Micro Product Marketing Insights: December 2021
Release Date: December 22, 2021
Good Morning,
Happy Holidays! Hope each one of you is making the most out of your winter break.
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📈 8 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Add features to reduce anxiety in your customer's journey and help them develop sticky habits.
Uber's use of ETA, price estimate, and easy payment trigger people to venture out to far-off parking lots for pickups at airports. The use of a countdown timer works the same way for pedestrians by reducing instances of jaywalking.
[2] Adopt usage-based pricing to optimize for consumption and improve net dollar retention rates.
Investors favor usage-based pricing increasingly these days as it directly links to adoption and offers an organic way for companies to monetize their solutions. HashiCorp also highlighted usage-based pricing in its S-1 filing to showcase its growth prospects.
[3] Build a community for a mature company around support and success to reduce customer churn plus increase contract value.
The Autodesk community provides a space for customers to submit questions and offer answers to each other. Salesforce's Trailblazer program allows customers to teach each other how to better use their products.
[4] Offer products/services at multiple price points along the customer's job to be done to increase their lifetime value.
This works especially for a creative or consulting business. To get customers to hire you for projects down the line; you need to start by offering "low-cost ways for them to go from follower to subscriber to customer".
[5] Compile 3 cornerstone stories (origin, adversity, innovation) to connect with your audience.
The New Quo is a leadership development and inclusion consultancy built on the founder's childhood experience of growing in an outside group. This origin story communicates the mission effectively while motivating people to act on social causes.
[6] Allow users to share their product engagement to attract new, potential users.
The end-of-year 'Spotify Unwrapped' feature allows Spotify to leverage their users and enable each one of them to popularize the app on different marketing channels while showcasing their musical tastes. This serves as another acquisition channel beyond their trial promotions and advertising.
[7] Create a promotion for an unusual special day to ensure people take advantage of discounts.
Launch unusual special day promotions linked to (1) existing special days (ex: National Donut Day) or (2) company-specific days (ex: Amazon Prime) or (3) personalized days (ex: the first anniversary of purchase). People are more likely to buy during these types of promotions!
[8] Use every customer interaction channel for feedback and make it your key differentiator to grow.
Slack created a single group called customer experience by combining quality assurance and customer support. This made it easy for the company to listen to users and respond no matter the source - ex: in-app tickets, Twitter, etc.
📚 2 BOOKS & THEIR TOP 3 INSIGHTS
Peak-End Rule – Humans usually remember 2 aspects of an experience more than anything else: (1) the peak (i.e., the most intense) and (2) the end.
Teach your audience a new skill by making sure it fits into 5 to 8 steps. If not, narrow the scope of the lesson until it does.
Offer coaching calls to understand the pain points of your audience instead of traditional marketing surveys. These provide deeper insights with room for probing questions.
[2] “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging” by Sebastian Junger
Self-Determination Theory – Human beings need 3 basic things to be content – (1) feel competent at what they do, (2) feel authentic in their lives, (3) feel connected to others.
A smart leadership model must account for the crisis or the opportunity in front of the company and choose a leader accordingly. The leader during wartime should be different from the one during peacetime.
For any institution to work, you should focus on the things that unite the members and avoid underscoring any effort by talking about differences.
🧠 10 CURATED BUSINESS THINK PIECES
[1] The power of the marginal
[2] The future of CPG wholesale marketplaces
[3] With resale growing fast, why are many brands handing their customers to 3rd-party marketplaces?
[4] Why Peter Thiel searches for reality-bending ‘secrets’
[5] Green Upheaval: The new geopolitics of energy
[6] How Shein beat Amazon at its own game – and reinvented fast fashion
[7] Techno-optimism for 2022: What you should be excited about
[8] Tiger Global is venture capital’s winning machine [Tiger Global: How to Win]
[9] The Cantillon Effect: How the rich get richer
[10] What the Beatles documentary ‘Get Back’ can teach us about collaboration
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Keep Learning and Carry On!
Regards,
Bryan Elanko
“Apply new product marketing lessons from the fastest-growing companies”
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