Product Marketing Isn't Working Make It Work Thematic Product Launches

Does your marketing department for products experiencing difficulties coordinating resources for marketing to handle an endless flow of new product launches with a lack of release dates, and an endless stream of product managers wanting to garner a lot of attention from marketing with every new release? Would there be an alternative?

• Make sure you be attentive to all product releases.
• Develop a captivating product story that goes beyond the parts.
• Marketing must be well-organized and thoughtful so they can be the best at their job to promote new products.

If you're dragging yourself by a constant stream of product roadmaps, endless "t-shirt" sizes to estimate agile project estimates, slipping product release dates and worrying about not being a failure to your product managers is a good an appropriate time to consider particular product launches. Discover how this can be done on this episode of Growth Stage!

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Transcript

David Vogelpohl () (00:04)

Hello everyone! We invite you to join The Growth Stage podcast by . I'm your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community by working as . And I love bringing the very best from the community to you through The Growth Stage podcast. This episode, we're going to interview someone who's uh very special to me. I'm working with him at . He's going to be talking about how marketing for products is in a state of chaos and the most effective way to get it back on track is with thematic

new product launches we'd be pleased to receive to the Growth Stage Mr. Braden Steel. Braden, welcome.

Braden (00:39)

Thank you, I appreciate your introduction. I'm looking forward to talking about the marketing of items today.

David Vogelpohl () (00:44)

Awesome. It is a pleasure to have you as a colleague here at , Braden. There was a feeling that I went through an anxiety attack due to the fact that I seldom pronounce your last name in a loud manner. And I'm like is it possible that this pronunciation is a weird pronunciation that I forgot to, I did not remember over the years, or something. But welcome to the forum. It is, of course. What Braden will discuss is his thoughts on problems with traditional marketing of product launches and the benefits of making periodic launches that are thematically related to products.

Braden (00:58)

Yeah. Thank you.

David Vogelpohl () (01:14)

in order to give your attention to the product launches and create a unified story about your product that is more important than the parts. It will assist marketing in becoming more focused and strategic so that you are able to deliver the best quality work on the launches that which you conduct. I went to Spryng put on by Wynter, W -Y -N T -E -R I believe, and also S P -R – Y -N G, however it's not a conference.

The group was talking about the various problems and challenges in marketing. The issue of product marketing was brought up. The group was feeling like they were exhausted dealing with every single feature launch, new product releases, and attempting to get the most value from every single one of them. The topic of thematic releases for products was brought up by another member of the group who had suggested the concept. The group had embraced it around a couple of years ago.

And so I thought it would be interesting to talk about this topic on my blog post today. This is it, Braden, are you eager to get started?

Braden (02:18)

Yeah, let's do it. It's a pleasure to discuss it. it. it. it.

David Vogelpohl () (02:20)

Alright, good deal. I've searched for some period of time, however I'm not sure of the best solution to this issue. What was the first thing you bought online?

Braden (02:28)

It's a cool concept. I was thinking about the subject. It was the junior high school years. The auctions were hot. Also, I picked up my PlayStation 2 with a bundle of games. It had like some sporting games, and additional games. There was always a debate on the best time to buy it. However, I bought it, and I loved it. I received a great deal of usage out of the console, and also had lots of enjoyment.

Another alternative is to make use of the money I earn myself. One of the first things I got was a guitar. It was also my first item I have ever bought using my own cash. That was also the second choice.

David Vogelpohl () (03:06)

OK, I love your distinction in between your own money and, I guess, your What was it like that of your parents' money? How did you fund the PSP?

Braden (03:14)

It's possible I earned it through weeding the lawn or cutting the grass or doing whatever. The second was just like the salary that I earn by myself.

David Vogelpohl () (03:24)

If you're cutting the lawn and you're paying for it, Braden. This is fine. OK, I gave it a miss when I first started but, could you please inform the public about the things you are doing in this forum or what that you are doing?

