Episode 7: Demand Generation

Amit Prakash

Insights into Demand Generation and Growth Marketing with Amit Prakash

In this episode of the Launch Gravy podcast, host Larry Weber interviews Amit Prakash, a seasoned CMO with extensive experience in demand generation and growth marketing. Amit shares his journey from his grad school days to working with leading tech companies like AWS, CloudFlare, and SurveyMonkey. The discussion covers key aspects of demand generation, such as customer acquisition, engagement, adoption, and retention, highlighting various strategies and metrics for success. They also explore the distinctions and overlaps between demand gen and growth marketing, providing valuable insights for both new and experienced marketers. The episode emphasizes the importance of alignment, careful planning, and thorough understanding of customer profiles to achieve successful product launches.

Connect with Amit Online: Amit Prakash’s LinkedIn

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Transcript:

• Introduction to the Launch Gravy Podcast

  Larry: Hey everyone. And welcome to the Launch Gravy podcast. I'm your host, Larry Weber. And on today's show, I'm going to be speaking with Amit Prakash. Amit is a CMO with a storied past in demand generation and growth. Having worked at such companies as AWS, CloudFlare, and most recently SurveyMonkey.

  Amit has a unique and valuable insight into how some of the world's most admired technology companies grow their customers and usage. Amit, Welcome to the launch gravy podcast.

  Amit: Hey, Larry, it's good to see you. And thanks for having me. It's been a while.

  Larry: It has, it has great to see you as well. So let's, I want to dive in quickly. We're, we're doing, taking a different approach lately and, and we're looking at different themes here. And, and for this session, we're going to. You have a past in demand gen and, and I want to be able to set the stage early on.

• Amit's Journey into Demand Generation

  Larry: Like, can you tell us from your own view, what, how you got into demand [00:01:00] gen.

  Amit: Yeah, totally, man. It's like a very interesting story, which I get asked quite a bit. And it goes back all the way back to my grad school where I took this course on e-commerce marketing. I still remember IDS 518 at university of Illinois at Chicago.

  And there, I learned about this whole very elegant concept of lifetime value of a customer. And what is its relationship to it the acquisition cost of any product and that's where I learned like, you know for a business to be successful you need to have your acquisition cost lower than the lifetime value and that's that concept like struck with me and I’ve used it at so many places. And you know as digital technologies have grown the ability to track customers acquisition and ongoing usage made it more and more interesting. And then as I started working, you know I started my career at like advertising agencies where I was able to apply it for a couple of businesses. And then most importantly where I used it most was at AWS at Amazon Web Services , where I built out the whole acquisition concept and all it does is it, it, it you see is the value a customer brings over a period of time.And that period of time is how long a customer on an average stays with your business. then how much revenue or profits they bring over time.

  And like any successful business, you would want to spend less than that amount of money. And that's what we did at Amazon for their cloud computing business, AWS. then as I kept working, I've seen different flavors of it. Like then I, when I left AWS, I went to CloudFlare and then that's where we were doing expansion marketing,

  Looking at existing customer base. How do we draw,  maintain their how do we have them adopt different products make sure that they are retaining And then they are buying different products. So that was a very different motion than what I did at aws Uh, and then there are different elements of it as well.

  There is self serve where customers are coming in and signing up. And then there are sales involved or human involved businesses as well. So there are different things we can get into it. But as you can see how I got into this was from grad school. And then my passion for numbers and marketing, which what kept me.

  And that's where we met as well at AWS, where we did some amazing work, both on the acquisition side and on the expansion side.

  Larry: Yeah, no totally. Super interesting.

• Key Concepts in Demand Generation

  Larry: And like, just, just for our listeners I want to bubble up some of the things you said, right? So on a demand gen front, part of it is getting new customers, bringing them in, and, and doing it for maximizing the amount of money you're putting in. You want more money coming back from sales and all that jazz.

  So part of it is new user acquisition. And then you mentioned another thing, engagement, and that's going to be existing customers. You don't want to forget about them. How do we get those existing customers to. Spend more, use more become closer to the organization as well. And so I see those two motions there.

  Is there anything else that you would add to that? Like between those two?

  Amit: I would also add like adoption and retention.

  Larry: Mm hmm.

• Adoption and Retention Strategies

  Amit:

  So like when somebody buys a product, like, especially if we are talking about SaaS businesses, we have to make sure that they actually adopt it. And by adopt, I mean, like meaningful adoption.

  So like, let's just take a simple example. We worked at AWS. Let's just use an example of S3, which is their storage product, right? Like if somebody just creates a S3 bucket, they've adopted Maybe they put in like two files, but does that mean they're meaningfully adopted? No, we have to make sure that people are putting in like hundreds or thousands or millions of files based on depending on the size of the business.

  And that's where as a business, you become successful. So that's the adoption part. And then the other part is the retention part. That you are not seeing churn, that you see these customers, they stay along with you and that's where, you know, the lifetime value actually captures that element as well, because if you see customers leaving, then the average tenure of the customer is going to be lower and you don't want that to be lower, you want it to be, uh, longer and longer and.

