Product Marketing is BrokenMake It Right with Thematic Product Launches

Do you and your team of product marketers struggling to coordinate resources for marketing to support an endless flow of new releases, yet there is no indication of release dates, as well as an incessant stream of product managers wanting to get tons of media attention for each launch? Do you have a better way to accomplish this?

• You should pay the greatest attention to every product release.
• Develop a captivating story for your product that shows the totality is more than the sum of its parts.
• Be sure that marketing is well-organized and logical so that they are able to do their best in their work of promoting innovative product.

If you're struggling to keep track of a flurry of product roadmaps which are always in motion, never-ending "t-shirt" sizes for agile project estimations, slipping product release dates and fretting about failing to keep your managers of product down, it may be an appropriate time to research specific product releases. Find out how you can achieve this on this episode of Growth Stage!

|

Full Interview including a Podcast: Audio

     Listen on the web or locate the podcast on other services.

Podcast Video Interview Full

 Transcript

David Vogelpohl () (00:04)

Hello everyone! Welcome to the latest podcast episode from the Growth Stage podcast by . I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I'm part of the community for digital products through my work . and am humbled to be providing the very best of community to community to you here on this edition of Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're going be interviewing someone who's, really important to me. He works with me in the field of . He's going to be talking about the fact that product marketing is in a state of chaos and the best way to solve it is through thematic

announcements regarding new products appreciate having you join us at Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.

Braden (00:39)

Thank you for your time, I appreciated the intro. I'm eager to discuss the marketing of products this morning.

David Vogelpohl () (00:44)

Awesome. And I am so happy to work with you here at , Braden. I had a moment of fear because I have never pronounced your name with a lot of force. Then I thought, what could it be? Could it be a strange pronunciation that I was not aware of, or perhaps have lost over time or something, but welcome here. Yes, absolutely. What Braden is likely to discuss are his thoughts regarding the shortcomings of traditional marketing techniques for items and us, as well as quarterly thematic product launches.

Braden (00:58)

Yeah. Yes, I'm grateful.

David Vogelpohl () (01:14)

for you to pay all attention to your product releases ensure that you have a cohesive product story where each piece is worth more than the individual components. This will help marketers be more planful and careful in order to deliver the highest high-quality work for the launches you create. I went to Spryng organized by Wynter, W -Y -N The -T-E-R is what I'm thinking, as is S"S" is a contraction of -P-R-Y-N -G, but it's a conference.

The meeting was designed to address various issues and challenges with marketing. The topic of marketing for products was brought up. Some felt overwhelmed by every single feature launch and new product announcement and then trying to make a impact for everything. The subject of thematic release was mentioned by someone was in the group who had recommended the idea. We had taken it up a while ago.

So, I figured it might be fun to discuss this topic in the morning. That's it, Braden Are you ready to engage in conversation?

Braden (02:18)

Yeah, let's do it. I'm eager to talk about this topic. it. it. it.

David Vogelpohl () (02:20)

Alright, good deal. I've been on here a long time but I'm not sure of the right answer for the question. What was the first product you purchased online?

Braden (02:28)

Yeah, this is an excellent concept. I spent some time thinking about this topic. I was in the freshman high school days. eBay was in its peak. When I bought a PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. It came with sports games and some additional games. Then I debated whether or not I should buy it. But I did and I loved it. I gained a lot of satisfaction from this console and enjoyed a lot of fun.

Other options were with my personal cash. The first thing I earned was a dogeridoo. It was the first item I bought with my own cash through the internet. That was the second choice.

David Vogelpohl () (03:06)

Yes, I am in love with how you separated your own money from, I guess, the same amount to your parents' money? What was the process that you employed to pay for your PSP?

Braden (03:14)

Yes, I could have earned it by gardening or cutting the lawn or whatever. The second was the salary I earned by myself.

David Vogelpohl () (03:24)

If you're cutting the lawn, it's your money, Braden. This is fine. True that I gave the impression of giving away some information in the intro But, do you have the opportunity to discuss your work with people who perform here, or the way you operate there?