Braden (03:27)

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sure. So I'm the senior Product Marketing manager of . My responsibilities include everything that goes to market for our entire range of products and the industries that we are within. If a brand new product is introduced, it's all the messages that go with that product and the surrounding environment, while supporting items like B2B games video games, or any other sector that we're planning on selling into. Merchant of Record.

And so what that means is that we integrate everything beginning with the purchase button, and end in a personalized selling experience. We work with SaaS companies, gaming firms AI firms B2B companies, and other things similar to. that. that. that.

David Vogelpohl () (04:18)

Excellent, excellent. As you go on to describe kind of how you performed it is you covered an array of diverse subjects. The topics included product launches and feature releases. In addition, you spoke about verticals. In the B2B category, you mentioned. SaaS and video games. The modern marketer is often embracing the vertical position in relation to a particular product. The fact that this is the case adds to the complexity of the marketing of products.

What is broken with the promotion of goods? What was not working in the traditional approach?

Braden (04:56)

Yes, that's a excellent question. You know, product releases depend on a variety of variables that are out the marketing director's ability to control. Examples include engineering problems or commitments from customers required, as well as sales can be an enormous issue that says"hey, we need to get this product completed prior to when the release of the next item. There are lots of involved pieces to these launches. It is therefore crucial to cooperate with the product teams in order to establish commit dates and know,

What time will these items be to be available for release? What does the word "release? Does it mean the software is accessible to everyone or is it still in a Beta phase? Now is the time for the following question to be asked: What is the best time to talk about the software? What are the topics we'd like to talk about? Can we be able to speak about it, since we're trying to test the concept? This poses a lot of concerns and lots of unease happens with the idea that you know the processes of engineering and manufacturing. In my opinion, the main thing that's broken is

it's so difficult to know that it's hard to see the product's final design and establish an release date and plan for a product that's ready for release. What happens is that managers of product like me get a week before launch, one week before GA, and the product manager says, This will be finished. You can then do this job. And it's like, okay but hold for a while. That's not all I've had to finish. It's true that you've talked about verticals. It's been discussed.

You know, that takes up a lot of your time, too. So the main question, you know, I've needed to answer and am now pondering is how I manage the work of creating the product, along with the different aspects of my job in the absence of control over when the launch will take place?

David Vogelpohl () (06:40)

In case you're running a floating timeline, and the product's not fully functional. There's a problem that's discovered just before the deadline. They are able to push through the release and get it out in the time they wanted. It's not easy to coordinate resources with other marketers, designers and website personnel and content experts and things similar to this. That's why this orchestration of floating dates I'm seeing. What about the other element? Like you've...

It's true that I've you know, I worked in marketing for products and in many capacities over time. I'm thinking that each time I talk with someone from the product department and they're telling me that we're planning to launch X and I'll create a huge announcement about the new release. Do you think that the level of time and effort needed to advertise new product releases can sometimes be excessive? Do you believe that's a big part of what's wrong with the old-fashioned method of marketing products?

Braden (07:28)

Sure, indeed. You know, these product managers are product managers with a purpose. They're the proprietors of those products. They're very excited over the new product. They've been working on these for, you know, many years, attempting to make sure that the product is to the market. Naturally, they'll need as much support as they can receive for their products. It's difficult to get an executive of the team responsible for product development to come before you and say"I'm thrilled by this latest feature.

I'm looking for a great amount of assistance, so here's a list of my suggestions I'm going the courage to say"let's get the brakes pumping a little bit for the A, B, or C reasons, but I'm not able to support your suggestions, or even do it because, well, I'm not able to accomplish it, or am finding it difficult to sustain a long-term connection with the product managers due to, you may think that they do not want to help their cause, or do another thing. It's not the case however, and it's certainly not your intention to assist everyone you're able to.