  I got to do some very interesting work at AWS at Cloudflare. Sorry,  uh, on a retention element. And you know, what we were doing was we had put together like a monthly newsletter in which we would tell the customers, like, what is the value that Cloudflare bring to you on a month from the previous month?

  So how many threats did we prevent? Oh, where is your traffic coming from? Um, so, so that the customers could get a sense like, Oh, is there a change in any trend? Uh, and, and, and you won't believe these, some of these email newsletters became so popular that customers would actually tweet about them. And if we would be late by a week, like we would be getting emails from the sales team, like, Oh, my such and such customer is looking for that email.

  Are you guys delayed? So those two things are like very important as well, like retention and adoption as well. And no, and I, I know we talked about the sales team, but this is where like the customer success team also comes into play at a lot of companies because they are the ones responsible for engagement and adoption.

  And, and I had the pleasure of working with the world class customer success team at Cloudflare as well.

  Larry: No, awesome. Awesome. You got me thinking when we were talking about that email that goes out to the customers and it was personalized to them, to their usage and gives them insight. That it's basically you're ill, you're giving them free intelligence about their usage and what's going on around them.

  It reminds me a little bit of a definitely yours is definitely going to be a lot more technically advanced than what I get from the energy company. I love it when I come in there like you, Larry, you are this more efficient than your neighbors, or if it goes higher than my wife comes and she wants to kill me, she's like, Oh, why are we spending so much money?

  And so I think that's great insight that, from a demand gen perspective, you're offering information, you're offering assets to the end user, really focusing on that customer. I would say a customer obsession in many ways.

  Amit: Exactly. Like at AWS,  we had this program called Trusted Advisor, and that is exactly what it was meant to do, right?

  Like we would, I was not part of the program, but it was one of the great things that The story in the company was like, how many, or in the industry actually, was that how many companies are out there who are going to call you and say that, Hey, please come talk to us to lower your cloud bill, right? Like this is only handful of companies that would do that.

  And we were trying to emulate some of that at CloudFlare as well. And I'm jealous of you, man. You get your energy bill and you're more efficient than your neighbors. I always get that my neighbors are efficient than me.

  Larry: Yeah, no, no, no. It's yeah. We're pretty good about it. And I think that, I think it's harder when I think post pandemic, you're using a lot more at home and you're spending a lot more time at, in the house and you're looking, but everyone else is too.

  So it's been good. Um, Hey, I do have a question, a couple of questions here, just things that have come up in my conversations with people. I'd love to get your take on it. And I see many times, Hey, I'm working demand, Jen. I am a demand gen person, or this is my field, but there's also the idea of growth marketing.

  And so do you have an opinion on what's the difference between demand gen versus growth marketing? 

• Demand Generation vs. Growth Marketing

  Amit: Yeah, I honestly feel like there are a few terms floating around right now. Growth marketing, revenue marketing, demand generation. I feel like all are very similar. There is this also there's another term life cycle marketing.

  Life cycle marketing is more about existing customer base, but I honestly feel like in, in my thesis is that they are all strategies to find how to grow the customer base, uh, to, to get more customers.  And then have those customers use more of your product. And ultimately, they're all after the same metric.

  How do we impact the revenue and profitability? So in my opinion, they're all the same. And I know some places it's a little bit of a title thing, but if people who are Just trying to understand or look for a job. I would honestly go after all of them. And I think revenue marketing is the latest term which I've seen, which has, I've started seeing in the last few months, but the job descriptions and what people do are pretty similar.

  Larry: Yeah. It's like when they want the bottom-line revenue comes first and foremost versus, Hey, I have a demand for your product. That's a little different than making the actual money and the income for it, for the organization.

  Amit: Yeah. Like for example, I don't know if you've heard of this, this company called Clari, like they, they help in, in, in, in tracking revenue.

  So, everything within their platform is like a revenue leak. And that's where I think some of that is coming. And I think it's fair, right? Like. You don't want any demand end person to just be like bringing in new leads or marketing qualified leads or opportunities. Ultimately, everybody cares is like the revenue.

  Like if there was a CFO right now in this discussion, he or she would be like, Hey, tell me how much revenue we are getting. And I think that's the ultimate question. Like public companies are responsible on the wall street to report on the revenue and private companies track that internally.  So I think it's all good.

  Larry: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. All good. Exactly. So a couple other questions I have here. I wanted to ask you your opinions.

• Understanding MQLs and Sales Collaboration

  Larry: It's things I've run into where at different companies, there's been different definitions of this and there's different kind of, I don't know, wrangling with the sales team and demand gen and others, but can you tell me what is an MQL and how do you define it?

  Amit: What do you mean? What MQL. Just kidding, man. Just kidding. Yeah. Okay. Let's just do it like one on one on this thing. Like very simply put, MQL is a lead which has. Exhibited certain behavior or behaviors or has taken an action, which as a business, which we've deemed important enough for a human or for a sales team to engage, right?

