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Launch Day Logistics: How to Ace Your Next Product Announcement
360 Plays1 year ago
Jess and Susan get real meta with their season 2 opener. This episode is all about launch day — what to do before, during, and after a product launch to make as impactful a splash as possible.
You'll hear:
- How to make sure your launch message will resonate BEFORE you spend a single dollar on media
- Why a creative centerpiece can help make it look like you're EVERYWHERE
- How to use first-party research to support your product launch
- Why your paid ads and your landing page should be a matching set
That's Marketing, Baby is sponsored by the incredible people at ércule (ercule.co) and Teal (tealhq.com).
Can't get enough? Subscribe to Rants & Raves, the official That's Marketing, Baby newsletter: https://bit.ly/rants-and-raves-sign-up
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Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to That's Marketing, Baby, the weekly show where two marketing besties talk all things marketing in the world of B2B and B2C. I'm your co-host, Susan Wenegrad, and I've spent over 20 years in marketing, focusing on paid media and email marketing. And I'm Jess Cook, copywriter and creative director turned content marketer. Every week, we'll tackle a topic that's on our minds and hopefully yours too. Ready? Let's go.
Sponsor Highlight: Air Cule's Growth Strategies
00:00:31
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Air Cule. Air Cule is an agency focused solely on organic growth for B2B SaaS brands. I've worked with them before and I can tell you I've never felt so confident and in control of my content strategy, SEO, and analytics.
00:00:48
Speaker
They also have this great free tool, Automo, that translates Google Analytics into actual, usable data. Which pages are killing it, which ones are declining, and what you can do about it. Check them out and give Automo a whirl at ercule.co. And now, on with the show.
00:01:11
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome back.
Season Introduction and New Features
00:01:14
Speaker
This is season two, episode one of That's Marketing, baby. I am Jess Cook, head of content at Lasso. And I'm here with my bestie that I haven't seen in so long.
00:01:26
Speaker
I hope you all are honored because we're always like, man, I got to put on makeup instead. I got to look all presentable like. So yeah, how was your summer? It was good. Really good. Yeah, really nice. I know. We did all of the summer things. We like went to the fair. We went to the pool. We went to Disney. Yeah, it was great. How was yours?
00:01:53
Speaker
It was good. For those of you that don't know, we own an RV, so like the big bus kind. We took that up to Stowe, Vermont, which is like now my favorite place on the planet because it's just so clean and so nicely 72 degrees during the summer as opposed to like the 98 degrees here with the 110 heat index. So I didn't miss that too much, but it was really nice to be up there for that. So jumping into fall now, yeah, getting my head back in the game before Q4 insanity hits.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's exciting. It is. It's very exciting. So a couple updates. We decided to start doing video. People had asked if we would consider it and we're like, okay, so now you can listen to us on audio or you'll be able to listen to us and see us on YouTube as well.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, big stuff. We also started a newsletter, and that is called Rants and Raves. And Susan and I have a lot of opinions, and some of them don't always fit into the show. And we thought we still need to get these out. We need to air these things. And so yeah, we started at Rants and Raves. So
00:02:53
Speaker
It's like every week you get one rant and run rave from both Susan and I for a grand total of two rants and two raves. Every Wednesday. Every Wednesday. And that's been going great. So if you're not already signed up for that, we'll drop a link in the show notes. You can get signed up and get more from us. Yes. And a big thank you to everybody that signed up. It's been nice to see the numbers crawling up every week. For sure. We're excited that you've invited us into your inbox, as we say. So thank you. That's right. So,
Product Launch Strategies and Messaging
00:03:20
Speaker
okay. New episode, new season. What are we talking about today, Jess?
00:03:23
Speaker
Today, we are talking about product launches.
00:03:28
Speaker
especially coming into Q4, there's all this interesting stuff that's going to be happening. And you've done quite a few product launches. So I was really interested talking with you about this processes you've been through and how you decide things. And then we were kind of swapping notes about what it means to be the media person executing some of that. Cause we were technically not usually very involved until more than halfway through. Like there's a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that happens before the media person really gets roped into it. Other than just like, where do you think you're going to want to promote this? And then I won't hear anything for months.