David Vogelpohl () (08:26)

Yeah. This is what you're feeling regarding managing the go-to -market around a product launch. You're faced with floating dates of the conventional method, as well as all other managers, simply because of the time and effort they're investing in it. It's like, let's make an announcement regarding this. However, with all the demands, plus the dates floating around It feels like you're doing less than your best work. It's like, you're spreading your time among all these demands which can make it hard to do your best job is something I'm experiencing. Is that like you?

Braden (09:01)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's a situation where many aspects fall down all simultaneously. There is a need to figure out the best way to accomplish each one of these. There are only 24 hours in a day not to mention, you know, working for 24 hours in a row as well as the pressure that comes with needing to think about, keeping all of those items at the forefront. Consider these complex things.

Make them smaller and easily accessible to the market. There's certainly plenty to be faced.

David Vogelpohl () (09:35)

This was something you mentioned in the past when you were talking about supporting product managers and the relationship between PMMs and PMs. If you're an advocate of the traditional model of product marketing, would you consider it to have certain tensions with PMMs as well as PMs?

Braden (09:58)

This is true and I'm thinking that. There have been times when, yes there's been an difficult conversation when you simply said, I just don't have the funds to assist your request. It's true that in these situations you need to take note and be aware of what the PM is searching for, but it certainly causes tension. And, you know, the key is to communicate effectively whenever you're faced with situations where it is necessary to need to be in the room and participate in the conversations, taking note of the conversation.

Be clear, adept at logging what you're doing as well as, in this case using the theme-driven launch procedure to prevent some issues that are associated from conventional products.

David Vogelpohl () (10:41)

Now you've got the product managers asking for the most powerful megaphone they can get for their new releases. Marketing departments in other areas are asking"Can we be more strategic to be able to perform better? And you kind of talked about the move to themes for your product releases. So let's start by asking a query. What exactly is a thematic release?

Braden (10:59)

Yeah, great question. A thematic release refers to a bundling of products underneath a topic. In this case, B2B as the umbrella and the entire range of products in line with that.

David Vogelpohl () (11:16)

If we're discussing themes-based releases that I'm guessing that we're talking about not every week. This could be because you're very committed. However, are you doing it regularly, in a month-long period or every quarter? monthly?

Braden (11:30)

Good question. There is a spring release or release in the summer months, and an autumn release. The public isn't in the holiday mood until the end of the calendar year, so we don't make it available at that time. However, we release it 3 times per year. Also, we do special releases at times during the time between.

David Vogelpohl () (11:45)

The product org is aiming at saying that each quarter, we'll be able to announce this theme improvement to this product line or item and, if we can integrate it into the marketing for the product, we'll to make it an entire campaign. Would it be possible to contain the components of all of the items and new releases that are connected to this subject?

Braden (12:08)

Yes, it does. It's got those features. Then we review our customers' plans and decide What are they planning to do for next year? This helps us classify the products in themes. This isn't necessarily an approach that is top-down and says, we need to identify for theme A what products fit under the theme of A? Instead, we examine what products that we're planning to introduce this year?

What's the primary subject concern that these goods could be categorized under during these seasons.

David Vogelpohl () (12:44)

It's possible to observe the difference and it will be amplified. You might be off during a quarter when your date of release is something, but there might be a delay, 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. This is a good idea, since we've implemented the strategy as well as GA actions we carry out because these features do need promotion when they go live. So, we in the course of the overall process, which is thematic could be able to have GA actions and thematic actions that we could implement for every product.

David Vogelpohl () (13:18)

Every release, should you'd like, will be an element of the theme release. There's also a kind of a smaller variant for such a thing as the GA rollout. The result is basically the double dip that it is a sound.

Braden (13:31)

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's been really helpful to make sure that all internal teams of our company have access to GA. It means that satisfaction of customers can't be just a matter of being able to receive feedback from customers. It's like Hey I'm using this awesome product. I'd love to know more about it. The customer success team was not established. However, this isn't true because at GA we're always releasing FAQ documents and value messages so that all employees are aware of what's going on.