  Like humans come at a very high cost. So we have to make sure that we are sending them the right quality of prospects  to engage with. And I'll give you some certain flavors because you said that low at every company is different. I'll also say that not only every company like within a company as well, if they are trying to bring in prospects, they want to have a different bar.

  But when they're talking to existing customers, there's a different bar because you know, with existing customers, okay, they already have a contract. We, they know us, we know them. So, so typically the bar on the expansion slide is slightly lower on converting on converting a lead to an MQL. So some of the examples, right?

  Like In certain programs, I've seen like if somebody just clicked on a particular email, that's considered an MQL  or in other cases, it would be like, Oh,  somebody attended this in person event and then they filled out this form and then  points to fill out a contact us form, like there would be multiple hurdles and typically how companies do it is like all of these would have like points also known as lead scoring.

  And then it's basically a summation of different actions. So if somebody says, Oh, 10 points to click on an email, 15 points to attend an event, 10 points to fill out a contact us form, and then we'll have an MQL.  And then they all like have a number that they hit on from, um, From a lead scoring standpoint and that's when it becomes an uh, an mql.

  Does that does that make sense?

  Larry: Yeah, no, no, totally. It's it's the idea. I think where I don't know i've run into situations where the mql like from from A lead in general versus the mql and and how good how quality is the mql? What are those gates? That, that marketing has to do to get it to the next level where a seller assumes, aha, this is ready to go.

  This is hot. And, you know, I've had conversations with folks in the past as well on, you go to an event and you get a lot of garbage leads and they're like, Oh, this is an MQL. I had someone, I gave a pair of socks to, they're a hot lead and it goes into sales and they're like,  the person's not ready to buy.

  And so it just. Making sure you have that clarity and cleansing within the quality of your MQLs of of that. What's that threshold that it has to pass?

  Amit: Yeah, I think very good point how you talk about like the sales team and look, I have, I've always had empathy for sales team. Like they have a lot going on.

  One of the things that I have learned in my recent roles  as you bring up the sales team is like,  I like to collaborate with them on understanding we are going to be sponsoring event X, Y, and Z. And let's align on why we are sponsoring events X, Y, and Z for a few reasons. First, we feel like the audience or the folks who are going to be there are going to be like our ideal customer profile.

  They are hitting 80 to 90 percent of our  checkboxes and let's go there. And then the other thing we need to align is as a marketing leader or a demand gen leader or a growth leader or a revenue marketing leader that, that let's make sure that We are committing that we are going to have X  number of people who are attending the event.

  And then we need to have a similar amount of commitment from the sales team as well, that, you know, within X amount of time, and it can be two days or a week that we are going to follow up with those leads who got there. So that. The lead is actually hot within that time. And we are not calling them like three weeks later.

  And then the customer has been on three planes after that and has attended two other events and they're like, what, what are you talking about? So I think having the right collaboration with the sales team on this event thing on, from the get go, like, what are we going to sponsor? Why are we going to sponsor?

  And then I commit to bring these many people. And then you commit to follow up with those people. Uh, and then. Also like to take one more step forward that on an average, each opportunity is going to be by a number of dollars, right? Like so we can do a little bit of an ROI even before going in.

  And having the right expectation with, uh, with folks like myself, with the finance leader that, okay, if we are going to spend 100, 000 sponsoring this event, we need to have like X times the number of pipeline depending on the comfort of each business, right? So that you, you ultimately, you come out as ROI positive.

  Like I've seen going in like, Oh, we're going to spend 100,000 and we're going to have a pipeline of. Of 50, 000 and I think as soon as you say that people are like what and out of this pipeline only a fourth is going to convert so like you're going to get me only 10, 000 in revenue by spending 100,000 and nobody likes that.

  Worse is if you, if you commit that, Oh, we are going to spend a hundred thousand dollars, we are going to have a pipeline of a million dollars. And out of that, a fourth of that is going to convert. So revenue is going to be 400, 000. So good. It's an ROI of four is to one. And it's, it's a good standard to, to keep that.

  But one thing that I would like to caution on that is like many times finance leaders or,  or even us marketing, uh, marketing leaders are like, Well, but this was the pipeline that got generated in the,  in the initial first year commitment. So we, again, going back to my comment of, of lifetime value, right?

  Like, let's not get stuck on like how much revenue we're going to get from a customer in first year. Let's look at long term because we are here in all these SAS subscription businesses. You are here on a multi year journey. So even if you can get to like a break, even in first year, I think that's a big win.

  Because if whatever you're going to get next year and also have them expand, um, is going to make you ROI positive. So, uh, I'll stop there. 

  Larry: Yeah, no, no, no. I think when you were talking, you got me thinking about like the T line, like time, and you, you might, you know, from a demand gen perspective, go out there and Hey, you know, here's, here's what an expected rate of return is going to be.