00:03:57
Speaker
and then Karina shows up and I'm like, eh. BT Dubs, it's ready now. Yeah, exactly. I'm like sweet. We traded a lot of thoughts about this and we thought this would be a make for a good episode. So yeah. Do you want to go ahead and start Jess with kind of the first chunk that we wanted to discuss? I would love to.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, so we kind of broke this down into like, think about, consider, measure, and just things that have worked for us as we've done product launches or product announcements. And the first thing that we wanted to talk about is messaging and validation. So you get handed down from leadership, like we're launching or announcing either one, this product on X date, right? And kind of the first marching order is like, what are we gonna say about this?
00:04:40
Speaker
what are the main features? What are some of the benefits? What's the kind of differentiated value that our audience is gonna care about? This is a lot of product marketing work, but our team at Lasso and so many other teams I know out there don't have a product marketer, right? So it's kind of like the role of marketing in general to like figure that out. What are we gonna say? A lot of that comes down to talking to the product team, talking to leadership, sometimes even talking to the developers, the folks who are building it, right? Like maybe there's,
00:05:08
Speaker
depending on your audience, the differentiation is like how it's built. So just really nailing that down, the features, the benefits in the agency world, we used to call this the smit, the single most important thing. Like what is the one takeaway you want your audience to remember about this product, positioning, all of those things. But I think even more important is how are you going to know that that's going to work before you put it out in the wild?
00:05:33
Speaker
And one thing to consider is like, okay, first, who's it going to? One, your audience, but also is this customer facing? Is it prospect facing? Is it both? If it's both, there's probably a nuance, right? Because prospects potentially have never heard of you or only tangentially aware of you. Customers are already onboarded. They understand who you are, what you do, right? So the messaging around that is going to be a little different.
00:05:57
Speaker
Then Susan, I'd love to, because I know you have tons of experience in this, talk to you about what is the validation of that look like? How am I going to know this is actually going to resonate? Yeah. It's funny. This actually feeds into one of the companies that I do marketing advising with as part of my consultancy. I think I have a soft spot for this because so many times, is it working? Are we talking about this right? The way that that gets found out is they spend a lot of money on media and it doesn't work.
00:06:25
Speaker
I've witnessed that again and again, where there wasn't really any message validation done ahead of time. And they really rely on the AB testing and media to discover that. And I think it's one thing to do that in D2C, which I mean, yes, D2C has gotten very expensive, but B2B on LinkedIn is very expensive, right? The data pools are smaller. They take longer to accrue. So that's a very laborious way to find out if something's not working.
00:06:51
Speaker
I really love and part of the reason I have so much fun doing marketing for winter, which is W-Y-N-T-E-R. One of the things that I love is that I can see all the message testing. It lets companies have the option to go through and say, hey, I want to get feedback from 10 CMOs on these value propositions or I need to better understand why they would leave a provider they're with. All those questions that can either A, help make the messaging something they'll really
00:07:20
Speaker
Adhere to and like really be interested in and or just validating What are the things that this is fixing that someone would need and getting that feedback ahead of time? I think is so valuable and it's always interesting to go through and because I can see the test results and kind of see the comments that are left on some of these tests and it's always really interesting to see the things that are Missing that are very obvious to people that do these tests because they don't see each other's responses or anything But they'll comment on the same things. You'll see the same comments over and over. Yeah, and
00:07:47
Speaker
And that's when you know, like when it becomes a theme, you're like, oh, it's really missing. It's important. And it's not that it's a hundred person survey question. Like you don't need stat SIG to be able to look at 10 responses and have them all say, I don't understand what the product actually does. Okay. That's a problem, right? You don't need to be able to tell you that. So I love things like that, that help bridge that gap between putting something out there and spending a lot of money against it.
00:08:12
Speaker
And just finding like, what are those easy things that you could have fixed? And sometimes it's just, you'll see teens that'll be like, God, they're just smacking their, it's right. It doesn't, we don't address that. Like, because it's, they're so close to the product and they're so familiar with it. It seems obvious to them. It's like those time for analogies.
00:08:29
Speaker
because it's an analogy. It wouldn't be an episode without it. We need an analogy jingle, like a little sound effect. Let's work on that. We do. I mean, there's an analogy every episode. Analogy time. Ding, ding. It's like those things that, you know, people will post them on Facebook where like almost every word is spelled wrong, but it'll be like, you're still able to read this because your brain fills in the gaps. Yes. Oh my gosh. That's a bravo. Because that was beautiful.
