Cloud IaaS Go-to-Market: Beta Finished Four Months Early
Devon Galett
Advanced Office Products built a cloud infrastructure platform for its own use and decided to sell it. As fractional CMO, I ran the beta program, the positioning, and the trial program it launched with. The beta finished four months ahead of its original schedule.
Two workstreams, one launch plan
Advanced Office Products is a managed IT services provider in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Nobody knew yet how the platform would perform for outside users, how cloud infrastructure professionals would receive it, or how to position it. There was no go-to-market plan and no value proposition.
I split the work in two. A formal beta tested the product with real users. Alongside it, positioning, product pages, and a trial program started building demand. Both fed the same launch plan, and each was measured on its own.
Finding beta testers on Reddit
The platform's buyers were cloud infrastructure professionals, and a lot of them talk shop in developer communities on Reddit. Instead of building a tester list from scratch, I went where they already were and recruited the beta there.
That's what shortened the beta. It finished four months ahead of the original schedule.
A managed beta, completed early
I set the initial positioning, then designed the beta around what the business needed to learn before launch. We brought on 13 formal participants and evaluated the product with them alongside AOP's technical team.
Their feedback showed where the product was strongest and turned up markets and use cases we hadn't planned for. I refined the positioning from it and carried it into launch preparation. The beta finished four months ahead of the original schedule.
Building demand while the beta ran
I built the product pages and the interest capture behind them, then ran the trial program. Form submissions and product trials were tracked separately because they measure different things. One is someone asking about the product. The other is someone using it.
Results
As a fast-moving technology company, we wanted a partner that could keep up with our unique challenges and deliver a high level of quality. [...] Seeing the growth and financial return from this partnership is exciting.
Brandon Greene, President, Advanced Office Products. August 16, 2021.
Role and team
Fractional CMO across four business units, directing a six-person delivery team.
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Posted May 14, 2024
Fractional CMO for Advanced Office Products. I recruited beta testers through Reddit developer communities and cut the cloud platform's beta by four months.
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