planning for Launch. Created by Christine Barnett
Key Quote: “Define Your Goals: Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the product launch. Are you aiming for brand awareness, sales targets, market expansion, or something else?”
- Build Anticipation: Start teasing your product through social media teasers, sneak peeks, and behind-the-scenes glimpses to create anticipation among your audience.
- Leverage Influencers: Partner with influencers in your industry who can help amplify your message and reach a wider audience.
- Measure Success: Define key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales numbers, website traffic, social media engagement, and customer feedback to evaluate the success of your launch.
- At Klue we partner with the best of the best in Product Marketing. We gain invaluable product market fit and positioning feedback from these friends as we grow together. Our Compete Network community is a place where we can spotlight these influencers and they can help us build the Klue brand, alongside their own, in an authentic way.
Effective Marketing Strategies for Product Launches. Created by the Marketing Millenials, Daniel Murray and Rebecca Shaddix
Quote: “If we’re not bigger or bolder than the gains we stand to gain we might be smaller.”
- Setting the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is crucial for a successful product launch, ensuring all features and efforts align with the organization's North Star metric. It's important to prioritize intentionally, clearly understand the high-level goals, and communicate why each feature is launched.
- A single source of truth for KPIs is essential for alignment across teams, allowing for transparent communication and progress tracking throughout the launch. Regular, clear updates on product performance and adherence to priorities are necessary for maintaining focus and momentum.
- Implementing phased "go/no-go" meetings throughout a product launch ensures consistent steps and clarity of expectations for each tier of release. This structure holds each owner accountable for providing updates and contributes to the overall success of the launch.
- At Klue we are laser-focused on our North Star objectives this year. Each team within the GTM function has Key Performance Indicators that are all aligned with company goals. We are regularly tracking and reporting against these metrics so that each team understands what they are responsible for and the role they play in our success. Each product launch initiative is tied into a company-level objective with key results tracked and communicated upon regularly to create a flywheel of learning, evolving and growth.
Launch Toolkit
Pricing Enablement. Created by Sarah Truman
Quote: “ It is important to ensure customer-facing teams are comfortable with the product and pricing strategy and positioning of the solution in the market.”
Use many of these tools when launching pricing:
- Short messaging video
- Infographic (walkthrough through value)
- Flyer (connecting pain points to your benefits)
- Feature comparison graph
- Landing page to get tools and request more info
- Webinars to hear the story “live” and ask questions
- Value calculator
- Video / written testimonials
- Objection handling “practices”
- With a recent product launch under our belt at Klue, we spent time with our revenue teams socializing, digesting and pressure-testing our new pricing model. We spent time practicing pricing conversations. We know that words, ‘the right words’ matter, so we practiced and honed our talk tracks. We know that tone and body language matter more. We had our SME spend time with leaders as well as individual sellers to ensure they were all able to bring deep understanding and conviction into their conversations with customers.
Building Hype. Created by
Katie Berg ??
Quote: “The goal isn’t to wait for the audience to slowly find your content organically, it’s to invest the same effort in promoting the content as you do in producing it.”
- Building an audience before a launch is key. It ensures the audience is eager and anticipating the release. Teaser posts on social media and in weekly newsletters help you generate more engagement than actual announcements.
- Leverage your network of influencers. Get your team featured on podcasts with similar audiences to help expand reach. This speaking circuit approach creates buzz and positions you as a leader in the space.
- Approach the launch with a comprehensive brand strategy. For Katie’s team, treating the show's release as a major marketing campaign across all channels, including email, social media, and web, was crucial to avoid reliance on organic discovery and to maximize ROI.
- We are learning from Katie Berg every day here on the enablement side. Her team does an incredible job of building hype around new campaigns and initiatives both internally within the business and externally. As we think about building hype for internal product enablement we try to “drip” teams with what is coming next in the product regularly so that when launch comes the teams are ready to hit the ground running.
Quote: “Launch Day is just a blip on their larger launch strategy”
3 unique and effective examples of product launches in 2023:
- Loop: Created an outstanding two-year launch strategy, employing high-impact tactics like Times Square billboards, creating a branded cereal, and distributing golden tickets to early adopters to stir excitement and viral engagement. They cleverly used contests and awards to both recognize and celebrate their customer base, which doubled as an effective lead generation and customer showcase strategy.
- Passionfruit: Had the unique challenge of a two-persona launch and a very small marketing team. It was persona marketing in action; they built the product out loud with their customers, iterated based on feedback, and honed in on a single marketing channel that resonated with their core audience, creating a sense of urgency with early access perks.
- DC Comics: they were aiming to revitalize the brand and step out from Marvel's shadow. They introduced a new CEO who presented a compelling vision through a single video. With this video, he was able to differentiate themselves from Marvel and re-engage fans in a promising and new future for DC comics.?
- Similar to the approach of Loop, we had our first-ever Klue Customer Awards this year. This gave us a chance to shout out our incredible customers and acknowledge their success with Klue. Some of our winners even posted about the awards on their social media platforms. Not only were we able to give kudos to customers doing amazing work, but there was an organic association with Klue that helped both brands shine.
As we continue to spot trends, we'll keep you updated. See ya next month!
Manager, Revenue Enablement @ Klue | Competitive Enablement for Every Enterprise.
1 年Queen B always knows whats up ??
VP Marketing @ Klue | Competitive Enablement for Enterprise Sales
1 年Yes in fact I do! ????