
The Product Marketing Experts · 2024-11-20 · 35 min
Jackie Palmer brings perspective from both product management and product marketing roles, explaining how product launches require coordination across the entire organization - a metaphor she illustrates as "an octopus with eight to twelve legs." She advocates for decoupling launch announcements from feature completion, noting that it's increasingly acceptable to launch beta features or announce capabilities coming months later, as long as the customer value story is clear. This approach enables longer "Rolling Thunder" momentum rather than single-day impact. Palmer shares concrete examples from Pendo and previous companies (DemandBase) where early beta feedback revealed customer needs weren't aligned with product assumptions - a discovery that led to splitting one planned launch into two separate feature launches. On messaging strategy, she emphasizes tying launches to specific customer use cases and value outcomes, incorporating stories from 3-5 beta customers and the company's own usage. For analyst engagement, she recommends sharing early messaging drafts, running doc reviews with Gartner and Forrester, and conducting pre-briefings before major events like Pendo's Pandemonium conference. Even without analyst licenses, Palmer notes that companies can submit briefing requests and leverage industry influencers for feedback and social amplification.
No - you can and should launch before full GA if the core customer value is clear. Launch beta features, move from closed to open beta with some features still in development, or announce capabilities coming in the future, as long as you communicate the value story and set expectations about what's available now versus coming later.
Start as soon as you have beta customers or design partners - ideally before any decisions are locked in. Product marketers should be gathering feedback on positioning, messaging, and customer value assumptions alongside product management, which can reveal misalignments early enough to reshape the launch strategy.
Share messaging drafts early with Gartner, Forrester, or other key analysts for doc reviews and feedback - you don't need a full contract to submit briefings and get input. Pre-brief analysts on launches before they happen, and even debrief them afterward; analysts want to help and often provide competitive and market context based on their other customer conversations.
Product launches aren't single-day events - embrace a 'Rolling Thunder' approach where you launch on the best date for your own calendar and momentum, then continue promotion and messaging over weeks or months through your own events and partner events, turning a potentially disastrous timing conflict into sustained visibility.
Run surveys and beta feedback sessions to understand customer priorities, which may reveal that different customer segments want different things. You can then split one launch into multiple launches, each with its own messaging tailored to specific use cases and customer value.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Questions covered in this episode: 0:32 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing 2:57 Can you share any stories about a memorable launch that you've been a part of and how you've adapted to make it a success? 10:32 How do you think about messaging and working with analysts or cross-functional partners to ensure that messaging is cutting through the noise effectively? 18:35 How do you balance speed to market while ensuring that all of the launch elements are in place and fully ready? 22:20 How do you whether as a Pendo or in another company you've been a part of integrate competitive insights into your launch strategy to ensure that your positioning not only stands out but counters any competitors? 26:27 How do you encourage product marketers, whether its a brand new product marketer who's just joined your team or somebody who's joining your team as a fairly senior product marketer to have a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape? 31: 17 How do you think about creating that rolling thunder and ensuring a launch not only goes smoothly, but it has a lasting impact beyond that initial day or event? Want more insights from Jackie?
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Foreign.
Speaker B: Welcome back to season six of the Product Marketing Experts podcast. Today I am really excited to have Jackie Palmer with me, the VP of Product marketing at Pendo. Pendo isn't just an incredible company that has skyrocketed in growth over the past few years. And I'm really, really excited for this conversation with Jackie to talk about product launches and so much more. Jackie, welcome to the podcast. I'd love to start with how did you get into product marketing and what was kind of your journey into product marketing? Because everyone's path is just a little bit different.
Speaker A: It really is. It really is. Thanks, Jeff, for having me. I'm super excited to be here as well, and I think we'll have a great conversation. So I got into product marketing from product management, actually, which makes a lot of sense now that I'm at Pendo, because that's the buyer Persona that we typically target. And so I'm leveraging some of my past lives in my current role right now. But I came in as a product manager and started over my time as a product manager to realize that more and more of my day was spent with external facing things, whether that was working with our customer advisory board, working with industry analysts, working with our sales team. I just started to see that I was spending more of my time externally facing than I was on building requirements or stories or things like that. So after a while there, I made the jump over into product marketing, and I have not looked back, let's put it that way. So it's been a good move for me.
