2-minute Product Marketing Insights: Apr 2023 Releases
Part 1 Release Date: Apr 6, 2023 (2 min read).
📈 4 Micro [Product Marketing] Case Studies
[1] Switch to a vested commission model from a traditional sales compensation plan if you want your PLG effort to succeed.
Palette points out that traditional sales compensation plans never account for execution, delivery, and long-term customer satisfaction. A vested commission model - ex: commission payments on invoice collection, compensating on consumption metric, etc. - ensures alignment of sales teams with usage or consumption-based pricing characteristic of many PLG motions.
[2] Pre-qualify your leads by using BANT to shape your copy on your landing page.
Membership Academy's landing page is upfront about who it targets and who it isn't for. They use BANT to write copy that attracts the right type of prospects - B (Budget): can the person access the money needed for product purchase? A (Authority): does the person have the power to approve the purchase? N (Need): does the person viewing the page want to achieve your promised outcome? T (Time): what's the time for their desired solution?
[3] Avoid poor UX or shortcuts by defining the design vision early in the requirements gathering phase.
According to Delivery Hero, the lack of a single design vision statement can lead to designers being at the mercy of product managers and engineers. In the worst case, it can lead to unethical designs, shortcuts, and poor user experiences in fulfilling business needs.
[4] Improve save rates by reworking your cancellation flow to re-engage, educate, and empathize with your customer.
Powtoon limits its exit survey to 3 questions and leverages the customer's selected reason for canceling to (i) share appropriate messaging and (ii) present offers relevant to their cancellation reason for the customer to stay.
📚 1 Book & Top 3 Insights
“The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision” by Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna
[1] A major reason for losing a deal beyond a customer's love for the status quo is the customer's inability to decide. Overcome this indecision by dialing down their fear of purchasing.
[2] The book's central thesis - Use the JOLT method to help customers overcome indecision and jolt into action: judge the indecision, offer your recommendation, limit the exploration, and take risk off the table.
[3] The 3 sources of indecision - (i) the customer is stuck between options and unsure which one's best for their needs, (ii) the customer is anxious they haven't done enough homework to decide, and (iii) the customer is skeptical about the returns from the decision.
🧠 5 Curated Marketing Think Pieces
[1] The Age of AI has begun (by Bill Gates)
[2] The Systems of Elite CEOs: Setting the Stage for Billion-Dollar Growth
[3] The Most Popular Experience Design Trends of 2023
[4] The Marketing Funnel for Technical Products
[5] How to Organize a B2B SaaS Marketing Team
Part 2 Release Date: Apr 27, 2023 (2 min read).
📈 4 Micro [Product Marketing] Case Studies
[1] Focus on profitability from day one by training your users on smart price increase mechanisms built directly into your product.
Aha! avoids freemium and purely relies on 30-day free trials. Even more interesting in pricing, the company doesn't just change the price by the number of users in the account but also adds an annual cost-of-living adjustment.
[2] Improve product implementation by developing mutual action plans (MAPs) using the customer's most 'compelling event' as a starting point.
Fluint suggests using a 'time-bound need or goal' - aka compelling event - like a new product launch, use or lose it budget situation, seasonal site traffic increase, etc., as the north star to develop MAPs with your customer. That way, you're not arbitrarily creating deadlines, and the customer buys into each of them.
[3] For Enterprise SaaS: Incentivize every user to ideally sign up for your product using their business email to onboard their colleagues faster.
Rows ran a few experiments to redesign their onboarding. Adding incentives to sign up using a business email made it easier for the users to invite their teammates as part of the setup and reach the aha moment faster.
[4] Leverage content and community to determine the ideal product and monetization strategy for your preferred customer base.
Adam Schoenfeld knew he wanted to serve the B2B SaaS market, specifically GTM leaders. His resource - PeerSignal - which offers research on PLG companies covering everything from hiring to pricing, was the perfect market research and lead funneling tool for his eventual company Keyplay.
📚 1 Book & Top 3 Insights
[1] Break your competitors (after compiling them) into 3 tiers - Tier 1: your major competitors, usually 5-7 companies. Tier 2: second level of competition, ~10 companies. Tier 3: everyone else.
[2] Quote - "Sometimes the ease of how a company does business or supports the customer after the close is as much as 10 times more important than a feature request."
[3] Get your competitive intelligence team to meticulously document CSM relationships with customers. And share those insights and practices with sales reps to improve customer lifetime value.
🧠 5 Curated Marketing Think Pieces
[1] What Happened When Uber’s CEO Started Driving for Uber
[2] The Impact of Generative AI on Software (Workshop, Theory Ventures)
[3] The PLG Teardown - Exploring PLG via the language learning app Duolingo
[4] The Psychology of Digital Marketing (Ryan Sutherland, Ogilvy Group)
[5] How ChatGPT really works, explained to non-technical people
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