Derek Osgood is a former marketing exec turned founder, building Ignition – the collaborative GTM platform helping Product and Marketing teams to get new products to market faster and more effectively.
Prior to founding Ignition, he was an early hire at Rippling where he stood up the Product Marketing function and helped scale the company to $20M in ARR. As a Product Marketing leader everywhere from startups to major brands like PlayStation, Derek has launched over 100 products and his products have generated over $1B in revenue. Now he’s building the platform he wished he had along the way.
Questions and topics we covered include:
And more!
Kenny Soto 0:01
Hello everyone and welcome to the people digital marketing with your host Kenny Soto and today’s special guest, Derek Osgood. Hi, Derek, how are you?
Derek Osgood 0:29
Hey, Kenny. Good, good. Happy to be here.
Kenny Soto 0:32
I’m happy that you’re here because I love video games. And I did a lot of research on your background and saw that you worked at Sony, you had a stint there. So normally, I have like a template question that I start every conversation with, which is how did you get into digital marketing? But I think just for my own personal benefit, and my own personal interest, I want to ask you what was the experience like marketing the god of war?
Derek Osgood 1:00
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it was really fun. I mean, obviously, like, I joke with everybody, I’m like, I got to, I’m one of the few people who like gets to live out their, their childhood dream, you know, dream job. And so, you know, I grew up with God of War as probably my favorite video game. And when I got to work on it, so it was like a dream come true for five-year-old me.
But I think, you know, it’s a really interesting experience. Because obviously, like PlayStation, you know, there are so many components that go into, you know, go-to-market plan for a video game, you’re talking about, you know, retail components, digital releases, you have really, really large budgets, where you’re investing in, you know, both like the top of like, very top of the funnel, traditional brand media, but then also doing tons and tons of digital performance marketing.
So it was, it was a very, very interesting experience, in that I feel like I got to touch, you know, pretty much every single aspect of marketing really early in my career. And that was, you know, a fantastic learning experience. For me, it was actually funny, because that specific launch, my boss, actually, you know, took off the dirt at the very beginning of the launch for some personal reasons.
And so I essentially had, like, the whole God of War franchise, kind of, like thrust on me. And I was 24, I had kind of like, some idea what I was doing, but you know, was relatively clueless compared to where I am now. And it was, it was jarring. And it was like getting really trial by fire for you know, working on one of Playstation’s biggest franchises.
And so, you know, it’s, uh, but I think, you know, launching big, big, very episodic releases like that. It’s great training for building out go-to-market planning because you really are trying to align literally everything against, you know, a couple of like, single points in time and building really big moments, in a way that, you know, I think, I think has become less common in, in marketing today.
But that I haven’t, like, experienced much of that early in my career, I truly believe is one of the most impactful ways that you can actually promote a product for a bunch of reasons. And we can go into that a little bit deeper, later on here. But yeah, it was fun. It was a blast. You know, it’s like fun getting to sit there and have literal work conversations about whether you know, somebody should be carrying a sword or a spear.
Kenny Soto 3:39
I want to pull this thread just a little bit more. What is one key lesson you took from that experience that you apply today?
Derek Osgood 3:46
Yeah, so I think the biggest one is the importance of thinking about marketing in an integrated fashion. Like it is really common nowadays to think about marketing as a series of like independent channels, and you’re just optimizing those individual channels.
And I think you know, what, what that launch and you know, all the launches that PlayStation taught me is really how much investing in landing specific moments with many stick channels stacked on top of each other and interoperating correctly, can amplify all of those individual channels on their own.
And so you know, I think when you think about the way that a company like PlayStation markets things you know, the biggest thing that they do differently than I think a lot of like tech companies is that they will invest in very, very, you know, top of funnel awareness media like TV, radio, etc.
And then they’ll point all of that towards specific activations across a search that make it really easy for you to discover those search terms and the conversion funnel is just so much tighter than it is in a lot of the people who you know, just invest in like a single performance channel will ever see
And so you know, I think that was probably the biggest thing for me was just like realizing how important it is to have channels working in concert as opposed to working, you know, independently.
Kenny Soto 5:09
Now, let’s get some more context on you. As far as what you’re doing today. Can you tell the audience what ignition is?
