Product Marketing is Not Working -- Fix It With Thematic Product Launches -
Is your product marketing team having trouble coordinating marketing resources to manage an interminable stream of product launches, with vague release dates and an endless stream of product managers wanting to get tons of marketing attention with each release? Would there be a better way?
- Be sure to pay the greatest attention to all product releases.
- Create a compelling product story that is greater than the parts.
- Marketing should be organized and thoughtful so they can be the best at their job to promote new products.
If you're running yourself ragged with over-active product roadmaps or incessant "t-shirt" sizes to estimate agile project estimates, slipping product release dates and fretting about letting your product managers down, it could be time to look into specific product releases. Discover how this can be done in 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 support the digital product community by working as . And I love bringing the very best from the community back and to you through the Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're going to interview someone who's uh, really special for me. I work with him here at . He's going to be talking about how product marketing is a mess and the best way to fix it with thematic
new product launches we'd be pleased to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.
Braden (00:39)
Thank you, I appreciate your introduction. I'm eager to talk with you about marketing for products today.
David Vogelpohl () (00:44)
Awesome. And I am so happy to work with you here at , Braden. It was like I experienced a moment of panic because I rarely use your last name loud. And I'm like is it possible that this pronunciation is a weird pronunciation that I forgot to, I forgot over the years or something. But welcome to the forum. Of course, it is. What Braden will be discussing are his opinions regarding the flaws in traditional marketing for products and we, is using periodic thematic launches of products.
Braden (00:58)
Yeah. Yeah, thank you.
David Vogelpohl () (01:14)
for you to pay the highest focus to the new releases of your products, tell an overarching product narrative that will be more important than the parts. This will aid marketing in being more strategic and careful so that you are able to provide your best work for the product launches you make. I attended Spryng put on by Wynter, W -Y -N T - E -R I believe, and also S -P -R -Y -N G, however it's not a conference.
The group was talking about the different problems and issues in marketing. The issue of product marketing was brought up. And people were feeling they were running ragged in dealing with every single feature launch, new product releases, and attempting to create the most of every single one of them. The topic of thematic releases for products was brought up by someone else in the group had recommended it. We had adopted that here at the time of some quarters ago.
And so I thought it would be neat to discuss the topic in this blog today. That's it, Braden, are you eager to get started?
Braden (02:18)
Yeah, let's do it. I'm excited to talk about it. it. it. it.
David Vogelpohl () (02:20)
Alright, good deal. I've been around for some time now, but I don't have the right answer for this question. Was the first item you bought online?
Braden (02:28)
It's a cool idea. I was thinking about the subject. It was the junior high school years. eBay was hot. And I bought the PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. It had like some sporting games, as well as additional games. It was a constant debate over the decision of whether to purchase it. However, I bought it and loved it. I got a lot of use out of that console and had a lot of enjoyment.
Another option is to use my own cash. The first thing I earned was a didgeridoo was the very first thing I ever purchased with my own money. So that was the other choice.
David Vogelpohl () (03:06)
Okay, I like the distinction you made between the money you own and, I guess, your What was it like, your parent money? How did you fund the PSP?
Braden (03:14)
It's possible that I earned it through weeding the lawn or cutting the garden or whatever. However, the second one was just like the salary which I made on my own.
David Vogelpohl () (03:24)
Well, I figure if you're cutting the lawn, that's your cash, Braden. This is fine. Okay, so I let it slip a at the beginning however, could you please share with the audience the things you are doing here or about the work you do?
Braden (03:27)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure. So I'm the Senior Product Marketing Manager at . My responsibilities include everything that goes to market for our entire range of products and the industries that we operate in. When a new product is launched, you know, all the messages that go with that product and around it, and then also providing support for things like B2B games, video games or other sectors that we're looking forward to selling into. Merchant of Record.
And so what that means is that we integrate everything beginning with the purchase button and ending in a digital product selling experience. We partner with SaaS firms, gaming businesses AI firms B2B companies, and other things like this. that. that. that.
David Vogelpohl () (04:18)
Excellent, excellent. As you go on to describe kind of what you did it was that you covered a bunch of different areas. You touched on product releases and feature release. Additionally, you mentioned verticals. The B2B category was mentioned. SaaS and video games. The modern marketer is often embracing the vertical position in relation to a particular product. This, I believe, adds to the complexity of the product marketing.
What do you think could be broken in the marketing of products? What was not working in the conventional model?
