Repair the Product Marketing Issue by utilizing thematic product launches -

Do you have a marketing team that is having difficulty coordinating marketing resources to ensure that they can keep up with the constant number of launches that have no date for release and an endless stream of product managers wanting to garner a lot of media interest with each new launch? Do you think there is a better way?

• Make sure you give your attention with the utmost care to new product launches.
• Make sure you create a narrative that is broad and has more value that the total of all the parts.
• Make sure that marketing is organized and rational so they are able to do their best to promote the latest product.

If you're struggling with over-active product roadmaps, endless "t-shirt" dimensions to calculate agile project estimates, slipping date for release of products, or worried that you're not keeping your bosses to down, it's an appropriate time to think about thematic releases. Learn how on this episode of Growth Stage!

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Audio Interview Full: Audio

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Audio Podcast Interview Full: Video

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 part of the digital product community as a part of my job at . and I am awed to bring all the wonderful activities happening in the community for the listeners here in The Growth Stage podcast. In this episode, I'll be interviewing an individual who is truly special for me. I work with him at . He's set to discuss how the process of product marketing has been broken and what you can do to fix it using thematic

announcements about new products be pleased to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.

Braden (00:39)

Thank you, I appreciate your introduction. I'm excited to talk with you with you about the topic of product marketing this morning.

David Vogelpohl () (00:44)

Awesome. Well, I love working with you here at , Braden. I felt like I had anxiety because I rarely pronounce your name publicly. I was thinking, what is it if there's a strange pronunciation that I was not able to do, lost over the years or something else however, I'm pleased that you're joining the forum. It's a given that it's. What Braden is going to be discussing are his opinions regarding the flaws in traditional marketing methods and our methods are by launching quarterly themed product launches.

Braden (00:58)

Yeah. Yeah, thank you.

David Vogelpohl () (01:14)

If you want to devote your complete attention to the new products you launch, ensure you develop a cohesive product narrative that is greater than its parts, and help marketing to be more strategic and thorough so you are able to give your best efforts to any product launches you create. I was at Spryng which was hosted by Wynter, W -Y -N T -E – R I think as well as S P - R -Y – N G. However, it's not a conference.

The discussion was about the various problems and challenges related to marketing. A question about product marketing was discussed. Many complained that they were a bit overwhelmed with every single feature launch and new release of products and attempting to create an impact for all of it. The idea of thematic releases of products was brought up by someone who was part of the group that had suggested it and we were able to adopt it here a few quarters back and

And so I thought that it might be interesting to engage in a conversation on this topic here on the blog today. That's it, Braden, are you interested in starting the discussion?

Braden (02:18)

Yeah, let's do it. We're excited to discuss the subject. it. it. it.

David Vogelpohl () (02:20)

Alright, good deal. I've been here for awhile but I'm still unable to find the correct answer to your inquiry. What was the first item you bought online?

Braden (02:28)

This is definitely a cool subject. It was a long time that I thought about the topic. This was during the time of junior high school. eBay was at its peak. Then I got an PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. The bundle contained sports games as well as extra games. After that, I debated whether or not to purchase the bundle. However, I bought the console and loved it. I gleaned a lot of value from the console, and also was having a blast.

The other option was with my own cash. One of the first things I did was to buy a dogeridoo. This was the first thing I purchased with my own cash. This is the 3rd option.

David Vogelpohl () (03:06)

Okay, I like the difference you created between your money personal from the money from your parents. How did it compare to the money of your parents? What was the method you employed to pay for your PSP?

Braden (03:14)

It's possible I earned it from weeding the yard or cutting the lawn, or whatever. But the other one was the same as my earnings from the job I earned by myself.

David Vogelpohl () (03:24)

If you're trimming the lawn, you're earning cash. Braden. That's fine. OK, well I've done it in the intro but, can you let viewers know your thoughts about what you're doing at or in relation to your work here?