Derek Osgood 5:16
Yeah, yeah, totally. So ignition, it’s this big monstrosity, a bundled product that does all sorts of different stuff. We’re basically building a platform for product marketers and product teams to collaborate around go-to-market processes. And you know, what that looks like, at a really tactical level is, you know, a hybridization of project management and documentation.
But then with a bunch of tools and workflows baked into it, that help you to a, you know, generate plans faster, so will actually dynamically cascade out launch plans for you based off of a bunch of characteristics of your launch, like, what’s your budget? What channels are you using, you know, will generate asset plans and project plans for you based off of that stuff and adjusted as the launch changes, but then also build in tools that help you to pull in all of the research and inputs that you need to build an effective go to market plan.
So you know, we have customer research showing we have competitive Intel tooling that will automatically pull, you know, competitive battle cards from a bunch of different data sources and build those in a fashion that’s vertically integrated into your launch planning motions, so that all the people who need to consume this stuff, you know, have it accessible within the actual plan, as opposed to scattered across a bunch of different siloed tools.
Kenny Soto 6:31
This is a question that I know doesn’t have a clear answer, because every single company has its own nuance, right? But to what degree is documentation not just for go-to-market strategies, but marketing in general? To what degree is documentation important when it comes to early-stage companies?
Derek Osgood 6:52
Yeah, that’s a great question. And, you know, this is something that we get asked about a lot when we talk to early-stage companies, because they’re like, oh, you know, like, we’re moving too fast. We just gotta ship stuff. And I think honestly, like, we use ignition right now for ourselves. And we’re, you know, a very early stage company, we have, you know, 15 people on the team, it’s really small, I could just shout across slack.
And everybody would know what was going on. The thing that you start to lose, if you don’t invest in documentation early, is as the company scales, you lose all of the historical knowledge that has fed into your marketing strategy to date. And then you end up reinventing the wheel every single time you launch stuff down the road.
So I actually think it’s critically important, you know, you’re probably doing a lighter-weight version of the documentation, but you still need to be capturing all the assets that you’re creating.
And you still need to be capturing all the messaging and what the key value props of the features that you’ve shipped in the past are, because then once you actually have the resources, start investing in scaling that stuff up and new, bigger systems, or building out, you know, like all your help center documentation, where you’re really writing stuff out in depth. People have something to lean back on. That’s not just going to interview somebody across the company.
Kenny Soto 8:06
Yeah. And it seems like it’s an inevitable thing that you want to do, especially if you assume you’re going to be successful. And you’re going to scale past Series A, yep. Even to like series D or IPO, you need to start thinking about documentation early, which is why I asked that question because it is a touchy subject.
Derek Osgood 8:22
It’s so easy to think, you know, to assume like, oh, we just have to be in execution mode. And we just have to be getting things done. And, you know, documentation is just going to slow us down. And it’s a waste of time. But I mean, I ran to this rippling like at rippling, we were, you know, hyper-growth company.
And you know, early on, we skipped a lot of the documentation, because we were trying to move so quickly. And you know, down the road, when we were hiring people, it just tripled the amount of time that it took to get anybody up to speed, the sales reps weren’t as productive because nobody could figure out where to go find and talk there find information about the products they were supposed to talk to.
And I would spend hours and hours and hours going back and kind of reorganizing this much bigger set of documentation that was now needed. So it’s, it’s hugely important to invest in this earlier than you think you should?
Kenny Soto 9:11
Here’s a broad question. So you can go anywhere you want with this. What makes go to market strategy succeed?
Derek Osgood 9:17
Really good question. I think, you know, at the strategic level, there’s less of a specific answer that I can give you here. I mean, ultimately, it comes down to just making sure that your go-to-market strategy is incredibly market-informed from both you know, customer research, as well as competitive research and just understanding you know, where your space really fits into, like where your product really fits into the space and you know, I am a huge positioning nerd like positioning is mine is my thing.
And I think you know when the only thing that you need to get right in a go-to-market strategy is your positioning and if you’re able to do that and nail where your place in the world is and frame it for customers in a way that they can understand everything thing else falls into place your channel, like all the channels you test stuff on will work all of the, you know, all the messaging that you have will convert.
