Teaching a Product to Talk — I. M. H. O. Thoughts on Product Marketing and Context. One of my all-time favorite pieces of writing is an essay by Annie Dillard called Teaching a Stone to Talk. It’s about a man who works each morning to train a palm-sized beach stone to answer back. It has nothing to do with product marketing. It’s really about humans — and how we spend our days trying to coax the meaning out of things. Which, of course, has everything to do with product marketing. Because a stone is never just a stone. A product will always present you with concrete qualities. People think Apple is good at this, but in reality Apple spends a lot of time looking in the mirror. Google is good at this. I can’t watch a GE commercial without wanting to call up my dad afterwards and talk to him about the wonders of modern life. What does this mean in action? “..Go to China, to talk to the hospital organizations to who say, we’re all about world health.
Top 50 B2B Marketing Case Studies of 2012 Give early stage employees the respect they deserve | joelandren I’ve been employee #4, #5 (twice) and employee #6 at startups. I’ve also hired people for these early roles twice as a founder. While the focus is often on startup founders, the first few hires are often make or break in a startups success. That’s why I’ve always been amazed at the lack of attention and care that founders place on how to treat early stage employees. Pay market salary This is probably the hardest for founders. Give ownership If you’re hiring the right people at the early stage they are entrepreneurial, and maybe already have founded a startup or two themselves. Be generous with equity Set aside 20% for employee distribution and give half of that to the first 10 people you bring on your team. Be open and transparent Early stage employees are taking a chance on you and the company, They can go somewhere else and get a 401K or a product roadmap that’s been baked out for two years. Early stage employees take enormous risks to join your startup. Like this: Like Loading...
Retention Strategies 4: How Three SaaS Businesses Beat Churn - I’ve always had a personal bias for storytelling. In fact, sharing founders’ stories is what originally got me into tech and startups in the first place. Marketing benefits aside, the reason we started this Retention Roundup series was to do just that: to share the stories of companies who had successfully approached the problems behind reducing customer churn and improving user retention. While I think trial and error is the best method for learning, I also believe in the power of learning from others. As you read these stories on different retention strategies, keep in mind that there are many routes to the same goal. Just as each of these companies has their own strengths and weaknesses, the trick is to find the retention strategies most suited for you. 1. Company Type B2B SaaS About the Company Bidsketch provides professional proposals as a service. The Breakdown Bidsketch’s case study shows a great example of a multi-strategy approach. a) Product b) Pricing & Business c) Marketing Takeaways
10 Trends for Startup Marketing in 2015 - Pierre Lechelle Marketing is evolving very quickly. Marketers need to evolve as well. Your competitors will and if you don’t, they’ll beat you. And you don’t want that. 2015 is going to see a lot of improvements in terms of Marketing. This article gives you the trends through which Startup Marketing is evolving. 1. Customers must be at the center of every Marketing strategy. Customer Development is excellent for testing out your idea. Although Customer Success is already being implemented by major startups, younger startups will do more and more to help their customers to be successful at their job. Startups will become even more customer-focused, doing everything in their power to satisfy them and integrating them in their strategies to develop something they actually need. 2. Many startups struggle to understand what Product Strategy is. Product Strategy is becoming increasingly important. In the future, Product Strategy will become even more vital as a competitive advantage for your company. 3. 4. 5.
The 17 emails we send to engage customers, reduce churn & increase revenue From the start of Baremetrics I’ve wanted to stay away from being a faceless company. Given we’re a B2B company, that’s relatively easy. We’re not dealing with 10,000 or 100,000 customers here, so making sure each and every customer gets some sort of interaction just makes sense. Keeping in touch with users makes for happier people and ultimately results in lower churn. But what are some ways to do that? Here’s a breakdown of all the ways we stay in touch with users, including the exact emails we send in the days, weeks and months after sign up. Onboarding We send out a series of emails in the days after a user signs up. We know that if users perform certain tasks, they’re less likely to churn, so the goal is to funnel them in that direction. It’s worth noting that we’re constantly tweaking and A/B testing these, and you should likely do the same. Day 1: Welcome (Founder) This usually gets sent within an hour or so of sign up. Subject: Welcome to Baremetrics! Hey there! Subject: Hello! P.S.
How to Start a Startup: How to Build Products Users Love What does it mean to make products that users love? What does that look like? According to Kevin Hale, founder of Wufoo and partner at Y Combinator, making products users love involves focusing the bulk of your energy on the customer. “My philosophy behind a lot of things that I teach in startups is, the best way to get to $1 billion is to focus on the values that help you get that first dollar to acquire that first user,2” Hale advises. Kevin expounded on his business philosophy during a lecture at Stanford University, which was part of YC President Sam Altman’s series on How to Start a Startup. (For more startup advice, check out our previous coverage of the How to Start a Startup series, including lectures by Altman and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, Homejoy cofounder Adora Cheung, and YC co-founder Paul Graham.) When you visit the Wufoo site, you can already tell it’s an outlier. Its childlike appearance is not the only thing that separates Wufoo from its competitors.
