Marketing Operators Category Expansion: When to Launch, What to Test & How to Scale
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Mar 3, 2026 Connor Rolain, Head of Growth at HexClad, a paid-acquisition and launch specialist, and Connor MacDonald, CMO at Ridge, who leads product and creative growth. They debate when to add new products into paid channels. They cover geo lift and holdout tests. They compare colorway tweaks versus new silhouettes. They walk through measurement plans and cross-category attribution.
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New Products Often Reach Net New Audiences
- New product launches can be a net new audience play rather than just selling the specific SKU.
- Ridge's tattoo wallet and HexClad's cocktail shaker drove higher CTRs, lower CPCs, and lifted purchases of core hero SKUs.
Tattoo Wallet Launch Produced 4x Incremental ROAS
- Ridge launched a tattoo-inspired wallet colorway and saw one-day click performance ~40% better than other ads.
- Geolift testing measured over 4x incremental ROAS and showed most purchases were for existing hero wallets, not the promoted design.
Create New Landing Pages For True Category Launches
- Build new landing pages and educational creatives when a launch is a true new silhouette or category.
- HexClad created a dedicated cocktail shaker page and listicle-style content to explain value props and support paid traffic.