Sometimes, the launch of a new feature or integration isn’t an immediate success. Deep breaths.. Let’s tackle some ways to reset when things go wrong.
Lackluster Adoption
There are a few key questions to ask yourself if users aren’t taking to the new feature or integration you’ve released. Let’s assume your new feature or integration is catered toward external users (rather than an internal integration meant to simplify the workflows of your employees.) In this case, ask yourself and your team to reflect on these questions:
- How are you promoting or selling the new integration?
- Have you put time into educating your sales and marketing team on how to promote/sell the new offering?
- Are there challenges with the UI/UX blocking user adoption?
- Is the new feature immediately usable or is there an onboarding timeframe you’re adhering to?
- How much are you charging for the new feature and is it “worth the price of admission” (cost & time) for your users?
Low/Non-Existent ROI
Anything you build should have positive ROI, whether your return is monetary or in terms of productivity. There are a lot of great ROI calculators online to check out, but the general rule of thumb is to first think about a reasonable payback period (a year or so) and then check in either monthly or annually after launch before evaluating whether you’ve met your monetary or efficiency goal.
If you’re not quite there (or starting to fall into a pit where you’re actually putting more into your new feature than you’re getting out of it…) ask yourself these questions:
- Is this investment sustainable? (Is the juice worth the squeeze?)
- Do you have internal support (sales & marketing) devoted to getting the word out?
- Are you using monetization methods like subscriptions, add-ons, etc. to grow revenue quickly?
- At its core, is your feature a holistic part of your product derived from user feedback/industry trends?
Lack of Internal Support
Getting other internal stakeholders excited about a new feature or integration can be incredibly difficult. Some features are a clear win while others make sense within the context of your long-term product roadmap, yet short-term gains are less readily apparent.
In our Simplified Guide to Marketing and Selling Integrations, we extensively discuss how to communicate with stakeholders prior to/during a launch depending on their role in your business. The advice there is applicable whether you’re launching a new integration or a new feature, so start there if you’re facing this struggle.
Additionally, you should consider going into depth on these topics to clear up some of the confusion/distaste:
- For sales - how will the new feature help close more deals and engage more prospects?
- For marketing - how will your new integrations enhance your product’s core value prop?
- For CS/PS - will your new features be implemented by your CS/PS teams? How will that process work, and will account and product managers need to alter their existing processes?
Again, we go much more in depth on this in our Simplified GTM Guide - take a look.
Non-Repeatable
Lack of extensibility (i.e. it takes 10 hours of engineer work to implement an integration for each new customer) feels less important in the short-term, but can lead to long-run difficulties as you expand and adjust your business to market pressures and customer demands.
If your integration exists within a silo either in terms of your product roadmap initiatives or your existing tech stack, there’s little potential for ongoing success. And with the technology industry shifting practically monthly, flexibility is key to long-term ROI. Ask yourself:
- Is this integration in-line with other product initiatives?
- What percent of our user base can we reasonably expect to utilize and pay for this feature?
- Will it be easier to build our next feature/integration? Does this new offering set the tone for future builds to be faster and/or more economical?
These examples of negative GTM outcomes are worst-case scenarios that can occur when you don’t plan your launch effectively. Learn more about what a great integration go-to-market strategy entails in our Simplified Guide to Marketing and Selling Integrations.
