Product Marketing is not working. Fix It With Thematic Product Launches
Do you have a product marketing team trying to manage resources related to marketing to manage an unending stream of product launches? Do you have vague release dates as well as an incessant stream of managers insisting on a lot of publicity for every launch? Are there better ways to do it?
- Be sure to pay the greatest attention to all product releases.
- Make sure you tell a unified story about your product where the whole exceeds all of the components.
- It is important to ensure that the marketing department is organised and well-organized in order for them to deliver their best during product launches.
If you're tormenting yourself through the night with your over-active product timelines, and never-ending "t-shirt" size adjustments for agile project estimations or slipping dates for release of your product, or if you're concerned that you're falling short of your team's expectations, it might be time to think about certain product releases. Find out how to do this in this section of Growth Stage!
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David Vogelpohl () (00:04)
Hello everyone! Welcoming to The Growth Stage podcast by . I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I'm part of the community for digital products by working on . It's my pleasure to bring all the great things about the community's community and to you through the Growth Stage podcast. In this episode, we're going to talk with one person that is special for me. We collaborate at . He's going to be talking about the ways in which product marketing has been broken and the most effective way to fix it applying thematic
announcements about new products and also I'd like to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.
Braden (00:39)
Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciated your intro. I'm looking forward to chatting with you about marketing for products today.
David Vogelpohl () (00:44)
Awesome. And I am so happy to work together here at Braden. It was like I experienced an anxiety attack as I never say your name out loud. It's like, what if there's a peculiar spelling that I don't have any idea about, or maybe lost through time, or however, welcome to the forum. Of course, it is. What Braden is going to be talking about is his views on what is wrong with conventional product marketing, and why our methods here are based on quarterly thematic product launches.
Braden (00:58)
Yeah. Thank you.
David Vogelpohl () (01:14)
To ensure that you give your attention to the release of new products be sure to create a coherent product story that is greater than the parts. It will also help the marketing team to become more efficient and focused so that you can provide the best quality of work on the product launches your company makes. I was at Spryng which was hosted by Wynter, W -Y -N -T -E -R, I'm sure, and S.P. -R. -Y.N. G However, it's not an event.
The group was about the many challenges in marketing, and the subject of product marketing was brought up. People were complaining that they were a bit grumpy, they were dealing with every new feature and new product release and attempting to create an impact for everything. The topic of theme-based launch events was mentioned by one of the group that had suggested it. We had taken it up the time of some quarters ago.
Therefore, I thought it might be fun to talk about this topic on my blog this morning. That's it, Braden Do you want to get started?
Braden (02:18)
Yeah, let's do it. It's a pleasure to discuss the topic. it. it. it.
David Vogelpohl () (02:20)
Alright, good deal. I've been around for some time and do not have the perfect solution to this issue. Was the first item you bought online?
Braden (02:28)
It's an awesome idea. I thought for awhile about it. It was the junior high school years. eBay was booming. And I bought the PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. It had sports games and other games. After that, I debated whether or to buy the game. But I did and I loved it. I got lots worth from my console and had a lot of amusement.
Another possibility is to utilize the cash I spent to buy a dogeridoo. This was the very first thing I bought with my personal cash on line. This is the third option.
David Vogelpohl () (03:06)
All right, I love the way you distinguished from the cash you have and your how was it similar to the money of your parents? How did you fund the PSP?
Braden (03:14)
Sure, I might have earned this money by cutting the lawn or weeding the lawn or whatever. But, the other one was my real job money that I earned through my own effort.
David Vogelpohl () (03:24)
So, if you're trimming the lawn, you're earning some money, Braden. That's great. Well, I kind of allowed it to slip during the introduction, however, can you share your ideas with viewers about what you do here at or what does and your work here?
