Jeffrey Vocell

Title: Principal Product Marketing Manager

Company: HubSpot

Tweet at him: @JVocell

What does a product release look like at your company?

At HubSpot we follow Jeff Bezos’ “two pizza” rule by working within small teams comprised of a product manager, tech lead (plus a few engineers), designer and product marketing manager. As a team, we define the priority for the launch using a two by two matrix.

Walk me through your product release process. How do you work with product management and what steps do you take leading up to a release?

Before we even build something, a PM defines the vision. As they write the vision, the product marketer in that group will work with them on market analysis and defining priority level.

Based on priority level, the product marketer defines a narrative for the launch plan which then is tested internally (by customer-facing groups) and externally with customers. For each priority level we have a template defining a “core” set of activities to complete for each launch. In a P1, the product marketer works with our content, video and brand teams to determine how we can tell the product’s story through various mediums like video, podcasts and written content.

Can you elaborate on these templates you have for launch plans and what they entail?

Launch templates vary by priorities. For a P1, we create a full product story explaining the product, how it works and how it impacts a user’s day-to-day. For P2, we write positioning and a narrative, but won’t necessarily create a dedicated video (so the story is told through a limited set of channels).

When releasing a product, we run through this template which is a checklist of drafted content ready to push live. Internally, we send an email to a Google group called “product notifications” to alert HubSpot employees that the product/feature is live. After that, we publish content externally to our HubSpot customer, marketing and product updates blogs. We’ll also monitor forums like inbound.org and Quora to answer questions. We also use in-app communications, email, video and other methods to communicate with existing customers and the market.

You mentioned how you’re specifically responsible for the narrative and positioning. What other areas does a product marketing manager own in a product release?

Product marketing is ultimately responsible for anything that is involved with a product’s go-to-market strategy. As a result we’ll talk with operations, finance, legal and other groups within HubSpot to ensure a release is set up for success.

While we don’t have a diagram that divides work between a PM and PMM for a release, product marketing generally owns the release process and product management owns the success of that product — which we measure in various ways like retention and NPS.

Tell me about a particularly challenging product release you’ve experienced. What were some lessons or takeaways?

Honestly, I haven’t experienced a “challenging” release at HubSpot. That’s not to say releases aren’t hard work. We’re always releasing, and this cadence is great for customers but it also means we need to be thoughtful about the stories we’re telling. Especially when two products release the same day and may have an overlapping audience. That said, the product marketing team communicates frequently to avoid issues where possible.

What’s the key to a successful product release?

It all starts with truly understanding your buyer. Without that you’re lost from the get go. Our narrative is really rooted in who that buyer is and why they need this product. Our job is to tell a story that resonates with the buyer and shows them a better solution than they have today.

Also, any good product release has really SMART and measurable goals. We have specific goals set for 30, 60 and 90 days post-launch that we work towards. As a product marketer your job doesn’t end when a product’s released; I’d say after a product release is when your work really starts.