Launch with Momentum Like a Navattic PMM

0:02Hi friends, welcome to Product Marketing Adventures, the only show that takes you beyond theory and into the real execution of product marketing. My name is Elle Grossenbacher, your trusted guide and host of this show. In each episode, I bring in expert product marketers to co-host two segments of this show. First, a case study example of their work, followed by a messaging critique for companies we admire. So if you're a PMM looking for practical guidance and inspiration, you're in the right place. Are you ready? Let's go.

0:42Launching into a new ideal customer profile is one of the most exciting and nerve wracking challenges in product marketing. It's like being the star player on the team and then suddenly getting traded to a brand new sports league. The rules are different. The competition is different. And the fans don't even know your name yet. You can't rely on old plays. You've got to earn trust from scratch, prove you understand their pain points, and show you belong in their world. When you nail it, you unlock an entirely new path to growth. When you don't, you risk getting sidelined before the game even starts.

1:18If you find yourself on that journey, you need an expert to show you how it's done. With that, it is my pleasure to have Natalie Marco Tullio on the show, a rising star in product marketing at Novatic. She is a natural when it comes to product marketing. Let me tell you why. Natalie is a two-time solo marketer for early stage SaaS startups. She's someone who's nailed it when it comes to wearing every hat and still deliver results. And her entrepreneurial spirit started way before tech. Back in college, she actually ran businesses renting out laptops to students whose computers had crashed. Talk about finding a scrappy real world solution.

1:57Oh, and just for funsies, Natalie actually grew up in England and had an English accent until she was about 13 years old. Though these days, that Northeast accent has officially taken over. Natalie, it's amazing to have you on the show.

2:11Natalie Marcotullio:Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, now that we've said that, people are going to be like, oh, we're going to hear a fun English accent. No, it's all gone. and I live in New York now. It's not a pretty, it's a harsh accent. So sorry. I don't even hear the Northeast part. So I think we're good. Like no accent distractions here. Perfect. So let's set the stage for today's conversation. For those listeners who maybe aren't familiar with Novatic, what is it and what problem are you solving? Yeah, I'm going to start with the problem. It's kind of like try before you buy, but for software. If you think about buying like a car, you would always go in person, see it beforehand, get to touch and feel it.

2:49Natalie Marcotullio:And for the longest time in SaaS software, it was kind of like, oh, you can't see this thing until maybe like three Zoom calls. Oh, gosh. Yeah, as we've all probably been there. So Nevada creates like shareable product experiences that you could either put on your website or send directly to prospects or customers so they can get hands on earlier in the buyer journey. Amazing. So like that, a little bit beyond a demo experience, which I feel like I've been seeing a lot these days. And I've been so excited about everything that Novatic is doing. So it'll be really fun to unpack this case study.

3:20With that, the first segment of our show is that case study segment. And today we're going to talk about how you launched a new product into a new ICP. So take us back to pre-launch. And I think the product was called Launchpad, if I remember correctly from our prep conversation for this episode. So tell us, Natalie, what was going on at Novatic when you made that focus on that new ICP?

3:46Natalie Marcotullio:Yeah, so kind of as you, you know, laid up, which I'm kind of continuing with the sports metaphor, so we'll see. We needed to break into a new ICP. And for us, it was solution engineering. So we often sell to marketers, product marketers. Hopefully, a few of you have heard of Novatic before. But this was kind of an entirely, I would say, entirely new persona. We had plenty of solution engineers who had previously used Novatic, but this was a very custom made solution for them. And I'd say because we had been spending so much effort in the past on marketing, product marketing, where the goal was just like more awareness for sales and SEs, like yes, Nevada has a custom solution for you.

4:21Amazing. Okay. So as you were pursuing this new sales engineering persona, I guess like walk us through the actual like case study itself in this story, really help us set us up here. What was the situation you found yourself in? What was the task at hand? And how did you pursue that task?

4:43Natalie Marcotullio:Yeah, so for about like nine months behind the scenes, we basically been working on this product. And the situation was we had to get it now in front of our new ICP, we hadn't publicly launched it yet, we had beta users, and we were, you know, doing some like early testing, but really hadn't done that big splashy launch. So that's what I was prepping for really the task was just like make both our customers and the little bit larger solution engineering audience but mostly we were focused on customers for this launch aware that we now had this new product line and that we serve this se use case as far as like what did we do it was a lot of taking our existing customer base segmenting out by like who would be a good fit for this product versus not how can we get in front of them craft communication and just like get excitement about this idea of again not just like the product but the overall story because What I didn't want to do was just be like, hey, look, we have this new product, but kind of had something like rememberable behind it, which we'll get a little more into the story.