  But if, if you get to the point that you're orchestrated, I'm putting my product marketing hat on right now, where it's, you need to build awareness. You need to build understanding. You will build a little bit of the market and then you're going out there to demand, right? There's different, I would say variables at play, and there's a level of orchestration that needs to happen, right?

  And depending on, on the maturity of the organization, maturity of the product, how much, if it's a brand new product, no one even knows what it does, like database, blah, right? I don't know why I even need that. That's a different issue than something that's already in market or there's already defined need, and there's a knowledge of that this product is going to service this need.

  So, so I think timelines as well, but you bring up something real quick where we're talking about the sales team and interacting with demand gen and kind of demand gen also interacting with. Other elements of marketing. And so maybe a question I have for you, you're kind of diving into it. What are all those different facets DemandGen interacts with, right?

  If you get to the point that you're orchestrated, and I'm putting my product marketing hat on right now, where it's, you need to build awareness, you need to build understanding, you build a bit, build a little bit of the market, and then you're going out there to demand, right?

• The Role of Demand Gen in Organizations

  Larry: Like where does demand gen sit within the organization from a collaboration perspective?

  Amit: Yeah, totally. I feel like DemandGen is the center of various go to market teams. You know, first it's connecting the sales and the marketing team. And then within the marketing team, it connects with leaders like yourself, with the product marketing organization, which, so that we can understand, Hey,  who is the ideal customer profile?

  What is the pain point that this product is going to solve? How is it going to solve? Then you talked about lead scoring MQL. So need to work with marketing operations to make sure we have the right tracking. We have lead scoring in place. And then let's not forget about friends in the product organization, right?

  Like, We many times when we, especially when we talk about adoption, retention, even like this term, product led growth, like we need to understand what are the challenges a customer is facing in adopting a product and how can the product team work closely with us in, in removing those, those speed bumps for the product, uh, for the customer.

  Right. And it's not PLG growth, but even for the sales systems as well, because.  We need to understand why did they build the product? And that is the story that we need to tell the customer as well. And then let's not forget about friends in the finance organization, right? Like a lot of it is like, how much budget do we have?

  Why do we need this budget? What is the ROI we are going to have? And many times as the company's financial situation changes for both  good or worse, Oh, we suddenly have like 5 million extra to spend. Hey, DG leader, do you think you can activate this stuff in the next two weeks? So as a DG leader, I'm always like ready with a list.

  Like if the finance team comes and says, these are the five things that I'm ready to go do it. But then we also have to be careful. Can I really execute it in like two or three weeks? Uh, and not wait. Or, Hey, we need to reduce budget. So always have like your bottom three things ready that, you know, like these are nice to have things that we are doing and we can reduce these to give some money back to the finance folks.

  So I think these are like the major players that, that as a DG leader, I've worked with in the past and I look forward to working with all of them. And all of these are some of my favorite people I've worked with in the past.

  Larry: Yeah, no, it makes total makes sense. I think as you're talking, I'm, I'm jumping around different When you and I worked at AWS together, it was a little different, like from a demand gen perspective, you were very close with the finance team and then, you know, I would work with them a bit, you would work with them a lot.

  I think from a product marketing and then product management side, I was like in the sea with product management coming out. And it's interesting that led to the larger organization, but smaller organizations I've worked at with, and even in different working as a CMO or working in other parts. Was all hands on deck.

  Demand Gen's definitely in there and everywhere with the sellers, with products, marketing and other areas. And so, it, I think some depends on the organization you're in, the size, the organization, mature, the organization. But I definitely think I agree with you that Demand Gen, similar to product marketing. Needs to be everywhere and be well educated on, on what's going on and who's who in the zoo kind of thing.

  Amit: And I feel like you and I have both seen this, if product marketing and demand get on a slightly different track, we don't see great outcomes, right? Like we both see things and, and what's been great With working with you is like we've many times just okay, let's get the let's get together in a room and let's get the let's get the train back on track.

  And that's why it's been amazing to work with you.

  Larry: Yeah, no, likewise, I feel like we're, we just stepped into doing marketing confessions, which could be another show at some point,

  Amit: Happy, happy to do that.

  Larry: full disclosure, not everything works as expected and a full disclosure, things can get heated and that's okay.

  And so I think a lot of it too is. Really getting an understanding of, you know, who is responsible, who can help.

  And as all things, the more you work together and I don't know, this is why I really like focusing these talks from in the trenches, it's not from something on high is, is  in the trenches is where you really build the DNA.

  It's really where you learn and you also, that's where you fix. That's where like a lot of where things can go and derail are, and just, I'm getting on my pedestal for a second. When you lead from afar. And you're not close enough to the details. That's where things go haywire quickly. And part of it is really understanding those mechanics, those nuances, like What is the ROI?

  What is finance doing? Does the product work? Does the product exist?  We don't know all those things. That's a whole another thing, but this is over communicate. And I think I'm overusing the term orchestration here. It's coming all together, getting over communicating, having that rhythm, having those discussions and solving those problems together internally.

