Product Marketing Is Not Working -Repair It By Using Thematic Product Launches
Are you and your team of product marketers struggling to coordinate marketing resources to manage an interminable flow of new product launches with a lack of release dates, as well as a constant stream of product managers insisting on a lot of attention from marketing departments for every launch? Is there a better way?
- Pay the highest attention to all product releases.
- Make sure you tell a story that is overarching where the whole is greater than the parts.
- Help marketing be planful and logical so that they are able to be the best at their job to promote new products.
If you're dragging yourself to death with a constant stream of product roadmaps, incessant "t-shirt" sizing for agile project estimations or slipping dates for release of your product, or being worried that you're letting your managers down, it may be time to look into specific product releases. Discover how this can be done in this episode of Growth Stage!
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Podcast Full Interview: Audio
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Transcript
David Vogelpohl () (00:04)
Hello everyone! You are invited to join this episode of the Growth Stage podcast by . I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I'm a member of the digital products community with my work at . And I love bringing the best of the community back for you on the Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're talking to one person who's really important to me. I work with him at . He's scheduled to talk about the way that product marketing has been broken and the best way to solve it using thematic
announcements of new products we'd be pleased to welcome to Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.
Braden (00:39)
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate the intro. I'm excited to chat about product marketing today.
David Vogelpohl () (00:44)
Awesome. Well, I love working with you at Braden. And I had a moment of panic since I don't often use your last name in public. And I'm like is it possible that this pronunciation is a weird pronunciation that I forgot to, I lost over the years, or something. But welcome here. Yes, absolutely. The topic Braden is going to talk about are his thoughts about what's wrong with conventional product marketing and the ways in which , what we do here, are using quarterly thematic product launches.
Braden (00:58)
Yeah. Yeah, thank you.
David Vogelpohl () (01:14)
to give the best care to new product launches make sure you create a cohesive product story where the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts. This will assist marketing to be more organized and careful so that you are able to deliver the highest quality work on the product launches you make. I attended Spryng hosted by Wynter, W -Y -N -T -E -R, I think, and S -P –R -Y –N -G, but it's an event.
We were at a roundtable to discuss the many challenges and marketing and the topic of product marketing came up. Many felt they were overwhelmed and had to deal with every single feature launch and new product release and attempting to create the most of all of it. When the subject of thematic releases for products occurred to me. Someone was in the group who had recommended it. We had adopted that here at a few quarters back and
So I decided it would be interesting to have a discussion on the subject here today. Also, Braden, are you ready to kick it off?
Braden (02:18)
Yeah, let's do it. I'm looking forward to discussing it. it. it. it.
David Vogelpohl () (02:20)
Alright, good deal. I've been around for some time however I do not know the answer to this question. What was the first thing you purchased online?
Braden (02:28)
This is definitely an awesome topic. I spent some time thinking about it. And it was in the junior high school years. eBay was at its peak. And I bought the PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. The bundle included games for sports and other stuff. And I agonized over whether or not I should purchase it. However, I bought it and loved it. I gleaned a lot of value from the console and had a lot of enjoyment.
Other options were with my own cash. The first thing I received was a guitar. This was the first item I ever purchased with my own money. So that was the other alternative.
David Vogelpohl () (03:06)
Okay, I like the way you distinguished between the money you own and what you think is your how was it like, your parent money? How did you fund the PSP?
Braden (03:14)
Yeah, I may have gained it from weeding my lawn or cutting the garden or something. The other was like my actual real job money which I made on my own.
David Vogelpohl () (03:24)
So, if you're mowing the lawn, that's your money, Braden. This is fine. Okay, so I gave it away a little during the introduction however, could you please share with the audience what you're doing at or in what you do here?
Braden (03:27)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure. As a senior Product Marketing manager at . My responsibilities include everything that goes to market for all of our products and the industries we are in. When a new product is launched it's all the messages that go with the product as well as around the product, as well as supporting things like B2B, games and other industries that we're really eager to market to. Merchant of Record.
The way we do it is we take everything from the buy button onwards into a selling experience. We work in partnership with SaaS firms, gaming businesses AI firms B2B, etc. the. that. that. that.
David Vogelpohl () (04:18)
Excellent, excellent. As you go on to describe kind of what you did, you touched on many different aspects. The releases of products as well as feature announcements. Also, you touched on verticals. You also mentioned B2B SaaS or video games. Today's product marketers tends to favor this type of vertical positioning in relation to a particular product. This, I believe, even further amplifies the complexity of product marketing.