Braden (04:56)
Yeah, it's a really good question. You know, product releases are dependent on numerous moving factors that are outside of the product marketing manager's reach. For instance, engineering issues or customer commitments required and sales are suddenly an enormous issue that says, hey, you need to complete this product prior to when the release of another product. There are a lot of moving pieces around these product launches. Therefore, it is important to work with the product teams in order to establish commit dates and understand,
when are these products going to be available for release? What is the meaning of release? Does it mean that it is generally accessible or is it in the beta phase? It's time for the next question to arise what time do we need to talk about the software? And what are the things we'd like to talk about? Do we have the ability to talk about it since we're trying to test it? This raises a number of questions and a lot of unease happens with this model of, you know how manufacturing and engineering work. Therefore, I think that the most important thing that's broken is
it's so difficult to know when it's difficult to visualize the final product and set a date for release and plan for a product that is ready for launch. So what occurs is that product managers such as myself get just a week before launch, one week before GA, the product manager says, This will be finished. Then, you can and do this job. And it's like, okay but hold on. It's not the only thing I've had to finish. It's true that you've talked about verticals. It's been discussed.
You know, that takes up a lot of time, too. And so the question that, you know, I've needed to answer and have to consider is: how do I manage the work of launching the product as well as the other aspects of my job when I have no control over that launch date?
David Vogelpohl () (06:40)
If you're using floating timelines, and the product's not fully functional. They discover a bug at the last minute. They manage to power through the release and get it out in time. It's a challenge to coordinate resources with other marketers, designers and website people and content folks and things similar to this. So this orchestration with these floating dates that I'm hearing. What about the other aspect? Like I've...
you know, worked in product marketing and in many capacities over time. I'm like, I feel that every time I speak with a person from product and they're saying, we're going to release X and I'm going to create a huge announcement about the release. Do you think that expectations about the amount of effort required to promote new product releases can sometimes be excessive? Do you think that's part of what's wrong with the traditional approach to product marketing?
Braden (07:28)
Yeah, for sure. You know, these product managers, they're product managers with a purpose. They are the owners of those products. They're extremely excited about the product. They've been working on these for, you know, up to several years striving to get the products out there. So naturally, they'll want as much support as they can get for these products. It's difficult to get an executive from the product team come up to you and say, I'm extremely excited by this new feature.
I'm looking for a great deal of help, so here's a list of my suggestions I'm going the courage to say: let's pump the brakes a little bit for the A, B, or C reasons, but I'm not able to support your ideas, or do it because, well, I'm not able to do it or I'm just discouraging and hard to maintain an ongoing relationship with these product managers due to, you know, you might think that because they feel do not want to help their cause, or do something else. This doesn't happen, and obviously it's not your intention to assist as many people as you are able to.
David Vogelpohl () (08:26)
Yeah. It's like from your perspective in terms managing a go-to -market around a product launch You're dealing with floating dates of the conventional method, as well as every other manager, just because of the time and money they're putting in it It's like, lets make an announcement regarding this. But with all those demands, plus the dates floating around It feels like you're doing less than your best work. It's like, you're spreading your time between all of these demands which makes it difficult to perform your best job is something I'm receiving. Does that sound right?
Braden (09:01)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. you end up in a place where a lot aspects fall down all at the same time. You have to determine how to achieve each of them. There are only 24 hours in a day, let alone, you know, working those full 24 hours and also pressure that comes with having to consider, keep all of those items in mind. So, consider these highly technical things and.
make them more compact into something that is market facing. There's certainly plenty of issues to be faced.
David Vogelpohl () (09:35)
This was something you mentioned a minute ago when we were talking about supporting product managers and the relationship with PMMs as well or PMs. If you're feeling you are a fan of the old-fashioned model of product marketing would you say it can have some tension with PMMs and PMs?
Braden (09:58)
It's true, I'm thinking so. I've experienced situations where yeah, it's certainly had a uncomfortable conversation to simply say, I just don't have the funds to assist your request. You know, in these situations you need to pay attention and try to understand what the PM's looking for, but it certainly does create tension. And, you know, it's all about good communication when you're in situations where, you know, you have to be there and engage in those discussions, paying attention.
Being clear, being adept at logging what you're doing, and in our case using the thematic launch process 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 for their releases. The other marketing departments asking"Can we be more strategic so that we are able to do a better job? And you kind of talked about the shift towards thematic releases of your products. Therefore let's get started with a simple question. What is a thematic product release?
Braden (10:59)
Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a bundling of products underneath a topic. For example, B2B as the umbrella and all the products are supporting that theme.
