Episode 1: Application Security Launch Lessons
Devin Maguire, ArmorCode
Episode 1: Application Security Product Launch Insights with Devin McGuire
In this debut episode of the Launch Gravy Podcast, host Larry Weber welcomes senior product marketing manager Devin McGuire from ArmorCode. Together, they explore the intricacies of product launches, particularly emphasizing the challenges and strategies surrounding application security posture management (ASPM) and AI-driven solutions. Devin shares his journey from consulting to product marketing, highlights key pre-launch activities, discusses the importance of engaging content, and reflects on effective launch tactics and post-launch sustainment. Listeners receive valuable tips on becoming successful product marketers and insights into mastering both tier-one and smaller feature launches.
Connect with Devin Online: Devin’s LinkedIn
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Connect with Launch Gravy on LinkedIn
Transcript:
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Hi everyone. And welcome to the launch gravy podcast. I'm Larry Weber, and I'll be your host here. Launch gravy is our online resource where we bring together industry, innovation, expertise, and education to help businesses like yours launch products and features that resonate with their users.
Our mission is simple, but ambitious. To make product launches easier and successful for merging and growing organizations. Each week on the LaunchGravy podcast, we're going to roll up our sleeves and explore the intricacies of product management and marketing by interviewing industry practitioners and thought leaders who bring unique perspectives as we uncover not only what has worked, but what hasn't.
And what is not, but also those golden nuggets of insight that we all can learn from.
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Larry: So I'm super, super excited today to introduce our first guest, Devin McGuire to our show. Devin, thanks so much for being here today.
Devin: Larry, [00:01:00] really excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Larry: Hey, awesome. so let's get to it, right?
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Larry: You are a senior product marketing manager at armor code. Can you tell me, tell us a little bit more about your role. And what, like what is armor code, right? And why is it important to know what armor code is?
Devin: Sure. Yeah. So ArmourCode's a pioneer in this application security posture management space. So at a kind of high level, we're all about helping companies reduce risk by creating clarity out of what's really become very complex security data and then optimize their remediation efforts. So, you know, software developments changed a lot There are a lot of tools to help you kind of test software and find issues, but unlike kind of those testing tools, we're really all about integrating with the entire ecosystem. So we have. 230 plus integrations. So we ingest all your security data, distill that down and the fewest highest [00:02:00] impact tasks for developers to, to take action on.
And then we streamline those remediation processes. So how can you minimize risk with the least time, effort and cost? That's what we're all about. So our primary users are security teams,
Larry: okay,
Devin: how dorisk and, developers are asked to do a lot. So with the kind of few is for mediation tasks, how can you have that best security posture?
Larry: got it. So like a synergy between the security teams and the developers at their level.
Devin: yeah, absolutely.
Larry: Perfect. Perfect.
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Larry: so product marketing, we're going to dig into kind of your life, your role,within armor code and also your past, but get us up to speed on this, tell us a little bit more of your origin story, how you got here.
And,like what you're working on.
Devin: so my kind of career path was a little atypical for product marketing. I started off in consulting. So I worked for a very small firm that really specialized in strategic positioning and messaging for. Small [00:03:00] to medium sized companies from a range of industries, primarily technology and software, but also some like tech, and manufacturing, in the Boston area.
So those were the industries around here. but really from right out of college, I was, with C level executives on some of their biggest challenges. Now, granted were C level at smaller companies, it's a little bit different when you get into these larger organizations, but,I really realized how systemic the challenge was of how do we position and message ourselves to the market?
a lot of these companies had talked to them and said, let's say got really great products. We just don't know how to message and sell them. so it's, It would essentially come down to they thought they had the best product for a certain population of people. And so the challenge was, all right, how do we convince them of this truth that, for this audience, this solution meets this need, and it's at a fair price. And so if we if they don't select your product, then we really [00:04:00] failed to convince them of that truth. so woke up to that need. And then also just saw the power of. What happens when you do that? when you really articulate that, when you do connect with a customer pain point and need, yeah, I was in consulting for a while.
I ended up going client side with one clients actually. And then then in for a few years now,
Larry: definitely lots going on. so in specifically in the cyberspace and kind of what you're working on and from a product marketing, it's always a challenge.
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Larry: You have experience in the consulting side of it, but it's always a challenge to start digging into why security matters, why it's important for you.
