B2B Growth Insights: Apr 2021
MINI “GROWTH CASE STUDIES” OF THE MONTH
[1] Build a testing ground to track engagement and identify likely winners for broad release
What can we learn from Drake or Will Smith about releasing successful features or products? The main takeaway would be their entertainment model of creating multiple, smaller pieces of content and using their follower engagement to turn the promising ones into larger products (think TV shows, movies, albums). A version of this philosophy was put into play last year by Evernote. The company ran contests involving its users to see how their core product was being modified for specific use cases. This experience led Evernote to launch a whole new feature for their product.
[2] Solve any traditional mistrust, transparency issues to attract mission friendly customers
Lemonade offers homeowners, renters, and pet insurance at low prices with fast payout rates by reversing the traditional insurance model. Unlike other insurers, Lemonade pools all the premiums you pay together, takes a flat fee of 20% to cover operating costs and reinsurance. The payout for the claims comes out of the same pool. “Leftover premiums are donated to a charity of your pool’s choosing” through the company’s ‘Giveback’ policy. Operating costs are kept low by embracing a digital-first approach and using blockchain technology to provide speed and transparency to users.
[3] Invest in partners to expand your platform for customers and stay ahead of the innovation cycle
The launch of Zoom Apps was aimed at bringing other apps into the Zoom experience. Similarly, the recent introduction of the software development kit allows developers to embed Zoom video service inside another application. Zoom went one step further now by creating a $100MM fund to invest in early-stage and mature companies that develop on the Zoom ecosystem. In the words of Zoom’s CTO – “We’ll help [these startups] build valuable and engaging experiences…by investing, we’re helping bring solutions and further expand the ecosystem and our customers should benefit from that”.
[4] Find ways to remove friction in your customer’s journey even if it’s outside your core product scope
Sometimes clear gaps in your customer’s journey affect how they interact with your product or service. In certain scenarios, it affects whether they get to a situation or place to use what you’re offering. Lyft Pass for Healthcare lets “health care organizations send patients prepaid passes that they can use for rides to doctor’s appointments”. Even though this is a Lyft initiative, health care organizations (and other institutions) should consider scenarios where they’re losing out on existing demand due to hurdles in the customer value delivery system.
[5] Cut down on waste and improve revenue by adopting dynamic pricing for soon-to-expire products
Traditional grocery stores must rely on their employees to track soon to expire products and sometimes mark the price down manually to drive sales. Wasteless uses a dynamic pricing algorithm along with electronic shelf labels to “display multiple prices correlating to different expiration dates”. Among the list of benefits – stores get to minimize food waste (up to 80%), maximize revenue as items with longer shelf life will cost more than those that are about to expire, manage available stock better, improve customer’s sustainable shopping choices.
[6] Keep track of your product’s most popular use cases to shift your messaging in a timely manner
Away is a D2C company known for its hard-shell suitcases. The pandemic’s impact on air travel immediately showed up as a drop in their sales by 90%. The company did notice the switch in customer behavior last year when people started to rent vehicles for trips and remote workers embraced the chance to work from different locations. Away quickly switched its messaging to “promote day trips, road trips, and weekend getaways”. The attention to customer behavior also led them to launch pet carriers as adoption rates went up during the pandemic.
[7] Spur adoption of a nascent, capital intensive technology by offering it as an end-to-end service
The concerns over carbon intensity force a lot of industrial plants to explore different clean energy options. While hydrogen looks attractive, it can add a lot of upfront cost for a plant to produce it on-site. Enter BayoTech that offers cheap low to zero-carbon hydrogen through a service called BayoGaaS. Through this service, the company can “build, own, operate, and finance projects and then sell that to end-user which reduces the upfront capital cost to the customer”.
