3 Tips For A Successful Product Launch in B2B (Newsletter #103)

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3 Tips For A Successful Product Launch in B2B

Last week we hosted one of our world famous Exit Five Live sessions (where we do a deep dive on a topic with a subject matter expert in B2B marketing).

These are open to the public, even if you're not an E5 member.

This week's session was about B2B Product Launches - breaking down all of the plays, tactics, and sales enablement required to pull off a successful product launch.

My guests were Natalie Taylor and Zach Roberts. Natalie broke down a launch from Capsule for their Video Editor and Zac broke down a launch he worked on at Dropbox.

We had 544 people register (they like to watch the recording after) and 149 people attend live.

Here are some of my takeaways:

1. Video is the best launch asset for 2024. This is how we all communicate - with short videos. Why make a PDF when you can make a one minute product launch video that people can share? It also is a great forcing function to nail your story and messaging. Do you know how hard it is to nail a one minute video? And how quickly that video can become three minutes?
2. Bring sales in early. If you want sales to actually use all of the content/collateral you're creating for a launch you need to bring them in early and create this content together.
3. Nothing matters more than buyer research. All of the launch tactics in the world won't help sell a product that nobody wants. Just like the overall company marketing strategy, the most important ingredient is the positioning and messaging here, which has to be rooted in research and feedback and insights from your Ideal Customers.

P.S. Don't call it a webinar! It's not a webinar! It's a Live Session 😉

See you at the next one?

We’re doing our next one on Email Marketing and doing teardowns to give you best practices and ideas to boost your email strategy.

You can sign up for that now at exitfive.com/teardown

Podcast #149: 16 Lessons I Wish I Knew As First Time B2B Marketing Leader

I share the 16 lessons I wish I knew as a first-time marketing leader, going from marketing manager to CMO in four years. This is a recording from Metadata's DEMAND 2022 virtual event in October 2022.

The lessons include:

1. Forget acronyms
2. The story is the strategy
3. Think hard about “offers”
4. Push your team past incremental thinking
5. Get on the same page as sales
6. Don’t “be” finance and ops...partner with them
7. Master internal communication
8. Articulate the strategy
9. Think short-and-long-term
10. Understand what the CEO cares about
11. Make hiring your job, not a side project
12. Create your own momentum
13. Your job is to get the job done
14. But do the job first, before hiring externally
15. Get comfortable making bets without perfect data
16. Spend the budget (all of it)

Listen to the Episode Now on Spotify

Or find it everywhere you listen by searching "exitfive" podcast.

Podcast #150: What ABM Isn’t – Some Huge Misconceptions of ABM, and What Works in 2024

I'm joined by Christopher Rack, CEO of pharosIQ. Chris is a seasoned leader with a track record of driving remarkable growth. With experience spanning individual contributions to executive leadership, he's led four sales organizations to achieve 10x growth in just 2-3 years. His leadership ethos prioritizes building robust processes and fostering winning cultures rooted in a human-first approach.

They discuss

• Why alignment between marketing and sales is critical for ABM success
• How to prove the ROI of our ABM efforts
• Executing ABM with minimal resources

Listen to the Episode Now on Spotify

Or find it everywhere you listen by searching "exitfive" podcast.

Upcoming Events

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What does an effective email marketing strategy look like today? What makes a great email? What should the subject line be? The copy? The layout and design? The call to action?

To help you refine your email marketing approach, we’re bringing in three experts to share their real-world experiences and insights.

In this session

• Our expert panel will look at real emails from Exit Five members, offering targeted feedback to help enhance your campaigns.
• Get your burning questions answered by Exit Five Founder Dave Gerhardt, Knak CEO Pierce Ujjainwalla, and SubjectLine.com Founder Jay Schwedelson.
• Engage in the chat and share your ideas with fellow B2B marketers. 

Don’t miss this chance to learn from these email marketing experts.

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Open Roles

HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: OhMD is looking for a Demand Generation Marketer to help drive the generation and conversion of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) to sales-qualified leads (SQLs) through innovative content creation, email campaigns, and conversion optimization.

If you're interested, you can apply here. 

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Circle is hiring a Head of Product Marketing. Remote Role.
• Circle is hiring a Senior Demand Generation Manager. Remote Role.
• Close is hiring a Head of Product Marketing. Remote Role, US-based.
• HighByte is hiring a Demand Generation Manager. 
• Sidebar is hiring a Head of Growth. Remote Role. $90-100k salary.

See All Open Roles

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