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 support an endless stream of product launches, with a lack of release dates, and a chorus of product managers demanding tons of attention from marketing departments for every launch? Is there an easier way?
- Pay the highest focus to every new product release.
- Tell an overarching product story that is worth more than the sum of its parts.
- Marketing should be organized and well-organized so they can provide their best work to promote new products.
If you're running yourself ragged with a constant stream of product roadmaps, incessant "t-shirt" sizes for project estimates that are agile or slipping dates for release of your product or worrying about failing to keep your product managers down, it could be time to think about thematic product releases. Learn how in this episode 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 a member of the digital products community by working as . And I love bringing all the great things happening in the community to community to you here on this episode of the Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're going to interview one person who's really special for me. We work together here at . We'll be discussing about the way that product marketing has been broken and how you can solve it using thematic
new product launches, and I'd be pleased to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.
Braden (00:39)
Thank you for your time, I appreciated your introduction. I'm excited to chat regarding product marketing this morning.
David Vogelpohl () (00:44)
Awesome. Well, I love working with you at Braden. And I had an instant of anxiety because I rarely pronounce your name loud. Then I thought I wonder if this is a weird pronunciation that I forgot to, I forgot over the years or whatever, but I'm glad you're to the forum. Yes, absolutely. What Braden will be discussing are his opinions on what is wrong with traditional product marketing and how the methods we employ here, are using periodic thematic launches of products.
Braden (00:58)
Yeah. Thank you.
David Vogelpohl () (01:14)
for you to pay the highest focus to the new releases of your products to ensure that you tell a coherent product narrative that will be more important than it's parts. It will also aid marketing in being more strategic and aware so that you deliver the highest quality work on your product releases. I was at 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.
There was a roundtable to discuss the many issues and challenges in marketing, and the topic of product marketing came up. And people were feeling they were overwhelmed and had to deal with every single feature launch or new product launch and trying to make an impact for everything. And the topic of thematic releases for products came up somebody other in the group proposed it, and we adopted that here at some time back.
Therefore, I thought that it would be fun to talk about that topic in this blog today. Also, Braden, are you ready to kick it off?
Braden (02:18)
Yeah, let's do it. I'm looking forward to discussing the topic. it. it. it.
David Vogelpohl () (02:20)
Alright, good deal. I've been on here for a while however I do not have the right answer for this question. What was the first product that you purchased on the internet?
Braden (02:28)
Yeah, this is an awesome question. I was thinking about the subject. It was junior high. eBay was at its peak. It was also when I purchased a PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. There were sporting games, as well as other games. And I agonized over the decision of whether to purchase it. However, I bought it and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I got a lot of value from the console and had a lot of amusement.
Another option is to use the money that I have earned was a didgeridoo was the first thing I purchased using my own money. This was also the second alternative.
David Vogelpohl () (03:06)
All right, I love the way you distinguished between your own money versus the money of your parents What was it similar to your parents' money? Which way did you finance the PSP?
Braden (03:14)
Yeah, I may have earned it through weeding the lawn or cutting the garden or something. But the other one was like my actual real job money that I earned through my own efforts.
David Vogelpohl () (03:24)
If you're trimming the lawn, it's your cash, Braden. This is fine. Okay, so I let it slip a bit in the intro, but could you share to the viewers what you do here at or in how you work here?
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 all of our products as well as the industry we work in as well. So when a product launches that's when we're able to handle all the messages that go with that product and around the product, as well as helping with things such as video games or B2B or other industries that we're really excited to sell into. is a retailer of record.
What that means is we take everything from the buy button onwards in a digital product selling experience. We collaborate together with SaaS companies, gaming companies AI firms B2B companies, and other things like that. that. that. that.
David Vogelpohl () (04:18)
Excellent, excellent. When you talk about your experience, you touched on many different aspects. There was a touch on new product launches and feature release. Also, you touched on verticals. The B2B category was mentioned. SaaS and video games. Today's product marketers is often embracing the vertical position to promote a specific product. And I think that just increases the difficulty of the product marketing.
So, what could be broken in the marketing of products? Was there something that didn't work for you in the conventional model?