Braden (03:27)

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sure. As the top Product Marketing manager here at . My main job is managing go-to-market of all of our products, in addition to the many industries that we operate in. When a new product gets launched that's when we're able to handle all of the communications that go with it and around it, and then also helping in games, B2B and various other sectors that we're eager to reach out to. is a retailer of record.

That means we take everything beginning at the click of a purchase button, and end with a seamless digital sales experience. We collaborate together with SaaS businesses, gaming companies AI-based companies B2B companies along with other organizations such as. that. that. that.

David Vogelpohl () (04:18)

Excellent, excellent. In your next paragraph, you detail what you did it was that you covered a bunch of different areas. Releases of product releases and feature release. Also, you touched on verticals. There was a mention of B2B. SaaS and video gaming. Today's product marketers tends to prefer vertical positions in order to market a particular product. And I think that just makes it more difficult for product marketing.

But what do you think is broken in the marketing of products? What wasn't working for you with the standard method?

Braden (04:56)

Yes, that's a amazing topic. The release of products are dependent on a lot of things which are beyond the marketer's product. For instance, engineering issues and customer commitments that are required, or sales suddenly have significance that's"hey", we must make this product available prior to when this other product gets released. There are a lot of moving pieces around these product launch. So, working with the team members from product development to establish commit dates and understand,

What time will these products be available to be released? What's the significance of release? Are you able to access it in general or is it in the beta phase? We're ready to ask the next question. be asked, when are we going to talk about the issue? What are the topics we'd want to discuss? Can we afford to speak about it since the product is currently being tested? There's plenty of issues, and a lot of uncertainty arises from this particular model of, just the way that engineers and their products function. Therefore, I think one of the main issues is

It's a challenge to determine when it's hard to envision the final product, and contemplate a launch date and to prepare the product's preparation for its launch. So what occurs is that product managers like myself get caught up in the process, with just one week ahead of the launch date, and one week before GA, and the product manager says,"Hey, this product is expected to be in the pipeline. Then, you can do all of this task. You just need to hold it for a moment. I have other tasks to do. I'm sure you've spoken about verticals. There's been a lot of discussion about verticals.

You know, that consumes considerable amounts of time, too. So the issue that, you know, I've needed to resolve and consider is how can I do the launch of my product and other aspects of my work without having any control over the date of launch?

David Vogelpohl () (06:40)

In case you're running a floating timeline, and therefore the software isn't ready. A glitch is discovered in the last second. They somehow power through the release, and they complete it in a hurry. It's not easy to coordinate the efforts of other marketers, designers and webmasters and content experts and many other aspects like this. Therefore, this coordination is with floating dates is something I've heard. Are there other sides? Just like it's...

It's true that I've have worked in the field of product marketing various capacities throughout numerous years. Every whenever I meet with a person from product you'll be told, I'm making X and need to create a huge buzz over the release. Are you feeling you're expecting too much from the effort required to make each of these releases is sometimes too much? Could that be a part of the problem with the conventional approach to product marketing?

Braden (07:28)

Sure. It's true that those product managers, they're product managers because of a reason. They control the products. They're thrilled about this. They've worked on these items for probably, for a few years trying to make products to market. Naturally, they'll want the same level of support that they receive from these items. When it's difficult to get anyone from the Product Management team visit you and tell you that they're extremely excited by this technology.

I'm in search of a large quantity of help. So this is a listing of opinions that I'm willing to make: we'll let the brakes go slightly in the case of A, B, or C motives, but I'm not able to support your request, or even because I'm just not at the right moment or am just discouraging and hard to maintain a strong connection with these manager of the product because, I'm sure they believe that they aren't interested in helping them or something, which does not happen. Obviously it's not your intention to help everyone who you can.

