B2B Product Marketing Insights: Sep 2021
Release Date: September 30, 2021
Good Morning,
Hope everyone’s doing well and staying safe.
Finally done with my #Ship30for30 cohort as of September 12th. Check out my 30 atomic essays on strategy and product marketing.
Follow me @StrategyinPros for daily product marketing insights. As always, please share this email and encourage your connections to subscribe to this newsletter if you like this content.
📈 8 MINI GROWTH CASE STUDIES
[1] Find & partner with companies that sell the product your prospect buys immediately before yours.
One estimate shows that a typical mid-market company buys up to 137 SaaS products. Aim for a packaged pitch by co-selling, partnering, creating technical integrations with companies in the purchase journey before you.
[2] Offer a big immediate benefit to counter the cost of every signup step to boost conversion rates.
Steady allows gig workers to track their income by gaining access to their bank account. Steady overcame the friction of users linking bank accounts by switching the call to action to 'complete setup' and capitalizing on our need to complete something.
[3] Use memberships to offer special insider prices for subscribers and drive long-term loyalty.
Beauty Pie considers itself the ‘Costco of lab-direct luxury beauty’. The company's membership option allows for steep markdowns on luxury beauty products while non-members pay full prices.
[4] Design for end-users (even if they’re not buyers) to organically discover and ‘trial’ your product(s).
The users of Freshworks are frontline employees and therefore the company optimizes the user interface to suit them vs. executive buyers like other vendors. Similarly, Freshworks uses free or low-cost channels like search marketing, word of mouth to be discovered organically by individual users.
[5] Increase the sales of your product by using (and highlighting) ‘branded’ ingredients.
This is a form of co-branding where one of the components increases the overall value of the product. Popular examples include North Face (Gore-Tex membranes), Apple Watches (Hermes leather straps).
[6] Own all customer interactions, even the ones beyond your control, to improve repeat business.
Chipotle moved to a “second-kitchen model” to improve the speed of service for digital orders. So many grocers and restaurants forget the new customer experience while selling through delivery apps like DoorDash, Instacart.
[7] Move some of your incentives for salespeople from sales targets to ‘activities’ to boost sales.
A South Asian pharmaceutical company changed its traditional bonus plan from sales quotas to make more sales calls. This immediately led to a sales increase of over 9%.
[8] Focus on where your audience spends a lot of time. Use those venues as your promotion channels.
Coinbase used Hacker News, Reddit, Tumblr to announce its launch since most of the target customers were part of those platforms.
📚 2 BOOKS & THEIR TOP 3 INSIGHTS
[1] “A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel to the Car, to What Comes Next” by Tom Standage
"Unbundling the car" - ride-hailing, micro-mobility, and on-demand car rental offer the convenience of a private car and remove the reasoning for mass car ownership.
There are 3 separate problems in building an autonomous car: (1) figuring out what's happening around (perception), (2) determining what will happen next (prediction), (3) steering, accelerating, or breaking (driving policy). The first 2 are the biggest challenges.
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) - We might be moving into a world where multiple transport networks - trains, trams, buses, bike rental, taxis, e-scooters, car rental - are seamlessly connected and accessible via a single app.
Go through the customer funnel for your product and your competitor’s product. This will help you understand the touchpoints in your customer’s journey and how easy it is for your customer to purchase your product vs. others.
To uncover new ideas for differentiation – Adopt the lens of a person who is removed from your industry and product. Look for what’s being built within your industry but in different geographical markets or adjacent industries.
Ask these 3 questions to go beyond sales – “What can I give my customers? What are some of the educational tools that would be helpful to their business? How can I create a community to help them succeed?”
🧠 10 CURATED BUSINESS THINK PIECES
[1] Turn and Face the Strange: Overcoming barriers to change in sports and investing
[2] Speculative bubbles in the 21st century & asymmetric upside
[3] Why premature scaling fails: The Traction Treadmill
[4] NFTs are worth understanding (A layman’s guide)
[5] Fresh Today, Faded Tomorrow? Brand resilience in a changing world
[6] Everything is always broken, and that’s okay
[7] How gaming will change humanity as we know it
[8] The future of work is the future of play
[9] How power works in venture capital
[10] 21 experts on the future of expertise
Feel free to reply to this email to share your feedback on the blog and the newsletter.
Keep Learning and Carry On!
Regards,
Bryan Elanko
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