Product Marketing is Not Working -Make It Right With Thematic Product Launches -
Do you have a product marketing department trying to coordinate resources for marketing to manage an interminable number of launches with no release date as well as a constant stream of product managers demanding tons of marketing attention with each launch? Would there be a better way?
- Be sure to pay the greatest focus to every new product release.
- Make sure you tell a story that is overarching that is greater than the sum of its components.
- Help marketing be planful and thoughtful so they can be the best at their job for product releases.
If you're dragging yourself to death with over-active product roadmaps, the endless "t-shirt" sizing for project estimates that are agile, slipping product release dates or worrying about letting your product managers down, it could be time to think about themes for your product launches. Find out how to do it on this episode of Growth Stage!
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Transcript
David Vogelpohl () (00:04)
Hello everyone! You are invited to join the Growth Stage podcast by . I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I'm a member of the digital products community by working as . and I am awed by bringing the very best from the community to community to you here on The Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're talking to someone who's uh, really important to me. He works with me here at . We'll be discussing about product marketing is broken and how you can improve it by using thematic
announcements of new products, and I'd like to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.
Braden (00:39)
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate the introduction. 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 with you at Braden. It was like I experienced an instant of anxiety as I never pronounce your name loud. It's like, what if it might be a strange pronunciation that I forgot to, I forgot over the years or something, but welcome here. Yeah, of course. And what Braden's going to discuss are his views about what's wrong with conventional product marketing and the ways in which , what we do with quarterly thematic product launches.
Braden (00:58)
Yeah. Thank you.
David Vogelpohl () (01:14)
for you to pay the highest focus to the new releases of your products make sure you create a cohesive product narrative that is worth more than it's parts. It will also help marketing be more planful and thoughtful so you can deliver the highest quality work on your releases. I attended Spryng hosted by Wynter, W -Y -N -T -E -R, I'm guessing, and then S -P –R -Y –N G, however it's not an event.
The group was talking about the different issues and challenges in marketing, and the issue of product marketing was brought up. People were complaining that they were overwhelmed and had to deal with every little feature release and new product release trying to make the most of every single one of them. The topic of thematic releases for products was brought up by someone was in the group who had suggested it and we had decided to adopt it here in some time back.
Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on the subject this morning. Also, Braden, are you willing to start the conversation?
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 here for awhile now, but I don't have the right answer for this question. What was the first product that you purchased on the internet?
Braden (02:28)
It's an interesting idea. I thought for a while about the subject. And it was in junior high. eBay was in its heyday. Then I got a PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. It had like some games for sports and other stuff. And I agonized over whether or not I should purchase it. However, I bought it and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I got plenty of use out of that console, and also had lots of amusement.
Another option is to use the money that I have received was a guitar. This was the first item I purchased using my own cash online. This was also the second option there.
David Vogelpohl () (03:06)
Okay, I like the way you distinguished your personal money from, I guess, your What was it similar to your parents' money? Which way did you finance the PSP?
Braden (03:14)
Yes, I could have earned it through weeding the yard or trimming the lawn or something. But the other one was just like the salary which I made on my own.
David Vogelpohl () (03:24)
If you're cutting the lawn, that's your money. Braden. So, all right. Well, I kind of did it a bit in the intro however, could you please share with the audience what you do here at or about how you work here?
Braden (03:27)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure. That's why I'm the senior Product Marketing manager at . My responsibilities include everything that goes to market across all our products, and also the various industries we are in. So when a product launches, you know, all of the messaging underneath that product and around the product, as well as helping with things such as B2B games, video games or other fields that we're looking forward to selling into. is a retailer of record.
What that means is that we integrate everything beginning with the purchase button and ending in a digital product sales experience. We partner with SaaS companies, gaming companies, AI companies B2B companies, and other things like this. that. that. that.
David Vogelpohl () (04:18)
Excellent, excellent. Now, when you describe the kind of work you performed it was that you covered various areas. There was a touch on new product launches, feature releases. You also touched on verticals. You also mentioned B2B SaaS and video games. And the modern product marketer tends to favor the vertical position to promote a specific product. It just adds to the complexity of product marketing.
But what do you think is wrong with product marketing? What was not working with the traditional model?