5:36Yeah, no. Okay, so that's really helpful. And I feel like I personally have been in the situation where I didn't really know what I was doing, frankly. And I just want to be like, okay, here's the, you know, here's my typical bill of materials. Let's go launch the product. And it's kind of like a checklist. Done, done, done, done. And over time, if you fall into that cookie cutter approach, sometimes you can't really achieve the outcome that you really wanted to achieve. So curious from your perspective, like, or just given your experience with this launch where it sounds like you were really put a lot more effort into the storytelling.

6:16Before we dive into the part, the exciting part where we turn this case study into a playbook for PMMs, what kind of results did you see once you took a special, that special approach?

6:28Natalie Marcotullio:Yeah. So once we actually ran the integrated campaign and we'll go over what channels we use and all that in a bit, we ended up seeing as far as email opens, email was a major communication channel, a 57 % open rate. We also used a little meta, but we used interactive demos as a way to show off the new feature to our audience. And we saw that 30 % of the people we sent it to engaged the demo. So you can just think of that as like 30 % of that target audience we sent to actually got hands on with our product in some way, with the new product. That is really impressive. I feel like that kind of penetration rate is not super common in the SaaS world.

7:02It's hard to compete just to get eyeballs, let alone actually take action to engage with your product.

7:09Natalie Marcotullio:A hundred percent. I think part of it was because we met buyers a little more where we were at. It's not like we pushed them just to see a live demo. It was something they could do on their own time. And one fun part of this was that we actually had a Slack channel. So every time a customer went through a demo, and especially if they were highly engaged, we could see. So it's also just like a fun way to celebrate internally. Like, oh, yes, customers are going through it. They're showing interest. That's awesome. Okay, so here you are. You're launching into a new ICP. You've got this brand new product specifically built for this new ICP.

7:40And you took this special segmentation approach where you built this message and story uniquely for that audience. And you had a ton of, I'll say, like activities related to that integrated campaign that landed you this incredible, you know, 30 percent engagement rate. So I want to get tactical now. And let's say that I'm a PMM who I'm in a similar situation. I've got this new product for a new ICP. Where do I start?

8:09Natalie Marcotullio:What's step one? Yeah. So step one for me was really doing the research. And this is something I had fell short in other launches. I just went straight into the channels. But for this one, we again mentioned wanting to figure out what that story was. So step one was talking to our internal subject matter expert, who happened to actually be our founder. It worked out really well because he actually used to be an SE. So a lot of what I was asking about was like, why did we create Nevada? What problem were you trying to solve for yourself? So don't always get that lucky, but that was cool for this one.

8:38Natalie Marcotullio:And then also talking. And for me, it was more listening to stories or other team members were the ones actually doing the interviews, but hearing from our customers, like what was this pain point that we are trying to solve? You know, what, especially SEs, like what is your day-to-day like? What pain points do you experience? They're just getting a little bit more in the mind of the audience before figuring out what we're going to say to them. Perfect. Okay. So you took the time to abstract all the really great information from the SMEs or the SMEs, subject matter experts. I love doing that too, right?

9:10I've done that certainly with the product and I've been at the product team and I've been at smaller companies and sometimes it is the founder you're interviewing. So I love that the story building is part of, well, story building, but actually like getting the information to build the story is very early in the process. So I have a question for you about how you look at those kinds of interviews, right? When you're interviewing internal subject matter experts versus like a customer, for example, or someone from your ICP. I guess what are you when you evaluate those different sources to contribute to your like research gathering?

9:49How do you see the difference between those groups, those two groups? And what kind of information are you hoping to get from your internal SMEs versus like your actual ICP?

10:00Natalie Marcotullio:I think for the ICP, it's really important to get the like, what is your current state? And why is that frustrating? Because it can be really tempting to want to start pitching the product or like putting your product into their day to day. But what you really want to hear right now, like what is what is maybe working well and what isn't working. So then when you go to write messaging, which is the next step, the part where it's like, okay, what is their current state? And why does that suck, which is literally part of our messaging framework, correct quotes from customers, you can hear their current state, versus the subject matter experts, and like our product team, that was a lot more, okay, then what did we build specifically to solve that?