Speaker B: That's amazing. It seems like everyone who comes to product marketing through different functions winds up staying around for quite a while. Not to say they stay forever, but for quite a while. And kind of falls in love with this intersection of previous skill sets and what they're now able to do through the product marketing function.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely, uh. I think it's a great place for a lot of different types of people. I've hired people into product marketing from sales engineering. I've hired people into product marketing from customer success, obviously from product management, and then marketers as well. But it just seems to be a, uh, really good spot for a lot of different people that are just interested in that. You know what? I always like to say that product marketing is an octopus with at least eight legs, if not a decapus or a. Whatever. 12 would be right where we have all of our legs out into all the different parts of the organization. And so I do think it takes a special skill set to manage all those tentacles. But we've, you know, product marketers have got it, we've got it in spades
Speaker B: for sure, for sure. And that really ties in I think to the topic at hand today, which is product launches. Product launches are really, really exciting events. Right. But they're also of course stressful for individual product marketers who are managing that launch or an overall product marketing team that's managing a series of launch. Can you share maybe any stories about a memorable launch that you've been a part of and maybe how you've adapted to make it a success?
Speaker A: Yeah, I think a product launch is really, you know, the ultimate example of a product marketer's eight to 12 tentacles. It a big product launch. And at Pendo, we're currently in the run up to our big customer event of the year. By the time this airs I'm sure it'll be passed. But we're running up to pandemonium where we launch the biggest product launches of our, you know, of the year completely. And so we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off, coordinating between all of the different departments. We've got people like even legal and finance working on things. We've got obviously the product management team working on things. And so there is a lot of opportunity for difficulties or errors or things that need to happen that could potentially go wrong. I won't use my current launches because so far nothing has gone, gone wrong. Fingers crossed. But uh, I'll take us back to maybe one from a previous company where we were trying to do a launch of something that was an integration to a uh, really top notch partner in our ecosystem and they kept pushing back their big event that we were going to do this launch at. But we already had another event that we had to sort of coordinate from our own perspective. So we just had to make a call and just say we're just going to launch and it won't be the best time because we won't take advantage of this partners big event. But we'll end up launching and we're going to do just like a rolling Thunder. And so we ended up picking a day that made sense from our calendar and we launched on that day. And yeah, it wasn't the most impactful launch at that time, but what it actually enabled us to do in hindsight we were really able to then take that launch and keep it going for probably three, four months afterwards because we had our event that was then the next one that we had been planning that we didn't want to move this launch for. We then had their event and it just kept it going. So we ended up turning that sort of what could have been a disastrous occasion for not having the right time to do. We ended up turning it into a positive. Now, granted, I think that we maybe like, you know, we say peanut buttering things a little bit, right. So we didn't have as much of a, like a huge impact on that day. But I do think in the long run, we were able to keep the conversation going longer and it actually was a positive in the long run. But, you know, that's just one example. I think there's a lot of, uh, options where we just found out this. I'll give one example today. We just found out this week that we need a change to our order form for one of the new products that we're launching. We had no idea, like, this is a legal thing that came out of nowhere. We should probably have known it, granted, but we didn't know it and now we're getting on top of it. But it means you've got to shift. Like I said, product marketers have to have all their tentacles out there, but we also need to roll with changes. I think that's. It takes a mindset of, um, somebody that's going to be able to roll with the changes and shift and make the right call and if it's not the right call, decide to do something different later.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker A: Like the. The example that I said where we made a call to launch on a certain date and then we rolling thundered it later on.
Speaker B: So, yeah, I absolutely agree just with the adaptability that product marketers need to have. I mean, certainly there's been experiences that I've personally had where it's been, you know, the day before a launch and the product team's like, oh, wait, hold on, we actually can't launch tomorrow. And you put in all that time and energy and there's certainly maybe a little bit of frustration there too. Right. We're all human. But also to say, okay, like, how can we make the best use of this? And how can we kind of reset and refocus and drive forward as well? And that Rolling Thunder point, I think, at least incredibly important. And I'm sure you're thinking about it now for Pandemonium and for all the launches you've probably done at Pendo, that a launch isn't a singular day event, that it's really this multitude of events that span a series of time.