  I think my perspective that I think that's, what's helped us too, throughout the years and things that we've done and we've worked on.

  Amit: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah

  Larry: so let's dig in here.

• Successful Product Launches

  Larry: The gist of this podcast really is around launches, right? And all different folks, not just product marketing, not just marketing even, but you know, how do organizations, how do they bring products in the market and a major piece of it? And that's why we're having this discussion today is how do you build demand?

  How do you how and what, where, and when does demand gen involved? And we talked some of the metrics, ROI, things like that. And, but I would love to dig in with you, your perspective and your view a real world view on some launches you've been a part of and from where you've sat. So I would love to maybe just pick one or not.

  Do you have one you want to bring up? Let's start picking it apart.

  Amit: yeah, sure, sure, sure. Maybe we can pick something that we work together on. But But before we get [00:24:00] into it, you know, why don't we first like Yeah, yeah. For some of our audiences let's talk about what are the very basic things which are needed for a launch to be successful, right?

  Larry: Sure.

  Amit: Like, like first is we, we need to have like, what are we launching, right? Like, is it a whole new product? Is it a feature? Is it a feature of a feature?  Um, who is this? Who is this launch going to benefit?

  Um, is it the same person or the same persona who has been using your core product or is it different? Um, the pain point and how does the product solve it? Because I think All of these things are very important. And then ultimately the most important,  are we ready to go? GA stands for general availability on day one, or is it like, Oh yeah, we're launching a beta and we're going to have like three people try to use it.\

  And we're going to call it as a launch. So it's, it's just like a lot of these things depends and that's what. Makes it very different how much of the ammunition you need to put in behind the demand generation and driving the awareness of that. And I'm sure you've seen this, I've seen this. And hundreds of our, of our people watching us or or listening to us have seen it as well.

  Um, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, you should we dig in into something that we…

  Larry: just wanted to follow up on the point too, is, and this is an interesting thing. And I think from where you and I stand sometimes. We can lose sight of it, or we can forget about it is that all different folks listening and organizations all across different views on what a launch should look like and different views and even perspectives on what it could look like.

  And look, you and I have run into situations where sure we have, is the persona really defined yet? No, it's just a product and we need to launch it and start running. And sometimes you have to, and you have to figure it [00:26:00] out. You have to build that plane while you're flying it. And you just, you have to do that.

  Is that best practice? No, not always. And so the stuff you brought up, I think is important. And I just bring it up for folks. It's like, look, you need a persona. Who are you targeting? Do you understand your customer? Do you answer those pain points? And I think a lot of that hard work we can't forget needs to be done really before you do a launch, before you get out there and start driving this forward.

  And too many times I've seen folks do this Half hazardly, right? Where it's, as you said it's, it's a challenge to drive these. But I really want to make sure that folks understand that, there's an ability to get guidance.

  There's ability to build a plan to stop. Take a breath, make sure you're targeting correctly. Before you start spending like millions of dollars on advertisements that you don't know where it's going. So anyway, I'll get off my pedestal again there too, it's one of those things that we just want to make sure that make sure you're, you walk before you run here a little bit and make sure you really understand what you're doing and why you're doing it and that's gets in the whole LKRs and metrics too later on.

  But anyway, I'll stop there, but let's look into, I don't know, pick a launch. What do you, what do you want to talk about?

  Amit: Yeah, we can talk about Document DB, you know, like we, we

  Larry: Oh yeah

• Navigating Product Launch Challenges

  Amit: We were, we were both part of this great launch DocumentDB at AWS. And I think it was a new product that they were, they were putting together. And they were, there were many elements to it, right? Oh, we are partners with some other company and how, how do we deal with that? Who's the persona? But what I really loved about that launch was how we all got together, not just within marketing, within product.

  Uh, we defined the metrics. We defined the persona. We also looked at a few things that, okay, how can we bring in brand new customers to AWS, and then how can we look at existing AWS customers who can adopt that, and that is what made that launch really fun. And I remember we did a lot of A B testing on messaging on what are we going to write in the end?

  email, what is be going to be on the ad copy. And we learned, and then the best thing was we were tracking the metrics over time, like the product team and the finance team, they had like very aggressive targets and we were looking at  how far are we off and we would have to come up with like ways of how we are going to get closer to the target as soon as possible.

  So that's what made that launch very exciting. Uh, I, I still remember like. Some of my colleagues in the demand gen were calling this this launch. This is DocumentDB is electric And and let's let's go behind it and and let's go make that happen Uh, and i'm sure you had similar pressure from from product marketing side as well

• Balancing Market Competition and Partnerships

  Larry: Yeah, DocumentDB was unique in the sense that, we were offering a product but we couldn't go too big because it was also, let me put it this way.

  It was a MongoDB compatible database. So. One of our partners, MongoDB [00:29:00] ran a database that kind of ran competitively to this database. So it was one of those situations where you wanted to make noise. You wanted to go drive, you wanted to go, drive adoption, but you wanted to, you didn't want to kill the market.