Braden (03:27)

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sure. That's why I'm Director of Marketing Products, the Senior at . My duties include everything that goes to market for our entire range of products, as well as for the industries we operate in as well. When a new product is launched that's when we're in a position to manage every aspect of messaging that goes under the product, and that surrounds the product, and also provide help for products such as B2B games, video games or other fields we're determined to reach out to. It is an official retailer.

What that translates to is we consider everything starting by clicking the purchase button to ending in a digital product selling experience. We work with SaaS businesses, gaming firms AI companies B2B businesses, and other things like that. that. that. that.

David Vogelpohl () (04:18)

Excellent, excellent. In the course of what you did, you touched on many diverse elements. The focus was on new product launches as well as feature announcements. You also touched on verticals. It was B2B SaaS and video games. The modern marketer is often taking on these positions vertically in relation to a particular item. This only increases the complexity of marketing for products.

Then, what's wrong about product marketing? Was there something that wasn't working using the old method?

Braden (04:56)

Yes, that's a good inquiry. The fact is that product launches depend on many aspects that are outside of the reach of the manager for marketing. Examples include engineering problems, if there's customer commits that need to be met, if sales suddenly has an enormous issue that says"hey, we need finish this product prior to when you release a different product. There's a myriad of shifting pieces to these launches. This is why it's important to collaborate with the product teams in order to determine the dates for commit and to be able to grasp,

What is the time these items are scheduled to get released? What is the real meaning of release? Do you have access to it in general or is it still in the Beta phase? It's time for the next question to be asked: is it the right time to talk about the program? What are the things we'd want to talk about? What can we discuss about this since we're currently trying to test the product? This raises a number of concerns, and a great deal of ambiguity is generated from this concept of similar to the way engineers and manufacturing work. So I believe the major problem is

There's a reason why it's hard to imagine the end product, and also determine a launch date and plan a product that is ready for launch. What occurs is that product managers like me get, the idea that a week before to launch and a week prior to GA and then a week prior to GA, the manager of the product will say"Hey, this should get done. Then, you can complete all the tasks. And then, it's like holding for a moment. There's other things I had to finish. It's true that you've talked about verticals. It's been discussed.

That's right, it takes much of my time, too. The question, you know, I've had to decide and contemplated is how do I manage the day of launch for my new product and the other tasks of my job even though I do not have any control over that timeframe?

David Vogelpohl () (06:40)

You've seen the floating timelines but your software hasn't been updated. There's a glitch that's discovered just before the time limit. They're able push ahead with their release, and they get the release to the market before. They're working to integrate their sources with marketing of other firms, designers and website people and content creators and other people who are similar. This coordination with floating dates is what I'm hearing. But what about the opposite part? Just like that one I've...

There's no doubt that I've worked in the field of marketing of products in various ways throughout the many years. I'm like, I feel as if every time I speak to someone from a product team, you'll be told that they're going to release X and need to make a big blast regarding the launch. Are you feeling that your expectations of the volume of work involved in these different product releases is sometimes excessive? Is that part of what's missing from traditional marketing for products?

Braden (07:28)

Yeah, for sure. It's true that the product managers are product managers with a purpose. They are the ones that own the products. They're very excited over it. They've been working on these products for understand, all up to a few years in which they've worked to make the product available to the market. Naturally, they're going to want to get as much help as they can with their product. If it's difficult to have an executive on the company's product team speak with you and say I'm extremely excited by this new feature.

I'm seeking a large quantity of support and here's a summary of my thoughts I'm going the brave step of saying We'll take the brakes off slightly for A, B or C reasons, but I just can't help you or am not able to accomplish it, or I'm frustrated and it's difficult to keep a strong relationships with these product managers due to the fact that they may feel like aren't interested in helping anyone, but this isn't the case, which is why you wish to assist all the people you can.