David Vogelpohl () (11:16)
If we're talking about thematic releases, I mean, I'm guessing we're talking about not one every week. It could be it's if you're extremely committed, however is it happening regularly, on a monthly basis or quarterly? monthly?
Braden (11:30)
Good question. There is a spring release, summer, autumn release. The public isn't in the mood during the holidays at the conclusion of the calendar year, therefore we don't release it at that time. But yeah, just three times every year. We also do ad-hoc releases occasionally in between.
David Vogelpohl () (11:45)
The product org is aiming to say like every quarter we'll have this thematic improvement to this product or product line and, if we can integrate it into the product marketing, we're going make it real as a single campaign. What if it were to contain the components of all of the items and new releases that are related to the subject?
Braden (12:08)
Yeah, it will. It has those aspects. Then we review our customers' plan and say OK, what's planning for this next year? This helps us classify the products into themes. We aren't always going using a top-down method and saying, we need to figure out for theme A which products that fit under the theme of A? Instead, we look at what products that we're planning to introduce this year?
Then what's the main subject matter that these products can fit under within these seasons.
David Vogelpohl () (12:44)
You'll be able to see this and you'll amplify it. You might be off in a quarter when the date of release is something, but there might be a lag, I think, prior to you knowing you've got it. Yeah. So you're decoupling the GA in the event you want to, from 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, because these features do need promotion when they go live. And so we, as a part of the process that is thematic, can have GA activities and then thematic actions that we could deploy for each product.
David Vogelpohl () (13:18)
So everybody, every new product, if you would like, is a part of the thematic releases. And then you have kind of a smaller version for such a thing as the GA rollout effectively. You're basically getting the double dip It sounds like.
Braden (13:31)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's been really helpful to ensure that the internal teams of our company have access to GA. This means that customer satisfaction isn't just suddenly being able to get feedback from customers. It's like Hey I'm using this amazing product. I'd like to know more about it. Our customer success team wasn't set up. This isn't the case because at GA we're constantly releasing FAQ documents and value messages in order to ensure our employees know what's happening.
Then, the go-to marketing messages, as you said, can lag on occasion. If your product is scheduled to debut in January, but aren't able to release a thematically-related product in April, the product won't receive enough marketing coverage at the start, but it will get to tag along with an even bigger marketing push later on during the year.
David Vogelpohl () (14:17)
If you thought it was extremely strategic, would you like throw in an X, or a larger release between the theme releases, if you happen to know a that GA dates for a similar extremely strategic item you've been waiting on?
Braden (14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. Therefore, we do have some ad-hoc releases which we support. we try to limit those to one or two if we are able to. We've developed a procedure that we have along with your Product team, where we hold an exchange and think, okay, we are aware of this amazing product. It's not in the category, but it's crucial for reasons A or B. So we've planned for that as a team to ensure that everyone understands what we're planning to accomplish. And then, you know this will get a separate attention.
The benefit is that there isn't a chance of 15 items that suddenly crash at the end 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 most favorite business jokes is the, actually, observation is that the executive Q3 is the time to start Q3 while the engineering team Q3 signifies the conclusion of Q3. This suggests that they're all kind of, well, moving towards the conclusion to meet those quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got it.
Braden (15:33)
Yes, precisely.
David Vogelpohl () (15:38)
You have a theme due out the next quarter, or maybe in the future, and there's a major announcement of a feature or product which doesn't match with the themes. Is this just one of those unique ones you were talking about you could see in between the thematic release?
Braden (15:55)
Yes, precisely as you would expect. Therefore, I'll provide you with an example of our current work. We released a payment release at the beginning of the year. We had variety of interesting payment options. One payment that didn't make it into the engineering could not be able to get it right by when the launch occurred took place. It was Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. And so, you know we took a seat and looked at it and thought, how could we promote Google Pay? The feature isn't really a business-to-business function. And so, yeah, we did a little version of the feature for Google Pay.
Created some documents for it FAQ documents, blog posts or blog post that is promoted on social networks such as that.
David Vogelpohl () (16:29)
What happens if you have this kind of release for an anchor product and a thematic release that falls? I mean, it sounded as if you had an anchor product, I guess that was the case within the thematic release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. So what can you do? Just wait to do the thematic release till the anchor products are included? Or what do you do?
Braden (16:54)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. Oftentimes it can be an open-ended wait and see. We've had that happen. You know, I was having conversations with the team behind product today who told me, hey, B2B may be an option to waiting and seeing launch coming at some point later in the year. The benefit of the thematic launch is A, it's not a hard deadline. We're setting that deadline for ourselves. So if we want to push that back slightly in order to support the deadlines of engineering and the product We can.