As we all know, like you have the security teams are like, Hey man, like we're coming down, we need to lock things down. And then you've got the developers that want to move fast. And so there's always a little bit of a. tension there between them. So if as a product marketer, how do you keep everyone happy?
how do you bring this together? How do you launch? How do you, so maybe a question for you specifically is like.in your day to day, what is the biggest challenge, man? You're [00:05:00] facing right now. What do you wake up to? You're like, man, this is where it's at
Devin: Yeah, there are challenges from an internal company perspective, and then there are challenges from a external market perspective. So I think from a market perspective, ASPN is a pretty hot space right now. I think there's a consensus that there's way too much security data, way too many tools.
There's this movement towards consolidation, integrating
Larry: it real quick for our listeners, ASPM, ASPM. What's it stand for?
Devin: application security posture management,
Larry: God. Yeah.
Devin: I'd say that's the challenge. consensus on what the problem is, but there isn't consensus on how to solve it. And more than any other industry I've worked in, cybersecurity is really confusing. And I think it's both difficult for marketers and companies to communicate their. their positions, their messages. It's also really confusing and difficult as a buyer to [00:06:00] be like, all right, this is my problem. I've got 10 people who think that they know how to solve it. what's the right solution for me. So I think from a, yeah, that's one of our challenges is amid all this confusion, how do we provide that beacon to say, all right, you have this problem. This is what you're. Your security ecosystem looks like, we really think we have a best solution for these reasons.
Larry: Yeah. it gets me and I went to derail from asking the question on the problems and the challenges, but you kicked it off my own head. It's It's a level of the job and the role of the product marketer is education. And so educating, specifically the right people, the right personas, but educating what the challenge is, what the problem is, but also what's going on in the market, what's going on around you.
Cause not every customer, not every company. Knows right. The knows those threats, they know what's going on. They know what the art of the possible and what they should be doing or not doing. And in a part of it comes on to us,as marketers to dig into that. So anyway, that was just one thing kicks off anytime we start talking challenges [00:07:00] specifically in cyber, man, it's like education, education, education.
Devin: Yeah. And like internal education, I think, bringing people up to speed on new products and capabilities and a kind of rapidly evolving landscape. I, I think enablement's always big challenge indeed. it's something that. Product marketers. I think that's a big part of our role is educating the market, educating our organizations, being on top of all these things.
Larry: Yeah. Getting, yeah,
I guess we always goes back to you think about marketing and think about, Hey, we could write something down on a piece of paper, even from product manager's perspective. here's the product.
Devin:
Larry: you got to enable an army of people to go sell it. if you're that sales model, or it has to be good enough so that a customer can knock on the door and be like, Hey, this is what I need.
This is what I want. I'm going to be self service. And it's that, customer enablement as well as a sales internal enablement as well. Depending of course, on your go to market model.
Devin: Yep. Yep. Very much
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Larry: All right, like one of the things where launch gravy, it's all about uncovering the nuggets and I, knowing you have gone [00:08:00] through, a bunch of launches in your career, let's dig in a bit and walk me through a launch that you've gone through one recently if possible and what are those nuances about it?
What were those learnings?
Devin: Last, so a year ago, April, I helped launch a kind of generative AI secure coding product. So it was a really exciting launch to work on. I they had just acquired this technology. and there were really these questions around, will developers let AI touch their code?
Larry: Yeah.
Devin: ever be accepting of this? And then with ChatGP, that conversation just shifted so quickly. And we had a headstart on the market, but it was really, had this kind of narrow window of opportunity. How do we capitalize on it? So that was a, was a very launch just because it's, a tier one launch, it involves the entire organization. Everything [00:09:00] from product and engineering, obviously, we integrated it with an event. we needed to get legal review and sign off, all of a sudden we're. code changes. What are the legal implications of that pricing? How do we package it? So it was a very, it was like a full scale watch.
But yeah, it was really good timing for that product. I was really exciting. We got excellent PR and kind of pick up, we launched up the RSA conference. So we were like a top 20, whatever, Launch for that event. and then sustaining that excitement post launch, with among customers and building pipelines.
So yeah, there's so much to dig into.
Larry: Yeah. No, no worries. And so like you said, tier one launch, right? So this is like one of those big boy launches, right? Like a new product, new, let's, it's not just Hey, we know it's here. It's we're introducing something really new to the market and it's going to take a full court press from the entire [00:10:00] organization to drive this thing.
So like all hands on deck launch, right?
Devin: Yeah. And those are the ones that are fun to talk about because it is like, all right, anytime you get to talk about a paradigm shift where, you know, things that, weren't possible before are possible now, and you really get to. To educate the market on something that's new like that.