David Vogelpohl () (08:26)

Yeah. So it feels like then that, from your perspective, managing a most-used marketing campaign in conjunction with a launch You're dealing with floating dates which are a part of the standard method, as well as all other managers, as you mentioned, given the amount of time and investment they're investing in and it's as if they're planning to make a statement regarding this. With all the demands, and with the dates floating around you feel as if you're not performing the highest quality job you can. There's a lot of pressure on you to do these things and you're finding it hard to do the best job. That's something I'm getting. Do you think that's fair?

Braden (09:01)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. This is an area in which a lot of aspects fall down all at once. You suddenly have to discover how to accomplish all of the above. There are only one day in which you can work without even considering work pressure for all hours of the day, and also the stress of thinking about ways to manage all these thoughts in mind, take this highly technological approach and.

Condense them into something that is market facing. There are many issues to face.

David Vogelpohl () (09:35)

This was mentioned just a moment ago, when we were talking about supporting product managers and their relationship with PMs and PMs. If you believe this is the typical form of marketing to products? Would it be reasonable to assume that it could have some tension between PMs and PMs?

Braden (09:58)

Absolutely, I do believe that. I've experienced situations where certainly, it's an awkward conversation to admit that I do not have sufficient funds to help you in how you would like it to go. You know the moment that this happens you must listen and understand what the person who is in charge, however it can result in tension. It's important to know that the most effective way is to communicate well when you're in situations where aware that required to be present within the room and paying attention.

Be clear, be good at tracking your progress as well as when launching using a theme-based method, to avoid a lot of the issues that arise with traditional software.

David Vogelpohl () (10:41)

You've now got Managers of the Product asking for the most powerful megaphone they can get in their announcements. They're also the marketers saying"Can we become more organised in order to perform better job? Also, you've talked about moving to thematic release. Let's begin with a simple query. What is a thematic release?

Braden (10:59)

Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a collection of products under one theme. For example, B2B as the umbrella and the entire range of products supports this topic.

David Vogelpohl () (11:16)

If we talk about themes-based releases, it's likely that there's not a single release per week. It could be, when you're very aggressive But, for instance do you release these regularly, in a quarterly manner or in a monthly manner?

Braden (11:30)

Good question. We do a spring, summer, autumn release. It's not a huge market when the season is at its peak, which means that we don't release it until the conclusion of the year, which is why we don't release the album at this time. However, we do release three releases a year with ad hoc releases every so sometimes in between.

David Vogelpohl () (11:45)

The company's product team plans to announce that every quarter we'll make this theme-based improvement to this particular item or series of products and, if we are able to integrate it into our product marketing, we're going make it real by launching a massive campaign. What is the totality of components of each of the categories and will it be released within the subject?

Braden (12:08)

It does. It includes those elements. After that, we go over our customers' road map and ask"OK, what have our plans for this next year? It helps us organize these items into categories. This means that we don't have to think in a downward direction and saying, we have to figure out themes A. What are the products which are related for theme A? Instead, we consider which products we're planning to introduce in the coming year?

What's the main theme every one of them can be categorized under in these seasons.

David Vogelpohl () (12:44)

You'll see that and all you have to do is amplify it. There's a chance that you'll have missed by one quarter, maybe when the date of release is some other thing however it might be a delay, I think, prior to you realizing you've missed it. Yeah. This means you're separating the GA in the event you want to and the promotional.

Braden (12:51)

That's correct, yeah.

That's correct. Yeah. This is a method, and that's why we've taken the initiative as well as GA activities that we execute because these features need to be promoted after they are operational. And so we are involved in the process that is thematic. This means that we are able to have GA activities and then themes that we're able to use to all of our services.

David Vogelpohl () (13:18)

Every product launch or release, kind of gets to ride along in the themes released. You can also have somewhat smaller version for similar reasons, such as the GA release that is a success. You'll get an extra dip here in the sense that it is.