Shortening Your Time to WOW — Appcues In the last lesson, we covered the importance of finding your WOW moment. That moment when a user say “WOW, this is awesome” and decide that your product is a must have experience. But identifying your WOW moment is just the beginning. But what if your WOW moment is hard to find? 1. The goal of user onboarding is to get users to their WOW moment before high friction steps or distractions that will cause dropoff. A reverse funnel is when users can use a product’s core features, and thus discover its core value, before even signing up for the product. Examples of the Reverse Funnel A/B testing without a 3rd party toolkit requires companies to build their own testing framework, deploy new code every time they want to launch a test, and track the data themselves. Instead of hiding this WOW moment behind a typical SaaS signup process, Optimizely allows users to create their first A/B test (on the user’s actual website) without even providing an email address. 2. But there’s a better option.
▶ Utiliser les Product Ads de Facebook : le Guide Comment utiliser les publicités carrousel de Facebook ? Comment ajouter plusieurs photos et images à vos annonces Facebook ? La mode est aux carrousels de produits directement intégrés dans le flux d’actualité. Téléchargement gratuit :cliquez ici pour récupérer le guide de la publicité sur Internet et le guide de la publicité sur les réseaux sociaux + 10 guides pour augmenter votre trafic et trouver des clients Les Publicités Carrousel Facebook Les Carousel Ads (appelés Multi-Product Ads ou Annonces Multiproduits à leur lancement) permettent de publier jusqu’à 5 images ou 5 vidéos pointant vers une ou plusieurs pages et disposant chacune de leur titre et d’une description qui leur est propre. Les publications sont diffusées dans le Newsfeed des utilisateurs que vous ciblez sous cette forme : Les annonces multi-produits apparaissent également dans le flux d’actualité de l’utilisateur sur l’application mobile de Facebook. Créer une annonce carrousel 1. 2. 1. 3. 4. 1. 3.
Common B2B Customer Objections & How to Respond Objections are a gift. It’s the customer telling you something that will help you sell to them. -Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft Buyer objections are a natural part of the sales process. Every member of your sales team should know the common objections in your market and how to respond to each of them. It will prepare them to best respond to customer objections will cut sales call time, make your reps more confident on the phone, and help close more deals. It is your job to provide them with a guide to common customer objections! Before we get into some common B2B objections, a few tips for when you hold sales training sessions on customer objections. Top tips Don’t think of customer objections as scary rejections. Every prospect, no matter their level of interest, is going to have concerns that need quelling. Let’s get started. Objections early in the sales process Objection: No need. How to respond: Objection: Lack of authority. Objection: They’ve never heard of you before. Objection: Budget.
The Key To Eliminating Objections and Increasing Sales by Charlie Cook, Marketing Coach - In Mind Communications, LLC. You’re in a meeting with a promising prospect. You review the project and the services you provide and then, just when you’re hoping to get the okay, the prospect raises an objection. They may tell you: I haven"t got the time right now. Has this ever happened to you? Prospects give objections like these when they still have a question about your company and the value of your services. If they tell you they’re looking for a largër firm, what they are really asking is, "Can your firm do the job?" When a prospect tells you your product or services cost too much, what they are really asking is, "Are the benefits worth the money? When a prospect tells you, "I already have a supplier," what they are really asking is, "How do I know I can trust you to provide the services?" Prospects raise objections because they have quëstions about your company’s credibility, the solution your product or service provides and its value.
Visual guide to selling software as a service by @prezly How to Get a Sales Job at a Hot Tech Company in 19 Days Good news, I figured out how to get a sales job in 19 days. That means you’re about to learn how too. 3 years ago, I set a personal career goal. I wanted to do sales at a hot tech company. It’s particularly gratifying given the fact I was abruptly laid off the other day. So today, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I went from unemployed to working at a hot tech company (only 19 days later). You asked for the details. Guide on How to Get a Sales Job For best results, I recommend you do these steps in sequential order. Read them start to finish. #1: Get crazy specific I made one huge mistake during my past job hunts. Now I do the complete opposite. You Will Achieve More Desirable Results With a More Targeted Search! For me personally, I wanted to work at a hot tech company (preferably SaaS) located in San Francisco with 50-200 employees. What do you want? #2: Take my list of hot tech companies Build a list of all the possible companies that you think may be a good fit. I’m serious. - Ian