Speaker A: Another thing that we've done in the past as well at previous companies and now we've started to do here at Pendo as well. Like you said, the product managers are not necessarily always going to have everything ready on day one and they need to make tough decisions about what to get cut and what to do, you know, to make a date like, especially with, ah, something like pandemonium, where there is a hard deadline, a hard date that we want to launch things by. And so what we've found is, you know, you can do a launch. The product doesn't have to be live. And I think that's something that over the last couple of years, product marketers have really come m more on board with is launching without having everything built. We're much more open nowadays to launching beta things or launching things that are moving from closed beta into open beta, even though some of the features are not fully ga. And I think we just need to be more comfortable these days in doing that because things are moving quickly and product managers and engineering need to work on their own schedule. That doesn't mean that our customers and our marketing efforts need to be tied to that schedule. I think it's more important to focus on what is the value to the customer. And if the value to the customer is telling the bigger story and 8 out of 10 of the features are available, but the other two features are coming in a month, you could still tell the value story for the customer and still do that launch. And you should, you can and should. And then, you know, just have a little note saying that these features 9 and 10 are coming later. And I think that's totally valid these days that maybe we would not have thought of earlier in our careers, for example. And that also can then mean more Rolling Thunder, which means more press and more promotion and more opportunities for you to keep talking and keep getting that value story out there to the customers.
Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree. And it's that consistent drumbeat of not just the features that are available, but the value that you can provide to customers and prospects, for that matter, I should say out in the market as well and setting the right expectations. Of course, there's different legalities in different industries and different functions and so forth that we need to be mindful of. Not just the legalities, of course, but different roles, so to speak as well. But, but being aware of being able to announce something and then fully launch it, you know, a few weeks later or a month later or at whatever point that's a little bit into the future is a really, really powerful motion
Speaker A: that, uh, or you take the salesforce approach and you announce something that's maybe a year plus out, you know, so.
Speaker B: Absolutely, I completely agree, Completely agree. It's a motion that I think to your point, product marketers are starting to get more used to. I don't think everyone's used to it quite yet, but it's almost this like appetite for innovation and at the company level to an extent as well.
Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's true and I've seen that in my years as a product marketer, I've seen that change. You know, people are more focused on the innovation and having innovation to talk about and. But they don't have to have it live. Right? Just because you're focused on innovation doesn't mean it has to be baked, sealed, gift wrapped, et cetera, whatever cliche you want to use there.
Speaker B: For sure, for sure. A big part of that innovation and a launch is of course the messaging and the story that we're telling. Right. How do you, as the leader of the product marketing function at Pendo, think about how you create messaging that truly cuts through the noise? And how do you also think about messaging and working with maybe analysts or different cross functional partners to ensure that messaging is cutting through the noise effectively?
Speaker A: Yeah, I think one thing that we've done well both here at Pendo and then at some previous companies I've been at is tying messaging to a customer use case or a customer value case. Right. If you can make it about what is that customer doing or prospect right in their daily life, then I think the messaging will hit them that much better. And both at Pendo, where we focus on how I, Pendo and Pendo on Pendo and at my previous company, Demand based, where we, where we had, you know, using demand based ourselves, right. We were our own best customer. We've focused on messaging around that exact thing. Like what is the actual use case to the customer. And we often try to, especially as we've gone through in most of these big launches, a beta process. We have, you know, somewhere from 40 to even 100 plus customers on betas gathering those use cases and really tying them in so that everything that you produce for that launch, whether that's the messaging doc, whether that's the blog that then gets created from the messaging doc, whether that's the press release that uses the quote that was, you know, in all these things, you've got to tie it straight to what is the use case, what's the value add and how are these customers prospects, et cetera, using the feature or solution. And so like uh, for example, one of the ones that we're launching next week at Pandemonium, we've got a bunch of these how I pendo use cases like our own teams because we sell to product managers and product marketers are our best users. And so a lot of the examples that we're using are how we've been using it ourselves in the beta process. But we're obviously also pulling in other stories from betas. We usually try to weave in at least three to five stories from ourselves and beta customers into the messaging and I think that really resonates. You mentioned analysts and industry sort of external people. I try to vet messaging with analysts early. Now sometimes you can't do that because things are, you know, you're flying the