  You didn't want to kill your partner. You didn't want to go do that as well. So it was actually a well. I would say, I would say threading a needle is the best way to put it. Type of launch, right? So you had to really be smart about what you did, why you did it.

• The Importance of Continuous Product Iteration

  Larry: And then, there was different levels of the products capabilities when it came out for, Hey, it's a net new product.

  And then all of a sudden iterations of the product came out, there were new features that were launched over periods of time, and I remember as a part of that. Really looking at, you think about a launch and launch happening, right? It's you get ready for it to go. Okay. You prepped good launch, but it doesn't stop there.

  It continues on and you have to make sure you have your editorial calendar prepared for those features that are coming. And that means. Working with you on demand, working with social to [00:30:00] get things out there, working with our developer communities, working with our advocates to make sure these things, it's that rolling thunder.

  It keeps going on and on and on. And that's the kind of thing you got to think about when you do a launch. It's not just set it, forget it. If this thing goes on for a long period of time and those features become that rolling thunder initiative.

  Amit: Yeah.

• SEO and Naming Strategies for Product Success

  Amit: And then let's not forget our dear friend SEO, right?

  Larry: Yes.

  Amit: Like bringing in free traffic. Like, I think that is. One of the most important thing because if you are not, um, if your product or feature is not visible in, in key search engines, then how are people going to find you, right? Like, and, and you're going to end up paying a lot of money. So let's make sure you have the right landing pages and everything and the right content build, um, for that.

  And one thing I would say, I'm not going to get into the name of this product, like also having The right name for the product is so important. If the names are not descriptive, people are going to be like, what did you all just launch? And I don't understand what it is. Um, so yeah, there was one thing which was,  I'll never forget, which was always been a learning for me to, to make sure.

  To push that like even as a DG person to push that on the product and the product marketing team while you're doing it and at least do some due diligence. What does it mean? How is it going to be to get on rank to rank top three or top five on on Google or Microsoft search engine to make that happen?

• Launching Zero Trust Products at Cloudflare

  Amit: And yeah, well, One more thing, like if we are, if we are ready to move on from DocumentDB, like another interesting launch that I've been part of is like Zero Trust products at Cloudflare. Folks who are just tuning in, like I've worked at Cloudflare and Cloudflare is a security company. They, they started as like basic core CDN DNS, but they've evolved a lot and Zero Trust is one of their key offerings.

  And when they were launching a lot of their products like a couple of years ago in that area The biggest challenge that we had was like it's a different buying center or a different buying unit and people who buy CDN and dns are not the same people who are buying zero trust products And even within the existing customers like we were having this challenge that oh  We don't know who to go talk to.

  And then you have to go start buying these lists, this right title and reaching out to them.

• Defining Ideal Customer Profiles

  Amit: So, so that's why like defining the ideal customer profile is super important to do that even when you are just targeting your existing customer base.

  Larry: Yeah, no, no, totally. And, and, and I, I think, oh geez, I almost want like a bull blueprint and then a whiteboard that you and I can kind of start outlining this in front of everyone, because there is there, it is important to really start making sure that these different, these different outcome variables, but I'm calling these requirements are completed before you go down the road of a launch, right.

  With the ICP or the, or looking at different personas who we're targeting, why we're targeting. And then you brought up something too is.  And I don't think I've talked enough about, or I haven't discussed enough is name. And when you come to market with a name, how does that affect SEO? I'll give you this one.

  I'd like, I'll put myself out there in front of anyone like this silly podcast. Right. And like launch gravy. Well, I got to tell you right now, when I went out there, I started looking. It was all things about making gravy for stuff. I'm like, Whoa, wait a second. I wasn't thinking through this. Right.  And, and so that's just one aspect of it.

  But when we would do naming for, for AWS was very good about this. You would actually spend a decent amount of time. Studying the market, studying, like, should we come out with a descriptive name? Should it be an abstract name? Or it should be a reference name, all different things. And you'd get into product managers work with product marketing to get a giant list together, and then as a team.

  You would go through and which ones sound the best, which ones should we go with? And so there was rhyme or reason. I'm not saying all the directions we took were smart decisions, but we did, we did try. And look, DocumentDB was a descriptive name. Why? It was a document database and that's what it was. Now, does that help you in SEO in certain aspects?

  Sure. In other aspects, you're going up against a behemoth like MongoDB, which owns a giant part of that market. That's another issue, right? Versus coming up with a name that's a little bit more abstract. I'll throw out there like Neptune, which Neptune was the graph database, right? And Neptune had more of that, that unique different name, or even Amazon Aurora, right?

  Which was referencing the Aurora. That was a pain in the butt because You think about, you do a search on Aurora, it's not the database, it's Aurora Borealis, or a different type. And that's wicked, that's super popular. So, then you run into those challenges as well. So, all different things, I'm not saying anything was done perfectly, but you have to be cognizant and aware.

  So that you can actually make those different changes as time goes on, based on the decision you make.