Single Asset Focus in Marketing Campaigns
00:08:56
Speaker
Okay. You can tell. You didn't imagine it made sense.
00:08:59
Speaker
Sometimes they're reaching a bit. So I feel like it's those things where it's like their brains are automatically filling in the pieces. And I've been guilty of that, especially when I first started doing workshops and training. I always had this assumption that people knew more than they did because I had to really take myself back to when I didn't know anything about this platform.
00:09:19
Speaker
And now I've trained myself to be able to rethink that way as someone that's totally new to something. But it's very hard for teams to do that, especially if it's a product that's been in development for two years and they've seen 50,000 iterations of it. They're so familiar with it. Going back and seeing it with fresh eyes is next to impossible. So any chance that you have to just spend the money to get that kind of feedback, I think, is so valuable. And some companies really balk at that. But my point has always been, you're going to spend, I mean, your media budget is five times that.
00:09:49
Speaker
And you might spend all of that just to find out it didn't work. Yeah. And then you have a problem. Yeah. I'm like, you're tripping over dollars to pick up pennies at that point. You're going to save yourself a lot of heartache. That's not even counting just the labor time that goes into creating something where you have to go back and change all the messaging. So I feel like that validation piece is something that a lot of companies just sort of skip over. And I don't know if it's because they don't realize there are options to do those things or
00:10:13
Speaker
if they just don't talk to customers, maybe it's a cultural thing. There are a lot of places that don't as you've seen. I'm not sure what it is, but I feel like there's a big gap there with companies that really do that due diligence beforehand. Two thoughts here. I think a lot of it has to do with we're always in a rush. We never build in the time for that. If you can build in the time, even just a week for validation, that will make a huge difference.
00:10:37
Speaker
I think a lot of people just don't even give themselves or leadership doesn't give them that time 30 days before the launch. It's like we're launching in 30 days. And it's like they know that the product is needed and I think they just assume that that's going to be enough.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's like they know that this is solving a problem. So that's going to be enough. And it's like, yeah, well, it's enough reason to make the product, but that doesn't mean it's going to sell it. So it's a big distinction. Precisely. I think the other thing to mention with this is customer advisory boards are great for this kind of thing. So if you have a cab, amazing. If you don't like, just reach out to a couple of customers you're really close with.
00:11:09
Speaker
does this resonate with you? Is this total garbage? Is it missing something? If you saw this, how would you feel, right? Any time that you can, even if you're only talking to a couple, it's better than zero. Totally agree. And you had mentioned something too. I feel like this kind of goes along with the validation thing. I was really intrigued by it because it gives you something that you can use further just beyond the validation. You're telling me about the kind of the research and survey piece. So like,
00:11:33
Speaker
In my world, I look at that and I'm like, we need it for validation. But I loved the way that you were saying that you've done it before so that you could actually use that data for something.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah. So just to give a little context behind this at Lasso, just in this year alone, so from like January to July, we had four product launches slash announcements. So it felt like we were just sprinting from like one to the next. It was awesome. Learned a ton, got a ton of buzz, but there was real logistics and strategy kind of involved in all that. So we'll share some of that today too. But something that we did that I loved was with each of these product announcements, like, oh, hey, inventory is coming. Oh, hey, logistics.
00:12:11
Speaker
is coming. We issued a survey to prospects and customers that allowed us to validate, again, the need for this tool we were coming out with. So we would ask questions around like, what is your current process like? These are not the questions, but we're trying to get at the pain of it and kind of quantifying the pain around the current
00:12:32
Speaker
process or tools or situation so that when it came time for the product to actually launch or once we've announced it and now we're kind of trying to drive people signing up for the wait list or getting a demo for it. We have these really interesting statistics around like only 17% of people are very satisfied with what they pay for trucking to ship their gear.
