What We Learned from the Sonos Launch

& How to Mitigate as a Product Marketer

Product marketing isn’t just about launching new features—it’s about ensuring they make sense to users and drive adoption. Sonos missed the mark because they treated their redesign like a product change, not a customer experience evolution. Here’s where product marketing could have stepped in and how we can prevent similar missteps in the future.

1. Validate Before You Detonate: The Power of Market & User Research

What Sonos Did: They pushed a major UX overhaul without properly validating how real users interacted with the old app. They ignored early feedback from beta testers and assumed their new design was better.

How Product Marketing Could Have Helped:

• Conducted pre-launch user research to understand how customers used key features
• Identified must-have workflows that users relied on
• Helped create user personas & journey maps to predict friction points

Future Fix: Before launching a significant change, run usability studies, prototype testing, and focus groups to understand the impact before it goes live. If beta testers hate it, don’t ship it.

Where to Learn:

? The Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) Framework → Helps understand why users hire your product (or a feature) in the first place. Read Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen.

? Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres → Teaches how to incorporate customer insights into product decision-making.

2. Messaging Matters: Prepare Users for Change

What Sonos Did Wrong: They dropped a massive redesign without setting expectations—no clear messaging, no onboarding guide—just confusion.

How Product Marketing Could Have Helped:

• Craft a communication strategy to introduce users to the redesign gradually
• Use progressive onboarding to walk users through key changes
• Create “What’s New & Why” content to frame the update as an improvement, not an obstacle

Future Fix: Ease users into change. Provide clear messaging, tutorials, and opt-in periods before forcing a transition.

Where to Learn:

? Reforge’s Growth Series → Covers onboarding best practices that increase adoption.

? Nielsen Norman Group’s UX Research → Insights on how users react to UX changes.

3. Rollout Strategy: Don’t Launch Big, Launch Smart

What Sonos Did Wrong: They simultaneously pushed the update to everyone—(Just like Crowdstrike… remember) no gradual rollout, no A/B testing, just chaos.

How Product Marketing Could Have Helped:

• Advocate for a phased rollout (launch to small segments first)
• Implement an opt-in period before forcing the change
• Monitor early data and advocate to iterate based on real-world feedback

Future Fix: Instead of a big bang release, stagger the rollout:

Test with power users → Get feedback from your most engaged customers

Gradual rollouts → Release in waves, tracking adoption & sentiment

Opt-in periods → Allow users to switch back if they struggle (like Google has done in the past)

Where to Learn:

? Amplitude’s Guide to Feature Rollouts → Best practices on data-driven launches.

? Superhuman’s Product-Market Fit Playbook → A case study on how early-stage feedback refines product experience.

4. Measure, Adjust, and Fix Fast

What Sonos Did Wrong: When users started complaining, they didn’t react fast enough.

How Product Marketing Could Weigh in:

• Define adoption success metrics before launch (e.g., time-to-value, feature engagement)
• Set up real-time feedback channels (in-app surveys, Net Promoter Score tracking)
• Work with Product to roll out quick fixes for the biggest pain points

?? Future Fix: Have a post-launch adoption strategy ready:

? Monitor customer sentiment closely in the first 72 hours

? Be transparent about fixes instead of ignoring complaints

? Have a rollback plan if adoption tanks

Where to Learn:

? Sean Ellis’ Growth Hacking Playbook → Focuses on rapid iteration based on real-world data.

? The Lean Startup by Eric Ries → Teaches continuous testing and pivoting when needed.

Final Takeaways: Product Marketing can bridge the gap between user flows, feature refinement, and adoption

If Sonos had a strong product marketing function in place, they could have:

• Validated the redesign with real customers before launch
• Crafted messaging and onboarding experiences to make adoption seamless
• Executed a phased rollout instead of a disruptive full launch
• Monitored adoption and iterated quickly instead of waiting for a crisis

The lesson? User flows should be refined with customer feedback, not at their expense.

If you’re in product marketing, this is your role: to be the voice of the customer before, during, and after product changes. Ignore it, FAFO ... and you risk a Sonos-level disaster.

If you’re interested in hearing another perspective, click here.

#ProductMarketing #UX #CustomerFeedback #UserFlows #Adoption #MarketingFails