10:35Natalie Marcotullio:And how is it different than anything else in the market? So I love that as you were doing that research, you had specific sources that you are going to help you fill in the information you needed as part of your messaging framework. Basically, what I'm hearing is, and I love that you do this, because not all PMMs do it. And it's so critical, finding the best alternative to the current to your product to solve the current pain point, right? Like what is the ICP? What is the customer currently doing to solve this pain? And why does that suck? Like, why is it not working? What are the pitfalls of that?

11:10And then on the other side, you have the product team to come in and say, this is why you should be pursuing this path instead, or, you know, aka our product. So I love that. Okay, so once you have that foundation with that great information that will contribute to the story, what comes next? What step two, I think you mentioned already messaging.

11:29Natalie Marcotullio:Yes, messaging framework. And hopefully if you recorded those customer interviews and SME conversations, you can upload all that into a system. I mean, I use a tool called GetWise and as well as do a lot of editing, but that means you don't have to start from scratch with the messaging too. So we have a two tables that we outline. One is more persona based. So for every single persona, like who is the user, who is the champion, who is, You know, who's maybe a decision maker trying to get that full buyer circle and figuring out why is this product relevant for them? Again, what are they current doing?

12:01Natalie Marcotullio:Why is that not work? How do we solve that? And then also more like use case specific messaging of, OK, this buyer identifies this pain point. How do we solve it? And really using direct quotes or insights from those conversations, plug and playing it into these tables and then going and tweaking, getting feedback from other, again, from the internal subject matter expert sales. see us to make sure it's like, this is the messaging we all agree on or aligned on. Yes. Okay. So by the way, I love GetWise. Huge shout out. I feel like I can't tell enough people about that product or that tool. It's so helpful.

12:38So TLDR, if you haven't heard of GetWise, it's basically a way that you can get immediate feedback on your messaging or streamline research to contribute to your messaging from real ICPs. Everyone's got to go check it out. I was not paid for that, by the way. Although they were a sponsor of mine earlier on in this product marketing podcast journey. But anyway, back to the show. So after you build out that messaging, and I love that you're doing it by the, including inclusive of the entire buyer team. That's another thing that I don't see a lot of PMMs doing, which is surprising because all of those individual members, right, you mentioned the champion, the influencer, the decision maker, they all take part in shaping whether or not your product actually makes it in the market.

13:28So after you do that, and you have this brilliant, beautiful messaging doc, how do you make sure like, how do you socialize it with the rest of your org and make sure that it actually gets used by like marketing stakeholders, salespeople, et cetera.

13:43Natalie Marcotullio:So important because it's so easy to just create this doc and it lives and dies somewhere in a Google Drive. I also have to give one more shout out for the messaging framework. I did work with Eric Holland and Mojo PMM. If anyone's seen that? Oh, we love Eric Holland. I know two like great shout outs here. And again, it was not easy either, but want to give credit where credit is due because I am, as you mentioned earlier in my product marketing career, I did not come without this myself. But step three was really creating an enablement doc that everyone from the team can access and see all this messaging.

14:15Natalie Marcotullio:Because we all agreed, we all aligned. And the enablement doc included everything from what is the story we're trying to tell. And that was actually the first thing you see to make it clear that this launch is not just about the features, it is about this story. And for us, we went back to our founder origin story and really told their story of why did they first create Novatic as SEs. It doesn't always work out that way that you can do a founder origin story. But if you've done the research by interviewing your subject matter experts and customers, a story should appear. That's a larger narrative.

14:43Natalie Marcotullio:So then we have the story. Who is this product for? We actually included who is it not for to make it clear this is a more targeted product. All the messaging, example resources, quotes from customers, which again, we could pull from the earlier interviews we did. And then of course, for us, we had like product content, which is interactive demos. So you could actually see the feature and then turn this entire messaging doc into a GPT that people could just chat with instead of having to read it all. They didn't want to read. I love that. I think that is so creative. I think that that is a very new emerging trend and approach in product marketing.

15:20So I have so many questions about this. That custom GPT is so clever. So tell me a little bit more about that. How do you decide when a custom GPT is worth building for a new launch? Or like, is it something that you think now is standard and all PMMs should be doing? Just talk a little bit more about that.