00:12:51
Speaker
That's a big deal. That's a great stat. And, you know, I've said this before, but like original research is so big now in this world of AI that you own it. It can't be generated by some machine. You have to really understand your customers in the market to get to it. So super powerful if you can do something like that, even if it's scrappy five questions that you're sending to just customers, it can give you some really interesting insights.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, like you are the repurposing queen. Yes. I've learned my ways for you. There's another Jess repurposing. That's right. Another thing that we had talked about, and I thought it was interesting because it's something that I think really initially comes from your world, but there's so much benefit to it in the media side that I don't think consider is to have what you call the centerpiece. Take us through that, and then I'll touch on why that's so crucial on the media side too.
00:13:41
Speaker
For sure. Okay. So something that feels really important, especially if you have a small team is to rally a product launcher announcement around one thing, one asset, one piece of creative, because what that does is it gives so much power to that one thing and it gets your entire team kind of like driving to it, right? So it's going to get the maximum impact that it can have.
00:14:04
Speaker
So for instance, when we launched inventory, we had this great video, went down to Nashville and shot. That was the reveal and really fun video. Like we got a ton of buzz from it. People super excited, but that video we used in social. We used it in email. We used it on the website. We used it in like our chat bot website. We actually embedded it in the product.
00:14:29
Speaker
for customers to see that this new product was coming. We just used it everywhere. It was the ad, right? We used it in video and gift form. So we were able to just show this thing. And it felt so big because it felt like everywhere you turned, if you were in this industry, in the events industry, you saw it. Maybe you saw it multiple times that day because you saw it in our social feed and then you logged into the product and it was there. Or you got an email because you were prospect and you also saw it in social. So it felt,
00:14:57
Speaker
Again, like way bigger than we are for a small team, but it felt like a really big effort had been put behind it. It doesn't have to be a video. It can be a downloadable asset that everyone kind of rallies around. So think about what is that thing that is going to drive interest in this new product and just pick one and just double down on it hard.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah. I think this is where I was kind of saying it's very helpful on the media side. And I feel like most people underestimate that, but there are so many times on the media side where our brand will say, well, what should we run? They'll come to you and say, and I'm going, what, how are you marketing it outside of don't change it just because it's going to be running in media, right? It's like, yes, the format will be different. We might have to switch some things around so that it works to have a bigger hook in the beginning or whatever, but we shouldn't recreate the wheel. Like it still needs to feel like your other stuff.
00:15:47
Speaker
So it's really hard when I've been parts of sometimes launch. Sometimes it's just ongoing marketing where they don't have that anchor. So you wind up feeling like you're creating something where you're going, I know this will work well on media, but it might feel really disconnected from everything else you guys are doing. There's no coordination. So my favorite is when there is that kind of centerpiece because we all know
00:16:09
Speaker
what we're looking towards, and I understand what are the benchmarks I need to be looking at. I know if I am launching this out there, if people click through in the ad, they're going to land on something that makes sense, or they're going to land on an experience that's consistent. And there are so many times where it hasn't. And as the media person, the brand will come back to you and be like, what are you doing wrong with the media? You're not- It makes you look bad, right?
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, I'm not the type person to be like, well, it's not me. You know what? Cause I mean, I don't like to, to me, I'm like, we all have to row in the same direction, but it's really hard. And they come back and they're like, what are you doing wrong with the media? Nothing's happening. I'm like, well, have you seen the page? I don't want to be rude, but have you seen the page they're going to? They don't go together. Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
And that's usually where you'll see things like the on platform metrics will look great, right? Click the rates will be healthy. Like there's engagement on the posts, but it's not translating to other stuff. Usually the first thing I'll say is like, what's happening when they get to the site? That's where looking at analytics. Do they lay on the page and like, what the hell? And they leave.
00:17:06
Speaker
they landing just seeing really high price point? That is something we can address in the creative, right? On the media side. So at least when there is that overall thing of what you're all looking at, it makes it so much easier. It's shocking how many places don't come with that. It feels like it's one or the other. They either show up and they're like, here's all the assets for it. And you look at them and know they're not going to work well, especially B2B. It just ends up being very corporate-y a lot of times, you know, kind of like you need to reformat this for humans, right? It's like the message is fine, but like we need to make this sound more like a person.
00:17:36
Speaker
It's like here all the things run it and there's just been no advising whatsoever about what would actually work on media Or they just come to like what should we make?
