SPECIAL EPISODE #400: How to Launch a New Product with Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer of Salt & Stone

0:00Pop quiz. Where do all your tasks live right now? If you don't have one answer, that's a red flag and a sign you need Wrike. Wrike is an intelligent work management platform that kills the friction, killing your speed. Visit wrike.com slash TMM to see what I mean.

0:21Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials podcast. This is a very special episode. It's episode 400. And you know what? I decided to bring on the best market I know. The one and only chief digital officer of Salt and Stone. And the founder and creator of GoToMillions. My wife, Ari Murray. Did you just forget my title?

1:16No. You hesitated a little. She's had so many titles. Happy 400. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and being a wonderful guest. But I want to get started because everybody wants to hear from you. We're going to talk launch strategy, which actually Ari's going to talk launch strategy, but I'm going to ask her the questions about this. So Ari, when you're launching a new product, where do you start? Walk me through the step by step. It all starts with the forecast. Well, it starts with pricing, but I don't do a lot of these parts. And I'm still learning what it's like to be brand side. I was at an agency for the last four and a half years before I came to the brand side.

1:58And so a lot of the products that are launching now were before my time. So I'm very much learning the process. But where it hits my plate is timing and forecasting. And timing, I think, is sometimes the biggest opportunity because I have so many opinions on calendar and on when to make a moment, when we're going to need a moment, what type of moment. And that's where I love to be involved. But it really depends on what you're launching. When I was at the agency, I led all of our teams. And so some of our projects were website projects. So that can start with branding and naming and it can go far back.

2:40And then other projects are you start working with someone and they have the site down and it's the go to market. So I can't answer because it all depends. But currently I am a little late in the process, but I know it really varies depending on your role and what's being developed. Okay, I'll get more specific with you. Let's say it's a new SKU launch that you're launching on the website. Walk me through that process of launching a new SKU product on your website. Well, there's photo shoots, there's social grids, there's ad creative, there's email calendars, there's copywriting, there's merchandising, where that product will go into your current mix.

3:26I think about that a lot. I'm pulling a lot of data for that all the time, always rearranging. there's what type of SKU launches this? Is this the type of SKU that you'd want a homepage takeover on? Is this something untested? Is this something you want to gate to members? I could keep answering your questions with questions. I really think there's so much to consider. What I'd say that maybe people don't think about enough is hitching your wagon to a certain SKU and putting a lot of faith in something that's new to market, I've found to be a really good way to misplan. And I think that whatever you can do for a new skew or a new drop to protect your month outside of that moment, should it not read the way you'd hoped, is how I like to play it.

4:15I like to go into these moments really scaled. And so finding efficiency before takes a lot of pressure off of having to push a product that might not be what you hope. and another thing I'd say too is a lot of products need time in market and for me I think there's like a fallacy that gets created where you think a product is your hero but that's because you've forced it to be your hero through years of repetition through prioritizing it in photo shoots through merchandising it first through talking about it always and I think a new skew needs time to fight for its life, but also needs sometimes to take stage.

4:57So did I answer? Yes. I'm going to go into, let's go more broad then. When considering a new, let's say SKU launch or website launch, or what are some strategies someone can think about when thinking about it? Like you said, there's like launching with members, there's password protected sites, What do people think about when launching a new product to make it successful? I think the power of urgency is really understated. And it's the most efficient way to get people to do what you want them to do without having to spend into it. And so I think when launching anything or considering a new product, the drop strategy of it and what is going to make someone click that email and feel like they have to buy right then.

5:51I can give an example. My coworker and I were shopping a brand. She was shopping it for her wedding. It's a white sweatshirt. I'm married to you. And so I don't need this white sweatshirt, as you know, Daniel. Like it's the last thing I need is a bridal. It's literally called the bridal collection. but I was watching her buy it and it was selling out like as we were on the PDP in her size and we were starting to panic. And then it had my size available and her size like magically popped up. So I felt this urge to just buy it because I was like, okay, a white sweatshirt, like it's in my size. This thing's popular.

6:28I need it. Ah, like freaking out. And before I knew it, I blinked and we both bought it, but I'm not getting married. I just wanted this sweatshirt because I couldn't have it or I thought I couldn't have it again. And I think that that urgency and drop strategy is hard to bring back that trust on. So if you're going to be a brand that says set your alarm and if you're going to have urgency, then you need to actually stock out and you need to actually have momentum and hype. But I think that that is a flywheel that's really fun to create. And going to planning process, say let's do something more specific.

7:08Like someone wants to launch something new on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. How far in advance should they start planning? How far are you thinking about these things before? I know you're probably forecasting out inventory and all this stuff way ahead of time. So how long are you planning out a launch that's happening on a tempo moment for your brand? The year before. Is that a bad answer? It's the truth. I know my goals and what I want to do and what I want to draw up and what we have to create. Well, that's a good answer. So actually more than a year before, like probably 14 months before. So always in Q4, planning for full year ahead.