Braden (04:56)
Yeah, it's a really good topic. The fact is that product launches depend on many moving factors that are outside of the product marketing manager's reach. Engineering, for instance or customer commitments required and sales are suddenly a big deal that's like"hey, we need to complete this product prior to when the release of another product. There are a lot of moving pieces around these product launch. And so working with product teams in order to establish commitment dates, and to understand
when are these products going to be available for release? What does release really mean? Is it generally available or is it in a beta stage? It's time for the next question to arise what time do we need to talk about it? What is it that we'd like to talk about? And can we even talk about this since we're currently trying to test the product? So a lot of questions, a lot of uncertainty happens with this model of how manufacturing and engineering work. Therefore, I think that one of the main issues is that
There's a reason why it's hard to envision the end product, and then think about a release date and plan for a product that is ready for launch. What happens is product marketers like me end up you know, a week before launch, one week before GA, and the product manager says, This will be done. Finally, go complete this task. And it's like, okay I'm holding the faith. There's other things I have to complete. I know you've mentioned verticals. There's been a lot of discussion about verticals.
You know, that takes up a lot of time too. The question I've needed to answer and had to think about is: how do I manage the work of launching the product as well as the other aspects of my job in the absence of control over that launch date?
David Vogelpohl () (06:40)
You've seen these floating timelines. The product's not ready. There's a glitch that's discovered in the last second. They are able to push through the release, and they get the release out early. You're trying to coordinate resources with other marketers web designers, designers and content specialists and other things like such. So this orchestration with these floating dates I'm hearing. Which is the opposite side? Just like the one I've...
You know, I you know, I've worked in marketing for products and in many capacities over the years. It seems as if every time I speak to a product person you'll hear them say, I'm going to release X and I'm going to go out and make a statement regarding the release. Do you think that your expectations regarding the level of work required for these various product launches can be excessive? Is that part of what's wrong with the traditional approach to product marketing?
Braden (07:28)
Sure. It's true that the product managers are product managers with a purpose. They're the ones who own these products. They're super excited about this. They've oftentimes been working on these products for understand, all the way to several years that they've been trying to get these products out there. And so of course they'll need as much support as they can get for these products. And when it's, it's difficult to get someone from a product management team visit you and say, I'm extremely excited by this feature.
I'm looking for a great deal of help, so here's a list of my thoughts as well as the courage to say: let's pump the brakes a little bit for the A, B, or C reasons, but I just can't support your ideas, or do it because, well, I'm just not in the mood or I'm just difficult to sustain relationships with the product managers since they may feel like they, you don't wanna help their cause, or do something else. This does not happen. Obviously, you don't wanna help as many people as you can.
David Vogelpohl () (08:26)
Yeah. So it feels like then from your perspective in terms managing a go-to marketing campaign around a launch, you're dealing with the floating dates that are part of the standard model and then every product director, and rightly so, as you mentioned, given the amount of money and effort that they're spending on it, it's like, we should make a huge splash regarding this. But with all those demands, plus the floating dates, it feels a bit like you're doing less than your very best job. The feeling is that you're distributing yourself amongst all these things and you're finding it hard to do your best work is kind of the gist I'm getting. Is that fair?
Braden (09:01)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's an area where lots aspects fall down all at the same time. And suddenly you have to figure out how to, what to do about all of them. And not only is there only 24 hours in a day, let alone, you know, working those full 24 hours, but also the, the stress of having to think about, keep all of those items in mind. So, consider the time to learn these technical aspects and.
Condense them into something that is market facing. So yeah, there's a lot of challenges there.
David Vogelpohl () (09:35)
You mentioned this just a moment ago, when we discussed the importance of supporting PMs and their relationship between PMMs and PMs if you will. If you're feeling this is the typical form of marketing for products, would you say it has some friction between PMs and PMs?
Braden (09:58)
Yeah, I think so. I've experienced situations where yes, it's definitely an a little uncomfortable conversation to simply admit that I do not have the resources to support the way you want to go. It's true that when that happens it's important to be attentive and attempt to figure out what the person in charge is searching for, but it certainly causes tension. You know, you need to be able to communicate effectively when you're in situations where, you know, you need to be in the room and be paying attention.
being clear, being really adept at logging what you're doing as well as, in the case of, deploying the process of thematic launches to help avoid some problems that are associated from traditional products.
David Vogelpohl () (10:41)
Now you've got the Product managers asking for the largest possible megaphone in their announcements. There's the other marketing departments asking"Can we be more planful so we are able to do a better job? You've also mentioned the switch towards thematic releases of your products. Let's start with the basics. What is a thematic product release?
Braden (10:59)
Yeah, great question. A thematic release is a bundle of items under an umbrella of a theme. As an example, B2B as the umbrella and the other products are supporting that theme.
David Vogelpohl () (11:16)
When we speak of themes-based releases, I'm guessing we're talking about not one every week. Maybe, I guess, if you're really determined do you release these regularly, on a monthly basis or quarterly? monthly?