Braden (04:56)
Yes, that's a great topic. You know, product releases depend on many moving factors that are outside the control of a marketer's product. For instance, engineering issues, if there's customer commits that need to happen and sales are suddenly significance that's"hey, you have to complete this product prior to when it's released. In addition, there are many shifting pieces to these launches. And so working with teams from the product team to set commit dates and understand,
When are these items going be released? What does release really mean? Are you able to access it in general or is it currently in the beta phase? It's time for the next question to be asked what time do we need to talk about it? What is it that we'd like to talk about? Can we even speak about this because we're testing it? There are a lot of concerns, a lot of uncertainty happens with this model of how engineering and product works. Therefore, I think that one of the main issues is that
it's so difficult to know when it's so hard to see the final product and think about a release date and prepare for the product to be prepared to go. And so what occurs is that product managers such as myself get knowing, for example, one week or two before the launch date, a week before GA, the manager of the product saying: Hey, this is going to be ready. Then, you can complete this task. And it's like, okay but hold for a second. I got other stuff I have to complete. I know you've mentioned verticals. There's been a lot of discussion about verticals.
You know, that consumes a significant amount of time too. The question, you know, I've needed to answer and thought about is, how do I complete the product launch work along with the other tasks of my job when I have no control over the date of launch?
David Vogelpohl () (06:40)
You've seen these floating timelines. The software isn't fully functional. There's a glitch that's discovered in the last second. They somehow power through the release and get it out in time. They're trying to coordinate their resources with other marketers as well as designers and webmasters as well as content people and stuff similar to that. This orchestration with these floating dates is what I'm hearing. What about the other side? Like you've...
You know, I you know, I've worked in marketing for products and various capacities throughout the years. I'm thinking, I feel like every time I talk to a product person and they're saying, we're making X and we need to go out and make a statement about the release. Are you feeling that expectations about the amount of effort for all these different product releases is sometimes excessive? Could that be a part of the reason why you're wrong with the traditional approach to product marketing?
Braden (07:28)
Sure. I mean, the product managers are product managers with a purpose. They're the ones who own these products. They're thrilled about this. They've oftentimes been working on these products for know, up to several years that they've been trying to get these products to release. So naturally, they're going to want as much support as they can for their products. When it's extremely difficult to have an executive from the product team come up to you to say that I'm extremely excited by this feature.
I'm looking for a great deal of backing, and here's a complete list of my ideas, and to have to say, well, we'll let the brakes go just a bit to accommodate reasons A, B or C reasons, but I'm not able to support the idea, or because I'm not able to do it, or, and that's frustrating and difficult to keep a strong relationship sometimes with those product managers because, you know, they may feel like they aren't worth helping you or anything, but that does not happen. Obviously and you're not trying to help everyone you can.
David Vogelpohl () (08:26)
Yeah. This is why, that from your point of view of coordinating a go -to market around the launch of a new product and dealing with floating dates in the traditional model, and every other product manager and rightfully so, because of the time and money that they're spending on it, it's like, we should make a huge splash about this. But with all those expectations, along with the floating dates you feel like you're doing less than your very best job. It's like, you're spreading your time between all of these demands which makes it difficult to be at your most effective work. That's what I'm receiving. Do you think that's reasonable?
Braden (09:01)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's an area where lots of things kind of collapse all at the same time. Then you must find out how to achieve each of them. Not only are there only 24 hours in one day, let alone the pressure of working those full 24 hours, but also the, anxiety of having to think about, keep all of those issues in your mind. Take the time to learn these technical aspects and.
condense them in an item that's market-oriented. There's certainly many challenges to overcome.
David Vogelpohl () (09:35)
You mentioned this just a moment ago, when we were talking about supporting product managers and the relationship with PMMs as well in the sense of. So do you feel like this is the typical form of product marketing can it be said that it has some friction with PMMs and PMs?
Braden (09:58)
It's true, I'm thinking that's the case. I've experienced situations where yes, it's definitely been a bit of a tension-filled conversation when you have to declare that I don't have the funds to assist the way you want to go. And, you know, in those cases you need to pay attention and understand what the PM is looking at, but it can cause tension. You know, it's all about good communication when you're in situations where required to have to be there and be paying attention.
Being clear, being good at tracking the progress you're making, and in our case using the theme-based launch method in order to eliminate some problems that are associated from traditional products.
David Vogelpohl () (10:41)
Now you've got the product managers asking for the biggest megaphone possible to announce their new products. You have the other marketing departments asking, can we be more planful so we are able to do a better job? Also, you've talked about the shift to product launches that are thematic. So let's just start simply. What is a thematic product release?
Braden (10:59)
Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a collection of products under the subject. For example, B2B as the umbrella and all the items are in line with the theme.
David Vogelpohl () (11:16)
So when we talk about thematic releases, I'm guessing there's not a single release each week. Perhaps that if you're very committed, however do you release these in a quarterly manner, or every month?
