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Whether you’ve noticed it or not, the combined wisdom of the B2B SaaS community has started to regress.
And it’s bad for product marketers, for marketing/sales teams, and for CMOs and CEOs and Founders… but nobody is pushing back.
The change has been driven not by what works – but by what people think they want.
They are two very different things.
Let’s get into it.
Your next launch needs to move pipeline, not just make noise.
I run 4-week positioning sprints for B2B SaaS teams who are about to launch company-defining products and can’t afford to waste the opportunity.
In this post:
Product launches have become marketing theatre
Teams are optimizing for the splash on launch day:
- A million video views on Twitter
- Techcrunch mentions
- LinkedIn influencer engagement
- Crazy buzz amongst the VC and tech-celeb community
We’ve started to optimize for breadth, not resonance; 15 seconds of fame, rather than long-lasting impact: temporary distribution, rather than real traction.
The change is driven by vanity and shortcuts
Drift, back in the day, was a big advocate of ‘marketing moments’ – monthly bursts of activity designed to continually deliver attention and eyeballs.
It was a great strategy, because it was built on a strong foundation: true differentiation, strong narrative, a product that delivered.
Today’s product launch beliefs began with good intentions, but marketing moments got bastardized – they became ‘make noise moments’, just for the sake of it.
1. It feels easier to orchestrate a big bang launch than it is to build reliable, resilient ongoing distribution
A ‘big bang’ launch feels like a worthwhile, valuable, and efficient use of time for the expected ROI.
“Let’s make some noise… focus on the lightning strike… We need to pop on social…”
Indeed, the Silicon Valley in-crowd are actively advocating for the ‘take over the internet for the day’ approach… so much so that it’s the name of a service offered by A16Z’s ‘New Media’ agency.
And there’s always the chance that the big bang launch does catapult a business into lasting success. Because if you’ve gone big and EVERYONE knows about you, then surely you’ll be top-of-mind! Right?
… No.
2. Product launches gloss over snake oil products
Some product launches try to hide the fact the product is really mutton dressed as lamb. Smart marketing, not a unique, useful, valuable product.
Cluely is a great example of this – huge buzz on socials because of their ‘cheat at everything’ message. Then traction dropped off a cliff, and now they’re just an AI meeting recorder, with no differentiation other than a CEO who’s literally built an influencer-facing app just to drive ‘clipping’ – an insidious social media tactic that drives views with bait.
Product launches also rely on goodwill of the wider circle.
Everyone congratulates everyone – and now ‘distribution’ focused founders are leaning into this, asking (or, forcing) employees and their families, friends, and connections to all lean in on launch day for a ‘thunderclap’ (RIP 2010s Twitter) – with pre-written messages tailored for each poster’s audience. They’ve never used the product, never seen a demo, but happy to – maybe for a fee – post about it.
3. AI is pouring fuel on the fire
AI makes it really easy to pretend that your product is much bigger, better, integrated, and useful than it actually is – from copywriting that jazzes up (read: lies about) features, to capabilities that are actually human-powered or purely non-existent.
Sometimes that’s just marketing spin… sometimes it’s a hallucination that nobody checked.
And because AI means product development moves so fast, teams prioritize creating seductive, sleek, glossy product launch videos that show the future state – because you’ll be there in 6 months! – but then wonder why that launch video generates interest that fails to convert today.
4. Breadth over focus
We all know that founders have a hard time saying no to things. “We want to launch to the broadest audience possible so we can learn what works and then double-down.”
(Tip: that’s not an effective way to launch)
Big, bold product launches generally don’t focus on “we solve one problem for one ICP very well, with these specifics”.
Instead they’re angled as “cutting-edge innovation in new category that changes the game for every person in the world”.
Yep… we’re back to startups talking about how they’re making the world a better place. Very 2011.
5. Ego
At the end of the day, product launches are conflated by the founder as the celebration milestone of many years of hard work. It’s validation of their thesis – the way they see the problem, the solution they’ve designed… and it’s also thought of as the north-star for what could be their life’s work.