Braden (13:31)

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's really helped to make sure that all employees within our organization are able to access GA. So customer success isn't suddenly getting comments from customers. They're saying"Hey, I'm using this amazing product. I would like to learn more about the product. The customer success team was never active. This isn't the case as the time of GA we're always releasing information on FAQs and Value Messages in order to ensure the internal team members are aware of what's happening.

Additionally, the most popular marketing communications are, as you pointed out may be delayed at times. If you're planning to release your product launch in January but you do not have a theme-based release until April, the product may not receive enough attention from marketing at the beginning. However, it'll be able included in the bigger campaign later throughout the year.

David Vogelpohl () (14:17)

If you were of the opinion that it was very tactical, would you to add an X you might have a better release, that fell between the other thematic releases If you have a clue about GA is slated for a similar super strategic thing you had your eye on?

Braden (14:30)

Yeah, absolutely. Also, we have releases on occasion that we support. we try to limit those to a couple of releases if we can. We've devised a method that we've developed in collaboration the product team we can have a discussion and consider, okay that we're aware of this amazing feature. It's not in the subject, but it's crucial in the context of A, B and C. And so we plan to have a discussion as together so that everyone is aware of what we're trying to achieve. It's true that these topics get separate attention.

This means that there's no need to worry about 15 different products suddenly crashing down at end of quarter. It's usually the case since the products are delivered all at once.

David Vogelpohl () (15:08)

Thank you.

One of my most popular business jokes is not joke, but observation is that the executives Q3 is the time to begin Q3, while the engineering team Q3 is when Q3 is over. So it sounds like they're all, you know obviously, getting in at the close for the quarter's OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I gotcha.

Braden (15:33)

Yes, precisely.

David Vogelpohl () (15:38)

This theme is due to release in this quarter or next but there's an announcement that's significant of some feature or item that doesn't fit to the theme. Are you referring to any of those exclusive ones we were discussing that you might pop up when the theme is released?

Braden (15:55)

Absolutely, exactly as you would expect. In this regard, I'll supply you with an example from the way we're working. Payments are due in the beginning of this year. We had many exciting payments options. One of the payment options that did not make it to the engineering could not reach the point at which it was launched. took place was Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. You know, we took a seat and examined it and asked How can we promote Google Pay? This isn't an B2B service. Therefore we released a version of the feature for Google Pay.

The documents were created for FAQ documents Blog posts, blog post or posts that are promoted on social networks for example.

David Vogelpohl () (16:29)

Then what happens if you have this kind of product that anchors with a theme release that falls? I mean, it seemed as if it was an anchor product, it was probably what happened in the release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. So what can you do? Do you have to hold off on this theme announcement until anchor products have been installed? Then what can you do?

Braden (16:54)

Yeah, I mean, it depends. It is often a matter of just waiting to see. There are instances of that. True, I was having conversations with the product team today which informed me that B2B may be a good option to put off to see what happens some time later in the year. But, the benefit of a theme-based launch is A, it's not a time-bound deadline. The deadline is set by us. If we have to push that back a little bit in order to keep the timelines of manufacturing and engineering, then we are able to.

You can change the theme at any time. In the event that the most important feature of the year is not being launched anymore, perhaps it's possible to pick up some or two less elements to create a collection that matches the theme but in a different fashion. And so there's the ability to adjust the system in a way that allows the possibility of adjustments all through the year.

David Vogelpohl () (17:47)

OK, that makes sense. In the context of the usual promotion of a feature release, it's comparable to the announcement blog or possibly a press release with some coverage on social media or even emailing our customers, contact our potential customers or even our potential customers. What is the difference between thematic releases in structure?

Braden (18:07)

Yes, I've mentioned the subject previously. A lot of these events still occur. In the present, they continue to happen but we also are dealing with what we'll call GA tasks. Additionally, there is a lot of like internal enablement, by way of in-app notification. If someone is able to connect to this piece of software or technology and we're giving them access, as well as the internal groups within our. This differs from a releases that are thematic.