That's exciting I'd say that those are the exception rather than the rule i'm sure there's some fun ones to talk about but I think it's important that even for the lower tier launches, ideallylaunching something because it's new and you're educating people who care that it's new. A lot of people might care when you're releasing a, Gen AI secure coding product. That's brand new and part of the Gen AI Zeitgeist. But when you're releasing support for a new language, there's a population that really cares about that.
Larry: Yeah.
Devin: and sometimes these feature [00:11:00] launches, we think like, all right. Yeah, we're not going to need to involve everyone. We might not even, and might be free or just part of the package, but making sure that you connect with the audiences who really do care. That's critical to every launch.
Larry: Yeah. Now you get me going on this too. Cause like the tier ones, right? Like they're big and they're the big focus and everyone wants them. Cause they're going to move the needle in theory and get some excitement. They're the ones that are like the. I know the PR launches, right? And but are they necessarily going to always be the customer focused ones, the customer obsessed launch.
Getting, let's say a new language development language included. And now you have a hundred thousand developers that have been clamoring for this. But it might not be as sexy on the front end. But it's going to help your business. And so those are the lower tier launches, but man they're gold.
So you, I agree. You can't, you don't want to hide those or shove those under the rug. And those, there's different ways to go to market with those and get people excited. But, I, I don't know. Sometimes those feature launches are. The delivery of what's been promised and it's important to [00:12:00] make sure that those are highlighted as well.
Devin: agreed.
Larry: so digging into this stuff. So you have this big launch, you got big fancy AI in front of it, which is, Oh my gosh. So everyone's listening, a little bit of added pressure, right? Tell me, man what went well and what didn't go well. Every lunch is, you can't say it's all, roses, of course there's some wounds and some battle scars from this.
So like what went well and why, and maybe start on the positive and then let's get into man what sucked, what's hard or what messed up.
Devin: Yeah. What went well? yeah, starting with the positive, like it really was a really perfect timing. so generated a lot of awareness and buzz around it. From like a launch execution perspective, we had a virtual launch event a week before. really tied in perfectly with generating interest and awareness at the RSA event. Yeah, from, from that perspective, [00:13:00] really cool. Like we got to make some awesome demos. I think we had some pretty engaging content. So that was all positive. some of the bumps and bruises and learnings AI being fairly new and needing to, the company. we had some misinformation within the company, even from like from high ups, that became it's tough to change a first impression or, if you get some misinformation, we were saying we were training on this massive data set, which reality, like we weren't, and it was a good thing.
we weren't, we were really doing kind of of its time, responsible AI, like a
Larry: A little bit of smoke and mirrors on this one.
Devin: Yeah, it was just, I think we obviously want to differentiate and you think, Oh, wait, how do we differentiate our AI? like, we have got a ton of data it. And it's like, all right, but that's one way, but also that comes with a lot of security concerns of whose data are you using?
What are the consequences of that? What are the security implications of that? And certainly when you're talking [00:14:00] AI for security applications, that's, top of mind. There were some missteps around, like we had trained it on trillions of lines of customer code. And it's no, like that's not helpful.
That's not accurate.
Larry: Yeah. Yeah.
Devin: That's horrible. And yeah, filtering that out and getting back to the reality of, this was a highly curated data set. It was very responsible AI. That was, that's the one bump, bruise that will always kind of stick out and be a landing point.
There are plenty others, but
Larry: So how about some more of the good things? So what were some of the other things in here? I don't know, maybe that it, maybe tell him the audience what were those things like? Yeah. Wow. This is a learning from this. This was something that, that went well.
And I wasn't aware necessarily that this was going to be important or this was going to be a factor in it.
Devin: Yeah. so like surprise things. I, there wasn't anything that was like super surprising. I think there's knowing the full gamut of materials that you're going to need. I think. There's obviously creating some, [00:15:00] that initial when you do a launch and then that quickly follows with, all right, I need some validation or proof.
having that catalog of follow on materials and diving into audiences who care about, all right, how are you training this model,having those materials. Technical white papers, stuff like that. Sustaining that conversation and that interest through the journey,
Larry: You're bringing up an important concept. I think some people forget about depending on people in the trenches really know this, but look, there's a pre, there's a during and a post. You mentioned the big fancy launch event. It's yeah, let's make sure this launch of it happens right now.
And dig into the virtual event and all that kind of goodness and how that was affected. But there's a lot of stuff that has to happen ahead of time. There's a lot of pre launch things. And it's I have opinions on this. I've. I've been in scenarios where, Oh, good God there's like nothing going on.