Braden (11:30)
Good question. We do a spring or summer and autumn release. People aren't around during the holidays at the end of the calendar year, therefore we don't release it in that period. It's true, only three of them every year. We also do ad-hoc releases every so often in between.
David Vogelpohl () (11:45)
This is because the product organization intends to announce that every quarter we'll make this theme-based improvement to the product line and then we'll integrate it into the product marketing, we're going introduce it in one big campaign. And I guess does it include the elements of each of the product lines and feature new releases that are related to the subject?
Braden (12:08)
Yeah, it will. It includes those elements. Then we review our customers' plan and say okay, what are we doing this next year? It helps us organize the products into themes. So we aren't necessarily going in a downward-facing direction or saying, we'll need to find a solution for theme A which products which fit into the theme of A? Instead, we look at what are the suite of products we plan to release this year?
And then what's the theme that each of those items can be categorized under in these seasons.
David Vogelpohl () (12:44)
So you'll have this, you'll increase the sound. You might be off in a quarter when the date of release is an event, but there could be a lag, I imagine, and you'll be aware of that it's. Yeah. You're decoupling the GA, if you will in relation to the promotion.
Braden (12:51)
That's correct, yeah.
That's correct. Yeah. And that's a strategy, as we've already deployed, we have GA activities that we do since these products need promotion when they become live. So are part of the process of thematics, are able to have GA tasks and then thematic actions that we could use for every product.
David Vogelpohl () (13:18)
Each new product, if you can, sort of is a part of the thematic releases. Then you can have a sort of a smaller version for similar reasons, such as the GA release that is effective. So you kind of get an extra dip here as it seems.
Braden (13:31)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's been really helpful to make sure that the internal teams of our company are able to access GA. This means that customer satisfaction isn't just suddenly getting feedback from clients. The customers are saying, Hey I'm using this amazing product. I'd like to know more about it. And our customer success team wasn't activated. It's not the case since during GA we are releasing FAQs as well as value-based messages to make sure that the internal team members are aware of what's happening.
And then the go -to -market messaging, like the one you cited, could be delayed on occasion. If you have the product debut in January, but do not have a theme-based release till April, your product may not receive the same amount of marketing attention in the beginning, but it will get the chance to be part of an even bigger marketing push later on throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (14:17)
If it was super strategically planned, would you throw in an X, that is, an even bigger release between the theme releases if you just happen to know a that GA timetable for that similar very strategic product you've been waiting on?
Braden (14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. So we have ad hoc releases as well that we are able to support. We try to keep them to a couple of releases if we can. We've developed a procedure that we have together with the product team where we have conversations and then we discuss, okay, know, there's this really great feature. The feature doesn't belong to the category, but it's crucial for reasons A or B. So we've planned for that as a team so that everybody understands the process we'll follow. And then, you know it gets its own treatment.
But the benefit again is you don't need to worry about 15 different products suddenly crashing down at end of each quarter. That's, you know, oftentimes as the product delivers every single thing at once.
David Vogelpohl () (15:08)
Thank you.
One of my top business quips is not joke, but observation is that the executive Q3 means the beginning of Q3 and the engineering teams Q3 signifies the conclusion of the Q3. It sounds like they're all kind of, well, moving towards the close to reach the quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got you.
Braden (15:33)
Yeah, exactly right.
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 that doesn't fit in the themes. Are you referring to one of those special ones you've been discussing that you might pop up in between the thematic release?
Braden (15:55)
It's true. So I'll give you an example of what we're doing. We did a payments 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 the time the thematic launch took place took place. It was Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. And so, you know that we got together and studied it, and asked, how do we make sure that we are promoting Google Pay? It's not really a B2B feature. And so, yeah, we did a little mini release for Google Pay.
It was created with some documents FAQ documents, blog posts or blog post that is promoted on social networks like this.
David Vogelpohl () (16:29)
Then what do you do when you've got this type of release for an anchor product as well as a thematic release which isn't as good? It sounded like you were still using an anchor product, I guess that was the case within the thematic release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. But what do you do? You can wait for the thematic release till the anchor products can be included? What do you do?
Braden (16:54)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. It's usually a wait and see. It's happened. You know, I was having conversations with the Product team this morning who informed me that B2B could be something to waiting and seeing launch coming a little bit later this year. However, the advantage of a theme-driven launch is that A, it's not a hard deadline. We're creating that deadline ourselves. So if we want delay that deadline a little bit to better support the engineering deadlines and product, we can.
or we can adjust those themes at any time. So if a key new feature is no longer released, perhaps we can pick up one or two other smaller features to create an assortment that matches a theme in a different manner. And so there's flexibility that exists within this system that allows to accommodate the changes that occur all through the time.
