I didn't start with a launch. I started by finding a market.
How customer research turned a stalled mid-market push into a new ideal customer, a reshaped product, and the largest launch in the company's history.
Problem, solution, result in thirty seconds.
A strong product looking for its next market.
The company builds a cloud platform that hotels use to run their operations, from reservations to guest experience. It had grown well and wanted its next phase of growth to come from mid-market hospitality.
It sold across several regions, and each region had built its own version of the story: its own personas, its own messaging and its own campaigns.
The brief was growth. The gap was knowing who to grow with.
The ask was to grow in the mid-market. With every region telling a different story, it looked like a messaging alignment problem.
But aligning messaging would only have made everyone consistently vague. Nobody had agreed which mid-market customer the company was built to win, or what that customer needed that the product didn't yet do. So I went and found out. I interviewed hotel groups and combined those conversations with Sales feedback and product-adoption data. A distinct customer emerged, with two needs that kept coming up: running multiple properties, and supporting long-stay guests.
Every commercial problem sits somewhere on this chain, from choosing the market on the left to what Sales says on the right. Decisions on the left shape everything to their right.
This was a product and market opportunity, not a messaging one. The messaging could only align once the company knew who it was for.
Four decisions, in order.
I didn't start with a launch plan. I started by listening to customers.
Listen before deciding.
I interviewed hotel groups directly, then combined what they said with feedback from Sales and data on how the product was actually being adopted. Three sources, one picture.
Define the new customer.
The evidence pointed to a distinct ideal customer profile: hotel groups running multiple properties, and properties supporting long-stay guests. That gave every team one clear answer to “who are we building and selling for?”
Change the product, not just the message.
I used the research to set product priorities and packaging around multi-property and long-stay needs. That shaped the multi-property product, which became the largest launch in the company's history.
Launch across regions.
I led the launch and the GTM programmes that turned the research into pipeline, and they were adopted across 4 regions, replacing the separate regional stories with one.
The right customer. The right product. Real pipeline.
Demand, pipeline and adoption, before and after.
More than doubled, with 29% engagement among target prospects.
Packaging was rebuilt around the new customer's needs.
From the largest launch in the company's history.
Research earns its keep when it changes a decision.
The research didn't just produce better personas. It changed what the company built, how it packaged it, and who it sold to. That is why the launch worked: the product and the message were aimed at the same customer.