And it's just let Larry go launch. You're like, what? Versus it's structured organizations where we have things like PR FAQs and [00:16:00] like AWS was really good about this. It's you don't even go to market unless you know what the heck you're building. And it's based on a customer need.
So goodness there.
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Larry: Can you tell me a little bit of maybe some of these from these launched, you've gone through launches in general, let's talk through some of the pre launch activities. what do you see as essential that you've run across? So that maybe for you and your organizations.
Devin: yeah. so PRFAQ, that's something I learned from you. But I think it always has to start with the question of, you know, are we launching this? Is this delivering value? Why are we prioritizing this over other things? And. That's something that product marketing and product and that's part of a broader strategy of the organization. and really the question is,we make that ICP statement of, all right, this is the best product for this audience. Good fair price. Can we make that argument stronger or can we make it true to a broader ICP audience? So that's the lens I look at [00:17:00] products and
Larry: Real quick acronym, soup stop ICP. Cause not everyone's going to know what ICP is.
Devin: profile.
Larry: Ideal customer profile. All good. No,marketers are going to get this, right? But some folks that are new to marketing and new to this, like there's a lot of terminology in here. And part of our goal is to demystify what we can, right?
So developing the ICP is also an important process here that's, this is there's a lot of time and effort goes into that.
Yeah,
Devin: whole conversation on ideal customer profile. I think it's, I,I think as product marketers, we tend to observe marketing and kind of obsess on marketing as consumers, at least I do. Like I'm always looking at product launches and, there was just the Hyundai Ioniq N came out, which is like a, it's an electric vehicle. And you think every car company needs to get into electric vehicles because [00:18:00] regulations are going that way. But they simulated that it could be into like a manual car experience. I'm like vaguely a car guy, but I like my manual shift whatnot. But it's it's completely fake.
Like they've faked this kind of, some ways, inferior experience where you can have you have a curve and you can bog it down if you don't correctly or whatnot. But like their ICP is car enthusiasts who are getting forced into EVs. And I think it's it's just super interesting.
there are all these EVs coming out, but that's, it's something that's a little bit remarkable. It's a little bit different. and it's interesting. Yeah, I think as marketers, we have to look at what's, what are those opportunities? What are the unmet customer needs that we can really attach ourselves to and actually get noticed and, do something that's a little exciting and different in the
market.
Larry: focus.
Devin: Opportunities are there all the time. If you're just bit creative, think a little bit [00:19:00] differently.
Larry: Yeah, the focus on the customer aspect and understanding the trends. that's always wicked important. But like getting back into the whole pre launch here. So like understanding the customer, understanding that ICP profile. Okay, now what what are those, some of those other things that, stood out for you?
It'll be like, yeah, let's make sure that we get this right. So
Devin: I think like at least half of product marketing, I feel like this project management. Especially for these tier ones where you're you're working with customer success and demand gen and sales and enablement BDRs. Legal analyst relations, are you briefing analysts on this capability throughout its development and at launch and post launch to make sure it's on their radar? there are a lot of pieces and parts to a launch that if you don't think about them, like either, you're just going to fall down and be scrambling or they'll [00:20:00] just go by and you'll miss that piece of it.
Larry: Quick question for you specifically on this one, just cause I'm curious with the whole AI movement and people are all AI, this AI, that companies, man, it put. ai at the end of anything. Now it's like, my dog is AI, right?
which it's always interesting now as a marketer, as you see, like all the gen I stuff that people are pushing out the door and it all looks the same because you know what it's coming from.
Devin: not to go in a different direction on this, but. How was it when you did this launch, right? This is roughly you said about a year ago. a
Larry: like what was like the, and like when you're talking, maybe you can talk through a little bit of what AI in the realm of analysts.
And then also the sales team, right? Because it's, Ooh, let me attach something good, but it's something a little different.
Devin: analysts it depends which firm you're talking to. Some tend to be a little bit more conservative, a little bit more forward thinking. yeah, I think that there's,you looked at the adoption of co pilot and chat [00:21:00] GPT, and it was all right, it's not a, if developers are using this, it's, they're using it. How do we make that a little bit more responsible? What have you, you know, kind of supplement these tools, with some security, capabilities. from a sales perspective.to your point, like, is everywhere now, but right now I think it's just noise. It's like saying you're a SaaS company or like you were on the internet 20 years ago.
of course you are.