David Vogelpohl () (08:26)

Yeah. This is why, you're looking at it from a perspective of coordination of going-to market around the announcement of a new product, you're dealing with the floating dates, which are an integral part of the standard model along with every other product manager and rightfully so, as you mentioned, given the time and money spent on it and it's like that we ought to make a big announcement about this. but with all of those demands, plus floating dates it's as if you're not performing your best work. Your time is being divided between many demands, and finding it difficult to be at your very best is kind of the gist I'm getting. Do you think that's the case?

Braden (09:01)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. There are a variety of things kind of collapse at the same time. It is up to you to determine how to, accomplish all of these. It is not just that there are 24 hours in the day and, not to mention, you know, working those full 24 hours and also the stress of having to think about how to keep all of these issues in your mind. Take the time to study these techniques as well as.

Make them into a form that has a commercial appeal. There are certainly plenty of challenges there.

David Vogelpohl () (09:35)

This was mentioned in the past, in our discussion of helping the product managers as well as their relationship with PMMs, PMs, or PMs. If you're not feeling the standard form of product marketing, are you able to say that it may have some tension between the PMs and PMs?

Braden (09:58)

It's the case. I've been in situations where yes I've certainly had somewhat of a stressful dialogue when you need to admit that I do not have the resources to assist you with you with your request. You know, in situations like this, it is important to be attentive and know what the PM's looking for, however it can result in tension. It's all about good communication for scenarios in which you are there is a situation where you have to be there and be paying to pay attention.

Being clear, adept at keeping track of your progress precise, keeping track of your progress and for this instance, using the thematic launch process to get around a lot of the problems that come from traditional products.

David Vogelpohl () (10:41)

You've got the product managers requesting the strongest megaphone that they can find in their announcements. Other marketing departments are wondering, how can we become more organized so that we can be more efficient? Also, you've discussed your move to thematic releases of your product. Therefore, let's begin with the basics. What's a theme-based release?

Braden (10:59)

Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a bundle of items under an umbrella of a theme. As an example, B2B as the umbrella and all of those products are supporting that theme.

David Vogelpohl () (11:16)

When it comes to thematic releases, I'm guessing there's no need to release them every week. Perhaps it's because you're extremely dedicated, but do you release these at a quarterly pace, or every month?

Braden (11:30)

Good question. There's a spring release and a summer release along with an autumn release. There aren't many people around during the holidays towards the close of the calendar year. therefore we don't do it at that time. But yeah, just three releases a year with occasional releases during the year.

David Vogelpohl () (11:45)

The company's product team plans to inform customers that each quarter, there will be this theme-based improvement in the product line. We'll also see if we can incorporate it into marketing for the product, and we'll attempt to make it happen through a large advertising campaign. What if it were to include the elements of each of the products and feature releases within the subject?

Braden (12:08)

It is. It has those aspects. We look at our customer roadmap and we say, OK, what's in store for this year? This helps us classify the items into themes. So, we don't need to take an upward-facing approach, or say that we'll need to figure out an answer for theme A. what products are related to the topic of A? Instead, we'll look at what products we plan to release this year?

What's the next thing that these goods can fit under within those seasons.

David Vogelpohl () (12:44)

If you're lucky and you'll increase the effect. It's possible that you'll be missing in a quarter when the date of release is announced or an event, however it could take a while in the beginning, but I think it's before you are aware that it's. Yeah. This means you're dissociating from the GA for the reason that you'd like to do and also the promotion.

Braden (12:51)

That's correct, yeah.

That's correct. Yeah. It's a smart method. This is why we've incorporated our GA activities that we do since these products need promotion when they become live. This is why they are part of a process of thematic. have GA processes and thematics which we can deploy for each product.

David Vogelpohl () (13:18)

Every new product, if you are able to, has the opportunity to make it into the themes that are released. Then you can have a sort of a small version like the GA release, which is reliable. It means that you get another dip which sounds similar to.

