2-min Product Marketing Insights: May 2024 Releases
Part 1 Release Date: May 16, 2024 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] (For B2B Startups) Pitch the right person in enterprises after understanding their role's nuances through existing client interviews.
Focal Point avoided directly pitching COOs their procurement solution. Instead, they relied on the testimony of existing clients to discover mid to senior professionals to pitch to (ex: heads of procurement, chief procurement officers, etc.) along with their unique day-to-day issues.
[2] Assign a 'propensity score' to every customer to decide the level of support in a PLG/SLG hybrid model.
Databricks works to keep its PLG and SLG motions in sync with each other, even in support. The company decides on the right level of support for each customer based on their propensity to spend money. The support levels can vary from "email to an in-product banner to a solution architect or a senior seller."
[3] Explore a strong partnership motion with a big brand to raise awareness for your product and get a strong endorsement.
Sentry ran a bundle campaign where it was given away for free to anyone who bought Atlassian's Bitbucket Premium. This partnership brought Sentry much attention (think signups, referral traffic) during Atlassian's developer conference, including prominent logo placement on the latter's sites.
[4] Ask these 3 questions to test your homepage, discover the most appealing content, and find your ideal customers.
Helio suggests asking a targeted audience the following questions on your homepage - (i) What does the product/service do? (ii) Where would you click first? (iii) What was most compelling?
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
[1] The cardinal rule of growth hacking - Don't get into high-tempo growth experimentation until you know your product is a must-have, why it's a must-have, and to whom it's a must-have.
[2] 4 questions to ask users who go dormant and return - "(i) Can you tell us why you signed up in the first place? (ii) What didn't work for you? Why'd you bail? (iii) What caused you to come back and try it again? (iv) What worked this time?"
[3] 2 types of fit to aim for after product-market fit - (i) language/market fit: how well your product description resonates with your target audience and (ii) channel/product fit: how effective your selected marketing channels are to reach your intended audience.
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] How novelty effects and dopamine culture rule the tech industry
[2] The Future of Search is Conversations
[3] The Unsexy Future of Generative AI Is Enterprise Apps
[4] Netflix’s head of design answers every question you ever had about Netflix
[5] Saying It Right and Saying It Best
Part 2 Release Date: May 30, 2024 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Add social proof across every step of the product onboarding flow to increase willingness to complete onboarding.
Supademo tried a series of tactics - including reverse trials, push for team usage, action-triggered emails - to reduce friction and accelerate time to value for its users. One of the tactics generating results was adding social proof to specific product onboarding pages (ex: testimonials on the 'invite your team' page) and use case emails with actual case studies linked to them.
[2] Plan for employee-driven LinkedIn takeovers across company levels to increase brand awareness and dominate a nascent product category.
Gong focused exclusively on LinkedIn and adopted an 'edutainment' mentality to gain recognition and dominate the revenue intelligence category. The company also set a company-wide mandate to get every employee - from new hires to C-level executives - to post on LinkedIn in a pre-coordinated manner on topics most relevant to Gong's decision-makers in their professional peer group.
[3] For early-stage startups: Determine your product-market fit archetype to discover your product's place in the market and how you should operate.
Sequoia distills early-stage startups into 3 archetypes: hair on fire ('addresses an urgent problem'), hard fact ('solves an existing problem better'), and future vision ('products out of left field'). Each archetype has its "own customer mindset, competitive market status, challenges, opportunity/general product goals."
[4] Pair your technical primary persona in a PLG motion with a customer support team filled with folks sharing the same tech background.
Cloudinary's core audience is developers. Therefore, the company hired developers for their customer support team who knew the language of the target audience. Customer service now ranks as reason #2 for why Cloudinary wins word of mouth in the developer ecosystem.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret” by Raymond Fong and Chad Riddersen
[1] Seek advertising arbitrage, i.e., opportunities where advertising inventory supply outpaces advertiser demand. This usually "occurs when an advertising channel is growing really fast (a supply increase) or when an advertising channel is falling out of favor (demand decrease)."
[2] Try these directed questions to get solid testimonials from your clients - "(i) What were you looking for when you found [COMPANY]? (ii) What compelled you to choose [COMPANY] over others? (iii) What results did you get from working with [COMPANY]? (iv) When [COMPANY][COMPLETED SOLUTION], what did you like most about the experience? (v) Who else would you recommend [COMPANY] to?"
[3] 2 formulas to offer instant clarity through your headlines - "Formula 1: [What you do] + [What makes you unique] + [Geo Reach] - ex: Residential roofing since 1929 serving LA. Formula 2: [End result the customer wants] + [Specific period of time] + [Address the objections] - ex: Hot fresh pizza delivered to your door in 30 mins or it's free."
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] My recent podcast appearance - “How CloudBees’ PMM built a competitive intelligence ecosystem from scratch”
[2] McKinsey: The growing importance of software product marketing managers
[3] Making a Good Bet: Building Products with Incomplete Information
[4] Why you need a “WTF Notebook”
[5] The Life and Death of Hollywood
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