What do you think is wrong with product marketing? Was there something that didn't work for you using the old model?
Braden (04:56)
Yes, that's a good question. You know, product releases hinge on a lot of moving factors that are outside the control of a marketer's product. For instance, engineering issues or customer commitments required, if sales suddenly has an enormous issue that says, hey, you need to finish this product before this other product gets released. In addition, there are many shifting pieces to these launches. And so working with product teams in order to establish commit dates and understand,
when are these products going to get released? What exactly does "release" mean? Does it mean that it is generally accessible or is it currently in an early stage of testing? It's time for the next question to arise what time do we need to speak about the software? And what are the things we'd like to discuss? And can we even talk about this because we're conducting tests on the product? This raises a number of questions are being asked, and there's a lot of confusion happens with this model of, you know how engineers and products work. Therefore, I think that one of the main issues is that
there's just so-- it's so hard to see the finished product and to plan around a release date and plan for a product to be prepared to go. So what can happen is that product marketing professionals like myself end up, knowing, for example, one week before launch, one week prior to GA, the product manager saying, This is going to be ready. Finally, go do all of this work. And it's like, okay but hold for a second. There's other things I got to do. I know you've mentioned verticals. It's been discussed.
You know, that is a huge chunk of time, too. The question, you know, I've needed to answer and thought about is: how do I manage the work of launching the product and also the other parts of my job in the absence of control over that launch date?
David Vogelpohl () (06:40)
If you're using floating timelines and so the product isn't yet ready. They discover a bug in the last second. They are able to push through the release, and they get it out in time. They're trying to coordinate their the resources of other marketers, designers and website people and content specialists and other things like such. And so it's this arrangement of these floating dates I'm hearing. Is there a different side? As I've...
It's true that I've worked in product marketing and various capacities throughout the years. It seems like every time I talk to someone from the product department, they're like, I'm making X and I need to create a huge announcement about it. Do you think that expectations about the amount of work required for these different product releases is sometimes overwhelming? Could that be a part of the reason why you're broken with traditional product marketing?
Braden (07:28)
Yes, absolutely. It's true that the product managers are product managers with a purpose. They are the owners of those products. They're thrilled about this. They've worked on these items for understand, all the way to several years striving to get the products out there. And so of course they'll need to get as much help as they can get for these products. When it's difficult to get a product manager come to you to say that I'm very excited about this feature.
I'd like a lot of help, so here's a list of my thoughts I'm going the courage to say: let's pump the brakes slightly for A, B, or C reasons, but I'm not able to support the idea, or, you know, I'm not able to do it or the resources. It's frustrating and difficult to keep an ongoing relationship with the product managers since, you know, they may feel like they aren't worth helping their cause, or do something else. This doesn't happen, and obviously and you're not trying to help 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 and dealing with floating dates of the conventional model, and every other product manager, just like you said, with the amount of money and effort they're putting in it and it's like lets make an announcement regarding this. But with all those requirements, and floating dates It feels like you're doing less than your best work. The feeling is that you're distributing yourself amongst all these things which makes it difficult to be at your most effective work. That's something I'm experiencing. Does that sound fair?
Braden (09:01)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's the position where all of things kind of collapse in a single moment. You have to find out how to achieve everything. Not only are there only 24 hours in a day, not to mention, you know, working for 24 hours and also anxiety that comes with having to consider, keep all of those issues in your mind. Take this highly technological approach and.
condense them in something that is market facing. That's why there are many challenges to overcome.
David Vogelpohl () (09:35)
So you alluded to this in the past when you discussed the importance of supporting product managers as well as the relation between PMMs and PMs if you will. If you're feeling this is the typical form of product marketing is it fair to say it can have some tension with PMMs and PMs?
Braden (09:58)
Yeah, I think it's true. I've experienced situations where yeah, it's certainly been a bit of a tense conversation to straight up admit that I do not have the resources to support the way you want to go. And, you know, in those cases, you want to listen and try to understand what the PM's looking for, however it causes tension. And, you know, you need to be able to communicate effectively in situations where you're, you know, you have to be there and have those conversations, listening.
Being clear, being proficient in tracking the progress you're making being clear, tracking what you're doing and, in this case using the process of thematic launches in order to eliminate some issues that come from traditional products.
David Vogelpohl () (10:41)
Now you've got the product managers requesting the biggest megaphone possible to announce their new products. The other marketing departments asking"Can we be more planful so we are able to do a better job? You've also talked about the shift towards thematic releases of your products. Let's start with the basics. What exactly is a thematic release?
