Press Release for New Products or Features
Work backwards by writing the press release, even before you build the feature or product.
Let's say, you're planning to launch a new feature or product. You may be a product manager, or anyone building technology products, or even someone in the business leading a feature launch. This article answers the key 5 questions around this thought.
What is a Press Release?
This short & crisp document (typically one to one and half pages) is a desirable future communication that you would like to "announce" in the team/organization about the launch of the feature or product. It is more like an org-wide announcement of what you have released and is written from a future point-of-view when this feature or product will be released. This concept was popularized by Amazon.
It is important to note that this Press Release (referred as PR in this article), is not the same as one used by marketing to share with media. Although, this document can serve as an input for the marketing team, and will be highly useful in designing public campaigns.
How does a Press Release help?
The PR is
simple enough to be understood by anyone in the organization
short & crisp to be read & understood by everyone
focussed on delivered outcomes & benefits
Why should we write the Press Release before building the feature/product?
This is the important part. Writing a PR before you start building the product forces us to start from where the customer starts thinking. Ultimately, you want to deliver value to the customer, so it's good to start from there. Then you can work backwards and build only what relates to this.
What is a simple & minimal PR format?
Heading : short name for the product/feature that the customer will understand
Subtitle: One sentence saying who the market is and what the benefit is
Summary: 2–4 sentences that gives a summary of the product and the benefits. Should be self-contained so that a person could read only this paragraph and still understand the new product/feature.
Problem : 2–4 sentences describing the problem that a customer faces, which this product solves. Tests your assumptions about the pain-points that you are addressing.
Solution : 2–4 sentences, describing how the new product/feature addresses this problem. Tests your assumptions about how you are solving the pain-points.
Getting started: 1–3 sentences describing how someone can start using this product/feature (if it’s baked into the existing product, say this explicitly). Tests your assumptions about how easy the ramp-up is for your customers to take advantage of the new product/feature.
Internal quote: Someone within your company being quoted about what they like about the product/feature. Tests your assumptions about the value you are creating for your customers and how you position this product within your broader product offerings.
Customer Quote(s): a hypothetical customer saying what they like about the new product/feature. Tests your assumptions about how you want your customers to react to the new product/feature and your ideal customer profile. They should be doing something that they couldn’t do before, doing something much quicker and easier, saving time and effort, or in some other way making their life better. Whatever the benefit is, their delight in the benefit(s) should be exhibited in the quote. This should be multiple quotes from different customers if you have multiple profiles of ideal customers, example: mid-market and F50 customers.
Call to action: 1–2 sentences telling the reader where they can go next to start using the product/feature. Tests your assumptions about whether this is a feature that is automatically on, something they need to turn on, a beta-release, etc.
Source : PR Format
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