2-minute Product Marketing Insights: June 2022 Releases
Part 1 Release Date: June 16, 2022 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Tailor the copy in your ads and other demand gen efforts to proactively kill your customer excuses.
Anyone unfamiliar with an Airbnb experience has a whole set of objections to renting a room from a stranger. Airbnb counters this by devising dense yet succinct copy in ads to eliminate many common objections.
[2] Create a list of users you don’t want to target to simplify messaging for B2B products.
In its early days, LinkedIn tuned out its vocal group of users – LinkedIn Open Networkers – users who preferred a completely open network to connect with anyone. This decision helped them focus on who the company truly wanted to appeal/sell to.
[3] (B2B Startups) Choose 1 channel for your customer support to funnel and control expectations.
Pick one channel (ex: live chat, email, phone conversations, etc.) to focus on for resolving customer support issues. This sets you on a path to continuously improve and helps you build institutional knowledge down the line for new employees.
[4] Provide tools to every team within the company to own user insights and scale customer feedback.
HoneyBook chose to co-opt a few members of its customer support and customer success teams to gain customer feedback on initiatives. These select members were given an interview guide and clear customer parameters.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products” by Martina Lauchengco
[1] Use the acronym CAST to check if your messaging resonates with customers - (1) Is what you do CLEAR and drives curiosity? (2) Is the language AUTHENTIC, i.e., syncs well with the customer style/word choice? (3) Is it SIMPLE yet different and compelling? (4) Has it been TESTED in the context customers will experience it?
[2] Every multiproduct company must think about its brand at 3 different levels: company (ex: Apple), line of business (ex: music, TV, watch, iPhone), and products (ex: MacBook Air, iMac).
[3] Market fit is about "market pull" - Does the customer need your product enough to take action to learn, try, or buy? Does this happen repeatedly?
🧠 5 CURATED BUSINESS THINK PIECES
[1] What is the point of crypto?
[2] Addicted, Overwhelmed, Oversubscribed: How technology hooked the world
[3] Why do so few founders know whether they’re default alive or default dead?
[4] BlitzFail: How not to go off the rails
[5] What is life like when we subtract work from it?
Part 2 Release Date: June 30, 2022 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Improve your product adoption by breaking down user onboarding into bite-sized checklists.
Appcues divided its onboarding checklist into 2 separate parts to improve the completion rate from 2% to 25%. The company’s first checklist for product installation daisy chains into a similarly bite-sized list to get started on the first activity/project.
[2] Upsell more product features by showcasing how your overall customer base values each feature.
A customer may initially purchase your product only for specific capabilities and not be aware of the rest. Yellowbrick, a data warehouse, uses feature importance graphs to drive the purchase of disaster recovery as a service (for example) to customers who only bought their security and compliance capability.
[3] Keep the messaging mix to “20% aspirational and 80% pragmatic” while marketing to developers.
Since developers must constantly adapt and learn a new tool, any outreach should lead with quality documentation, code samples, and hands-on training. The 'read more' section below shares a product marketer's experience marketing to developers while working for Intel, Mozilla, and HP Enterprise.
[4] Identify the stack of services around your product to discover partnerships for growing faster.
Notion sought to offer a product that worked well with other productivity tools and services. This self-imposed rule helped them uncover partnerships to scale their business without building in-house integrations.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
[1] Developer experience is the sum of all developer interactions with your company - pre-discovery to when they get labeled as a veteran customer.
[2] Understand how developers want to use your product. You can get them to initial success if you can be very specific with your use cases.
[3] A great tutorial structure to use: "(1) Explain the content, (2) Show the end result, (3) Walk through the steps, (4) Help the reader take the next step."
🧠 5 CURATED BUSINESS THINK PIECES
[1] The Value of Science – Of all its many values, the greatest must be the freedom to doubt
[2] The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
[3] “Adapting to Endure” – Sequoia’s presentation to founders to navigate current market conditions
[4] How to Play Offensive in a Recession: Flight to Quality Planning
[5] The Open Secret of Google Search – 1 of the most-used tools on the internet is not what it used to be
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