David Vogelpohl () (17:47)
OK, that makes sense. As I imagine a traditional marketing campaign to promote a feature release It's similar to an announcement blog post, maybe a press release or a social media post and emailing our customers. email our prospects, that sort of item. What is the difference between thematic releases in terms of structure?
Braden (18:07)
Yes, I mentioned the issue in the past. A lot of those things continue to happen. And at the thematic moment, those things are still occurring, but there is what we call the GA actions. Also, a great deal of like internal enablement, via in-app notifications. When somebody is able to access this tech or piece of software and we're giving them access and those-- our own internal teams. We separate that access from this thematic release.
At the time, instead of paying attention to a large portion of what's more features, like, "hey it's accessible, fragmented and bits, we're able to tell more of a narrative story about the value broadly of the features together. That's an important difference that I see which isn't possible in the case of releasing something in pieces through the course of the quarter or year.
David Vogelpohl () (19:04)
Yeah. This is a good thing, because it is like you are able to elevate the story. Since I'm a fan, the perfect example for me is this improvement in quality of life that were like really hard for engineering but do not necessarily improve the marketability of the product. It's because, isn't it? The person on the outside isn't aware that there it was an issue or something. It's often hard as Phil is an employee of a product marketing company, to announce, Hey y 'all, we, we fixed this. when in reality it proved to be extremely valuable to the company and customers.
Braden (19:08)
Yeah.
David Vogelpohl () (19:34)
It's that thematic releases don't just let you give away the megaphone, but also kind of elevate the story of some of these more quality of life improvements.
Braden (19:43)
Yes, absolutely, you get to, you know, a lot of applications benefit from this which normally wouldn't be eligible for marketing or even, you know, a quick announcement in Pendo. Instead, they're in a website that's a part of these bigger features that, yeah, they get to be able to use the megaphone. And there's a lot of value in the small things, such as enhancements to quality of life.
David Vogelpohl () (20:08)
Okay, now that you have this method worked? How many quarters of your time are you?
Braden (20:13)
This is our third, we're coming up on our third thematic launch this, in July.
David Vogelpohl () (20:20)
Three quarters in, would you consider that this has increased your capacity to organize marketing resources and support launches of products? Or is it still too early to tell?
Braden (20:33)
It's certainly improved, from my side. What I've seen isn't just do I have the ability to assist the team behind the product, but not just support them, but also coordinate with the rest of marketing and demand generation. They get a lot of lead time now that they had not before with the products.
We can also incorporate things in campaigns previously we struggled to do. So I would say that is the most significant benefit. But then the other benefit is that it has opened the door to concentrate on the other ways to expand vertically, like into video games and other games, which we would not have had the time or enough manpower to push those verticals forward.
David Vogelpohl () (21:28)
You mentioned the video gaming segment at least a few months as well. The company has had customers who play video games for quite a while nearly since the beginning of the company. You talked about the company being a bit more entangled in the segment. Do you feel like segments might play an important role in thematic releases, or do you think this is more akin to set of features?
Braden (21:51)
Yes, segmentation plays a big role. As I said, the next release is centered around B2B, a vertical which we're hoping to sell into and that we're enthusiastic to expand into. There's a possibility where we're doing that in the video game space as well. You know, we mentioned the improvement we've made to the functionality of Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. This is why expanding using vertical themes is not just opening up the ability, you know, for...
The benefits are the same as the thematic launch. However, it also offers the advantage by incorporating aspects like thoughts leadership into your thematic launch that you might have a difficult time integrating with a traditional releases of products. This means you benefit from a greater, perhaps larger campaign, and gain more value from this type of launch for the larger company.
David Vogelpohl () (22:44)
Excellent. Well, this has been very interesting Braden. I appreciate the fact that you came on the air and talking about this. This was an amazing discussion in Spryng here in Austin. I thought it'd be neat to kind of bring it to the show. it was a blast. Thank you for joining.
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 about what Braden is working on and possibly his next theme-based release, please go to .com. Thank you for taking part in this segment of Growth Stage. I've been your host, David Vogelpohl. I am a huge fan of the community of digital products as part of my role as . It is my pleasure to bring the best of the community here on the Growth Stage. Thank you everyone.