15:41Natalie Marcotullio:For us, it's going to become standard for every tier one launch. And so that's anything that's getting like external beyond our customer promotion, like prospect and audience promotion is tier one launch. And part of that's because honestly, like after doing it, it was just so much easier than telling everyone to read a giant doc. It's also pretty simple. Once you create one, all you have to do is clone it and then create that enablement doc and insert it into the next one. So I'm probably going to do it, yeah, like I said, every launch. This was the first time I tried it. And I think after seeing both employees' reactions and also we looped in some external help for promotion, they were like, oh, this is so much better than just having to read the long doc.

16:21Yes. Okay. So what was that feedback, the reaction from everybody in the company?

16:26Natalie Marcotullio:Yeah, mostly just heard about how helpful it is that they would want to use it again. But I think the biggest thing wasn't actually the feedback I heard, but saw. I saw that the emails we were writing, the messaging, which is much more on brand than if I didn't give them that resource. Because even if you give them a big enablement doc, that's still a lot to parse through versus if you're chatting, it's just going to pull from that messaging off the bat. So that was really the biggest unlock for me. It's like, oh, I'm not going to have to spend as much time editing emails down the line for other team members because they have a good source to pull for messaging to begin with.

16:59Wait a minute. So I'm just playing this out here and you tell me if I'm wrong about this. But say I'm a salesperson who is using your custom GPT for this new product launch. And I want to put together some, you know, an email series for some accounts, a handful of accounts that I want to blast out to let them know that we got this new product. Can I use your custom GPT to write the email templates?

17:30Natalie Marcotullio:Sort of. I'm going to give a caveat. You could use that to help get some messaging for what you should put in your emails. This GPT was more around internal enablement. I actually wouldn't recommend someone tries to write an entire email key with it because what I found with GPTs is if you give it too many tasks, it starts getting worse. I create a specific GPT for different tasks. Like if you're writing an email cadence for, let's say, an SE leader versus an SE manager, maybe you'd ask it, what value points should I bring up in this email cadence? That's what it'd be really good for. Actually writing out the emails, I didn't set up the GPT to do that because I knew if I gave it too many things to do, everything would just start getting a little worse at.

18:10Natalie Marcotullio:I would recommend almost creating a different GPT just for email writing. Okay, that's really helpful. I love that. All right. So maybe we'll start to see rather than big, heavy, complex, multi-page, you know, product guides, internal product guides, obnoxious hundred slide decks. Maybe we'll just see, hey, here's a few custom GPTs. Like, here's the enablement one. Here's the go-to-market one, et cetera. You know, I love that. How interesting. Okay. So you've got the messaging down. You've got the enablement down. what's next? So after that, then I think we can finally start getting into like segmentation channels, just getting a little more tactical, because this was all the prep work.

18:57Natalie Marcotullio:Now that we have all this messaging, it's a lot easier to spin up everything else. So next step was definitely creating those different segments of who did we want to target and what messaging do we want to go after with them. And I worked really closely with our head of CS for this one, because we were mostly targeting existing customers, also worked with our sales team who had been working some of these deals. Again, our founder, who's kind of our internal subject matter expert. And we pulled in everything from like industry, technographics, company growth signals, like are they hiring sales and built out one massive clay table to be like, okay, this is who we really want to go after.

19:33Natalie Marcotullio:This is our tier one target account. Okay, awesome. You've mentioned a few signals, I'll say already that you use. So talk to me a little and you mentioned that you worked with your customer success team as well. So but talk to me a little bit more about the segmentation. And, you know, how did you approach that? I think that's an area where PMMs get caught up and can struggle a bit. It really was sitting down with my head of CS, like we kind of just had working session together, and saying, Okay, what customers have we already seen are good fits? And then what qualities do they have that we would want to replicate?

20:07Natalie Marcotullio:And so that's where, you know, you get into signals like technographics or firmographics. For example, for this product, we found that it tended to be more larger, more multi-product organizations that saw value, because those were the ones that have SEs. If you didn't have an SE team, you're not probably experiencing much of the pain of them being on a bunch of repetitive calls. So we kind of had to work backwards and say, okay, these are the customers that we've already identified as good fits. This is why, how do we sort of diagnose that and then make it repeatable, which often was things like, okay, if they're hiring sales and SEs, that probably means it's a pain point.