Larry: Yeah,
Devin: and I think there's always, anytime there's new technology, there's this desire to talk about the tech. And that's quickly just going to become noise. But I think when you can talk about the experience that's enabled by the technology.
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Devin: That's much more interesting and I think much more exciting and certainly for sellers.
They were like, oh, This is pretty game changing. This is you know [00:22:00] a paradigm shift. This is You know, we're doing things that weren't possible before and they're hugely valuableyeah, I think that's exciting. And anytime things resonate with the market, sellers just grab onto stuff like that.
if something works, sellers will use it.
Larry: no, that's great. Yeah. It's anything sales will salivate over. is always good stuff. Cause then
Devin:
Larry: you get front and center.
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Devin: why you got to be like careful with your roadmap and stuff. like they'll sell futures or, it'll delay deals or whatnot.
Larry: Yes. No, you got, yeah. It's I feel like it's a, alert for everyone. And it's do not oversell the roadmap for too long. You have to deliver at some point in time.
it's one of the things I've noticed in some other organizations I've been in is, some companies are now posting their roadmap online, and very clear and transparent. Like the next two years, this is what we're delivering. And I'm like, that's going to keep someone honest. Pretty good.
Devin: [00:23:00] Yeah, I feel like Microsoft would use their roadmap or use visionary things in order to like paralyze markets. It would be like, oh, Microsoft might be doing something. I'm sure others do this as well. But like working in the past for kind of small startups, it was, Oh, Microsoft might do something that competes with us.
Honestly, they never delivered anything in that scenario, but it just it would hold up deals because people are like, Oh, we have Microsoft. This might, they might do this.
Larry: Yeah. Yeah.
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Larry: all So we got some pre launch stuff. You pre brief, you go through that. And then can you tell me more, like anything else specifically the virtual launch itself, because, there's always a pro and a con for doing some virtual, right. And getting people that, virtual butts in seat versus, Hey, come on, let's have a steak dinner and some drinks or, whatever may be in a location.
And there's pros and cons to both, but, can you take us through a little bit of the decision for doing a virtual event? And how that played out tell us a little bit more about, how you attracted people maybe. [00:24:00] and what was the response based on that?
Devin: Yeah. The decision to do the virtual event. So we knew we wanted to launch it around RSA. Which is this big kind of cyber security conference. And we wanted to drive awareness and interest ahead of that event. So we decided, we were already doing kind of a press release a week before. but we were like, why not do a virtual event?
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Devin: Why not tell our story, So we put out like teasers, we had this whole teaser campaign. it wasn't hard to figure out what we were launching, but we didn't, officially announce it. I think it was like the futurist fix or something like that. Like there, there was just so much desire and interest in AI at the time that like, we, that, that teaser campaign for the virtual event did I think it was, like, by far and away our best attended,event. And then, the event itself, we,it [00:25:00] was a presentation. we had a short demo. and then that kind of,what to interest at the actual in person event as far as you know steak dinners and launches like that. I mean that's for the sellers I'm more the production product marketer.
So
Larry: Tell me on like the one thing I'm curious on, like you said that the teaser before the launch was like a good drive or to, to the virtual event. Am I getting that right? and
Devin: yeah, so we
Larry: what was that teaser?
Devin: I think we put out some thought leadership pieces around The role of AI in software development and secure software development. then we ran an ad campaign promoting the virtual event with some good graphics that kind of futuristic, somewhat intriguing, tagline, what have you. so yeah, and then that fed to the virtual event where we announced the product.
Larry: Got it. So, so, okay. Good marketing [00:26:00] and clean visuals.
Devin: I, yeah, like the ideal scenario Would be like if you have a customer, if you have an early access customer to do that launch event with, which when I think of the best launches I've done in my career, those are the ones where it's like, all right, we're going to do an event with an early access
Larry: Yeah,
Devin: real outcomes and they're going to talk about them and let's do it. So those are, that's, if I think of like ideal scenario launch, That's what it looks like.
Larry: a hundred percent. it's gold and it's the part of getting the early product, Or the MVP, the minimum viable product, in the hands of customers and getting them to align to ensure that, Hey, they're going to want to be spokespeople and, or they're, Giving feedback for it.
Spokespeople is like the nirvana, you want them to get to, but just that customer feedback and interactions so that you can actually, then, when you put out a press release, Hey, my gosh, customer X, Y, Z is a part of this. that's money, right? So totally get it.
okay.
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Larry: so moving on to, all right. [00:27:00] Thing you launched RSA. Yay. everyone's happy salespeople out there selling stuff, right? Anything you can say about, after launch, any other follow on events or things that you were like, things that maybe stood out for you as being really good or even the challenging, man, this didn't work out.
