What's in the box?
Before a marketing team can wireframe a Feature Page or draft a Messaging Map for a campaign, they need to understand what they’re promoting.
If your team is doing true Docs-driven Development, where you start with the specifications and maybe even a Request for Comments before you begin building, those docs are going to be a strong foundation for anybody to understand what’s in the box.
In real life, docs are usually something you forget to write until you’re updating your changelog. And by the time you get to the bug bash, your feature barely resembles the original idea from the PRD.
It’s okay for features to drift. It’s okay to ship features before you know how to market them. But before you go and throw a bunch of resources into a Tier 1 marketing launch, pause and take stock.
Do you have a clear, honest, and up-to-date handle on the feature? Do all of the marketers you’re working with also share that understanding?
Even if you think the answer is “Yes,” grab a friend and fill out the brief together.
What happens when you skip the Feature Brief
When marketers don’t understand what they’re promoting, they tend to:
- Oversell or undersell the feature
- Publish incorrect information, or
- Write the messaging around the wrong benefits
Plus: If you can’t get somebody on your own bench hyped about the feature, how are they supposed to create hype in the market?
The Feature Brief exercise is a good practice round to feel out how the feature might perform when it’s more publicly advertised.
How to use what’s in the box for campaigns
Read through your brief and look for something sharp. Something visceral and specific.
Is there a narrow use case where this feature shines compared to alternatives? Is there a niche audience that’s passionate about this? Is there any aspect of the technical design that’s novel or interesting? Is there a missing feature you can spin into an advantage?
Don’t make the mistake of building your marketing campaign around a high-level value prop. Your headline shouldn’t be all about “saving costs” or “growing a business.” Can you copy/paste your H1 into the marketing site hero for any other B2B software? Does it still work? Congratulations, you lost the plot.
Especially when you’re marketing to developers, highlighting a minor sub-feature that solves a real pain is likely to be more effective than quantifying huge cost savings.
When you need an even briefer Brief
If you’re shipping a small setting or sub-feature, the full Feature Brief is overkill, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a marketing opportunity.
When you need an even leaner process, laser in and answer these questions:
- What can the customer do now that they couldn’t do before?
- What major pain point does this solve?
With that information, you can write a compelling changelog entry or produce a video reel for social media. Try to flip the focus to the customer’s perspective and what it means for them instead of writing “We added {this feature}” or parrotting off the title for the related GH issue.
Sometimes it’s that tiny bit of reframing that elevates a release to a launch.