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The 5 Considerations of Great Product Communication

Author

Adam Wardlow
October 8th, 2025

A monthly digest of product communication strategies and best practices - built for leading product teams operating in complex environments.

TL;DR: Five differentiators separate unforgettable products from forgettable ones: Brand, Messaging, Design, UX, and Voice of the Customer.

The 5 Differentiators of Great Product Communication

TL;DR: Five differentiators separate unforgettable products from forgettable ones: Brand, Messaging, Design, UX, and Voice of Customer.

Every product team faces the same challenge: shipping great features means nothing if your users don't know about them, understand them, or even care. Yet most teams approach product communication as an afterthought.

The best product communicators know differently. They understand that announcement quality separates products that gain traction from those that fade into obscurity. Here are the five dimensions where excellence makes the difference.

1. Brand

Your announcements aren't just information—they're brand touchpoints. Every release note, every changelog entry, every Slack notification shapes how people perceive your product and company.

David Ogilvy, built his legendary career in advertising on one principle: brand image matters more than any single advertisement: "Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image." This applies equally to product announcements. Each communication either strengthens or weakens your brand personality.

Consider how your announcements sound. Are they robotic feature lists, or do they reflect your company's voice and values? Do they build trust and credibility, or do they feel rushed and careless? Your cumulative announcement quality becomes your brand reputation.

LaunchNotes turns your product updates page into a branded experience. With full design customization—from header to footer—your announcements reflect the same visual language, attention to detail, and brand personality customers experience everywhere else.

2. Messaging

Features don't sell themselves. Even the most powerful capability falls flat if users don't understand why they should care or how it solves their problems.

Emma Stratton, founder of Punchy and author of Make It Punchy, built her career helping B2B tech companies cut through jargon to create simple, human messaging. Having worked with companies like Loom, Outreach, and Miro, she's seen how technical teams often bury their value in complexity. Her approach centers on translating what technology does into what it means for the customer—showing concrete "before and after" examples rather than listing capabilities.

The same principle applies to product announcements. Great messaging doesn't just describe features—it helps customers immediately grasp the impact. Instead of "We've added advanced filtering capabilities," effective messaging shows the transformation: "Stop wasting time scrolling through irrelevant results. Now you can find exactly what you need in seconds." The difference is clarity about what changed in the customer's world, not just in your product.

LaunchNotes provides structured announcement templates that guide your team to focus on customer impact rather than technical specs. You're not developing messaging frameworks from scratch—you're ensuring every product update clearly communicates the "so what" that makes customers care.

3. Design

Visual presentation isn't superficial—it's functional. Well-designed announcements guide attention, clarify hierarchy, and make complex information digestible. Poor design creates confusion and friction.

Tony Fadell, who led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest thermostat, understands that design isn't about making things pretty—it's about making them work. He championed the principle of "invisible design," where users barely notice the interface because it serves their needs so seamlessly. His book Build emphasizes that great products consider every detail of the user experience.

Your announcements follow the same principle. Clean typography, clear visual hierarchy, and thoughtful use of screenshots or videos don't just look better—they communicate better. They reduce cognitive load and help users quickly grasp what's important.

LaunchNotes doesn't design your product for you—but it helps you communicate your design excellence through rich media support, auto-drafts for release notes, and formatting that presents your updates professionally across every channel, from email to Slack to in-app notifications.

4. User Experience

The medium is the message. It's not just what you communicate, but how and where users encounter it. Great product communication considers the entire user journey.

Netflix has become the gold standard for user experience, continually evolving the service interface based on rigorous testing and user research. Their approach focuses on removing friction and meeting users in the contexts where they actually make decisions. They don't just ask what users want—they study what users do.

Your announcement UX matters just as much. Do users discover updates at the right moment? Are notifications intrusive or helpful? Can users easily find information when they need it? Is the experience consistent across web, mobile, and email?

LaunchNotes focuses on the UX of communication itself—delivering updates through the channels your users actually use (email, Slack, in-app widgets), with controls to prevent notification fatigue, and a centralized product updates hub that serves as a permanent reference when users need to look something up.

5. Voice of the Customer

The best product communication isn't inside-out—it's built on genuine understanding of what customers need to know and how they think about your product.

Benjamin Humphrey founded Dovetail after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was for teams to systematically capture, analyze, and act on customer insights. Dovetail was born from the recognition that great products come from teams who truly listen to their users—not just occasionally, but continuously and systematically.

Voice of the Customer isn't just about research studies. It's about understanding the language customers use, the problems they're trying to solve, and the context in which they encounter your product. Announcements that reflect this understanding resonate because they speak to real needs, not engineering specifications.

LaunchNotes helps you maintain customer focus by providing audience segmentation, feedback collection, and reaction tracking. You can target announcements to specific user segments and measure what resonates, creating a feedback loop that makes each announcement more relevant than the last.

About LaunchNotes

LaunchNotes is a product communication platform that helps teams announce, distribute, and measure product updates. We provide the infrastructure for professional product communication—from customizable templates and multi-channel distribution to analytics and feedback collection—so your team can focus on building great products while ensuring your users stay informed and engaged.

Trusted by leading companies including SpotOn, Impact, Shift4, Langchain, and Toast—teams that know the difference between functional communication and unforgettable experiences.