Devin: Yeah, there's like on events, Black Hats, the like, next event, next cyber security event in the summer, so we sustained momentum through that. We really focused on expand opportunities. It was a prerequisite that you had to do. Be a customer, use the core technology in order to take advantage.
So that was the immediate pipeline converting opportunity was expand. So we did quite a bit of customer marketing around that. and then, weaving it into demand gen campaigns. That's, that's a process that product marketing supports and, provides content for that. But, it involves more than product marketing for [00:28:00] sure.
Larry: Yeah, no, totally get it. so moving on here, it's like one of the things.
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Larry: I did want to talk to you about a little bit and I think it's something interesting when you ask product marketers and the companies, and every company does a little bit different, but like, how do you measure results?
Devin: And measure results from a standpoint of something that's real. Like I've been at companies before where People reported on, they had a color code and it was like red to green. And then there was like, and that's fine because that simplifies like, Hey, I'm doing well. It's green. Or, Hey, it's not so good. It's red. and it would light a fire as needed. Can get a whole nother subject on that. But at the end of the day though, what were the numbers behind that? Just not just, Hey, it feels good today. Or, Yeah.
Larry: so you can tell me more, anything around, Metrics, whether it be on the launch itself or in general.
and as you, as a product marketer, things that you align around.
Devin: Yeah. I think there's a lot of times, as kind of content [00:29:00] creators, a lot of the metrics come down to what's the engagement with the content that we're creating or the launch that we're doing against, industry benchmarks or the own companies. Yeah. Benchmarks. are we generating more traffic?
Is that traffic converting into leads And are those leads going through the funnel? I think that's, high level metrics. I think yeah, stroke it's, I think it is this launch helping the organization to grow faster than the market, the average, are we outpacing?Other industries. And I think part of the challenge with product marketing metrics is we influence a lot of different things. we influence demand gen campaigns, we sales, how good's the pitch, how good is, are the materials, are they able, are they equipped to progress people through that [00:30:00] pipeline?but pinning down to like, all right, this is the product marketing. specific metric. I think it often in my experience, it's become, right, what kind of engagement are we getting? Cause tough to be like, all right, product marketing helps generate this pipeline or, tied to pipeline or revenue.
I think that's, it's challenging that we'd be like, all right, this launch for feature, especially if it's like not a tier one feature or watch,figure out, all right, what's the. the impact of that can be challenging.
Larry: yeah,
Devin: less so with like PLG stuff, like that's a whole different world, with enterprise or product led growth stuff.
Larry: yeah.
And product led growth strategies and you align directly. Sometimes product marketer plays the role of the salesperson, in many ways with product management or even product management, it says, Hey, we can do this on our own. All good.
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Larry: I think one of the challenges and challenges [00:31:00] I faced as well throughout my history is how do you show results or, or, you know, and perception, right?
When you put out a launch, right? What are some of those? Key things that really say, Hey, wow, you move the needle. If you're a demand gen person, Hey, no, no worries. Like you, how many qualified leads do we get? How do they convert? Blah, blah, blah. If you're a digital person and this is somewhere, marketing's in there too, as well.
I don't advocate for taking goals on like website visits, it's a good test to see wow, did something work or not?
but like, did Devin move the needle with this launch? And it's kind of.that's always a challenge, right? is perception and awareness in market.
And do you have any guidance on that or any opinions on how do you, man, how do you handle that?
Devin: yeah, I think,the previous launch as an example, like, we had a big uptick in web traffic, but it was also with an event where, we see uptick in web traffic every year. [00:32:00] so kind of,you can out the, the correlations, all right, we launched something, we put out a PR, had much pickup that had this uptick in web traffic and what have you. I think like some of this stuff, it's easy, sometimes it's easy to be like, all right, this is our top performing website. This is our top performing landing page. These are the things that are generating interest. I think some of my thoughts on the metrics are, it's a lot of like retrospectively, did we do well? It's Oh, we want to show that we did well. It was, worth the cost that we spent on this launch or the right investment. sometimes it's a little bit of a challenge to be like, what did we learn from this data? Are we going to invest more in this areado we learn that this type of content performs better for this audience?
I find that a lot of times it's just retrospective, like what worked. and it's You gotta take the next step to do it. [00:33:00] Alright, how is this gonna influence what we do in the future?