Braden (03:27)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure. So I'm the Director of Marketing Product. Senior at . My main responsibility is to manage go-to-market for all of our products and the business that we operate in. When a new product is launched, you know that all the messages underneath the product as well as around the product and also helping out with things such as B2B, games and other areas we're keen to reach out to. We are a record-breaking retailer.
This means that we incorporate everything starting from the buy button onwards in a digital product sale experience. We collaborate with SaaS businesses, gaming companies AI-based companies B2B and B2B. the. that. that. that.
David Vogelpohl () (04:18)
Excellent, excellent. In the discussion of what you did You touched upon a variety of aspects. It was also a discussion of launch of new products as well as feature announcements. The discussion also included verticals. You also mentioned B2B SaaS in addition to gaming on video. The modern marketer is often using these vertical roles to market a certain product. And I think that just makes it more difficult to understand the complexities of marketing products.
So, what could be broken in the marketing of the products? Was there something that wasn't working using the old approach?
Braden (04:56)
This is a great subject. The fact is that product launches depend on many variables that are out the reach of marketers' product. Engineering for example, as well as customer commitments that have to take place or sales are of importance that's"hey, we need to make this product perfect prior to the time it's due to be released. In addition, there are many moving parts around these launch. So, working with teams from the product team to determine the date of commit as well as to be able to grasp,
when are these products going be released? What exactly is "release" means? Does this mean it is widely accessible or is it currently in the beginning stages of testing? Now is the time for the next issue to be addressed, when do we want to talk about the software? What would we want to discuss? Do we have the right to discuss it since we're trying to see if it works? There's a myriad of issues and a great deal of anxiety stems from this idea of knowing how product engineering works. Therefore, I think that the main thing that's broken is that
it's so difficult to know that it's hard to imagine the end product, and then set a date for release and plan for a product to be prepared to launch. It's possible professional in product marketing like myself receive just one week prior to launch, a week before GA and the manager of the product saying,"Hey it's going to be ready. And then, get to complete this task. Then it's like, hold the belief. It's not just me. I have other tasks that I need to accomplish. It's true that you've talked about verticals. There's been lots of discussions regarding verticals.
It takes up a lot of time. The question, you know, I've had to solve and thought about is, how do I complete the product launch work along with the other responsibilities of my job however I don't hold any influence over the launch time?
David Vogelpohl () (06:40)
In case you're running a floating timeline. It's not completely ready. They discover a bug in the last second. They somehow power through the release, and manage to get it done early. They're trying to coordinate efforts with the other marketing agencies along with designers, webmasters, as well as content people and stuff similar to this. So this orchestration with these floating dates that I'm hearing about. Is there a different aspect? Like you've...
I have probably heard that I've been in the field of marketing products in various instances over the years. I'm feeling as if each time I talk to an employee from the department of product you'll hear them say I'm working on X and must make a huge public announcement of the new release. do you feel like your expectations for the level of commitment required to all the new releases could sometimes be overwhelming? Do you believe that's a part of what's wrong with the old-fashioned approach to product marketing?
Braden (07:28)
Yes, absolutely. The truth is that, for these product managers, they're product managers due to a reason. They're the proprietors of the product lines. They're thrilled about this. They've been working on the products for a long time up to many years of working to get these products ready for release. Naturally, they're going to need the most assistance they're able to get with these items. If it's difficult to have someone from a product management team visit your home and tell you that I'm super excited about this new feature.
I'd appreciate a great deal of help, and here's a summary of my ideas I'm planning to say, well, it's okay to let the brakes come off a little bit for A B, C, or A but I'm unable to help you or cannot do so because you're not in the mood or it's discouraging and hard to maintain relationships with the product managers because, as you can imagine, they may feel like they don't want to aid their cause, or do something else. That's not true however, it's obviously not your intention to assist everyone that you are able to.