plane while you're building it. But if you have some messaging early on, you can submit, uh, a doc review, for example, to some of the big companies out there like Gartner Forester, and you can get their thoughts on your messaging. You can submit an inquiry and get some ideas. If you don't have licenses for a Gartner Forester, which many companies don't do, you can still submit briefings. I think people underestimate how much you can do without a Gartner or Forrester license. You can submit a briefing. They won't necessarily be able to give you the deep dive inquiry, you know, feedback, but you can still submit a briefing and pre brief the analysts on your events coming up. So like leading into. I'll just take Pandemonium as an example. It's coming up for me, but obviously passed by the time this airs. We do do a pre briefing for all of our key analysts. So I go through and I make my rounds and I say, here's what we're going to be launching. And sometimes they do give me feedback on the messaging. I'll give you another example. We just did an acquisition back in July and some of my analysts I was able to pre brief and they gave me tweaks that we then pulled into the press release that we did for that acquisition, the training that we did for the internal resources that were things. I even actually briefed some analysts after the fact just because I couldn't get them before the acquisition. And I also got some tweaks there. So I was able to make a shift for the next stuff that we're doing after the acquisition as well. And so I think it's really important to both take advantage of the things that you pay for. Right? We, all those of us who do pay for the industry analysts pay a Crap ton of money. I, uh, will be a little bit nicer in my language for these things, and you should absolutely take advantage of it. So run that messaging by them, run that web page content by them. They're not afraid to give you feedback. Now, granted, you don't have to take all the feedback. I'm of the mindset that it's better to hear feedback, even if you don't use it, than it is to not have the feedback at all. But then I think a lot of people don't even take advantage of things that they can do without a contract. And in the analyst world, so many people are willing to do this. And even if you've got like, not the Gartner enforcers of the world, but you've got, you know, influencers, right? There could be industry influencers in your market that you've made, uh, friends with or met in the world, and they're perfectly willing to give you feedback, and they might even be willing to give you a quote or a, uh, share on your social when you do launch that. So I think it's always to your benefit to take advantage of as much of that external sort of interaction when you're doing a launch as you can.
Speaker B: That's really good advice. And, um, a lot of that, in my mind at least, powers that feedback loop of like, taking in external feedback, whether it's an analyst or a prospect or a customer or any influencer or anybody else for that matter, and, you know, refining for this an, um, upcoming launch or a launch maybe that just passed and applying it to that next launch, uh, and it's really, really good feedback. Early on in my career, I very much had a mindset of like, oh, gosh, before I go to an analyst, it has to be perfect because what are they going to say about us in that next report if, like, this thing that I pitched to an analyst is not, you know, buttoned up and totally perfect? And I learned very, very quickly to your point that you can share things with analysts pretty early on and they will give you, um, oftentimes, at least in my experience, pretty good feedback as far as, hey, have you thought about this? Or this other company Is, like, thinking about this direction? Like, you might want to consider something like that. It really, really has been incredibly helpful for me to really break out of that box, uh, a little bit.
Speaker A: I think that's exactly right. And I think that many product marketers, when they're first getting started, obviously they're scared of the analysts, but really these people are on your side. They want you to succeed because they want the market to succeed. Right. Their benefit is to talk to customers and people in the market that are innovating and changing and doing things. And so the bigger that the market is and the more conversations that they have, the better for their ultimate end goals, which is to produce impactful content from an analyst perspective. Right. So the more that they learn and the more that they talk to companies and customers, the, the better. And so I think that people get scared that like you said, that they have to have everything buttoned up, everything sort of decided, but that then misses that opportunity for the back and the fourth. And this is the opportunity to get the benefit from the analysts of hey, I've, have you thought about this? Or I've seen this in a variety of different companies or hey, I just talked to this financial services yesterday on an inquiry and they were asking the same things. And so yeah, people underestimate how willing the analysts are to have a conversation, not just be the recipient of the final edit of everything. Right?
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a collaborative effort and not just a final docker view, so to speak. Uh, and you mentioned something in there that I think is, is really important that uh, the collaborative nature of like, hey, if you share early not only with analysts because they are of course an important part of this, but also your internal cross functional stakeholders are very, uh, important part of this as well. If you don't share early with them, you miss kind of some of those back and forth and collaborative elements. And so as you think about launches at Pendo, how do you balance some of that speed to market while ensuring that all of the launch elements are kind of in place and are fully ready?