Yeah, no, you bring up a great point and that's, and it gets back to the whole ICP or even a persona, right? Is. what's the right content for the right person at the right point in time? And is it resonating, right? Resignating, resonating,and resigning now. down. Heh.
Larry: I'm out of here.
Bye bye. And I think, Historically, people will look at it and be like, backing up. I think historically people don't look at it enough and we don't study enough for the actual content that's in market and making sure that, I don't know if my pet peeve is eBooks, right?
People will spend all these time and day on eBooks, right? Oh, look at this. Great. Some third party created it. No one's reading the darn eBook, right? Why the heck, how much money did you spend to have someone else pay And it's, like we need to be really focused on, on what the customer wants, read,I'm getting on my pedestal now with this, but We really need to make sure that customers want what's put out in market.
And then study that, [00:34:00] and making sure that we're solving, helping at least educate them or helping them solve their problem where we're the custodians of the word. Where we need to go do that. so that's just my take on some of that, with, when you bring up, content and putting it the right place at the right time.
yeah, it's, I think there's. There's a level of art and science to some of this the science, we can track things, but the art is what do we want to track? Andhow do we know? I, not for me personally, I think where I fall into it is go ask a customer, go, and start there, get a good, All right.
I talked to three customers and they all said that the content was great or it sucked and this is why, right? And that gives you a good starting point. You need to go then in mass, the world's not, solved by three customers, but it was super important for that to be, a driver to your next action, to, to check out.
Devin: Yep. Very good point.
Larry: all right, let's talk about this. I, all things would launch, whatever. Is there anything like back in a way that you wish you would have changed or that you would have done differently or. Even said, even for a role that maybe [00:35:00] wasn't yours, as a part of it,man, what would you do differently?
You're saying, Hey, timeout, you guys should have done this. Or
Devin: I mean, I think I mentioned like ideal launch is what the customer, you always want, you always have that as part of your kind of wishlist. so there's things that, could have or wish we had done, follow on campaigns, kind of coordination with,I think there was a lot of other priorities.
I think very quickly the organization realized like, oh, this is what people are excited and talking and care about. I think that, it took a little while, maybe a little bit longer than hoped to get there. Yeah, I think I mentioned there's a narrow window of opportunity, especially when you get to be first to market. capitalized on that. Did we maximize it? Absolutely not. there were definitely things we could have done to capture that moment in time and sustain it better for sure.
Larry: [00:36:00] yeah, like every, everything's 2020 in hindsight, right?
Devin: All right.
Larry: But you got to learn from it. If you don't learn from it, to make that next one better. Look,I'm with you on that. I think about many of launches back when I was younger and even bringing products to market and how much money we left on the table by not really maximizing and, No, I'll throw this, I'll throw this bone out there to all of my, partner marketing friends.
But a lot of times people do not pre brief the prop, the partners and many organizations are like an extension of the Salesforce. And they're like,
Devin: yeah.
Larry: out there selling, they got better stories. They're educated. They're clamoring for this content. And unless you can get that, that, partner involved, man, this is a lot of people forget about it and it gets lost.
Devin: yeah, I've had the benefit of having really good partner marketing leaders work with, which, yeah, absolutely, they are more than a force multiplier. And they've got, they've got a lot of companies that they're [00:37:00] selling. If you're not, if you're not providing value to them, if, ideally, you're bringing customers to them as much as they are to you. But yeah,
Larry: Yeah.
Devin: high on their radar is key.
Larry: all right, like we close up here, we've done a good conversation, walked through launch and kind of the AI.the step into it, I would say, but like some pros and cons, a quick overview on, on, where you've been on throughout your journey.
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Larry: Let's assume someone here is listening and is man, I'd love to do what Devin does.
And, maybe you have any recommendations for, and maybe as a part of your origin story, but what you would recommend for new folks to marketing or new folks into even the product, any of the sphere. what do you recommend for them to get involved, to take that next step?
Devin: Yeah. I highly recommend product marketing. think it's a really cool position. we get to work across product marketing and sales. I think having a really solid communication foundation, being a good writer, I think that's,what [00:38:00] we do a lot of content creation and understanding how to tell a story and connect with audiences. I think that's a pretty key foundation. the other thing I'd say is just Be curious and interested in your industry, become a subject matter expert, take the time to really deep. If you're going to be educating the market and your company, have to take the time to educate yourself as well.
and there's, are so many free resources and what, Yeah, whatever industry you're in, software security, cyber security is pretty complex, there's a lot to learn, but, it's a steep learning curve, but I feel like all industries feel that way. it might be more true for cyber security, but like in consulting, one of the, one of the things I liked the most was I got to go really deep in a lot of different industries.
and yeah,that's fun.