David Vogelpohl () (08:26)
Yeah. From your standpoint of co-ordinating the go-to-market process around a product launch You're working with floating dates which are part of the normal model, and any other director of product is, just as you mentioned, given the time and money that they're spending on it and there's a need to launch an announcement on this. But with all those demands, and the floating dates, it feels like you're not doing your very best work. You're distributing you across a variety of things which makes it difficult to do your job at a high level is exactly what I'm feeling. Is that reasonable?
Braden (09:01)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. You end up at the point where all different things can collapse within a short time. It is then your job to figure out how to achieve each of them. It is only possible to work for 24 hours in a day, let alone the stress of working 24 hours and also pressure of having to think about, keep everything at the forefront of your thoughts. Think about these technical matters and.
make them more compact into an object that's practical for commercial use. There's a lot of problems to tackle.
David Vogelpohl () (09:35)
You mentioned this time ago in your discussion of the significance of supporting product managers as well as the relation to PMMs as well if you're thinking of it. If you consider the typical form of marketing for products, could be said to has some friction with PMMs and PMs?
Braden (09:58)
Yes, I believe that's it. I've experienced situations where sure there was a little bit of a tension-filled conversation openly admit that I'm not equipped with the resources available to help how you would like to go. In such situations, it's important to pay attention and figure out what your boss is thinking about, but it does create tension. In reality, there is a need for good communication when you're in situations where aware that it's important to remain present and be listening.
Being clear, being adept in logging your progress, and, more importantly, the case making use of thematic launches, to get rid of some issues in conventional product.
David Vogelpohl () (10:41)
You've now got manager of the product requesting the most powerful possible megaphone for their releases. The rest of marketing saying, do we need to be more organized so that we're able to perform better? In addition, you've discussed shifting to thematic releases of your products. So let's start with a simple question. What's a theme product release?
Braden (10:59)
Yeah, great question. A thematic release is bundle of goods on a subject. In this case, B2B as the umbrella and other items are helping to promote that topic.
David Vogelpohl () (11:16)
When we speak of releases that are thematic I'm assuming there's not a single release each week. Maybe, I guess it's If you're incredibly determined to are you releasing these on a quarterly basis, monthly?
Braden (11:30)
Good question. The spring release is available or summer and fall release. The public isn't in the festive mood in the middle of the year, consequently we don't release it during that time. But yeah, just three times a year with periodic releases ad hoc often in between.
David Vogelpohl () (11:45)
This is due to the fact that the organisation is hoping to state each quarter we'll be making this thematic change to this particular item or range of goods and in order include it in marketing for the product, then introduce it through a large campaign. Do they include all the components that make up each product and feature new releases that are related to the topic?
Braden (12:08)
It is. It includes those elements. When we look over our customer map and ask what's the plan for this calendar for the year? It helps us organize those products within themes. There isn't always an upward-facing perspective and saying, we need to come up with a solution for theme A What products are relevant to theme A? Instead, we look at what are the suite of items we are planning to launch in the coming year?
What's the topic thing that these products are classified under? the respective times of the year.
David Vogelpohl () (12:44)
You'll be able to see this and the only thing you can do is amplify the impact. There's a chance that you'll be missing by a quarter, maybe at the time of release or some other time, however there could be a delay, I think, before you realize the issue. Yeah. This means you're decoupling from the GA for the time you want to for the purpose of promoting.
Braden (12:51)
That's correct, yeah.
That's correct. Yeah. This is a good strategy because we've already put in place our GA actions that we carry out because these products do need promotion when they're released. So, as an integral part of the process, we can have GA actions and thematic ones which can be applied for each product we offer.
David Vogelpohl () (13:18)
Every launch, if it could, at least has the opportunity to include the theme that are released. It is possible to create small version for such a thing that is the GA release, which is reliable. You'll get a double dip there It's similar to.
Braden (13:31)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. This has been extremely helpful in ensuring that the employees within our organization are able to access GA. Therefore, customer satisfaction isn't just a matter of getting the feedback of clients. It's more like: Hey, I'm using this awesome product. I'd like to know more details about the product. The team for customer success has never been activated. This isn't the case because at GA we are releasing FAQ documents, as well as information based on value to ensure our employees know the situation.