Braden (11:30)
Good question. There is a spring release, summer, fall release. People aren't around during the holidays at the end of the year, which is why we do not release during that time. But yeah, just three releases each year, with occasional releases occasionally in between.
David Vogelpohl () (11:45)
So the product org is aiming to say like every quarter we'll see this improvement in the theme of the product line and we're going to integrate it into the advertising for products, but we're planning to bring it to life in one big campaign. Does it include the elements of each of the product lines and feature release within the theme?
Braden (12:08)
Yes, it is. It contains those components. Then we review our customers' plan and say OK, what's planning for this calendar year? This helps us classify these products in themes. So we aren't necessarily going in a downward-facing direction in saying that we have to find a solution for theme A which products that are relevant to the theme of A? Instead, we look at what are the suite of products that we're planning to introduce this year?
Then what's the main theme that each of those merchandise can fall under during these seasons.
David Vogelpohl () (12:44)
This is what you'll get, you'll increase the sound. There's a chance that you'll be missing by a quarter, maybe at the time of release or some other thing, but it could have been a delay, guess, before you know that it's. Yeah. This means you're separating the GA, if you will in relation to the promotion.
Braden (12:51)
That's correct, yeah.
That's correct. Yeah. That's an approach, as we've already deployed the strategy, and we've got GA actions that we carry out since these products require promotion after they become live. Therefore, as a part of the thematic process, we have GA activities and then themes that we are able to deploy for each product.
David Vogelpohl () (13:18)
Every new product, if you can, sort of is a part of the theme releases. And then you have kind of a shorter version such a thing as the GA release that is effective. You're basically getting the double dip, it sounds like.
Braden (13:31)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's really helped to make sure that the internal teams of our company have access to GA. Therefore, customer success doesn't come about by receiving feedback from our clients. They're like, Hey I'm using this amazing product. I want to know more about the product. Our customer success team was never activated. It's not the case since in GA we're releasing FAQ documents as well as value-based messages in order to ensure our employees know what's going on.
And then the go -to market messages, as the one you cited, could be delayed on occasion. If you have the product debut in January, but aren't able to release a thematically-related product till April, your product may not receive as much marketing support early on, but it will get an opportunity to participate in the bigger campaign later throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (14:17)
If you thought it was extremely strategically planned, would you to add an X or a larger release that was in between the other thematic releases if you just happen to have some, that GA dates for a similar very strategic product you've been waiting on?
Braden (14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. We also have occasional releases which we assist with. We attempt to limit them to one or two if we can. We've developed a procedure that we have along with your Product team, where we hold conversations and then we think, okay, we know, there's this really amazing product. It's not in the theme, but it's crucial for reasons A or B. And so we plan for that as a team to ensure that everyone understands what we're planning to accomplish. You know it gets its own treatment.
However, the advantage is we don't have 15 products all at once, crashing to the floor at the close of each quarter. That's typically the case in the case of products that are delivering everything at the same time.
David Vogelpohl () (15:08)
Thank you.
One of my top business jokes is that, not a joke, but an observation. The idea that executives Q3 signifies the start of Q3 and the engineering teams Q3 means the end of the Q3. It sounds like the teams are all sort of obviously, moving towards the close to reach the quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I gotcha.
Braden (15:33)
Yeah, exactly right.
David Vogelpohl () (15:38)
So you have this theme that's due to be released in the this quarter or next or something, but you have a big announcement of a feature or product that doesn't fit in the theme. Are you referring to one of those special ones you mentioned that you might pop up within the time between the release of the thematic theme?
Braden (15:55)
It's true. So I'll give you an example from what we're doing. The release of payments was early this year. and so we had a variety of interesting payment options. One of those payments which slipped through the cracks of engineering and couldn't get to it by the time that the theme launch occurred included Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. And so, you know that we got together to look at the feature and asked, how do we help promote Google Pay? This isn't really a B2B feature. And so, yeah we released a version of the feature for Google Pay.
I have created some documents to accompany it FAQ documents, blog posts or blog post that is promoted on social networks such as that.
David Vogelpohl () (16:29)
So what happens then if you have this kind of anchor product release with a theme release that slips? It sounded like you still had some anchor product, I guess, within the thematic release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. So what can you do? You can wait for the thematic release till the anchor products are in place? Or what do you do?