So that’s the most important thing at a strategic level. But then I think, you know, at an operational level, what really makes it work is having an operation-like operationalized process. There are so many companies that again, and this is especially you know, early-stage startups are especially guilty of this, that just never actually operationalize the process of building a go-to-market strategy.
So you end up with sales and support teams that literally find out about the new thing that you just launched from a customer. And then that support person has to look like an idiot when they’re talking to that customer. And it makes the company look bad, because the company doesn’t, or the customer is like, Wait, their support team doesn’t even know how to talk about this thing.
They don’t even know that it existed, what’s got what kind of like, you know, circus operation is being run here. So having a process where you actually are making sure that communications are being created and then distributed internally so that you’re you have all the internal enablement required before you actually ship that thing is really, really important.
And you know, your internal team is your best marketing channel, and making sure that those people have everything that they need, in order to effectively promote that product is just going to amplify everything else that you do.
Kenny Soto 11:22
Now, you already touched on this, but I am looking specifically for comparison here, when it comes to the pitfalls that can occur, not only with early-stage companies but with bigger corporations, too. What are some of those common pitfalls that companies face when doing a go-to-market strategy? And how do those pitfalls differ between a small organization and a big organization?
Derek Osgood 11:49
Huh? Yeah, so I think at small organizations, like type, the biggest pitfall is it’s funny, like, these two things are kind of like mirror images of each other, like, at a small organization, oftentimes, the biggest pitfall is just that they don’t have a process. I mean, this is what kind of what I was talking about with the opera operationalization they don’t have a process for communicating stuff internally.
So you know, all the different cross-functional teams that need to be aware of, you know, a launch are not aware of it, by the time that it ships. Also, they’re missing out on communication opportunities to customers in that sense, because they’re thinking about launches way too small-mindedly, you know, they think about the launch in the context of like, okay, we’re going to send an email to customers, because that’s all the time that we have to devote to announcing this thing.
But sending one email to a customer is never going to get you the kind of adoption that you’re actually looking for with any new feature. And so you’re gonna end up shipping a bunch of things that may be extremely impactful, but nobody ever even discovers exists in your product until much, much later. So they kind of fall flat.
So I think, you know, that’s, that’s really where early-stage companies fall down. I think at later-stage companies, it’s almost the flip side, they over-engineer the process to the point where the process becomes the product. And they basically end up spending so much time, just routing things for approvals, that they never actually ship things.
And so you know, I think where you end up needing to strike a balance is creating a process that ensures that everything that gets done needs to get done, but that actually allows for agility in the channels that you’re using in the ways that you’re, you know, that you’re talking about the product, and allows for creating that process quickly enough that you can actually, you know, spend time on the important strategic research work instead of spending time on just project managing getting the thing to market.
Kenny Soto 13:45
This is a question that I’m asking because not only am I experiencing a 2022 job search, and that whole world right now, but I know other people on the podcast or listening will be going through this process, too. If you were to start ignition today, or any new company, for that matter. What qualities would you look for in potential candidates specifically for your marketing team?
Derek Osgood 14:09
Hmm. Yeah, really good question. I mean, I do think that a bit of this comes down to you know, the specific needs of the business. But generally, like when I’m hiring for my first marketer, and you know, we haven’t started hiring for marketers that ignition yet I’m kind of doing it all myself at the moment.
But my plan when I do start hiring for somebody is I almost always look for people who have kind of the core product marketing fundamentals down regardless of whether I’m hiring for somebody who is you know, a growth going to be filling more of a growth marketing role, or whether I’m hiring for somebody who’s going to be fulfilling more of a product marketing role.
I want somebody who really understands positioning and messaging because, in order to make any channel successful, you have to be able to speak the customer’s language so you have to be good at collecting customer insights. So Have the sizing those into actionable positioning and then synthesize that positioning into actionable messaging. So, you know, I think that is the single most important skill.
And it’s probably the one that like, honestly, most marketers that I meet today, like, lack, it’s, you know, we’ve become, I have a whole old blog post about this about how, you know, there’s this massive explosion of channels in the early 2000s, when the internet came around, that created tons of arbitrage opportunities.