Larry: No, that's great. Yeah. and just to back you up on that, that cyber. I spent most of my time in data databases, cloud [00:39:00] and things like that. And yeah, sure. you had to stay on top of it. Yeah. You had new, microservice architectures, new databases coming out, new services coming out.
Cyber, nothing is like cyber. Cyber is like. That, but also threat actors and finding new ways to circumvent anything you're putting together. And I always felt it challenging because, it was, no one knew the true story. It was like just digging through and really getting an understanding of what's happening.
Why is it happening? And Oh, not to belabor it, but One of the biggest challenges sometimes in product marketing is, is it depending how you're staffed and how you're ready for it is a reaction to the market or reaction to something going on and the ability, like when something negative happens and it could be around the holiday season and then all of a sudden you have to put out a corporate press release, and because someone hacked the system, holy God, right?
That was the stuff that was. There was energy to it. Gosh, that stuff was [00:40:00] hard. That was, that's the kind of stuff where all hands on deck. And unless you build. Just my opinion, unless you build a kind of a strategy to handle it and a little bit of discipline, but also, I would say building a culture that can handle that, and be prepared for it and to leverage it for your advantage, rather than just reacting, that's where goodness sets in. And that's one of those things we talk about learning throughout the years. that's one of those things, even today, I'm still trying to get better at.
And that's, Where you have to stay on top of the market, stay at top of your industry, and be prepared for those unknowns and be ready to write and type. So
Devin: too often, but I'm
Larry: bald like me.
Hey, it's been great talking to you like real quick, like just to get a little human here.
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Larry: I like to do this at the end, We talked shop, we talked through, marketing, everything like that.
But tell us a little bit about maybe what you're doing right now. Can you recommend, I don't know, like a book or an album, a movie show, a game, whatever it may be like, what do you do in your free time right now? Or [00:41:00] is it, what are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you playing?
Devin: Free time. So I don't know. Do you know what Libby is? It's like a free app to, for a library, audio books and eBooks. All right. I don't know if it's just a, I don't think it's just a New England thing.
Larry: check this out.
Devin: I listened to a lot of audio books. I walked the dog and I'm one of those like. 3x speed type of people.
I burn through audiobooks. most of what I listen to is like for entertainment, all for entertainment really. get some like sci fi and some fantasy stuff in there. and then yeah, I put recommendations. the Greenbone Saga by like Fonda Lee gets not enough attention and I think it should get more.
It's really good.
Larry: Cool.
Devin: yeah, I'll go with that.
Larry: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I do the audio books too. Like I always wait for I use audible as the next Amazon person. but it's one of those things where I pride, I don't commute into the city anymore, so like I have, it's all dog walking, when these [00:42:00] books are 28 hours.
Devin: Yeah,
Larry: gosh, I don't, man, I like to start losing interest after a while.
Devin: man.
Larry: I know I, I started doing that and then it's, yeah, but I'm with you though. it's a minor are trying to listen to either. It was for me, a part of it was cyber, was definitely a part of it and trying to learn a little bit more historical.
but also, a little bit more, not self help, but, time management. Things like that, right? Where it's how do you maximize your day, maximize your health? Things like, I don't know things I need to be doing a little bit more of, but
all good.
Larry: Hey,Devin, thank you so much for coming today and be a part of this pilot podcast here.
A great conversation real quick before we leave you. Hey, if listeners, man, they heard you and they want to ask you a question and they want to reach out to you, like where's the best place for them to find you if you're willing to share,
Devin: they can track me down somehow on LinkedIn, that's my only social media. someday I'll get a picture on there, I'm one of the anonymous, silhouettes, but maybe by the time this comes out I'll get a [00:43:00] picture up there
Larry: I'm going to, I'll take a screenshot, I'll send it over. You got to be forced to put on your page.
Devin: perfect, yeah, I'll use this,
Larry: All good. I'll put it. I'll put your, I'll put the link in the show notes too, as well. And he starts getting some spam, maybe get some more
Devin: Awesome.
Larry: cyber activity with it. No.
Devin: I love talking product marketing. so yeah, reach out, ask questions, whatever.
Larry: Awesome. thank you, Devin. Thank you for being here. Any questions, any desire for product marketing, go fill up his inbox. And ask those questions. If not, come talk to us. Thank you again for being here on the launch query podcast. Thanks again, Devin. We'll talk to you later.