Braden (13:31)

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's been extremely helpful in ensuring that our teams within the company have access to GA. This means that customer satisfaction isn't just hearing from our clients. Customers are stating,"Hey I'm using this great product. I'd like to learn more about this product. Our customer success team wasn't set up. However, this isn't true because in GA we've been releasing FAQs as well as value-based messages to make sure that our team members are aware of the problem.

Additionally, the primary marketing messages like the ones that you mentioned, can be delayed at times. If you're planning to launch in January but you cannot launch any thematically based product until April, the product might not get enough attention from the marketing department in the beginning, however it'll be able to join to the bigger campaign later on in the year.

David Vogelpohl () (14:17)

If you were thinking it was highly strategic, would you put into an X? know, a bigger release, that fell between other releases on the subject should you have an identical, GA timetable for that similar product, which you've been waiting on?

Braden (14:30)

Yeah, absolutely. So, we have some ad-hoc release that we offer assistance for. We attempt to limit these to just one or two releases when they're possible. Then we've created a system in conjunction along with your company's product team. we engage in a discussion about the product and say: okay we're impressed by your product. It's not in the category, but it's important for you to be able to distinguish between both. We plan on that together as a group to ensure that everyone understands the plan of action. Then, as you can imagine, it will get its focus.

But, the benefit is that you don't need to have fifteen products at the same time and then crash to the ground after the quarter's end as is often the case in the case of products that are delivering simultaneously.

David Vogelpohl () (15:08)

Thank you.

One of my top business jokes is not a joke, however, an observation. The concept is that executive Q3 marks the moment to start Q3 while the Engineering team Q3 signifies the conclusion of Q3. The teams are all sort of sure of arriving at the conclusion in order to meet the quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got you covered.

Braden (15:33)

Absolutly right.

David Vogelpohl () (15:38)

This theme will be out in within the next quarter, or maybe in the next few months but there's an announcement for a new product or feature which doesn't belong in the themes. Are you sure this is one of those special ones you've been discussing which you can see during the time between the release of the theme?

Braden (15:55)

Absolutely, exactly like you'd expect. So I'll give you an example from what we're currently doing. We did a payments release at the beginning of in the year. and so we had a lot of cool payments features. One of the payments that fell through engineering just couldn't be able to get it right by the time launch took place. The payment came from Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. Then we took a seat and sat down and then thought about how can be sure we're not in the right direction when we promote Google Pay? It's not really a B2B service. And so, yeah we released a version of this function for Google Pay.

It was created with some documents that FAQ documents. It was then incorporated into a blog post or promoted through social media and other things similar to that.

David Vogelpohl () (16:29)

So what happens then when you're dealing with this anchor product release with a theme release that isn't quite as great? It seemed like you had some the anchor product it was part of the theme release, which Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. What do you do? You can wait for this thematic announcement until anchor products have been installed? What else can you do?

Braden (16:54)

Yeah, I mean, it depends. Oftentimes it can be a wait and see. It's happened. Yes, I was having conversations with the product team today which led me to believe that, B2B could be something that we can see at some point later in the year. But the benefit of the theme-driven launch is that A, it's not a deadline. We're setting that deadline for us. If we need to extend the deadline a bit, in order to support engineering deadlines and product We are able to.

It is also possible to alter the themes at any moment. If a significant new feature is no longer launched perhaps we can take some additional features for an array that is compatible with the theme in a new way. That's why there's a certain flexibleness in the system that allows an opportunity for changes during the time.

David Vogelpohl () (17:47)

It's an excellent idea. If I look at the standard advertising campaign used to market the release of a feature, it's similar to an announcement blog post Perhaps it's a press release or social media post or email our clients, send our clients emails and so on. What is a thematic release like in regards to structure?

Braden (18:07)

Yes, I've talked about this in the in the past. These things continue to occur. At the moment of the theme, these events continue to take place. We are also dealing with the term GA actions. We have a variety of like internal enablement, notifications within the app. In the event that you permit access to an item of software or a technology, we're supplying that technology to our customers as well as our own internal team. We also separate that access from this theme release.