And, you know, just by twisting the levers on the channels, and so, you know, a lot of really special hyper-specialized marketers emerged where they were really good at capturing those arbitrage opportunities. But now all of those channels have become really saturated.
And so you know, the way that you actually perform well on them now, is to be very good at creating compelling customer based messaging, that, you know, really breaks through the rest of the noise that exists, you know, on a daily basis for those people. So I think that’s the most important skill.
The other, the other one is just thinking about marketing holistically, it’s like, you know, don’t like, you know like I said earlier, I think, you know, integrated marketing is really important, even at early stages, and being able to think about your marketing strategy through the lens of what is the like, very top level positioning objective that we’re trying to accomplish?
And then how do we translate that into not just positioning and messaging, but also into the channel activity that we’re using? So I think that those two are probably the biggest ones don’t like, I tend to look for people who are just good at like UX, understand product chops, and are able to just put themselves in the shoes of a user. Like Ultimately, it comes down to empathy as a marketer.
Kenny Soto 16:42
This is before asked my next question, I just need to throw this out there. Because as you were talking, one thing that came to my mind is, and I think this is a good picture as to like the career trajectory of any marketer. I myself started off really mastering tactics and the basic basics of marketing.
And now that I’m in like, my seventh year, in my career, I’m starting to realize the importance of tactics are one thing, but how do those tactics follow through into an overall strategy that maps the buyer’s journey, as you mentioned, positioning and messaging very key, that’s something I’m learning myself right now.
And also thinking about, if you can google something, it’s usually tactic for you to something, it’s usually a tactic, it’s the things that are very vague, like positioning and messaging that you really need to learn through experience, and trial and error. Because at a certain point, even if you try googling that, you’ll get this cookie cutter, SEO-optimized articles that are going to give you a, I guess, like a direction to move forward in, but it’s not going to help you execute on what you’re actually tasked to do.
And if, in this case, the task is to create a marketing strategy or a go-to-market strategy for a feature or a product, if you will, that requires a lot of in-depth thinking, listening, and empathy, as you mentioned, I think, doesn’t really come to fruition as far as like part of your skill set until you’ve reached a certain level of experience. As a marketer, would you say, that’s accurate?
Derek Osgood 18:18
And I think it’s really unfortunate, like, I remember early on in my career, you know, most of the CEOs that I would go interview with, they were looking for the tactical markers, like they, you know, they would actually kind of brush me aside because, like, what I brought to the table was because of my PlayStation Experience, a really, really good understanding of kind of macro marketing strategy, and how all these things fit together.
But that was something that was too squishy, and you know, not really, like actionable in their mind. And so, you know, unfortunately, like, you’re right, that is the most important skill set for a marketer. It’s unfortunate, also the one marketing is that outside of marketing is the least valued until you reach the executive level.
And then once you’re at the executive level, all of a sudden it flips again, and you know, then CEOs and CFOs want you to be able to talk for days about, you know, the squishy stuff. But until that point, you know, everybody just kind of wants you to execute, which is the wrong thing for them to want.
Kenny Soto 19:16
Yeah, now, tying back to execution, I was, in certain ways, stalking your LinkedIn to see if I can get some other great questions for this interview. And I have struggled with the execution of product launches because Product Hunt is a monster in and of itself. And you recently did a product launch three months ago, if I’m not mistaken. Can you tell us about that experience? And if you can go back what would you do differently?
Derek Osgood 19:46
Yeah, totally. So I mean, Product Hunt. You’re right. It’s its own beast. And you know, we even have talked about with ignition like building a separate template in our product for specifically product launches because they are just such a different thing.
Yeah, I think ultimately like, so what we did I mean, we so most of the day, we were in number two, the number two spot, you know, on product time, we basically ended up at number four, because they ripped about 100 upvotes from us, for some reason at the very end, which was really surprising.
But anyway, you know, what we did, I think effectively was, it’s all I mean, first of all, again, everything comes back to positioning messaging asset creation, like, can you articulate a story that is compelling to people in a way that is easily digestible. And so we spent tons and tons of time on our assets like that was the primary thing that we spent our time on when gearing up for this product launch, making sure that we had all of the different channels that we’re going to promote on teed up making sure that we had to message that was really crystal clear.
