👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
This GrowthWaves note is brought to you by AirOps.
This it’s not another “content trends” PDF with charts no one asked for.
AirOps dropped its State of Content report, and it’s packed with data you’ll actually want to use:
what high-performing teams are doing with AI
how content operations are shifting (fast)
what’s working right now
The AirOps team is close to the action, and this report reflects that.
If you run content at a B2B company or you’re responsible for the results of that content, you’ll want this in your toolkit.
Don’t miss it.
He built it with the help of the AirOps team (shout-out to Nicole Guercia).
The post went viral and drove hundreds of people to AirOps.
But that’s not the only reason why I’m writing this note.
Let’s see what we can learn from this product drop.
Context
AirOps is an AI-powered platform designed to help businesses automate and optimize content creation, workflow management, and SEO processes at scale.
As Eoin Clancy, Head of Growth at AirOps, described what they do:
We help marketers create content that wins, persuades, and just basically starts helping them win the battle for attention. It’s really about helping teams unlock authoritative content from their data, from their insights, and deliver that to their end customer or user.
They’re turning heads in the content and SEO industry with their innovative product and approach to go-to-market (GTM).
You’ll see LinkedIn posts with videos or screenshots of AirOps, describing a workflow users built and the promise that you can make something similar.
And it’s true. I’ve used the tool and it’s really good at what it does.
There’s just one problem:
The product has a learning curve, and I’m not saying that lightly. Over the past few years, I’ve tried and tested over 200 tools for various use cases.
We're definitely a platform today where you need to have a level of technicality or that skill set. But our aim is to make sure that everyone in the future can achieve a 10 out of 10 result just by prompting or using text—without needing to do too much building.
The thing is, the AirOps team knows that, which is why they invest so much time and resources into educating their audience and providing them with tools and solutions to get the most out of their product:
Templates
Guides
How-to Videos
Workshops
And many more.
That’s all good. Not the first time you’d see a SaaS company with a steep learning curve care about how their users will get the most out of their product.
But AirOps took things to the next level.
The launch
If you’re in the SaaS marketing space, chances are you’ve heard of Kevin Indig.
I may be a bit biased because Kevin is a friend, but you won’t find as many people who are so well-versed in and passionate about their craft yet down-to-earth and approachable as Kevin is.
There are a couple of things that are true about Kevin:
He has a growing audience across multiple channels
He has the attention and loyalty of that audience
To put it simply: when Kevin talks, people listen.
Imagine this: you’re a SaaS building in the (broadly speaking) content and SEO space. How would you approach your GTM for a product that (you know) has a steep learning curve while getting in front of the right audience with the right message?
According to Eoin:
We decided not to just do a launch day, but a launch week. There were so many internal teams and external builders involved, and we wanted to focus each day on something different—education, community, and showcasing powerful use cases from people like Kevin.
Here’s the post Kevin did on LinkedIn:
That’s nearly 500 engagements, 90 comments, and 35 reposts. Not bad for an AI workflow, right?
The first comment included a link to the workflow and a shout-out to the builder, Nicole from AirOps’ team.
Kevin also posted the workflow on his Substack:
In that post, he explained why the workflow was built and how to use it in more detail.
Kevin had this idea for a content cannibalization workflow and was particularly excited about it. When the person outside the building is excited, that’s half the battle. He came in with a clear framework, and we helped bring it to life.
I happened to see the LinkedIn post right when it was about to explode. I tried the workflow, but it didn’t work. The reason? I guess it’s to do with the demand, which was later confirmed by AirOps’ CEO:
As Eoin told me:
We thought we could handle maybe 100 requests an hour. But we got 150 requests in the first 10 minutes after Kevin shared the workflow on LinkedIn—and it just skyrocketed from there. It was kind of panic stations internally.
Read: Mission accomplished
Are creator product launches the new way to approach GTM?
You may wonder why I refer to this play as a ‘Creator Product Launch?’
Well, it’s not exactly a launch, since it’s a product capability.
In other words, it’s a feature.
But it was part of AirOps’ v2 launch of their product.
Most importantly, it was a launch that validated the need for such a feature/tool. Which is why AirOps is turning it into a feature:
Within 48 hours, we had productized the entire workflow. What was Kevin’s public app became a power step in our platform—the most used one to date.
Simply put, the team at AirOps validated the need for this feature through the demand that followed the product launch.
Here’s the thing: AirOps isn’t the first to partner with creators to promote their product.
Maven is doing something similar with its creator lists, most notably, its Lenny’s List. This is a list of courses (on Maven’s platform) that Lenny endorses.
The key insight lies in the headline:
“Learn directly with top operators I admire”
“So these are courses recommended by
? The same Lenny I follow on Substack—the one whose newsletter I pay for?”Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly what these companies are trying to achieve, and they’re doing an excellent job at it if you ask me.
But AirOps took things a step further. And they wrote a new playbook on how to approach Creator Product Launches. This isn’t just about getting endorsed by the creator; it’s way beyond that.
Here are the pillars of a successful Creator Product Launch:
Let me break them down for you:
1) Product Capability—the product needs to be able to support the use case
2) Audience Overlap—there has to be a strong overlap between the creator’s audience and the company’s ICP
3) Pain Point—the company’s ICP needs to have a strong pain point
In AirOps’ case, all three pillars were at play:
1) AirOps can support the use case (identifying cannibalization opportunities), and with the help of a person from their team and guidelines from Kevin, they built it into a workflow
2) There’s a very strong overlap between Kevin’s audience and AirOps’ ICP
3) One of the ICP's pain points—or at least unsolved issues—is identifying cannibalization opportunities so they can take action.
Take a look at the report (read: workflow output). Who (in the content and SEO world) wouldn’t like to get access to a similar report for a domain they’re interested in?
AirOps executed perfectly in this case. They wrote the playbook on Creator Product Launches.
It’s a way for us to MVP test different parts of the product. When paired with a thought leader like Kevin, it taps into the market and gives people tons of value before they even need to build anything themselves.
I avoid predictions, so I don’t know if Creator Product Launches are the future of product launches. But if executed properly, they seem like a very big opportunity to ignore.
Final thoughts
As I mentioned several times in previous notes, B2B marketing and growth desperately need to level up.
AirOps’ launch of a workflow in collaboration with a creator turned out to be one of their most successful product launches to date.
And I’m pretty sure they’ll have more moments like this.
Regardless of your growth motion or stage, there’s something here for you.
You just need to list the three pillars for you and execute with precision.
Just like AirOps did.
Disclaimer: While we’re friends with the AirOps team and they’ve advertised with us in the past, this post was not sponsored or incentivized in any way. The thoughts and observations here stem from personal interest in the product and its Creator Product Launch strategy.
Resources and Links
https://app.airops.com/public_apps/a5c873af-e5e3-4855-8261-808807fe7489/run
https://airops.typeform.com/to/Hd3ce2pU?typeform-source=substack.com
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