Building business launch momentum is one thing; but, keeping that momentum rolling after launch is another. When momentum is so intangible, are there specific strategies a company can use or is it a guessing-game?
Jonathan Gandolf, Co-Founder & CEO, and Brett McGrath, VP of Marketing of The Juice, join the show to discuss momentum — touching on it in a previous episode, Jonathan and Brett take a deep dive, looking at momentum before and after launch.
Jonathan and Brett cover:
- Managing passionate chaos
- Pros & cons to building business momentum
- Handling momentum after the launch
Managing passionate chaos
Pre-launch plans are usually neat and tidy. It’s easy to keep everything on track because it’s still all theoretical. However, as anyone who’s planned an event can tell you, the actual launch is always different.
Imagine planning a wedding only to have the bride leave town twenty minutes before the ceremony — your idea of how the day would go just went out the window.
”When the products live, all of a sudden, you have this, ‘Oh, sh*t,’ moment, and you realize there’s so much opportunity because the product is real.” — Jonathan Gandolf
So, when the launch finally happens, how do you manage a team that’s passionate about finding all of those opportunities without feeling overwhelmed by the chaos? For Jonathan, it comes down to taking a breath, having fun with it, and realizing that all the excitement is from everyone’s belief that the product is worth the effort.
Most importantly, he comes back to his mantra: “Hire smart people and get out of the way.” Trusting his colleagues to lead the charge in their respective departments while removing any roadblocks is where Jonathan keeps his focus.
“I love finding those problems that you all are facing and finding ways to make them easier to solve” Jonathan comments.
Pros & cons to building business momentum
Jonathan relates the idea of momentum to watching sports — an intangible but very physical sensation of momentum building as the game goes on. In the same way, he thinks you can feel that same kind of momentum through a business, especially early on.
How to build momentum
As an added benefit of trying to build momentum in a new business, it can be achieved faster. This is due to the amount of calculated experiments that can be conducted. Then, once the business knows what experiments are working, they direct their focus to those. This can be more difficult for an established business that can’t allocate as many resources to find areas of most benefit.
”Just move really quickly away from what’s not working. I think that’s the best way, and the most tangible way, our team has been able to build momentum to this point.” — Jonathan Gandolf
The pros of momentum building
To show just how important momentum can be to the early company, Brett and Jonathan highlight some key areas where the business has excelled:
- Bringing people into marketing initiatives: It has helped add social proof to the content they’re creating, allows them to build relationships, and get real product feedback that can help the product or company evolve early on.
- An exercise in positioning: Reaching out to companies with a much higher reputation than The Juice has been a good way for Brett and Jonathan to realize that aligning with the right people, no matter their status, is the quickest way to get ahead. Just because a company may be intimidating does not mean that they won’t be interested in your company or product.
The cons of momentum
While many benefits can come from building momentum, some potential setbacks can pop up as well:
- Too much too soon: When you have two audiences — the content marketer and the brand audience — trying to solve the pain points for both can lead to a solution that works for neither.
- Losing accountability: If you take on too many projects at once, it can lead to a large backup, slowing the momentum way down.
Handling momentum after the launch
Once the launch has taken place — then what? Will the same strategies used pre-launch work afterwards? Yes, but with a minor adjustment. Up to the launch, the experiment focus has been on getting content and brand creators. Now, the focus is on individual content creators, contributors, and fundraising.
”That’s kind of the test of: ‘is our momentum real?’ Do people want to help us build momentum and make that momentum move even faster?” — Jonathan Gandolf
Business momentum can come and go. While we can’t control all the external forces that can influence it, there are strategies to help maintain and increase it so that you can get the most out of your business — pre and post launch.
This post is based on an episode of the #FlipMyFunnel podcast. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here.
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The Juice: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram
Jonathan Gandolf – Chief Executive Officer at The Juice – Twitter | LinkedIn
Jonathan is a left-brain marketer with a right-brain problem. Having launched his career in marketing data, a curiosity and appetite for problem-solving has led him from digital marketing, to craft beer (yes really), to healthcare analytics (yes, an even weirder transition).
Now, he’s tackling his most challenging problem yet — helping B2B marketers, like himself, break away from their old school habits. The Juice is a B2B Content Discovery Platform that more intelligently connects content consumers and content marketers. It’s the B2C experience for curated content we all know and love being applied to the B2B space. Stop filling out forms, start enjoying content.
Brett McGrath – VP, Marketing at The Juice – Twitter | LinkedIn
Brett has spent the past 12 years in the B2B SaaS industry in various marketing functional and leadership roles. He wakes up every morning thinking about creating value for the audience he is serving and loves building winning content programs. He believes the content marketing function is the catalyst for change in B2B marketing and spends his days learning from other marketers on the 3C (Curating Content Creators) Podcast. His evenings consist of creating content in the sports cards industry with his show Stacking Slabs and is always looking for rare Peyton Manning cards that he doesn’t already own.