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like what are you doing everywhere else? There seems to be a dawning awareness that like your tactics have to match your overall like strategy and tactics aren't the same thing. But it still feels like sometimes they still approach it like what's our media strategy? I'm like, well, the strategy is going to be how we buy and who we target. But it's also what we say. And that just can't be can't pop out of immediate person's head. So yeah, we need like, and clueless or like she would put her outfit together and like
00:18:10
Speaker
On that computer, it would be like mismatch, mismatch, and then it's like a match. It's like we need to share Horowitz. This creative and this landing page don't go together. Try again. I would love that. I bet AI will be able to do that in the future. It'll just scan and be like these two things don't match.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah. One more thing on this, if you have the same centerpiece, it helps you test the messaging attached to that centerpiece, right? So if you use that same centerpiece in three ads, but you slightly change like the copy of the post or the promoted post or whatever, like you can find like, Oh, if it's the same piece over and over, but this particular hook headline, whatever really one, like let's put more money behind that.
00:18:55
Speaker
There's a lot of pros to having kind of that one piece just in terms of like, you'll know what's working and you'll know why. Yeah. That's Marketing Baby is sponsored by Teal. If you're a B2B marketer looking to make your next right career move,
00:19:10
Speaker
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Pre-launch Strategies: Waitlists and Media Patience
00:19:40
Speaker
Okay, so something else you brought up was the waitlist idea. Yeah. And I thought that was really fascinating. I've done that stuff on the media side and I really like it. To like drive to the waitlist piece. I thought your stats about what that looks like post launch and stuff was really interesting.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, so a couple of the product launches we did this year, we weren't quite ready to demo them yet, but we wanted to kind of make a little noise in the market that it was coming. And so it was more of an announcement than a launch. So we couldn't get demos of it yet because the product hadn't fully been built, but we wanted people who were interested to be able to raise their hand and say they were interested. And so what we did was we said, sign up for the wait list, when it's ready, you'll know. And what was really interesting about that was we've gone back to that
00:20:29
Speaker
email list a couple of times now of people who signed up on the wait list for project management, signed up on the wait list for logistics or inventory. And they have been the highest, most engaged lists that we have of contacts in our CRM. It was interesting to me because you're like, of course they would be. But to me, there was part of me that's like, it's interesting to me that their attention didn't wane.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like to me, I actually find it. It's not what I thought it would be when you told me that, you know, I was like, Oh, I kind of expected you would have seen more of a drop off. So I thought it was interesting. They have stayed consistent all the way through. It wasn't like they saw the product and like, Oh, that wasn't what I thought or Oh, it's missing these things I wanted. Like they stayed very into it. I thought that was really interesting.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yes, and not only were they interested in the product they signed up for the waitlist for, they were interested in other things too, other products, other announcements from us. So that's just something to think about if maybe it's not quite ready for demo, if you're trying to just make a little bit of noise, kind of have some sort of marketable moment before your earnings call. You need to make some noise before your earnings call.
00:21:31
Speaker
You've out-analogyed me. You've had two now. That was just like I couldn't think of the word, and then I did. Those are some things you can do to help derive some leads, at least get some people that are interested and have them in a list, so when you're ready, you can go to those people first. Yeah, I love that.
00:21:46
Speaker
Let's talk media. How do you take all this and make sense of it on the media side? So there's a few ways. And I think in B2B, I really feel like the episode I've referred people to the most is my content working one. Yeah. And really mapping out your short term, what am I looking at every day to make sure incrementally we're going the right way versus overall, what do we see happening?
00:22:09
Speaker
I actually have a great case study of this for, I shared it with you earlier, but there's a client that I advise and manage their LinkedIn and they're a large enterprise IT type thing. I don't want to be too specific, but there's this long sale cycle. They have very niche audiences and they have launched their product for different kinds of IT frameworks. We had launched one in June and it was difficult because
00:22:37
Speaker
You're looking for IT decision makers, but they really only work within this framework. And there's not a way to filter for that in LinkedIn. So a lot of times what I'll first try to understand is who is it we're trying to target? Am I able to get that granular, right? And if we're not able to get that granular, then it becomes, okay, what are you thinking for the creative? Because I want to make sure the creative is very specific. I don't want to get clicks from people that aren't going to be the right folks because I want to train LinkedIn for who I'm looking for since I can't specify the targeting.