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think it's the Boy Scout mantra, right? Always be prepared. And so you have to start way earlier than you might even think. One of my launches, we had an idea that we were combining these, what ended up being two different products combining into one. And we thought it would be like this amazing thing that our customers would really want to have both things combined. Well, we did some surveys and some feedback sessions with the early beta users and, and we found that half of them wanted this part and half of them wanted this other part and none of them wanted them together. And so we ended up separating that product launch into two different features that ultimately were sellable and that obviously changed the messaging significantly. And so I think that you've got to be flexible and you've got to start early. So as soon as you get those Beta customers in there. As soon as you get something in front of, uh, even like if it's just a design partner, if you don't like to have a beta program, you don't have to have a beta program. You can just have some conversations. But the more conversations that you have with whether that's people external to the company or even testing it with your sales engineers or your customer success folks like, hey, you talk to customers every day, you talk to prospects every day. What have you heard in terms of feedback on this type of a feature? Even if you're just getting some input like that, the earlier you can get that both as a product manager from a building perspective and then from a product marketer as a positioning and messaging perspective, that then ultimately feeds into that launch, that's the better, right, the earlier that you can do that. So, you know, I'm, um, a talker, as you can probably tell, and so it's a great encouragement that I do for all the people on the teams that I work with. Just get talking. I think the more that you can talk to people, the better.
Speaker B: Completely agree. And you said something really fascinating there that I just want to double click on for just a minute, which is you got all this feedback that like 50% wanted one part of it. Yeah. The other 50% wanted the other part and you wound up splitting the launch. Like, I'm curious how you convinced product management not only to kind of split that but, but also to get involved early in that process. Because I think so many product marketers that maybe listen to this or so many, maybe first time product marketing leaders or just individuals getting into product marketing are trying to figure out like how do I, you know, build up that reputation with my product manager that I'm working with or how do I figure out what's coming to the pipeline a little bit earlier so next time I can fix that thing that maybe went wrong.
Speaker A: That one example was definitely maybe more product management led than product marketing led. I think that decision came because the product managers, obviously product marketing was also talking to the beta customers, but product management was talking to the beta customers more deeply than we were. So the suggestion was brought up that we maybe should split it. The real thing. That sort of the icing on the cake on that one though, on that decision was a pricing survey that we ran and my team manages pricing as well. So that one did come from a survey that was triggered by a product marketing aspects. But, uh, sometimes pricing is in product management. So it depends on where these things sit. Like I said for that one example, it was probably more heavily geared towards product management, making the decision or finding the insights to make that decision. We then ran with it and split them into two messaging docs and ultimately two launches and things like that.
Speaker B: So yeah, yeah, that's incredible. And uh, I mean want to like maybe even dive a little bit more into the launch process and how you prepare for it. Competitive intelligence, of course plays a huge role in any launch. And so how do you, whether as a Pendo or maybe another company you've been a part of, integrate competitive insights into your launch strategy to ensure that your positioning not only stands out, but counters any competitors positioning as well?
Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a big proponent of having every product marketer understand their competitive landscape. Whether or not you have the luxury of having a dedicated competitive intel person on your team. I do think that every product marketer needs to understand their competitors landscape because like you said, you need to be able to formulate the messaging and the positioning for a product, whether it's a new product or a new feature, based on what you see from the competitive market. So even if you've got a competitive intel team or you know, some dedicated person on your team, I would highly recommend to every product marketer out there, go and look at your competitive landscape. What are they saying? How are they saying it? What kind of channels do they use to do a launch? Like some companies out there have an amazing process for a launch. And one of the companies that I worked at a, uh, while ago, we bought a company that just had very more public aspect to their launches that I fell in love with. Like they would post everything about their launches, you know, completely out there for everybody to see. And the acquiring company, the one that I had been part of, we shifted over to that, right? We shifted over to this very much more friendly and open approach to launches. And so we had you know, a website that listed all of the, a public website on our um.com page that listed all of the things that we've released and we had a very sort of broad set of ways to communicate. Now obviously at Pendo we use Pendo, we are our own best customer. So we use in app messaging, we also use out of app messaging and we do that a lot for getting the word out there. But we also have the same thing. So we've got on our.com, we have. Well on our no as.IO on our IO page we have a slash new and on the slash new page linked from our website you can see all of the upcoming Things, all the big ticket upcoming things, not our level three smaller things that are, you know, sort of tiny, but the big ticket upcoming things and we put them out there. We also have a great webinar that our CEO actually runs once a quarter where we talk about all the betas that we have coming up, all the things that we've released in the last quarter, and then things that are coming up in the next quarter. And we want to get that out there so that our customers participate with us in that launch. So competitive wise, if the more that you know in terms of what your competitors are doing, they might have a page out there that has their releases, they might have a page out there that has their betas. Get in there and look at it, see how they are messaging, see what they're messaging, what they're focusing on. They might have a slightly different Persona than you and you can then tweak your messaging to the Persona that is better for your positioning and differentiates you. And obviously nobody should copy exactly what their competitor is doing, but you can absolutely use it to inform how you're going to do a launch launch. So going back to the beginning, I'm a big proponent of every product marketer understanding their competitive landscape, understanding how that competitor is talking about features that you may or may not have as well, and making sure that your launch messaging addresses that the salespeople will also desperately want all of that intel when you finally do launch. So getting that in there from the get go is always beneficial. So that when you're creating the enablement training, you have it already and you can leverage that for your Salespeople and your CSMs and other things like that. I took us down a little bit of a rabbit hole there.
Speaker B: No, it was a great rabbit hole because honestly all of that is so relevant to everything product marketers should really be doing day in and day out and hopefully are doing day in and day out. But I wanted to just follow up on one element of that, which is like how do you encourage product marketers whether it's maybe a brand new product marketer that's just joined your team or somebody that's joining your team as a, uh, maybe a fairly senior product marketer, to have a thorough kind of understand competitive landscape?
Speaker A: Yeah, ah, I'm a big proponent in what I like to call majors and minors. So every product marketer on the team has a major and usually that's a, um, a uh, product area. Sometimes if you've got a, you know, somebody on your team that's a competitive intel person or an analyst person or a pricing person, that's their major. But I always like to have minors and usually everybody on my team, I like to assign them at least one competitor that they deep dive on, that they are like, you know, a uh, go to person for and a segment or a Persona or something like that. Right. So that they should be able to talk about some of the other Personas or some of the other competitors at a certain level, but they deep dive on as their minor on that competitor. So what we've done at uh, most of the companies that I've been at is we've kind of looked at our big competitor landscape and we've said, okay, I have you know, 10 competitors or I've got eight competitors. Oh, but I only have four product marketers or something like that. So you got to divide and conquer. And when somebody just gets started, I also think it's a great way for them to learn the product and to learn the market, to sort of really try to learn as much as you can about that competitor. So go into the web pages, watch their videos, watch their webinars, take their self guided tours, you know, sort of embed on that. It will help you learn your own product as well because you'll be able to see how others talk about things. So when you uh, are working with your salespeople, you can say, oh, you know, competitor X calls it this, but we call it Y. Right? You should talk about it in this way because it's going to position you that much better. So I think it's good for both a new product marketer and an existing product marketer to sort of just orient them to either a new aspect of the product or something that they're learning to deep dive on one competitor at a time. Right. Like you don't have to know everything. You should not be expected to know everything. Another thing that somebody once taught me a long, long time ago, this is probably dating me. But this MUD concept, is it meaningful, unique and defensible? Right. And so as you're looking at your competitors, keep your eyes open for what is unique to you that they don't have and what is defensible to you. They might have a similar thing, but where can you make uh, a distinction that this, you know, feature of yours is defensible and differentiated? Right. So that MUD concept is sometimes a helpful way of looking at the competitors because everybody's going to have some of the same things in the market. But there's got to be some way, whether it's A Persona, whether it's a, uh, feature, whether it's a market and a region, there is a differentiating aspect. And a product marketer benefits from knowing that and doing that research. So I would definitely advise all product marketers to just pick a competitor, go look at what they're doing, don't copy it, but at least inform yourself. Right? And uh, it's always better to know more. The more you know, the better.
