s11s

Note: We've all been doing it for 4+ years each. That's great, because we get results, have frameworks, etc. but I really don't want to get stuck learning just from our own experiments and experience.

So, ideally, I need something short, no basics, to the point, high level.

Help a B2B Writer has worked better than HARO for us. More often that not, the HARO responses we received were just fluff sent in to score backlinks. 

Moreover, Help a B2B Writer has a strong community on Twitter, thanks to the founder Elise Dopson. Look up the hashtag #hab2bw on Twitter!

And IMHO, personally reaching out to people who you know are subject matter experts / credible sources is the best way to gather valuable inputs. 

They are good on ecom, healthcare, real estate, education verticals

I haven’t organized end to end but managed the team and activities after budget was given to me. happy to help if i can

Happy to help, Forum
Reach out to Rohan from my team on The Shape of Work Slack community. He’ll share our docs, vendor contacts etc

Sounds good. Thanks a bunch <@U02V9QUDK1Q> 

I too need help! <@U02UFCPL84F> Share insights? :pray::grin:

Screenshot 2022-08-11 at 8.21.05 PM.png

Weren't planning to invite trolls anyway.

IMG_2475.jpg

am i reading this wrong? 80% convert to customer in 40 days?

Assuming this has already accounted for survivor bias, I think this would be broadly correct for a subset of SaaS companies - mostly those offering 30 day trials! I’d imagine however that strong PLG motions throw this kind of graph for a real spin.

^ <@U030SDYNX7V> it means 80% of customers who eventually convert converted within 40 days

<@U02PDC4883V>  this is missing the ACV number. This would be true for small/mid-market deals I guess. Personally I have seen most conversions happen within the 2 month mark, except enterprise ones.

it would be nice if there are similar reports based on ACV ranges

<@U02USELSBRT> fair to say survivor bias doesn matter?

<@U030SDYNX7V> survivorship bias is relevant but not useful in this case when you purposefully want to look at how many survivors are left from a given cohort.

[FREEMIUM] 1000 signups - 20 convert - 16 convert in 40 days
[30 day trial] 1000 signups - 40 convert - 32 convert in 40 days
[14 day trial] 1000 signups - 30 convert - 24 convert in 40 days

Considering this scenario - how can it be said that models are irrelevant?

<@U02PDC4883V> as a product marketer what would be your takeaway from this chart?

<@U030SDYNX7V> in order to truly understand the difference between the 3 models, you need to look at area under the 3 curves (red, purple and yellow) to understand how they truly compare. freemium has the largest area under the curve, meaning it gives the highest volume of revenue the fastest, followed by 14-day trial and the 30-day trial comes at last. But ofcourse, this doesn't count the type of product and the ACV, so I don't know, this is half data :D

Yes this is half data :see_no_evil::zipper_mouth_face:. But my takeaway is that you can use this as a starting benchmark esp in freemium products and that once the threshold is crossed (esp below 15 mn ARR) I should not be focussing on the people who have not converted by the threshold

it looks like someone chose the headine and then squeezed the data to return a chart like this

<https://t.co/6ikcPB31Wb|https://t.co/6ikcPB31Wb>

30d trial ka chart is not even intelligent anymore, people who submit in the card will get charged on the 30th day and then dunning kicks in or net D days gives the customers (allowance of X days to make the payment) and i think as per <https://www.chargebee.com/docs/2.0/net_d.html|chargebee> it can be anything between 0-180 days) and most common value is 30, thats why you get a good curve between 30 and 60

Yeah 2016 data, unfortunately. Was looking for 2022 / 2020 at the min but found this 

same for 14d trial - as the chart is not dependent on product/category, its how the subscription model works

freemium is interesting though - as that is completely driven by product and/or sales

Thanks <@U03D3N0BBEX>! Hi Richie, Please let me know if we can connect over this requirement.

Firday is here.

I would request all the interested community members to find a shameless-plus post (not posted by them originally) and share on this thread.

Why? - Because I couldn't find a post that was valuable enough to be shared on the General channel this week.

try these:
<https://www.userinterviews.com/>
<https://www.surveymonkey.com/market-research/solutions/audience-panel/>

check <https://www.cint.com/> also if the topic is niche.