Or we could alter those themes at any point. In the event that a crucial feature suddenly isn't gonna get launched, maybe we could pick up one or two lesser features to form the perfect bundle to fit the theme in a different way. There's a lot of the flexibility in this system that allows to accommodate the changes that occur all through the year.
David Vogelpohl () (17:47)
Okay, this is logical. When I consider a traditional marketing campaign to promote an announcement of a new feature, it's like an announcement blog post, maybe a press release, some social coverage, email our customers, email our prospects, that sort of item. How does thematic release differ in terms of structure?
Braden (18:07)
Yes, I mentioned the issue in the past. Many of these things continue to happen. And at the thematic moment they are occurring, but there is what we refer to as GA activities. Also, a great deal of like internal enablement, within-app notifications. When somebody is able to access this tech or piece of software We're providing that technology to our customers as well as our own internal teams. We separate that access from the this theme release.
And then at the thematic moment, instead of being focused on all of the more like the same features there's this feature available, you know, fragmented, we can tell the story about the value broadly of the aspects. This is a huge difference that I see which isn't possible when you're releasing something, you know, at piecemeal over the course of a quarter or a year.
David Vogelpohl () (19:04)
Yeah. It also seems to help elevate the story. Because I think an example that I think is perfect for me is the enhancements to quality of life which were like really hard for engineering but do not necessarily improve the marketability of the product. Because, do are you aware of what I'm talking about? A person who is outside doesn't even know that it was an issue or something. So, it's usually difficult for Phil, as a product marketer to say"Hey, y'all! we, we fixed this. In reality, it is actually beneficial both for the business as well as customers.
Braden (19:08)
Yeah.
David Vogelpohl () (19:34)
So it's felt like thematic releases not only give you the ability to share the megaphone, however, they can also elevate the story of some additional quality of life improvements.
Braden (19:43)
Absolutely, yeah, you have the opportunity to that a variety of applications benefit from this which would otherwise not be able to benefit from marketing or might get an, say, short announcement from Pendo. Instead, they're in a website that's a part of these bigger features that, well, do be able to share that megaphone. Additionally, there's lots of value in the small, you know, improvement in quality of life.
David Vogelpohl () (20:08)
So, if you take this strategy worked? How many quarters of your time are you?
Braden (20:13)
It's our third launch, next month we'll have our third thematic launch this month, which will be in July.
David Vogelpohl () (20:20)
Okay, so three quarters into the program, do you consider that this has increased your capacity to coordinate marketing resources as well as support new the launch of new products, or is it too early to say?
Braden (20:33)
I would say that it's certainly improved on my part. What I see is not only do I have the ability to assist the entire product team and not just support them and coordinate with the rest of marketing particularly demand generation. you know, they are able to use a large amount of lead time now that they did not have prior to this product.
And we could slot them into the campaigns that we used to struggle to do. So I would say that would be the biggest advantage. But then the other benefit is that it has opened the door for us at to focus on other vertical expansion for example, such as gaming, that we might not have had the time to do or not enough manpower to push the verticals ahead.
David Vogelpohl () (21:28)
So you mentioned the video game section at least a few months it was in existence, with customers who play video games for quite some time, almost since the start of the business. You talked about the company kind of leaning into the video game segment. Do you feel like segments could play a role in thematic release, or do you believe it's more around the feature sets?
Braden (21:51)
Yes, segmentation plays a big role. As I said, that our upcoming launch will be focused on B2B. It's a niche that we want to sell into and that we're enthusiastic about expanding into. I can see a world in which we're doing it around video games as well. As we've said, how we've upgraded Our Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. So yeah, expanding using vertical themes does not just give you the capability, you know, in terms of...
The benefits are the same as the thematic launch. However, you also get the benefit of coupling things like thoughts leadership into your thematic launch that you might be unable to integrate into a conventional launch. So, you'll get a bigger, potentially a bigger campaign push as well as more value from these product launches for the broader organization.
David Vogelpohl () (22:44)
Excellent. Well, this has been very interesting Braden. I really appreciate you coming to the radio and speaking about this. This was a fascinating conversation at Spryng here in Austin. I was thinking it would be cool to kind of bring it to the stage, but this was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.
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 learn more details about the things Braden is doing and possibly his next thematic album, go to .com. Thanks everyone for joining this week's episode of Growth Stage. Your host is David Vogelpohl. I love supporting the digital product community in my job at . and I am awed by the opportunity to present the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. Thanks everybody.