And then, the primary advertising messages, like you mentioned, may be a bit off sometimes. If you have a product that is set to debut in January, but you're not able to launch something that has a theme this means that the product will not receive sufficient marketing attention at start, but it will get to tag along with an increased marketing effort at a later time in the entire year.

David Vogelpohl () (14:17)

If you were thinking it was very strategic, would you like throw in an X or an additional release during the theme launches If you have GA is slated for the same highly strategic product that you've been awaiting?

Braden (14:30)

Yeah, absolutely. Therefore, we do have some ad-hoc releases which we are in favor of. We attempt to limit these to just one or two releases when we can. We've created a process we use with you and your Product team, where we hold an exchange and think, okay, we are aware of this incredible product. It's not in the category, however it's essential for reasons A or B. We've decided to plan for it together as a group to make sure that everyone understands what we're trying to achieve. Then, that this is going to get separate focus.

It's a plus that there aren't any chances of having 15 items that suddenly crash at the end of each quarter. It's usually the case the event of items that deliver everything at the same time.

David Vogelpohl () (15:08)

Thank you.

One of my most beloved business jokes is observation that executive Q3 represents the best time to begin Q3 while the engineering team Q3 marks the end of the Q3. This suggests that they're all in a way moving towards the conclusion in order to reach those quarterly OKRs. Yeah. Okay. I've got it.

Braden (15:33)

Yes, precisely.

David Vogelpohl () (15:38)

You have a theme due to be released in the upcoming quarter or possibly in the future, there's an announcement major about a feature or product which isn't in line with the theme. Are you saying this is one of those unique ones you were talking about you could see in between the themes?

Braden (15:55)

It's exactly what you'd expect. Therefore, I'll provide you with an illustration of the work we are currently doing. The release of a payment was made in the first quarter of the year. We had variety of interesting choices for payment. One payment which didn't make it into the engineering could not be in a position to be perfect by when the launch occurred happened. The payment came from Google Pay and everyone knows Google Pay. And so, you know we took a seat to look at the feature and wondered, how can we get people to know about Google Pay? The feature isn't really one for business-to-business. So, yes we made a tiny version of this feature to Google Pay.

It was created with documents like FAQ documents Blog posts, blog post or article that gets promoted via social networks such as that.

David Vogelpohl () (16:29)

What happens when you have this kind of release for an anchor product, and then another thematic release, which is not? It sounded as if you had an anchor product. it could be in the case with the thematic release Apple Pay slipped from or Google Pay slipped from. So, what do you do? Wait to release the thematic release until the anchor items are added? Or, what else do you decide to do?

Braden (16:54)

Yeah, I mean, it depends. Sometimes, it's an open-ended wait and see. It's happened to us. It's true, I was speaking with the folks in charge of the product yesterday who told me, hey, B2B may be an option in the event of a delayed an announcement later in the year. The advantage of the theme-based launch is that A, there's no deadline to meet. We're setting that deadline for us. If we'd like to push that back slightly in order to support the timelines for engineering and our product, we can.

Or we could alter those themes at any time. If it happens that an important feature is suddenly not going to be launched, perhaps we'll be able to pick up one or two lesser components to make the perfect combination to suit the theme in an alternative method. There's lots of flexibility in this system that allows to accommodate the variations that happen throughout the year.

David Vogelpohl () (17:47)

This is quite logical. If I think of a conventional marketing strategy to announce an announcement about a new feature, it's like posting an announcement on a blog, maybe a press release, an email to our customers, or email our prospective customers, and that kind of thing. How does thematic release differ with regard to its structure?

Braden (18:07)

Yes, I've mentioned this subject previously. A lot of these events continue to happen. And at the thematic moment they're happening, however it is something we call GA activities. Also, a great deal of like internal enablement, within-app notifications. If someone is able to gain access to this piece of technology of software, we're providing the technology to our customers and our internal teams. We separate that access from this theme's release.

At the same time, in the moment, instead of focussing on each of the similar attributes, this one is, you know, fragmented and able to tell the story about the value broadly of the elements. This is a huge distinction that I've noticed and isn't feasible when releasing something, you know in a piecemeal fashion throughout an entire quarter or year.