<https://medium.com/@producthunt/how-loom-grew-its-user-base-after-its-product-hunt-launch-1499cd5c5e5c|Link to the article>

Detailed Insights :arrow_down:

• *Do things that don’t scale. Be rigorous about understanding why people are using your product (JTBD)*
    ◦ Founders did things that do not scale at the start to put in place the 0-1 systems that will scale -&gt; tracked everything: why people were using Loom, where they dropped off, and why they dropped off.
    ◦ They took turns on Intercom support shifts and drove relationships with their users
    ◦ Conversation with a remote Hubspot employee named Scott that gave them the revelation that remote work was a perfect use case for Loom
    ◦ Kept in touch with Scott constantly, even creating a relationship map to track growth within Scott’s team
    ◦ Team’s consistent surveying and customer feedback ultimately led Loom to pivot from the marketplace to a SaaS play
    ◦ In the early days, Shahed told PH that he was basically just begging people to use the product for free. He spent months hounding people to use it and, importantly, understand why they weren’t using it.
• *Good artists copy, great artists experiment and steal ideas* (<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjjl-LJ6bH5AhUB-TgGHWUkBFUQFnoECAIQAw&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fben-shoemate%2Fwhat-does-it-mean-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal-ee8fd85317a0&amp;usg=AOvVaw1PLd5ftOCUZtt7nZuX15hq|Steal here is not same as copying>, it is about making something your own by re-defining the concept’s execution within your own context after deeply understanding it)
    ◦ Latching onto ideas continued to help Loom reiterate and therefore increase usage.
    ◦ For example, they noticed people weren’t turning their cameras on for their recordings, they discovered that many users were self-conscious seeing themselves on video. They became obsessed with answering the question, “How do we make more people comfortable?”
    ◦ Knowing Zoom had dealt with a similar issue by adding a “touch up” feature, they had an idea and ran an experiment, one of which was ‘_leaving the mirrored state in place in the final recording too. After the switch, they saw a climb in people keeping their video camera on.’_
    ◦ They continued watching data and making adjustments to making sure people feel comfortable while using Loom continues to be deeply important for the product.
    ◦ The founders thought about other company’s growth tactics and took a cue from LinkedIn - it’s been a key growth hack for the company. Loom created anonymized notifications along the vein of “someone has viewed your video.”
    ◦ Shahed also pointed out that cherry-picking goes both ways. Study success and failures, and decide what you want to try.
    ◦ As part of our discussion about making people feel comfortable on video, Shahed noted that Loom’s experimenting with things like different backgrounds. They also recently released transcriptions, closed captions, and are building a feature that will allow you to automatically remove filler words (like “um” and “buts”) out of your Loom videos.
• *Find your lead indicator*
    ◦ Initially, the team thought that signing up to Loom and recording a video would be the “aha” moment to the product’s value. Data and feedback showed that it wasn’t. In actuality, people’s first videos were just a test to play around with what the product could do
    ◦ Consequently, they learned that it wasn’t until someone received their first view on their Loom video that users would see the value in their product and continue using it
    ◦ Understanding where the latch (stickiness) point was for people to turn from testers to regular users was key to understanding how to hack growth.


Awesome share <@U03070R3SQ7> always insightful to hear from you:bulb:

*Related:* <https://www.linkedin.com/company/useloom/|Loom>’s Flywheel explained by <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAWggK8BGRq6UgbO5lfEMCamuqNcD4uf_RE|Joe Thomas> (CEO &amp; Founder) - How Loom managed to get to 10'000'000 users without any paid advertising.

Goldmine for B2B Product-led-growth framework, how to get away from funnels, and think from loop/flywheel lens for long-term compounding growth. The video consists of:

- The very first early flywheel loop in 2016 and how it was iterated upon
- How they specifically experimented on it
- How it was attached to Outcome Metrics
- How important it is to be diligent about input metrics
- How resources were shifted during the process

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbOoikTMfyI>

CB is a vast concept/are. Which type of behaviour you’re referring to?

Demand Gen./Pipeline definitely takes a hit during holidays and that’s pretty evident.