But this taints direction and limits potential.
Executing a launch around the emotional arc of a founder optimizes for the wrong audience: it optimizes for social standing and status rather than the signals that are ACTUALLY going to drive impact.
This is a dangerous problem: how do we escape?
We’re at a point where launch marketing is fast becoming disingenuous, inauthentic, and ineffective.
So it’s worth reminding ourselves what a product launch is really intended to achieve.
A product launch is a momentum machine – not a marketing moment.
Its primary job is to make the next 100 sales conversations easier, faster, and more likely to close.
They should be judged on three things, in this order:
- Their impact on pipeline velocity
- Their impact on sales confidence
- Their impact on buyer behavior change
If it doesn’t drive pipeline, it doesn’t give sellers more confidence in their pitch, or doesn’t spark behavior change in the intended buyer, it’s failed.
You can get a million video impressions on X. You can get mentions in Techcrunch. You can glow in the warm bubble of Silicon Valley thotfluencers crowing about your vision.
But if it doesn’t 👏 turn 👏 into 👏 cold 👏 hard 👏 cash 👏 it’s 👏 honestly 👏 been 👏 a 👏 waste 👏 of 👏 time 👏 and 👏 money.
Plan your next launch like this
Before you write a single brief or book a single journalist, start here.
Decide: what are you optimizing for?
- Launches that create excitement:
- Look impressive internally
- Hit every channel
- Generate buzz and coverage
- Make everyone feel like we “did a launch”
- Leave sales wondering what to do with it
- Launches that create urgency for buyers:
- Give sales a sharper story
- Make the competitive alternative look riskier
- Surface evidence that builds confidence
- Shorten the path from interest to decision
- Make deals close faster
You can have both. But if you have to choose, choose the second one.
Know your baseline:
- Our current win rate is X
- Time to close is Y.
- Sales team are X/10 confident in pitching.
- We are focusing on Z specific ICP, and we’re positioning our product as a way they can achieve ABC value.
- Our product launch goal is $x million in pipeline within X months.
Now build backwards.
- Strategy
- Own the specific problem your ICP keeps getting wrong without you. Don’t describe what you do – describe the decision they keep making badly, and position your product as the thing that makes that decision feel inevitable.
- Tactics:
- Start with sales enablement:
- Build your sales enablement deck from real objections, not the product roadmap
- Give sales the launch assets 2 weeks before go-live. If they can’t start conversations with them before launch day, rebuild them.
- Prepare the groundwork:
- Identify 50 accounts in active evaluation and reach them directly – not 50,000 via broadcast
- Predict and fix pipeline challenges:
- If top-of-funnel is the actual obstacle, invest in TOFU broad awareness activity.
- If MOFU is the blocker, focus on problem/solution concepts.
- If you have plenty of potential pipeline but poor conversions, fix BOFU.
- Start with sales enablement:
- Milestones
- Beta with friendly customers.
- Soft launch to existing customers and targeted sellers.
- Main launch activity timed around a specific event or moment.
- 90-day follow-on plan to build BAU activity and repetition amongst target ICP.
- Kill conditions:
- If win rate hasn’t moved after 60 days, the story isn’t landing – stop and diagnose before investing more.
- Adjust conditions:
- If pipeline is building but velocity is slow, the story is working but sales enablement needs sharpening.
- Invest conditions:
- Win rate up, time to close down, sales team asking for more. Scale distribution.
The launches worth studying aren’t the ones that made the most noise.
They’re the ones that made the right noise – to the right people, at the moment a decision was forming.
Their launches probably weren’t big bangs. They might have been really quiet; precision instruments designed to achieve a goal with the least effort possible.
The Cluely launch got everyone talking, but got almost nobody buying.
Every market has a long memory and a short attention span – and it will punish product launch theatre eventually.
Some people will read this post and nod… then build the same launch they always have. The same checklist, chasing internal validation rather than doing what’s right for the business.
Build for momentum, not theatre.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought – find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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