If you don’t communicate it, did it even happen?

If you build a feature but haven’t told your customers…did you really build a feature?

If you land a new partnership but haven’t told your customers…did you really land a new partnership?

If you start offering a new support channel, but don’t communicate with your customers…are you really offering a new support channel?

Product marketing is key to any release. It’s the difference between many (perhaps most!) of your customers knowing and using something, or not.

When you’re building and selling software or tech-enabled services, your customers get used to a certain workflow. They’re not browsing your website every day. Most don’t have time to consistently or regularly see what’s new in your product or service and try it out. They’re busy in their day-to-day jobs and lives.

I notice this in my own behavior. I have a problem to solve or a job to do and limited time to do it: I need to keep moving. This doesn’t leave much time to learn and explore the many changes always appearing in the tools I use.

It’s hard to overdo it

Product updates, partnership announcements, integrations, new services, new pricing, improvements to speed or scalability, improvements to support and so on are a unique type of content.

They’re not about brand building or education. They’re informing customers about immediately useful or important changes.

It’s hard to over-communicate these things, at least to your core, active customers. I rarely find myself getting frustrated at seeing updates to the software I use regularly.

Some of the things users love to hear about:

• Product updates. Things that improve their day-to-day use.
• Reliability signals. Faster, safer, more stable.
• New possibilities. Partnerships, integrations, or expanded capabilities.
• Responsiveness. Proof that feedback is being heard and acted on.
• Transparency. Honest reasoning behind changes or roadmap shifts.

Internally at Vero, there’ve been times when we’ve shied away or slowed down or batched up announcements of this kind for fear of over-messaging.

Yet, time-and-again, feedback shows us that when we communicate changes quickly and clearly, customers love it. They tell us so.

The reality gap

Inside a company, progress is tangible. You’ve watched development happen: from the first sketch to the final pull request. The whole team knows what’s new and why it matters.

The upshot of this is that, by the time you release something, it can feel like it’s been discussed and communicated to death. This is the reality gap: there’s a huge difference between what’s known as true internally and what’s known externally.

If it’s not communicated, it’s not released

These days we have a two simple rules:

1. If it’s not communicated, it doesn’t count as released.
2. Communicate early, communicate often.

There are lots of good reasons teams shy away from hitting “send”:

1. Fear of over-messaging. No one wants to be the company that spams inboxes.
2. Perfectionism. Teams wait until they can craft the perfect announcement.
3. Internal bias. After months of staring at the same project, it doesn’t feel “newsworthy” anymore.
4. Process friction. By the time everyone approves the copy, the next feature is already shipping.

All of these come from a place of respect for customers, pride in the work. But the effect is the same: the updates get quieter, the cadence slows and, eventually, the outside world assumes you’ve gone dormant.

There’s a small handful of companies that are excellent at surfacing progress. You can feel the pulse of their product. Every few weeks, you see small, focused updates. Not fanfare, just signals that they’re alive and building.

A steady rhythm of communication tells customers: “We’re here and we’re improving things. You can trust us.”

Even if a customer doesn’t read every update, they notice the pattern. And that pattern builds confidence.

The opposite is dangerous. When companies stop communicating, customers fill the silence with their own assumptions — usually the worst ones. “Maybe they’ve stopped investing in it” or “maybe this product’s going nowhere”. Silence, over time, can quickly look like stagnation.

If a feature gets launched in the woods, does anyone use it?

This doesn’t work with every type of content

Now, this absolutely doesn’t apply to every type of content. Other, more promotional content can absolutely get overdone, and fast. Webinars, discounts and special offers, even case studies: anything that is promotional without a direct link to immediate value for the customer is riskier.

But…

If you’ve built something useful, make it visible. If you’ve improved something, say so. If you’ve fixed something, show it.

Otherwise, all that progress stays locked inside your walls: invisible, uncredited, and unused.