7:59Let's go into a side that you do a lot of, which is like the media planning of where things are going to be shown. So like the paid social. I know every brand is different, but what are you seeing a good split of media mix for someone to think about when they say they have$100 ,000 budget for media spend? I think it depends. What I'd say is I love to be pretty diversified across channel, but on$100 ,000, I would spend all of that in Meta and Google. and I think that there's a TAM for every product and you're not going to hit as many people as you'd like on 100K. So I think putting that in Meta as your top of funnel even though it is conversion but compared to Google, Meta is going to bring them to the door and Google is going to let them in and I think that is the split for 100K budget.

9:02When you're in seven figures, I think you can be in 10 channels but 100k goes quickly let's say this because i know you've run into this problem with brands and did you work with the agency brands you worked in the past you've seen brands do this what is your recommendation let's say you're spending the 100k you're you're seeing such a good row as such a good CAC and you've spent through it, would you go ask for more budget or would you just say like, oh, I've used my 100K budget for this quarter. Now I have to go, I'll wait till next quarter to spend again. Oh no, I would be begging for money.

9:51And I think how I like to think about it is there's efficiency goals and there's top line goals. And if you're in your efficiency, then your top one goal is now the floor and you should be scaling when there's momentum. And I think every business is different. Cashflow is real. Inventory is real, but you should be begging to keep blowing the top off of your plan as long as you're able to. And I think future you sometimes will feel that pain and you can stalk yourself out and you can't do things without finance approval and without holding hands with the team. But I personally have seen so many brands from my time at an agency not hit the gas when they were ahead.

10:35And you can't just turn it on. Like the market will tell you. And if you're hot, you need to run. I think that's a good point. I think momentum in marketing is such an underrated factor. Momentum in anything is an underrated factor. And it's not something you can easily restart. when you see this efficiency metas learned your audience or whatever channel you're on has learned your audience. You're spending very well. Your creatives are crushing. And then you decide to pull back because you don't have the budget or you don't know approval. And then the people want you to do the next thing four months later, but you've lost all that momentum and you get to restart.

11:17And I think that's such a good point you made there about momentum and marketing. Thanks, honey. What are some things you see brands doing terribly wrong when they're doing either new brand launches or new SKU launches? I think a new brand should launch with a limited range. I think you cannibalize your message and there's only so big a basket anyone's going to build. I think, as an example, today's, what is it, April 2nd? So Real Actives, which is Alex Earle's brand, just launched. They had five products. I think that's smart. I think that's the right amount. I've worked at beauty brands in the past that launched with 30 SKUs, and I think that doesn't actually help someone who doesn't know the product to make a choice.

12:09So that's what I'd say. What was the second part to the question? I said there's a new site launch of a new brand, like Real Actives, but there's also like someone is dropping a new skew or new product on their website. What are the things you've seen go wrong when someone drops like a new skew or new? I'd say there's a lot that can go wrong in pricing strategy. And I think a new product, if priced out of range or in a way that doesn't play well with the rest of your line, can make everything else anchor really expensive. And at the same time, depending on how your business is trending, I think people also aren't merchandising existing products together into newness that can actually push up AOV.

13:01So my favorite thing to do is to try and to put as many products as make sense together and to build this one big ultimate bundle or this one big trio, whatever that quantity is for you. But sometimes I feel like we assume we're overwhelming our customers and we're not. And so I say like there's a lot of opportunity in creating newness out of existing product in merchandising. And then if it's a new product launch, I think a little restraint in the next future drop. Continuing to drop is always my favorite thing to do. and then i think some things on the website that people don't consider putting on or they they don't put enough time and strategy i'm thinking of like the shipping bar like the shipping threshold bar or i know you talk a lot about people putting too many widgets on their site and blocking carts so what are some things to think about on the website what does like a good page look like?

14:02What's on there? What do people think about on a good PDP, for example? A good PDP, we have to all remember and look at our heat maps. But in my experience, the amount of people that get below the fold, it's so rare. And the energy should be spent in your carousel and in your assets and in those thumbnails. And you should have thumbnails. And And I think so much of the information you think people will scroll down to, they'll never see. And infographics and motion and video and punchy copy all can exist. And so can tags that exist as overlays on those assets in that hero. I think above the fold PDP is an art and it can get crowded.

14:50it and there's so much to do to draw the eye where you want it to go but I think the assets are the biggest opportunity and especially the more you can do to fill out that bank and to let it be clear that there's more than one picture to swipe into so those thumbnails I think are so important so I think there's a lot of features depending on the vibe of the brand some brands want to have every pricing strategy, every, you know, it can get really crowded. And I think that works for a lot of different product lines. But what I'd say is the asset should be really fruitful and should continuously be something you're testing the format of.

15:33Is there any, I mean, you talked about like urgency of strategy. Are there any like proof points you add on a page that people should think about? Like UGC? Is there backed by signs thing? So I have a terrible opinion of UGC on web, and I think it's just because I've seen it go so wrong. I think UGC looks great in reviews, and I think that for a lot of products and brands, like Sephora, for example, I'm very influenced by the UGC within those reviews, but UGC can look really crazy. And I think it depends on what is brand safe, and it can look really amateur really quickly. And I think I'm of the belief that before and after it works really well, but even that can be in studio.