David Vogelpohl () (19:04)

Yeah. This also helps increase the impact of the story. Because I think an illustration that I believe is perfect for me is improvements to the high quality of life that were like really hard for engineers, but don't necessarily enhance the commercial viability or value of the products. Do you happen to be even aware of what I'm talking about? Anyone who's not aware isn't aware that there was a problem or a thing. It's often difficult to Phil who is the product manager, to say"Hey, y'all! We've solved this. It could be advantageous for the business as well as the clients.

Braden (19:08)

Yeah.

David Vogelpohl () (19:34)

So it's felt like these releases don't just give people the chance to speak on the megaphone, but they may also help in advancing the tale of additional improvement in the quality of life.

Braden (19:43)

Yes, absolutely, you are able to let many applications profit by this. They would not be able to benefit from marketing or might get an, say, short announcement from Pendo. They're instead on a website that's a part of these bigger features that, well, do be able to share that megaphone. Furthermore, there's a lot worth in the tiniest changes in quality of life.

David Vogelpohl () (20:08)

If this method, have you succeeded? How many quarters of your daily time do you have?

Braden (20:13)

It's our third launch, this month will be our third theme launch of the month, which will be on July.

David Vogelpohl () (20:20)

Okay, so three quarters into the program are you satisfied that this has increased your capacity to manage marketing resources, as well as support new launches of products, or is it too early to tell?

Braden (20:33)

I'd say it's certainly improved on my part. The thing I'm seeing is that not just that I've got the ability to assist the entire product team and not just help them, but to coordinate with the rest of marketing particularly demand generation. They are able to use a large amount of lead time now which they didn't have prior to the launch of this product.

And we could slot them in the same campaigns we used to struggle to achieve. So I would say that would be the biggest advantage. However, the second benefit is that it has opened the door for us to pursue additional verticals, like, such as gaming, which we would not have the resources to pursue or the personnel to propel the verticals forward.

David Vogelpohl () (21:28)

So you mentioned the video game section at the very least for a short period of time. was present, with players who were playing video games for quite some period of time, right up to the very beginning of the company. You talked about the company being a bit more entangled with the segment of video games. Do you think that segmentation can play an integral role in thematic release, or is it more around the feature sets?

Braden (21:51)

Yes, segmentation plays a big role. As I said, that the upcoming launch is focused on B2B. It's a niche that we want to sell into and are excited about expanding into. I can see a world that we're creating with video games too. As we've said, the way we've improved Our Apple Pay and implemented Google Pay. Also, expanding with vertical themes doesn't just offer you the possibility of, say, in terms of...

The advantages are exactly the same that you get from a themes-based launches. However, you also get benefits of integrating things like thoughts leadership into your theme-based launch, which it isn't possible to incorporate into a traditional launch. This means you'll receive more, possibly a larger campaign in addition to more value from these product launches for the broader organization.

David Vogelpohl () (22:44)

Excellent. It's been an extremely interesting episode Braden. Thank you for coming to the radio and discussing this. This was a fascinating conversation on Spryng right here in Austin. I was thinking it would be cool to kind of bring it to the stage however, this was a great experience. Thank you so much for being on stage.

Braden (23:01)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me to join you. It was a blast.

David Vogelpohl () (23:04)

Awesome. Also, if you'd like learn more details regarding the work Braden is working on and perhaps his next theme album check out .com. We thank you all for being part of this week's episode of Growth Stage. Your host this week is David Vogelpohl. I am a huge fan of the community of digital products in my job at . and am thrilled by the chance to share the best of the community to you here at the Growth Stage. Thank you to everyone.

David Vogelpohl David is the Chief Marketing Officer at . In the last 25 years, David Vogelpohl has led teams that have built top-of-the-line engines for innovation and technological advancement for the top brands such as WP Engine, Genesis, AWS, Cloudflare, and various other brands.

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