Braden (10:59)
Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a bundling of products underneath a umbrella of a theme. In this case, B2B as the umbrella and the other products are supporting that theme.
David Vogelpohl () (11:16)
So when we talk about thematic releases, I mean I'm guessing that we're talking about not one each week. It could be that if you're very committed, however is it happening in a quarterly manner, or monthly?
Braden (11:30)
Good question. We have a spring or summer and autumn release. People aren't around in the Christmas season towards the end of the year, which is why we don't release it during that time. It's true, only three of them each year, with occasional release every now and then.
David Vogelpohl () (11:45)
So the product org will say that every quarter, we'll make this theme-based improvement to this product or product line and we're going to bring it in advertising for products, but we're planning introduce it in one big campaign. Does it include the elements of each of the items and release within the theme?
Braden (12:08)
It will. It has those aspects. Then we review our customers' plan and say OK, what's planning for this next year? And that helps us categorize those products within themes. Therefore, we don't have to go using a top-down method in saying that we have to find a solution for theme A, what are the products that are relevant to the theme of A? Instead, we will look at what are the suite of products that we're planning to introduce this year?
What's the overall theme that each of those items can be categorized under in these parts of the year.
David Vogelpohl () (12:44)
So you'll have this, you'll increase the sound. It could be off by a quarter at the time of release or 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. And that's a strategy, as we've already deployed our GA activities that we do since these products require promotion after they are launched. And so we in the process that is thematic, have GA actions and thematic activities that we can deploy for each product.
David Vogelpohl () (13:18)
Every product release, if you would like, has the opportunity to be part of the thematic releases. There is also a kind of a smaller version for such a thing as the GA rollout. This means you have an extra dip here It sounds like.
Braden (13:31)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's really helped in ensuring that our internal teams are enabled at GA. Therefore, customer success doesn't come about by being able to get feedback from customers. They're like, Hey I'm using this amazing product. I want to know more about it. And our customer success team wasn't activated. This isn't the case because at GA we're releasing FAQ documents, value messaging to ensure that our internal teams understand what's going on.
And then the go -to marketing messages, as the one you cited, could be delayed on occasion. If you've got the product launch in January but you do not have a theme-based release until April, that product won't receive the same amount of marketing attention at the start However, it'll get an opportunity to participate in an even bigger marketing push later on throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (14:17)
If you were super strategic, would you like to add an X that is, an even bigger release that was in between the other thematic releases if you just happen to have some, that GA date for some like extremely strategic item you've been waiting on?
Braden (14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. We also have occasional release that we are able to assist with. We attempt to limit them to one or two if we can. And we've built a process in conjunction with you and the team of product developers where we engage in a conversation and we discuss, okay, know, there's this really great product. It's not in the theme, but it's important to have A, B and C. And so we plan for that as a team to ensure that everyone understands what we're going to do. And then, you know, that does get separate attention.
However, the advantage is there isn't a chance of 15 items that suddenly crash at the end of the quarter. This happens, you know, oftentimes when product is delivering every single thing at once.
David Vogelpohl () (15:08)
Thank you.
One of my top business quips is actually, observation that executives Q3 means the beginning of Q3 while the engineering team Q3 means the end of Q3. This suggests that they're all, you know, of course sliding in there at the end to hit those quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got it.
Braden (15:33)
Yeah, exactly right.
David Vogelpohl () (15:38)
You have a theme that's due to be released in the the next quarter, or maybe in the future or something, but you have a big product or feature release that doesn't fit in the overall theme. Is this just one of those unique ones you mentioned which might come up in between the thematic release?
Braden (15:55)
Yep, exactly right. Let me give you an example of what we're doing. We did a payments release in the beginning of this year. We had lot of cool payments features. 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. Then we took a seat and looked at it and asked, how do we help promote Google Pay? It's not really a B2B feature. So, yes we released a mini release for Google Pay.
It was created with some documents FAQ documents a blog post or promoted via social media such as those.
David Vogelpohl () (16:29)
So what happens then when you've got this type of release for an anchor product and a thematic release that falls? It sounded like you still had some anchor product that was the case in the thematic release that Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. So what can you do? Wait to release the thematic release till the anchor products are in place? What do you do?