And based on insights into product marketers, which you know, thankfully, was easy, because I’m a product marketer. So we’re talking to ourselves, but then the other thing that we did that was really effective. And this is something that I think most people that are launching on a product, don’t do because it’s hard, is we went out and we recruited, you know, a good amount of people who we would either upload and things that were similar to our product in advance, we got them on board, as beta users, we had been in alpha for kind of months in advance of that.
And so we had a base of companies that were already using us and ready to go promote us. And then we recruited that audience, you know, when we launch on Product Hunt, and we made sure that we were just really tapping into this already passionate group of people who would go and help support, you know, across their social channels across, you know, the cross product line itself, and we just made sure that we communicated with them, you know, leading into the launch, we had a lot of pre-launch communication.
So we were sending updates, you know, a couple of weeks out a week out a couple of days before they have, and, you know, making sure that everybody knew exactly what was happening, they had all the assets that they needed in order to be able to go promote us. So we sent people out, you know, screenshots of the product that they could share out on their, on their social channels, you know, we made sure that they had the link in advance, so they could post it.
And just make sure that you recruit, you know, and use your audience as much as possible, because the product itself, if you just go publish something there, and then you know, if you go promote it on your social channels, there’s no way you’re gonna get enough traffic to be able to actually, to be able to actually drive up yourself up through the day. The other thing is like, phase it out.
So we spent, you know, some we use some chunk of that audience in the morning, we use some chunk of it in the afternoon. And then we use some chunk of it towards the end of the day so that we keep momentum kind of throughout the whole day, which is another big, big helpful tip that people end up not really realizing.
Kenny Soto 22:51
Do you think there’s any utility in using a hunter? Totally
Derek Osgood 22:55
Yeah, so we had, I forget, actually, who we had to hunt us, I think we had Hayden Shaw, hunters who are one of our investors, but absolutely go recruit a hunter, find somebody who is, you know, who has some degree of product, following also make sure that you’ve been active, you know, well in advance of Product Hunt.
So, go create an account, have your old team create accounts, go like and upvote other products, engage with the community, and actually be an active user on Product Hunt, because, you know, their algorithm likes that. And, you know, they want to see that you are not just like going to them for free promotion, you’re actually a person who uses products on a regular basis.
Kenny Soto 23:34
And just to follow up, would there be anything you do that you would do differently? After this experience?
Derek Osgood 23:42
Yeah, for sure, I would have, I would have spent a lot more, and I would have given ourselves more buffer. So we were really rushing because we wanted to get our beta out in the market, you know, beginning of January, and we ended up picking a product launch date and gearing up all that pre-launch activity driving towards that that was probably a little too aggressive.
And you know, so our product had some very rough edges when we ship to a product. We also you know, like there were things that were broken because we shipped them literally the day before we launched the product.
So for example, during our onboarding for a little while we weren’t allowing people to just go try the product because we still had a gate in place and we didn’t realize that that was happening because it was only happening for a small subset of emails but unfortunately than a lot of the emails like we got signups from more people who had that specific email address and so you know, just make sure that you have left yourself probably an extra two weeks more than you think that you need to leave yourself and make sure that your product and your and all your conversion funnels are super, super tight and bug-free.
Kenny Soto 24:52
Now let’s get back to the squishy stuff, if you will, with my last three questions. What is one aspect of marketing overall that remains a consistent challenge for you?
Derek Osgood 25:03
Good question. Honestly, you know, I feel like content marketing continues to be an area that I struggle with. You know, I think I’m because I come from a much more advertising-heavy background, I’m really good at dealing with kind of the shorter form bits and pieces of the world.
And, you know, I think I am really good at creating the positioning that informs good content marketing strategy that informs it, but I don’t consider myself a writer, in terms of long-form content. And you know, I think when it comes to like, SEO strategy, it’s an area that I just haven’t spent as much time with. And so it continues to be a challenge. It’s an area that I’m trying to always get better at. But I think that’s probably the biggest one for me.
Kenny Soto 25:52
This is going to tie back to a previous discussion we had, why is branding your company so important? And from your experience? And this is not to shout out any particular group of companies? Because it’s some not all? Why are some startups but do they tend to push aside branding as a later priority in their to-do lists?