Braden (16:54)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. Sometimes it's waiting and seeing. We've had that happen. It's true, I was talking to the team behind product today who said, Hey, B2B might be a waiting and seeing launch coming in the next few months of this year. However, the advantage of a theme-driven launch is that A, there's no deadline to meet. We're setting that deadline for ourselves. So if we want delay that deadline slightly so that we can better meet the deadlines of engineering and the product, we can.
or we can adjust those themes at any time. In the event that a crucial new feature is no longer released, perhaps we can pick up one or two lesser features to form an assortment that matches a theme in a different way. This is why there's some the flexibility in this system that allows the possibility of changes throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (17:47)
OK, that makes sense. As I imagine a traditional promotional campaign of a feature release It's similar to an announcement blog post, maybe a press release and some coverage on social media and emailing our customers. contact our potential customers, that kind of things. How is thematic release different in terms of structure?
Braden (18:07)
Yeah, I alluded to the issue in the past. Many of these things continue to happen. In the current thematic time these things continue taking place, however we also have what we'll call GA activities. So a lot more than just internal enablement via in-app notifications. When someone could access that tech or piece of software We're providing that technology to our customers and those-- the internal teams within us. And we decouple that from the this theme release.
At the point, rather than focusing on a lot of things that are more similar to, you know, hey, this feature is readily available at bits and pieces it's possible to create more of a narrative story about the value broadly of all of these elements. That's an important difference that I see it's not possible to do with a release, in pieces through the course of the quarter or year.
David Vogelpohl () (19:04)
Yeah. And it helps, it is like you are able to improve the quality of your story. Because I think my ideal example is the enhancements to quality of life which are really difficult for engineering, but don't necessarily make the product more marketable. It's because, you know what I mean? A person who is outside isn't aware that there was a problem or something. And, and so it's usually difficult for Phil is the product manager, to announce"Hey, y'all! we've solved this. When in fact, the fix was really valuable both for the business as well as the clients.
Braden (19:08)
Yeah.
David Vogelpohl () (19:34)
So it's felt like these releases do not just give you the ability to broadcast your megaphone but also kind of make the case for some of these more quality of life improvements.
Braden (19:43)
Absolutely, yeah, you are able to access many applications benefit from this which normally wouldn't be eligible for marketing or might get the benefit of a quick announcement in Pendo. Instead, they're in a website that's a part of the other features. And well, do be able to use the megaphone. Additionally, there's lots to gain from the less improvements, like quality of life improvements.
David Vogelpohl () (20:08)
Okay, now that you have this approach, how many quarters of your time are you?
Braden (20:13)
This is our third, next month we'll have our third thematic launch this month, which will be in July.
David Vogelpohl () (20:20)
Three quarters into the program, do you consider that this has increased your capacity to organize marketing resources and help with the launch of new products, or is it still too early to tell?
Braden (20:33)
I'd say it's certain that it has improved I'm the one who made it happen. I think the improvement I've noticed is not just am I able to better support, the product team, and not just support them as well, but also collaborate with other marketing departments particularly demand generation. you know, they have a lot of lead time now that they had not before with this product.
And we could slot them into the campaigns that we used to struggle to do. That is the most significant advantage. However, the second benefit is that it has opened the door for us at to focus on vertical expansion in other areas for example, such as gaming which we may not have had as much time or sufficient manpower for pushing those verticals forward.
David Vogelpohl () (21:28)
So you mentioned the video game segment for for a while, and 's had video game players for quite a while from the very beginning of the company. It was mentioned that the business is having a tendency to lean into the video game segment. Do you think that segmentation might play an important role in thematic releases or do you think they are more focused on feature sets?
Braden (21:51)
Yes, segmentation plays an important role. As I said, that our upcoming launch will be focused on B2B. It's a niche which we're hoping to sell into and that we're enthusiastic about expanding into. It's possible to imagine a future in which we're doing it with video games too. You know, we mentioned the improvement we've made to Our Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. So yeah, expanding the vertical theme does not just give you the ability, you know, to...
you get the benefits of the thematic launch, but you also gain the benefits of incorporating things such as thinking leadership to the launch, which you may be unable to integrate into a conventional releases of products. This means you get a bigger, potentially an even bigger push for your campaign and more value out of these product launches for the broader organisation.
David Vogelpohl () (22:44)
Excellent. Well, this has been really interesting, Braden. I really appreciate you coming to talk on air about this. This was an amazing conversation at Spryng this week in Austin. I thought it'd be neat to bring this discussion to the show. it was a blast. Thanks for joining.
Braden (23:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for inviting me. It was super fun.
David Vogelpohl () (23:04)
Awesome. And if you'd like to check out more on Braden's work, you can visit www.braden.com. Braden is up to and possibly his next theme-based release, please go to .com. Thank you for taking part in this week's episode of Growth Stage. I've been your host, David Vogelpohl. I love supporting the community of digital products as part of my role as . It is my pleasure to bring the best of the community to you on the Growth Stage. Thank you everyone.