Braden (16:54)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. Sometimes it's waiting and seeing. It's happened. It's true, I was talking to the team behind product today who said, Hey, B2B might be a wait and see coming up a little bit later this year. But the benefit of the thematic launch is A, it's not a deadline. The deadline is set by us. So if we want to delay it slightly in order to support the product and engineering's deadlines then we are able to.
or we can adjust those themes at any point. If a major element suddenly doesn't get launched, maybe we could take a couple of other smaller features to create a bundle that fits a theme in a different manner. This is why there's some flexibility that exists within this model that still allows to accommodate the changes that occur throughout the year.
David Vogelpohl () (17:47)
That's a good idea. When I consider a traditional marketing campaign to promote a feature release, it's similar to an announcement blog post or perhaps a press release or a social media post or email our clients, contact our potential customers, that kind of things. What is the difference between thematic releases in its structure?
Braden (18:07)
Yes, I mentioned this before. The majority of these events continue to happen. In the current thematic time these things continue taking place, however we also have what we'll call GA actions. Also, a great deal of like internal enablement, via in-app notifications. When someone could access that piece of software or technology, we're enabling those customers and also our own internal teams. And we decouple that from the this theme release.
And then at the thematic time, instead of being focused on all of the more like, you know, hey it's accessible, at bits and pieces it's possible to create the story about the value broadly from all these features together. This is a huge distinction 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. And it helps, it is like you are able to enhance the narrative. Because I think the perfect example for me is the improvement in quality of life that are really difficult for engineers, yet don't always make the product more marketable. Cause it's, isn't it? A person who is outside doesn't even know that it was an issue or something. And, and so it's often hard as Phil or an employee of a product marketing company, to say"Hey, y'all! we, we fixed this. When in fact, the fix proved to be extremely valuable to the company and the customers.
Braden (19:08)
Yeah.
David Vogelpohl () (19:34)
And so it feels like thematic releases not only give you the ability to give away the megaphone, they also help to enhance the narrative of a few of these more improved quality of life enhancements.
Braden (19:43)
Absolutely, yeah, you are able to access, a lot of functions benefit from this, which normally wouldn't be eligible for marketing or might get the benefit of a quick announcement in Pendo. Instead, they live in a website that's a part of larger features. So, well, do share that megaphone. make use of that megaphone. There's plenty of benefit for the smaller things, such as enhancements to quality of life.
David Vogelpohl () (20:08)
Okay, so has this method worked? How many quarters in are you?
Braden (20:13)
This is our third, next month we'll have our third theme launch during July.
David Vogelpohl () (20:20)
So, three quarters in, would you agree that it's improved your ability to manage marketing resources and support product launches, or is it still too early to say?
Braden (20:33)
I'd say it's certain that it has improved, from my side. What I've noticed is not just do I have the ability to more effectively support the product team, and not only support them and coordinate with other marketing departments, specifically demand gen. you know, they have a lot of lead time now that they did not have prior to these products.
And we could slot them in campaigns were previously difficult to do. This could be the greatest benefit. But then the other benefit is it's opened up time for us at to focus on the other ways to expand vertically, like into video games, that we might not have had the time or sufficient manpower for pushing those verticals forward.
David Vogelpohl () (21:28)
So you mentioned the video gaming segment for a while it was in existence, with video game customers for quite some time, almost since the start of the business. The company was kind of leaning into the video game segment. Do you think that segmentation can play a part in thematic release, or do you think it's more around the feature sets?
Braden (21:51)
Yeah, segments absolutely play big roles. You know, I mentioned that our upcoming launch will be around B2B, a vertical which we're hoping to sell into, that we're excited about expanding into. It's possible to imagine a future where we're doing that with video games too. We've mentioned that how we've upgraded the functionality of Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. Also, the expansion the vertical theme not only opens up that ability, you know, to...
You get the advantages of the theme-driven launch, however you also gain the benefits by incorporating aspects like thinking leadership to the launch that you might be unable to integrate into a conventional product release. This means you get a bigger, potentially an even bigger push for your campaign and gain more value from this type of launch for the overall organization.
David Vogelpohl () (22:44)
Excellent. Well, this has been a lot of fun, Braden. I truly appreciate your coming on the air and talking about this. It was such an interesting debate during Spryng here in Austin. I thought it'd be neat to have it to the stage, but it was a blast. Thank you for joining.
Braden (23:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was a blast.
David Vogelpohl () (23:04)
Awesome. If you'd like to check out more on what Braden is working on, including maybe his next thematic album, visit .com. We thank you all for being part of this week's episode of Growth Stage. I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I love supporting the community of digital products in my job as . and I am awed by the opportunity to present the best of the community here at the Growth Stage. Thanks everybody.