00:23:07
Speaker
So I'll try and understand I try and understand what is it we're going after and then what's the content you're creating for it right so for these guys we figured out after six weeks of testing anything carousel just kills it for them the carousels murder it for them on crazy
00:23:24
Speaker
And I think it's much more visually stimulating. I think it feels more interactive. It feels more personal than just like a typical IT. It has kind of a sense of humor. And I worked with the team on some of the copy where one of the things that it helps with disaster recovery and stuff like that. And so all of it didn't sound very scary. And I'm like, it's not that I want to scare people. I'm like, this actually is really scary. This happens. This is really bad. So how do we make that a lot more obvious?
00:23:53
Speaker
You don't want to just be like, oh, in case this thing happens. It's like, no, if this happens, the world stops for this company. I mean, it's a big deal. So working with them to kind of highlight what is they're helping you avoid a worst case scenario. Don't be shy about that. It's not that you're scaring people. You're not being a doomsday. This is literally what happens and you're helping people not experience that. So it's helping the team understand
00:24:12
Speaker
Even though it's B2B, how do you make it emotional? Because no person wants to be up through their weekend fixing this, right? Yeah, totally. So it was kind of aligning that to make sure like we're speaking to the things that it fixes for them, the potential outcomes of not having it, making it more personal. Who are we targeting? It's a specific type of it person who would be worried about this very specific problem.
00:24:37
Speaker
And with the media at this point, I usually recommend I start out with all my clients. I'm like, do not judge LinkedIn based on the demos that are tracked to it. It will never show you track demos ever. It just, it won't. I mean, you'll get some sometimes, but if you were to look at it from that perspective, you'd never spend there.
00:24:53
Speaker
So one of the things I had said, and luckily I work with just the coolest VP of demand, John, like he totally gets it. I mean, he's like, yep, it's a long play. I will block and tackle. I'll handle all the, why aren't we getting more demos yet? Why aren't we getting more demos yet? He's like, I'll handle that. You just do what you do. So when we launched it, they had this old structure that they used to run where it was like, it was just traffic campaigns. It was kind of their old boring creative. The new stuff just blew it out of the water. It did so much better.
00:25:17
Speaker
I mean, the cost per click was like a third of what they were paying for the old stuff. The click-through rate was like 1%, which is ridiculous on LinkedIn. It was really, really good. And what was interesting is it stayed quiet when we launched it in June. And sure enough, it was like, where are the demos? Where are the demos? Then we just reviewed July's results. And it was like the highest month of free trial and demo requests they've had the whole year.
00:25:40
Speaker
You saw this like decline dip and then it's starting to go back up and August is on track to do really well. So the thing that's I think is difficult with the media part is that a lot of it is about patients and they were really cool about the fact. I told them LinkedIn just takes a while. It takes a while to get the ultimate result you want, but sometimes it does take a while to get those day-to-day results too. It wasn't like I launched it and the first day we were getting 1% click throughs, right? It's like we had four different creatives. We had carousels, we had statics, we had engagement versus traffic. We had, you know, in setting,
00:26:10
Speaker
LinkedIn is still very clunky. God love them. I don't know why they won't make it easier, but it's like, so I'm managing like 18 different campaigns, even though it's like two different kinds of creative, just because of how they set up all the ridiculous targeting. So a lot of it is managing those expectations upfront, but just knowing like, what can you correct for with targeting versus what can you correct for with media to try and get down to the person you want.
00:26:30
Speaker
That's also where the feedback loop was something I had to talk to them about because I'm like, look, all I see is what's in LinkedIn. I'm seeing the metrics improve, but I don't know if that's translating to demos for you guys because I don't have access to your Salesforce, I don't have access to your Tableau. We worked out a reporting cadence just so I can understand. Looks like it's on about a 45-day lag when we do stuff.
00:26:51
Speaker
So that's managed the expectations of as we launch new things, sometimes they'll stink out of the gate. Like there are certainly times where we launch it and we're just like, wow, it's a week and a half in. Cause now we have a bench line, right? It's like, now we have a benchmark. It should be around this. So if it's not on like E, this isn't working, right? But with newer stuff, it's like now we kind of know, okay, initial metrics look good. We should see the output of this over a 45 day period. It's just getting everybody to align that that's how this media works for me to be. That's usually the more painful part.