  Amit: Yeah. I think Larry, you're, you're talking about products pre and post that situation that I was actually part of. Like DocumentDB was definitely in the post era where. They had identified some issues with the names and they were having challenges.

  And then there were a few products which were launched, which were  generic names, which were so hard to win. And even customers would come back and be like, I honestly do not understand what does this mean? So, uh, we, we, we actually had this instance, like, you know, how typical at Amazon, it was like, Oh, this is a Jeff Bezos fire drill.

  There, there was one AWS product name, which got into that situation. And we had to quickly work on identifying why was this named as that? And okay, what should be the new name? And, but in the whole thing of how Amazon is known for what bias for action, right? Like speed matters in business and how quickly we changed the name of that one product, like it was done at lightning speed and it was amazing how quickly we were able to do that. Larry: Yes.

• The Role of Executive Engagement in Launches

  Larry: I, and this gets back to the whole idea of having executive engagement in the launch process as a part of this, to enable things to happen. Faster decisions. Amazon gets, it's a gold star in this. They're, I don't think I've ever been anywhere that's been able to pull it off like Amazon had at that level.

  And it was mainly because the senior leaders were directly involved. But not every company is like that. So you have to have a sub tier of executive approvals or others. You need least to declare. Who's in charge, who is going to make that game time decision. And put that responsibility on that person.

  If you don't, that's where things get a little bit wishy washy. And I don't know if we should do this and it can get messy really, really quick.

  Amit: Yeah. And then we just keep dragging out the launch by like months. I've seen like things just keep getting dragged out. Oh yeah. We think we should do it. Oh yeah, we think we should do it. Oh, and oh yeah, let's do it this way. Oh, let's do it that way. And it's just like, nobody's making a decision. So yeah, you're right.

  And I think Amazon, absolutely. It's no secret. They have their leadership principles and it's basically in the DNA and bias for action is there. And ownership, like you talk about, we would get up to the most senior people at Amazon on, on, on getting this. And that's where like ownership, which clearly says that nobody says this is not my job.

  And people keep. Keep getting involved and make this happen. 

  Larry: Yeah. And I, and I'm not,  I don't want this to turn into a love fest for just Amazon. But one thing I will say is the vast majority of the company really lived and died by the leadership principles. And, uh, that's really, I mean, yeah, I've been at other companies.

  They have things on a wall. They say they do. Oh,  totally not true. Right. Oh, this is a great place for now. Amazon really kept true. And I will say that that's the importance with Amazon. How they went into market, how they're able to talk to customers and hold that trust is all I've been in all of that, having been through it with you and seeing it fantastic.

  It's a great experience that hopefully more people that go through the, through the machine of AWS come out or Amazon in general and bring that back to the market, because I think it's important for consumers to have that as well.

  Amit: Absolutely. Absolutely.

  Larry: So like, okay, so we talked through a couple of launches here. I do want to talk through a couple of key things with you. Like not necessarily post launch, but as a part of it.

• Aligning Goals and Metrics for Success

  Larry: Yeah. I think a big part of it is making sure you write down ahead of time, what it is you're going to track and why you're going to track it and we can change, you can change based on what What's happening in the market.

  You can change, yeah, you can change the goalposts. I'm sorry. It can be done and you have to do it. You want to make sure one person's not doing it without communicating it. This is where you need your chain of command to ensure that it's allowed and that people are aware, but that's important to do so.

  One thing as you were talking through. Yeah, the launch and, and the different metrics you would think through.  I also, there's different kinds of launches as well. And today we've been talking mainly around product launches, but we have also done thought leadership launches and things that are around, we're going to, we're going to build a quote unquote launch to get awareness for a certain customer base.

  So I think one we did, we worked on was specifically around. Getting more business leaders and more senior level folks to focus on things like databases, which that time, not database in general, but like AWS was very developer focused. And how do we, you know, how do we expand to really illustrate to larger leaders?

  Oh my God, this is how much money you can save. By migrating over and it wasn't, there wasn't a lot of awareness on that. So part of it was how do you build awareness to those other personas, those thought, those business leaders, but also get awareness in general. It's in that thought leadership piece. So I think that's important too, because that's going to be a different type of metric you're going to track.

  Then the PLG try more, buy more where, and those, those other ones. I've always felt education and tutorials, if done correctly, are some of the most powerful types of assets you can have, right? That allow apps to increase, increase your revenue, right? And your usage.

  Amit: Absolutely. They all work together and like this whole concept of like brand to demand, like they're all very important and you need to drive brand awareness with the right audience.

  Like cost, efficiency, how fast your, your thing works and why is it important? Like many people like, Oh yeah, I need this database to query faster, but why? Like you need to be able to explain it to them and help them understand that if it's not done at this speed, your business can suffer and you will not be able to give like a good experience to your customers.