Speaker B: That's incredible. I, I personally haven't heard the MUD concept, but I may have to borrow that.
Speaker A: I had a CRO once that said, let's go out there and sling some mud, like throw the mu at the competitor. I was like, okay, I guess so. It's one of these sort of frameworks out there that I do think it works because you can't expect to be always differentiating. But if you can find that nugget where it is meaningful, it's unique and it's defensible, then you've got it.
Speaker B: I love that. I love that. We just had a product launch at my current company and our biggest competitor, our most notable competitor, launched a fairly similar, not exactly the same, but a fairly similar AI feature. Literally. I think it was four days before our launch. And what was interesting is that like I was able to take a look at. There is a very cleanly pull apart. Okay, here's how we actually are different and very clearly message that to our sales team and our internal account management team and so forth. But I hadn't heard the MUD framework until now. And so, uh, I will have to leverage that going forward.
Speaker A: Yeah, dig it up. If I'm not mistaken, it was either invented by Gartner, sort of promoted by Gartner a while ago. It's. It's an old one, I think it's an old one, but it's, you know, it stands the test of time, right?
Speaker B: For sure. For sure. As we were talking about a little bit earlier, we talked about launches being a bit of a Rolling Thunder, right? Not just a singular day event or singular hour in a webinar or whatever the case may be. How do you think about creating that Rolling Thunder and ensuring a launch not only goes smoothly, but it has a lasting impact beyond that kind of initial day or event.
Speaker A: I really like to anchor things to a series of things that you can focus on. Let's take Pandemonium as an example. We've got a physical event date, right? We are launching towards this. October 8th is the day one. We've got, uh, some training days on October 7th, but October 8th is the day 1. Our CEO and chief product Officer are going to get up on stage and announce these big things. But that doesn't mean it stops there. We've got webinars planned for after that, we've got email sends planned for after that. We've got videos that we are not getting done in time for Pandemonium that we're going to launch after that. And that gives us other things to be able to then follow up on. And I think the more that you can stagger things out, people love a series, right? Like you know, this is season six and there'll be X number of episodes of season six and people will love to follow a series. It's the same for a launch, you know, so if you can have for example, email on week one, but then two weeks later follow it up with this new asset that is related. Like maybe it's a new blog, maybe it's a new video, maybe it's a new self guided tour. Maybe it's a customer story because you just had somebody go live, uh, on it and you've got, you know, a week that you, they've been using things and you've got a new customer story. Leverage that, right, leverage that and create a series. And nowadays that's what people want. They don't want to just have everything sort of shoved down their throat on day one. They want to piece it out and they want to be able to see the value. And then what you've got is the ability to sort of refer to the previous stuff so you can catch people up and say, oh, if you missed the first part of our series, check out the video that was shared last time. So then you've got them also clicking in and they'll stay longer on your website or they'll stay longer in the product or they'll do something. And the more that you've got them sort of enticed to stay, the better and more likely that they'll be to buy that product, to turn on that feature, to leverage that and use that in their daily lives.
Speaker B: I love that. I love the rolling cadence. Jackie, thank you so much for taking the time to be, uh, with me today and take the time out of your day just before Pandemonium to talk with me. I personally learned a lot. I hope everyone listening to this learned a lot as well. Any place that anyone listening to this can connect with you or just read a little bit more about what you're working on and what you're thinking about. Product marketing.
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is probably my place to share if I do share. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. Uh, and happy to connect with everybody. Always like hearing everything that's going on in the product marketing world and then, you know, Pandemonium will be out there as a replay. So you can check out on Pendo IO all of the the keynotes and other things. You can see if I did it well, if my team did it well for the launches. So happy to take all feedback. Remember, like I said, all feedback is good feedback. We can always learn from each other. So that's what these things are all about for sure.
Speaker B: Well, I will be watching. We are customers of Pendo and big fans. So best of luck at Pandemonium. Jackie, and thank you again so much for your time today.
Speaker A: Thanks so much, Jeff, for having me. This has been great.
Speaker B: This show is produced by sharebird, a uh, site where leaders from top companies share their expertise. Our mission is to make the best product marketing content knowledge accessible to all. Get the latest tips and best practices@, uh, sharebird.com.
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