00:27:19
Speaker
And it's just a patience game. And a lot of times it's not the people that you're working with directly. It's like it's board members or it's C-suite. It's people that don't understand how this stuff works, right? So the education curve is like, woo. I mean, it'll take your breath away how many times you have to say the same thing over and over sometimes. The media culture was very direct response oriented for a very long time. And B2B was always like print and things that weren't measurable. And I was like, oh, we can measure it. So that means it's going to happen quick. I'm like, nope, just means you get more data. It doesn't mean it happens faster.
00:27:48
Speaker
That's how it looks from the media side. I think managing the expectations about, yes, we're testing these things, but just because we're testing doesn't mean we'll know tomorrow. That's the biggest role, honestly, that I think a good media person plays. I met some people that are really good. They understand the platform, they understand the bidding and all the mechanisms, but they just struggle so much
Sales Feedback and Real-time Launch Coordination
00:28:08
Speaker
at translating that to people that aren't in that world about what to explain, what not to explain, why it's going to matter, what does it mean. They're just so deep into the algorithms and stuff that that part
00:28:17
Speaker
kind of escapes them. So that's from a product launch perspective. That's kind of what it looks like on the media side. Love it. And I love your thoughts about making sure someone knows it's for them, which doesn't necessarily mean you have to say, Hey, it people who are concerned with whatever security, if you understand the problem enough,
00:28:35
Speaker
They'll get it. What would be a headline that no one would care about except for someone? Except for that. Yes, love that. I think the other thing that a lot of media places don't do, and this is something that you do and you preach religiously, but it's a lot less common on the media side, is circling back and just getting feedback from sales.
00:28:53
Speaker
Are we able to service these people? Are we getting companies that they're companies we would want, but they have very specific needs that we can't do anything for? One of the roles that I have, we're running into that where it's like we're getting really great logos that are really interested, but they have these really specific needs that we haven't built yet.
00:29:10
Speaker
So can I correct for that? Sometimes, sometimes I can't. Sometimes it just is what it is, but it helps me understand, okay, if that's what that looks like, and here's how much we're paying, then I know that of these ex-leads we're driving, we're finding that this percentage of them we do service, and that helps me understand costs. I really wouldn't know that. Otherwise, all I see is in these guys' case, they use HubSpot, right? So I'm like, oh, wow, there's all these demos. But then I look at what actually moves, and I'm like, why is the opportunity rate so low?
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know that it's not something I'm doing wrong or that sales hadn't dropped the ball on something. It's a product fit right now. I think that's the other piece that's super important to understand. And I don't think media people are really ever encouraged to look at that. It's kind of like, what's your cost per demo? And like, oh, but your cost per sale is so low. Again, what are you doing wrong in the media side? Yeah. Doing nothing wrong. To quote a movie, screws fall out, sir. The world is an imperfect place.
00:30:00
Speaker
coat the breakfast club. So it's like the world's in a perfect place. Like we're not going to nail the right thing all the time. Yeah. You mentioned just getting that feedback from sales. Like how's it going? Who are you hearing from? What are their objections? What's the result of this, right? Like in terms of who is coming to you? Something that was really nice that we did was we set up a Slack channel each time we had a product announcement or launch. Oh, that's nice. Everybody's on one thing.
00:30:26
Speaker
Everybody from sales to the product and marketing was in there. So like, hey, had a demo with this group today. They loved it. They want to come back when this feature is available. So product knows that. If we see that a few times, that's got to go on the roadmap. That's so much more efficient. Yeah. We've seen the chain of emails of these things and then suggestions from customers that ever make it the product. And you're like, that was a really good suggestion. Is it even on the roadmap, but you don't hear about it until six months later? Yeah.
00:30:55
Speaker
One other nice thing we did with that channel was people would post how excited prospects were or customers were. By the end of the week, we had five or six really great screenshots of somebody was like, it's like Christmas Day over here. This is so exciting. You're like, can't wait for this to come out. This is awesome. We need this. I was able to put a graphic together of all these screenshots, anonymize them, of course, but be like, this is how excited people are about this coming out.