16:22So UGC, as a rule, say I kind of get scared of, but infographic studies, clinicals, pricing, like cost per ounce, cost per day, breaking down the price, defaulting to show if you have subscriptions, defaulting to an open bar that actually has all the features exposed versus allowing the click. Like I think whatever you can do to expose more information, but also to stay premium is my favorite. This hurts to say, but a lot of marketing ops are built on top of accidental processes. Wrike is a work management platform that fixes your workflows from the ground up. Let's say your approvals are buried in email, your assets are across three different apps, and your Mondays are one long status meeting.

17:18Wrike has AI-powered automation, whiteboard-style collaboration, and 400-plus integrations to connect everything into one scalable source of truth. Teams at Microsoft, Tiffany & Co., Southwest Airlines, and thousands more already use it. Go to reich.com to get out of the weeds today. One thing that I also want to ask you is on launch, and I know Ari is always on her phone checking numbers. Whatever company she's been in, she's been on her phone checking Shopify, checking whether she has AAA or whatever other software she's using. But what are some, like during launch, what are some metrics that people should be paying attention to very closely that should be on their dashboard and should be reported on?

18:11I think I like to look at the last 30 minutes as my absolute sign. And I'm constantly filtering to the last 30 minutes every single time I'm checking my site. but during a launch I think there's so much to do to understand the breakdown between like ad to card initiation and actual checkout and I'm filtering for conversion rate by traffic source by page and I think that's the easiest way to read if something's wrong in a launch but also if there's opportunity and I don't know I think I like to look at all of it but what I'm most focused on is if my ad spend is where I want it to be for that time of day and for that moment to what we planned because that's the tell for future and then the last 30 minutes is the tell of if what we've done is working and I'd say the number one metric though to me you might think I'd say top line revenue or that number but it's sessions if sessions on site are low and let's say it's Black Friday and I'm watching what's happening, if sessions are like a thousand off of what I expected for that moment of when we sent that thing, that's when I freak out.

19:26I care a lot more about session growth in these pinnacle moments. And in those minutes, that's the quickest read on if we're about to have a really big time. That's good. I mean, that's a good thing to think about because a lot of people throw off leading indicators like sessions and they go they go down as you're rated yeah i think leading indicators even like when i look at social posts if i see something starting to gain traction early or i see views starting to go around like okay this is going to go viral or not yeah you could tell yeah it's it's early it's early views early likes early reshares that really could expose doors last question for you and ask everybody in the marketing millennials but i want to ask you is what is a marketing hill you will die on my hill is to marry someone who is more creative than you when i met daniel i told him we were co-workers it's a whole story but i told him i wanted to work at the company we worked at for five years and that was my dream and daniel had like so much he wanted to do.

20:36He was way braver than I was as a marketer and it's led me to a better path to watch him be bold. So marry someone more creative than you and in whatever field they're in, that will help you to feel like you're always inspired. And I'm so happy about 400 episodes I remember when you started this it was so it was so brave and I'm so glad that we're here when she says so great I was nervous I mean she was making fun of me and saying why the heck are you doing it it was sad it was like my dad was your first listener for like many months but you you persevered and look at us now this was August 2020 was the first or maybe no 2020 or 2021 I I forgot.

21:27No, it was 2020. But times were like very COVID-y. You were like recording in your room. It was just, I didn't know we'd end up here, but I'm very glad we did. And again, back to my point, it's good to be around people that are creative. They'll do things that maybe they're a little early too and 400 episodes later. I'm very proud. Well, thank you, Ari. I mean, thank you for coming on the episode. I love you. I love you. I'm proud of you. Wait, can I ask you questions now? No, you can answer that. Yes, I can. What is your favorite episode you've ever done? That's one right here. That's not what I wanted.

22:10There's so many because there's so many different takeaways. I think going back to, I mean, I really like Rory Selvallant. I've had him twice in the podcast. I just could listen to him talk for hours, and I'm really interested in marketing psychology. So that's an episode that I always go back to that I think. But it's just so cool to have so many guests in so many different industries and so many different... And I remember when I first reached out to guests, it was so hard. I've got so many people rejecting me that some of them have come back and asked to be on the podcast, which is fun. I love that.

22:52But it's... Yeah, I think Rory's one of my favorite episodes. I think mine's Amelia. Oh, I love Amelia. I love Amelia. You love Amelia. She's an icon. Yeah, go follow her on LinkedIn. Yeah, we're very proud of you. Thank you all for listening. And go subscribe to GoToMillions and go follow Ari on LinkedIn. Ari Murray. She writes a great newsletter. And she needs to start a podcast. I really think she should. Please go Flutter LinkedIn and say start a podcast. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world.

23:34If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five-star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community. Thank you.