Presently we are not paying attention to a large amount of features that have closer to features like, "hey it's available, you know, as bits and pieces," we can tell an even more compelling story about what's important from all these features together. And so that's a big contrast that I've noticed it's impossible to achieve when releasing something in pieces over the course of an entire quarter or year.

David Vogelpohl () (19:04)

Yeah. It also is like you have the ability to enhance the credibility of your narrative. Because I think my ideal example are the improvements in living quality that are really difficult for engineers to implement, but they do not always help make products more attractive to consumers. Because, do isn't it? Anyone who's not inside does not know that there's an issue. It's usually difficult when Phil is a worker for a product marketing company, to announce"Hey you! we, we fixed this. when in reality this was a huge benefit both for the business as well as the clients.

Braden (19:08)

Yeah.

David Vogelpohl () (19:34)

It's a good thing that thematic releases don't just let you broadcast your megaphone but also kind of provide the argument for more high-quality upgrades to the quality of living.

Braden (19:43)

You absolutely are able to access, numerous features gain of this, and would not be able to benefit from marketing, or even get an announcement by Pendo. They are instead housed on an online site which is a component of these larger functions that are, in fact, sharing the megaphone. Share that megaphone. There's also a lot worth in small improvement, including the quality of life improvement.

David Vogelpohl () (20:08)

In other words, if you adopt this approach How many quarters do you have in?

Braden (20:13)

It's our third launch, next month we'll have our third themed launch in this month. It will take place in July.

David Vogelpohl () (20:20)

Now, three quarters after do you think it's enhanced your ability to oversee marketing resources as well as support the launch of new products, or is it too early to say?

Braden (20:33)

I'd say it's certain to be improved from my perspective. What I see is not just that I can better support the team behind the product, but assist them as well, and also collaborate with the other departments of marketing particularly demand generation. They are able to use a large quantity of lead time that they didn't have before regarding the product.

They could be incorporated into campaigns previously considered difficult to implement. This could be the biggest benefit. Another benefit is that it allows time for us to work on the alternative ways of expanding vertically such as video games, that we might not have had as much time or sufficient manpower for pushing the verticals further.

David Vogelpohl () (21:28)

The video games section has been in operation for has been in operation for at least a couple of months and has video game customers for quite a while, almost since the start of business. There was a mention that the business is being a bit more involved in the segment. Are you thinking that segmentation might play an important role when it comes to thematic releases? Or do you believe that it's more about the set of features?

Braden (21:51)

Segments definitely play a big role. Like I mentioned, our next launch will be focused on B2B. This is a market that we're hoping to reach and that we're enthusiastic about extending into. It's possible to imagine a future where we're doing this with video games as well. The improvements that we've made to Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. This is why increasing the vertical theme doesn't only opens up that capability to use it to...

The benefits of the theme-driven launch, however you also get the benefit of including things like thinking leadership to the theme of the launch. This is something you'd not able to incorporate into a conventional launch. This means you'll benefit from more extensive campaign effort and more value out of the launches to your organization.

David Vogelpohl () (22:44)

Excellent. It's been quite a blast, Braden. I really appreciate you joining the radio show to discuss this. It was such an interesting discussion that took place in Spryng just here in Austin. It was my thought to incorporate this debate into the show, but it was a blast. We appreciate your time.

Braden (23:01)

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me. It was really fun.

David Vogelpohl () (23:04)

Awesome. If you'd like to learn more details about the projects Braden is currently working on, for instance, his upcoming theme-driven release, visit .com. Thank you for taking part in this episode of Growth Stage. As host, I'm David Vogelpohl. I am a huge fan of the communities of digital products as an aspect of my job play at . and I am awed by the chance to showcase the best of this community to you at the Stage of Growth. Stage. Thank you everyone.

David Vogelpohl David is the CMO of . Over the past 25 years, David Vogelpohl has led teams in the creation of top engines for growth as well as applications for top brands such as WP Engine, Genesis, AWS, Cloudflare, and numerous others.

This post was posted on here