00:31:23
Speaker
So anything like that where you can get that feedback, whether it's negative or positive, you can do something really great with that information. Agreed. All right. I have one last little bonus thing I wanted to talk about that I know has helped me during product launches and announcements, and that is a day of war room. This is something that you would set up like, okay, I know that the product is going live on April 7th,
00:31:49
Speaker
And this is especially great for remote teams too, just because it's hard to kind of work all together on a big project like this when you're remote. April 7th at 9 AM, we're all going to jump in this Zoom or whatever you use. And we are going to go down kind of our checklist of like, all right, the landing page is going live at 10. The emails are going out at 10.15. The social post is going live at 10.30. And you have kind of
00:32:14
Speaker
dedicated owners for each of those things. You're running through, hey, I'm not going to be able to get Facebook post up. I'm still working on LinkedIn. Hey, can you grab that for me, right? Like you're just working together to work down that list, make sure there's no obstacles as you're doing all of that. Something wonky isn't happening to the form, right? Like, ah, and you're like, I can't launch the page, the form's not working and now I got to Slack somebody, but like you're all in the room together. So it doesn't matter.
00:32:38
Speaker
You're all there. You can get the help you need. So that has been super helpful. And then again, just like in that same Slack channel, just like updating sales and everybody, right? Like kind of as a celebration and just giving people visibility into how much work has gone into, Hey, the landing pages went live. All the emails just went out to 7,000 people, all of these things. I think there's so many moving parts to your product. There was a company I worked at. The product launches were just a mess.
00:33:04
Speaker
someone showed me like, hey, when are the ads starting? I'm like, I haven't even gotten specs about the product. I mean, it was like there was the left hand never talked to the right and it was stressful. And then after it would launch, you just had no ideas. Did it go well? The customer, there was just, you never got any feedback. And it made it hard to be motivated and feel like you had any ownership in it because it was, you just operated like in this vacuum where you're like, oh, I'm just supposed to run ads for it. I'm just launching what they told me to launch, but I have no context for what's happening or why. So I like, I love all the context.
00:33:32
Speaker
that gives for what everybody's doing to push everything in the right direction.
00:33:36
Speaker
All right, I think that's everything we want to know. That's it. You're 37 minutes away from a perfect launch. I know. It's like we went for it with our first, this is like longer than most of our episodes. We went for it with our episode one for the season. That's right. So yeah, I'm so happy to be back and I'm going to personally, I'm just joking with Jess, apparently we can't blur the background with what we use. So like I run a side candle business, which some people know and some people don't. So like if you see any weird looking tools or
00:34:06
Speaker
A lot of wax. Yeah, I was like, I'm not a contractor or anything. That's my wax melt over there. In case he was like, what is all that industrial stuff behind her? I normally- But hey, also check out candles because- Yeah, I mean, it's like if he didn't, I do corporate orders as Jess knows actually.
00:34:23
Speaker
I do. They're amazing. That's right. I was like, I really feel like I should explain the stainless steel cable and the candle sign behind me and wax melt there. I hid my heat gun and all my jars and stuff. I was running around putting everything away. So yeah, you'll probably see that in the background for the foreseeable future, bud.
00:34:39
Speaker
We wear many hats here. So it's 2023 people normalize all this side hustle home and work. They're all one. Exactly.
Teaser for Next Episode: B2B Influencer Marketing
00:34:47
Speaker
So next week we are going to be talking about that, that of the influencer marketing in B2B, which I'm like super excited to talk to cause I feel like it just doesn't get talked about a lot. And it's such an interesting thing to me because it was so dominated by like Tik TOK influencers for, you know, for so long. I'm like, I love seeing B2B get their fair share.
00:35:06
Speaker
Me too. That will be next week's topic, but hope you all enjoyed having us on video if you watched it, and if it was just audio, hello again. Hello again. We're happy to be back for season two. We're so glad to have you back. I know. So glad. You're so excited. We're like, we're recording today. Also, anyway, everyone have a great week and we will see you next time. That's Marketing Baby. That's Marketing Baby. Bye. Bye-bye.
00:35:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening to That's Marketing, Baby. If you dig what we're putting down, be sure to subscribe and share with your marketing besties. Because, you know, hot marketers don't get cute. And if you're like, this is not enough, I need more, we got you. Rants and Raves is the official newsletter of That's Marketing, Baby. Every week, Susan and I share one thing we love and loathe in the world of marketing. Get on the list at thatsmarketingbaby.com. Okay. Bye.