  Larry: Yeah. Hey, a question for you, and we're talking about goals and what do you study? What are those metrics? And sometimes it's been a challenge to get. Buy in to get others in the organization to agree or align on those goals. And do you have, do you have any tips or tricks and things that you, I, cause I remember working with you, you were always darn good at getting alignment on goals.

  So I didn't know if you had an opinion on kind of what was your secret sauce, on getting alignment.

  Amit: getting alignment on goals. I think like what my secret sauce is like starting early and bring everybody together. And one example I'll give you is,  and don't be shy on going and quote unquote inspecting how somebody has come up with a goal.

  Like I'm not like saying that finance team sometimes can use different assumptions, which are away from reality, but I've seen it in the past, like sales team or finance team or even within marketing team, right? Like if somebody is responsible, like,  like one example, I'll give, I was in a situation where somebody took the enterprise  annual  contract value, also known as ACV, you know, like, They applied it to the whole customer base when we knew that 60 percent of the target audience was was SMBs and the SMBs would would bring in like half of that that value and when I looked at it, I was like, there is just no way we can do this.

  And a lot of people thought I was like, not being nice and was just questioning. But I was like, look, it I'm just telling you the reality. It is not going to happen. And like at the end of that call, all the salespeople, finance people were thanking me that, Oh, thank you for bringing that up because we were about to set up like hundred people up for failure, like marketing, sales, product, and everybody would have been like felt so bad throughout the year if we would have taken this target.

  Uh, so it's, it's, it's that, that thing. And I don't do it like to just, Call  somebody out. It is just like, let's, let's, let's think through this and, and I like to take some time and start early versus trying to do it like the night before. 

  Because, because these things don't come up like, um,  like I can come up with all of the assumptions suddenly, like you need to think through it.

  Like, oh, it was like a launch, which we were trying to do with an existing customer. So I was like, okay. What is the existing customer base target that we have? So if we had say like a hundred thousand customers,  we can only like the ideal customer profile is only like 30 percent of that.  So that gives you only 30, 000 and out of 30, 000, 50 percent are SMBs and 50 percent are enterprise.

  So you can't use the same thing and let's with that build up with it. And then also like to our sales front, like there was assumptions like, Oh, suddenly we're going to change the conversion rate from X percent to Y percent and Y is like 30 percent higher. And I'm looking at the sales folks and like, Oh, this model assumes that on January 1st, you will be converting 30 percent higher.

  Is that true? And they were like, no, that's going to take up some ramp up time. I was like, okay, so that needs to be built up into this. So, so those are the ways that's the tricks and trips. Like let's, let's bring everybody together and, and, and sure we can have some aggressive targets, but also let's keep things real.

  Larry: No, that's, that, that's [00:48:00] logical and makes sense and just need to be better, better. I don't know if you see something, say something and also do things early. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I've had a dime for every time and you're doing this in the very end or the last minute, right?

  Amit: We talked about Amazon. So like I always remember one of the shareholders letters from Jeff Bezos that you cannot do handstand on in one night. And he had written this in like a shareholder letter. I think it was like 2015 or 2016. If you Google it, One night handstand Jeff Bezos it will

  Or like, get ready for launches and not launching iPhones, but you should be kind of like, get ready and make sure that every word that you say, is like, ultimately good about you. So it's just like, let's spend time, let's not try to

  uh, then the, then the, then the keynote time that you're going to be on the stage to get ready and make sure that everyword that you, that you are going to, you're going to say is vetted like multiple times and you feel good about it.

  So it's just like, let's spend time. Let's not try to do it overnight.

  Larry: No, that makes sense. Makes sense. Hey, I just looked at the time and I think we're up here. Uh, in, wow, it's been awesome having you on it. And I have to feel like we can keep going on a lot of these different areas.

• Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways with Amit

  Larry: I do want to, I do want to ask you one last question and, uh, to leave the listeners with is from a demand gen perspective, from just your experience and, and being launching products, being part of this, any tribal knowledge you would share and say, kind of, if more knowledge you haven't covered already, that you want to share with our listeners on this space.

  Amit: Instead of adding something new, I think I'm just gonna repeat a few things, you know, first is understand what is the launch, understand the ideal customer profile, because if you're if you reach the wrong people, you're not going to be successful doing that. The last one is, Metrics, [00:50:00] it's very important to understand on the metrics and how you're going to track them. If you want me to repeat i'm going to repeat the three things again first is customer profile Secondly is come up with the metrics that you're going to go after And third is set right expectations on what we are going to be able to get to.

  Larry: No that, that makes sense. And it's gets back into have a plan, over communicate, align on goals and make sure darn well, you know, who you're targeting and why, because otherwise, whoo, it could be a hot mess real quick.

  Hey, Amit, thank you so much for being on the show. And, um, yeah, if, if anyone wants to get out in touch with you, like LinkedIn is probably the best way.

  Amit: Yes, sir

  Larry: Okay. I'll have your LinkedIn in the show notes and we'll go from there

  Amit: All right.

  Larry: I'm at, thank you again, man. Take care.

  Amit: you so much, Larry. Pleasure.