At the same moment, rather than being focused on a huge portion of things that are more similar to the same attributes, when this feature is available, you know, in bits and pieces and we are able to create a more compelling story about the advantages of all these elements. It's a major difference I've observed that isn't feasible with a release, fragmented over the course of the time or even the entire year.

David Vogelpohl () (19:04)

Yeah. I also feel as if it elevates the narrative. Because I love my favorite example of increase in living quality that is extremely difficult to engineer However, it doesn't mean they improve the value of the product. This is because you know what I mean? A person who is on the outside doesn't realize the issue exists. It's frequently difficult as Phil is an employee at a product marketing company, to go out and say"Hey everybody, we fixed this. In reality this fix proved beneficial for the company and to the clients.

Braden (19:08)

Yeah.

David Vogelpohl () (19:34)

It's that thematic releases don't just give you the ability to share the megaphone. They aid in bringing the tale by bringing additional improvements in high-quality to life.

Braden (19:43)

It is possible that a variety of functions benefit from this, which might not otherwise be able to benefit from marketing or an, say, quick announcement via Pendo. Instead, they're putting them on a page that is an e-commerce site that is accompanied by the other features. So, in fact, allow them to use this megaphone. Make use of the megaphone. There's plenty to gain from it, not least of all, you know, improvement in the quality of life.

David Vogelpohl () (20:08)

Okay, now that you've mastered this technique, how do you know? How many quarters are you?

Braden (20:13)

This is our third. and we'll be launching the launch of our third theme during July.

David Vogelpohl () (20:20)

So, three quarters after, can you say that this helped you manage marketing and sales resources, as well as support new product launches, or is it too soon to judge?

Braden (20:33)

I would say that it's certain that I've improved my performance. The difference I've seen is not just that I now have the capacity to assist more effectively the team behind the product, but also help them out and coordinate with the other departments of marketing, particularly demand generation. It's true that they receive a lot of lead time that they had not before regarding the product.

Additionally, we can incorporate elements that we previously struggle to achieve. This is the most significant benefit. However, the second benefit is that it's given us the opportunity to work on other vertical expansions games and other sports, that we wouldn't have as much time for or the manpower needed to move those verticals forward.

David Vogelpohl () (21:28)

So you mentioned the video games section a while ago it existed, with customers who play video games for a long time from the very beginning of the organization. It was becoming a bit more entangled within this area. Are you of the opinion that segments could play a significant role in thematic releases, or do you think it is more like elements?

Braden (21:51)

Segments are definitely playing an essential role. As I've said, that the upcoming release will be centered around B2B, a vertical that we want to sell into and that we're eager to further expand into. There is a possibility of the future in which we're making that happen within the game industry too. As we've said, the improvements we've made to our Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. This is why expanding, the vertical theme not only opens up that possibility, but also allows users to...

The benefits are the same as the thematic launch, but you'll also get advantages of incorporating elements like leading by example to your launch. It's a challenge to integrate into a traditional launch. And so you can gain a larger, possibly an even greater boost for your marketing campaign and reap more value from this type of launch for the overall company.

David Vogelpohl () (22:44)

Excellent. This has been a lot of fun, Braden. I appreciate the fact that you appeared onto the air to talk about this. The conversation was fascinating at Spryng right here in Austin. The idea was to have it to present the event. this was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time.

Braden (23:01)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for inviting me. It was really fun.

David Vogelpohl () (23:04)

Awesome. If you'd like to find out the latest news about what Braden is doing and possibly his next thematic album, check out .com. Thanks for participating in this show of Growth Stage. Your host is David Vogelpohl. I love supporting the online product community as part of my job . It is my pleasure to present the very best ideas from this community to you here on the growth Stage. We appreciate everyone's support.

David Vogelpohl David is the CMO of . More than 25 years David Vogelpohl has led teams to develop elite engines for growth and applications for top brands such as WP Engine, Genesis, AWS, Cloudflare, and many more.

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