The go-to market messages, as you mentioned, may appear to be slow on occasion. If you've got the product launched in January, but you do not have an April release that is based on themes, the product won't receive enough marketing assistance at the start however it'll be able to tag along with that bigger push later throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (14:17)
If you had the ability to be extremely tactical, would you to add an X, an additional release in between the other thematic releases, if you happen to know a you are aware of GA date for an identical highly strategic product you've been thinking of awaiting?
Braden (14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. We have also ad-hoc releases as well that we are able to offer support to. We've tried to limit them to just one or two if we can. We've developed a process in conjunction along with the team responsible for your product that allows us to exchange information and say, okay, you know, there's this really amazing product. This doesn't fall under the idea, but it's important to have C or A. So we've planned for that as a team to ensure that everyone understands what we're going to do. Then, as you can imagine it gets its individual attention.
But, the benefit is you don't need to worry about 15 different items that crash suddenly after the quarter's end that is what happens, you know, oftentimes when the product delivers every product at once.
David Vogelpohl () (15:08)
Thank you.
One of my top business quips is not an ill-informed joke but rather an observation. The idea is that, executives' Q3 is that it's the start of Q3 and engineering teams Q3 is an opportunity to close the Q3. This suggests that they're all in some way obviously, getting into by the time they hit the quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got it.
Braden (15:33)
Yes, precisely.
David Vogelpohl () (15:38)
The theme is due to be released this quarter or the following but you're also hearing about a major announcement for a new product or feature that isn't in line with the theme. Is this just one of those releases you've been discussing you could see during the theme release?
Braden (15:55)
It's true. Therefore, I'll provide you with an example of what that we're doing. Payments were released early this year. It meant that we had the opportunity to provide a variety of interesting choices for payment. One of those payments that did not make it to the design process and wasn't able to get to it by the time that the theme launched included Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. Then we took a seat to examine the feature and said, how can we help promote Google Pay? This isn't an online service for business to business. And so, yeah we made a minor update available to Google Pay.
It was created with some documents and FAQs, as well as blog posts or even promoted on social media sites such as that.
David Vogelpohl () (16:29)
What happens when you've got this type of product that is anchoring as well as an thematic release that is? This appeared as if you were using an anchor product which could be the cause of the theme release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. What do you do? You can wait for the release of the thematic release till the anchor products have been included? What other options do you have?
Braden (16:54)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. There's always waiting and watching. It's happened. You know, I was having conversations with the Product team this morning that suggested that B2B might be worth be patient about and I can see a launch at some point later in the year. But, the benefit of a Thematic launch is that it's not a time-bound event. We're setting that deadline for ourselves. So if we have to delay that deadline slightly so that we can better keep the engineering's and product's deadlines, we are able to.
Or we could alter those themes at any time. If a major element suddenly isn't launched, perhaps we'll be able to take a few of additional features in order to create the ideal bundle that fits a theme in a different method. This is the reason why there's an element of flexibility that allows the possibility of changes during the year.
David Vogelpohl () (17:47)
That's a good idea. If I think of an old-fashioned promotional campaign of the kind of feature release, it's like an announcement blog post or perhaps a press release and some coverage on social media and emailing our clients. Sending emails to prospects is such as this. What's the difference between thematic releases and their design?
Braden (18:07)
Yes, I've said this before. A lot of those things continue to happen. Thematically, these events are happening, nevertheless, there is also what we call GA tasks. This means that we have several options for internal enablement, as well as in-app notifications. In the event that you permit access to an application or piece of software, we're giving them access and the access is granted to our internal teams. And we decouple that from the this theme release.
At the same time, in the moment, instead of having a focus on the entirety of the similar features, like, "hey, this feature is readily available in bits and pieces it's possible to discern the of the overall benefit of these functions. That's an important distinction which cannot be achieved with a release that is done as a fragmented release throughout an entire quarter or year.