Derek Osgood 26:15
Yeah, I mean, I’d say answer the second part first, I think it’s mostly just, you know, they’re they don’t have marketers in-house and you know, they’re there. They think that branding is just like fluff. I mean, that’s, that’s the reality is most people who are not marketers by trade, and even a lot of marketers alike think that branding is just you Oh, you’re putting a shiny coat of paint on something and making it look nice so that you feel good.
And I’ve heard, I’ve heard past CEO’s joke on us about the joke on us, like, saying that marketers like to come in and pee on the fire hydrant, and like, basically mark their territory by updating the website. And, you know, redoing the branding. And, and I think that you know, there’s some truth to that there are some marketers who come in and do that, and they’re just like, Oh, I just want to put my spin on this.
But the reality is the reason that you want branding, and you want quality branding is you can first trust first and foremost, like if you have benefited from day one, with the company that people look at us. And they think that we are much further along than we are and we’re much larger than we are. And so they are willing to give us a shot that they would have no chance of giving to a company that hadn’t invested some degree in branding themselves.
Also, it creates memorability and affinity, like people actually like our brand. And people are and we stand out in people’s minds, there are a ton of companies out there that are building, you know, software that can kind of like tangentially help with the problems that we’re trying to solve. But most people, you know, see them and then forget about them, because they’re just not memorable. And there are visual cues, there are emotional cues, and there are copy cues that you can use to drive your product into people’s minds.
And then you don’t have to invest in just retargeting them all the time. Like, you know, people, people, you can get top of mind on somebody who saw you six months ago by serving them an ad, but serving them an ad is really expensive. And so you’re way better off if they just remember you, and then they see you somewhere on their social channels. And they’re like, oh, yeah, I remember that company, that company was really cool.
I actually really liked the way that they were talking about themselves, I’d like to come back to this, you know, down the road. So I think you know, the two biggest things are trusted memorability. And those actually have a significant impact on the road. And also actually, the third one is, is it allows for word of mouth, like it enables word of mouth.
And I think, you know, one of the things that marketers really index on is, is remembering that, in order for somebody to talk about you, they are burning social capital. And so they want to share things that are cool. So if you have good branding, they are much, much more likely to share you with their friends and other people who are in your industry the industry that you’re targeting.
Because they feel like they are an insider, and they feel like they’re special. And they have some insight that’s really into this really cool, big next new thing that they want to talk about. So you know, otherwise, if your branding sucks, that’s very, very unlikely. Unless your product is 100x better than anything else out there.
Kenny Soto 29:24
I’m definitely gonna have to have you on the podcast again because I feel like there’s so much more we can dive into. But my last question for you, Derek is hypothetical, because time machines don’t exist. But if they did, and you can go back in time, about 10 years into the past, knowing everything you know, right now, how would you accelerate the speed of your career?
Derek Osgood 29:44
Super good question. Um, I think the biggest thing that I would do differently, is I still actually really value the fact that I went to a big company first and then went into startups after that because I think I got the foundation that has enabled me to grow more rapidly within startups.
But I think looking back on it, I went straight from a big company to a really small company. And I think I probably would have targeted that company kind of more in the middle where I could have learned a little bit more from, you know, more seasoned leaders, you know, early on in my career, and also experienced opera, the opera realization operationalization of, of all these marketing activities in startups at some degree of the scale, as opposed to like trying to figure it all out for myself early on, which, you know, worked well. I learned a lot, but I think it would have sped things up a little bit. So that’s probably the biggest, biggest thing that I would do.
Kenny Soto 30:41
Derek, if anyone wants to say hello online, where can they find you?
Derek Osgood 30:45
Yeah, so companies ignition where it has ignition.com. And then, if you ever want to reach out to me directly, I’m Derek at having mission.com
Kenny Soto 30:56
Perfect. Thank you for your time today, Derek, and thank you to the listener for listening to another episode of the people’s Digital Marketing podcast with your host Kenny Soto. And if you can, please rate us on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Please, please, please. I would truly appreciate it if you had taken the time today to give us at least four stars. Fingers crossed. And as always, I hope everyone has a great day.
Thanks for listening and yeah, peace out.