[8] Identify your current unique mix of competencies that you can scale and repurpose if need be
SnackMagic is a build-your-own snack service that didn’t exist before the pandemic. The company started as a lunch delivery service in NYC under the name Stadium. Mostly offering co-workers a platform to place a single order while accessing multiple restaurants. The remote work aesthetic post-March 2020 forced the company to leverage its “personalization tech, logistics management, data analytics” capabilities into a new service. SnackMagic offers personalized snack boxes that are easy to gift and already boasts Amazon, Google, Spotify, Toyota as a few of its corporate customers.
INTERESTING BOOKS OF THE MONTH
[9] “Post-Acquisition Marketing: How to Create Enterprise Value in the First 100 Days” by Shiv Narayanan
Key Takeaways: There are aggressive expectations for growth anytime a PE firm acquires an emerging, profitable company. The author offers a framework (and templates) to scale Marketing to build the pipeline capable of meeting the sales targets.
Marketing Due Diligence – “Channel & Campaign Performance Report” – Choose the right accountability metrics to judge Marketing success – ex: Marketing-Generated Pipeline and Closed Won Deals. By tracking beyond MQLs, you remove Marketing’s bias for lead volume and replace it with lead quality.
Demand Generation – “Demand Gen Opportunity vs. Effort Mapping” – Understand the needs of customers at each stage of their journey (unaware, awareness, knowledge, consideration). Pick the demand generation activity for prospects in each stage by their intent level (awareness, knowledge consideration) and interest level (hot, warm, cold).
Content – “Multiproduct Line Content Roadmap” – Ask these 3 questions to prioritize specific assets over others: Which product line has the most value to the business? Which product line has the most growth potential, especially if supported by content? Which product line is core to the success of other product lines?
Team – “Marketing Team Structure” – Every marketing department needs the following functions, with the number of roles varying based on the context of the company – Corporate (brand, PR, communications), Events, Product Marketing, Customer Marketing, Sales Enablement, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Marketing Operations
Investment Committee – “Marketing Budget Proposal” – The likelihood of getting an increased amount of budget improves if Marketing can (i) tie its budget ask to what has already been forecasted for revenue, (ii) show where that investment will pay off
Key Takeaways: The authors offer a market entry checklist by analyzing 4 success stories in China (Sequoia Capital, InMobi, Intel, Zegna) and 4 failures (Amazon, Norwegian Cruise Line, Hyundai, LinkedIn). I’ve compressed the key ideas of the checklist below and as you can see, it’s relevant to any international market.
Job: What “job” are you setting out to do in China? Think about size, growth rate too.
Resources: What are your differentiated (tangible or intangible) assets to sustain advantage in China? What is your estimate of the risk-adjusted return? What commitment of resources do you need?
Organization: What legal form will you use to access the market? How will the China unit be organized and governed?
Strategy: What is your top-level strategy? What are some possible competitive responses?
Adaptability: To what extent do you expect to adapt your offerings to the Chinese market?
BONUS GENERAL BUSINESS READS
The most popular consumer brand in every country
Business software faces pressure to update its user experience
Autonomous trucks present challenges and opportunities at every stage of the value chain
Paper – “Reddit's Wallstreetbets tips outperform the market”
China’s digital currency is about to disrupt money
Best Buy launches a new $200 membership program to fight Amazon
$23T in opportunities for climate-smart investments between now and 2030
Partnerships to retain users: “Instacart and DoorDash plan to launch their own credit cards”
Absolute decoupling of economic growth and emissions in 32 countries
Good use of high-frequency economic data: “America’s boom has begun. Can it last?”
Supply chain slowdown hits at key pillars of the economy and will likely get worse
The sharing economy’s next target: B2B sharing is poised to be a lucrative model for the future
Nike enters the circular economy with Refurbished, giving shoes a second life!
The better your automated customer service options, the worse your customer service experience
Extending state-of-the-art corporate decarbonization to the “brands behind the brands”
How to search for the right minimal viable product and find product/market fit
PepsiCo’s 4-phase playbook in its search for upstarts
Minimum Viable Replacement (MVR): a new framework for retiring old systems
How product placements may soon be added to classic films
The next frontier for e-commerce is regional cities and rural areas
Keep Learning and Carry On!
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