David Vogelpohl () (19:04)
Yeah. This is a good idea, since it makes it seem that you're able to increase the quality of your narrative. Since I believe the best instance for me would be this improvements to the quality of life which are extremely challenging to engineer, yet don't necessarily mean that the product is more accessible to the market. It's because, isn't it? A person who is on the outside isn't aware there's a problem or issue. Therefore, it's usually difficult as Phil or an employee at an organization that promotes products, to say, Hey 'all, we have fixed this. When in fact, the fix proved invaluable for the company as well as the customers.
Braden (19:08)
Yeah.
David Vogelpohl () (19:34)
It's been felt that thematic releases not only give you the opportunity to share your megaphone but also kind of enhance the narrative about other improvement in your life.
Braden (19:43)
Yes, absolutely, you are able to access many benefits from this which otherwise wouldn't get promotional activities, or you know, a short announcement from Pendo. Instead, they're the same website as a component of these larger functions that will allow them the chance to make use of that megaphone. There's plenty of benefits in the smallest things like improvements to quality of life.
David Vogelpohl () (20:08)
Ok, so has this strategy worked? How many quarters in are you?
Braden (20:13)
The third time we've launched this theme and next month, we'll hold our third launch of thematic themes this year during July.
David Vogelpohl () (20:20)
Okay, so three quarters into the program, are you satisfied that it has enhanced your capacity to handle marketing resources and assist in the introduction of innovative products? Or is it still too early to tell?
Braden (20:33)
I'm sure that the product has made a difference on my behalf. What I've noticed is it's not only possible to improve my support for the entire product team, but not just support them as well and cooperate with other marketing departments particularly demand generation. You know, they have a lot of lead time now that they didn't have prior to the launch of this software.
and we can slot items into campaigns that we had to fight for. This is the most significant gain. However, the second benefit is that it allows time to focus on the vertical growth within other fields, for instance in video games, which might not have been able to do with the time or not enough manpower to move these verticals.
David Vogelpohl () (21:28)
You mentioned the video game for a period of time, too. The business has had video game customers since almost since the inception of business. The company was mentioned as tending to lean into the video game segment. Do you think that these segments could play an important role in thematic release, or do you think that this is more akin to a set of features?
Braden (21:51)
Segments definitely play a big role. You know, I mentioned the launch we're planning to do in the near future is centered around B2B. a vertical that we'd like to market into and are excited to expand into. There's a possibility in which we'll do it using video games too. The last time we talked, we've upgraded our Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. This is why expanding, having these vertical themes does more than just open up the ability, you know, to...
You get the advantages of the thematic launch. However, it also offers the advantage by incorporating aspects such as thought leadership in the thematic launch. This can be a difficult thing to incorporate into your traditional product release. It means that you can receive a larger, more likely larger campaign, as well as more value from these launches for your larger company.
David Vogelpohl () (22:44)
Excellent. This was really fascinating, Braden. I really appreciate you having the opportunity to chat on air about this. The conversation was amazing that took place during Spryng at the moment in Austin. It was my thought to bring this to the stage. It was awe-inspiring. I appreciate you coming to the party.
Braden (23:01)
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you inviting me to join you. It was a blast.
David Vogelpohl () (23:04)
Awesome. And if you'd like to learn more details regarding the projects Braden is working on, as and his forthcoming theme-based launch, go to .com. We thank you all for participating in this week's episode of Growth Stage. I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I'm a big fan of the product community on the internet during my time as . It's my pleasure to present all the amazing things from the community to you in the Growth Stage. We appreciate everyone's support.
David Vogelpohl David is the Chief Marketing Officer of . Over the past 25 decades, David Vogelpohl has led teams who have created powerful engines for growth and developed software for major businesses like WP Engine, Genesis, AWS, Cloudflare, and more.
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