R0512D_A (1).gif

Summary of insights :arrow_down:

-&gt; Prevailing methods of segmentation that budding managers learn in business schools and then practice in the marketing departments of good companies are actually a key reason that new product innovation has become a gamble in which the odds of winning are horrifyingly low

-&gt; To build brands that mean something to customers, you need to attach them to products that mean something to customers. They are called Purpose-branded products. Purpose-branded products that do specific jobs well command premium pricing and compete in markets that are much larger than those defined by product categories,

-&gt; Need to segment markets in ways that reflect how customers actually live their lives vs trying to find correlation (instead of causation) between product adoption &amp; demographics, behavioural, financial &amp; geographical insights

-&gt; Marketers segment their markets by type of drill and by price point; they measure market share of drills, not holes; and they benchmark the features and functions of their drill, not their hole, against those of rivals

-&gt; When marketers do this, they often solve the wrong problems, improving their products in ways that are irrelevant to their customers’ needs

-&gt; The problem is customers don’t conform their desires to match those of the average consumer in their demographic segment

-&gt; When marketers design a product to address the needs of a typical customer in a demographically defined segment, therefore, they cannot know whether any specific individual will buy the product—they can only express a likelihood of purchase in probabilistic terms

-&gt; There is a better way to think about market segmentation and new product innovation. The structure of a market, seen from the customers’ point of view, is very simple: They just need to get things done, as Ted Levitt said. When people find themselves needing to get a job done, they essentially hire products to do that job for them. The marketer’s task is therefore to understand what jobs periodically arise in customers’ lives for which they might hire products the company could make

-&gt; With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension.

*-&gt; In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.*

-&gt; Pierre Omidyar did not design eBay for the “auction psychographic.” He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a “search demographic.” The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter &amp; Gamble’s stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop.

-&gt; Why do so many marketers try to understand the consumer rather than the job? One reason may be purely historical: In some of the markets in which the tools of modern market research were formulated and tested, such as feminine hygiene or baby care, the job was so closely aligned with the customer demographic that if you understood the customer

-&gt; New growth markets are created when innovating companies design a product and position its brand on a job for which no optimal product yet exists

-&gt; Companies that historically have segmented and measured the size of their markets by product category generally find that when they instead segment by job, their market is much larger

*-&gt; This should trigger an action item on every marketer’s to-do list: Turn off the computer, get out of the office, and observe*

*-&gt; The brand of a product that is tightly associated with the job for which it is meant to be hired is a purpose brand.*

-&gt; Most of today’s (2005 article) great brands—Crest, Starbucks, Kleenex, eBay, and Kodak, to name a few—started out as just this kind of purpose brand. The product did the job, and customers talked about it. This is how brand equity is built.

-&gt; Brand equity can be destroyed when marketers don’t tie the brand to a purpose

-&gt; When they seek to build a general brand that does not signal to customers when they should and should not buy the product, marketers run the risk that people might hire their product to do a job it was not designed to do

-&gt; The need to feel a certain way—to feel macho, sassy, pampered, or prestigious—is a job that arises in many of our lives on occasion. When we find ourselves needing to do one of these jobs, we can hire a branded product whose purpose is to provide such feelings. Gucci, Absolut, Montblanc, and Virgin, for example, are purpose brands.

-&gt; In some aspirational situations, it is the brand itself, more than the functional dimensions of the product, that gets the job done.

-&gt; A mistaken belief is advertising alone can build brands. Advertising cannot build brands, but it can tell people about an existing branded product’s ability to do a job well.

-&gt; Advertising clarifies the nature of the job (Unilever Snacky Soup Case-study) and helped more people realize that they have the job to do. It informed people that there was a product designed to do that job and gave the product a name people could remember.

-&gt; The fact is that most great brands were built before their owners started advertising. Think of Disney, Harley-Davidson, eBay, and Google. Each brand developed a sterling reputation before much was spent on advertising.

-&gt; Advertising that attempts to short-circuit this process and build, as if from scratch, a brand that people will trust is a fool’s errand. Many companies have decided that building new brands is so expensive they will no longer do so. Brand building by advertising is indeed prohibitively expensive. But that’s because it’s the wrong way to build a brand.

-&gt; Executives who think that brand advertising is an effective mechanism for stuffing meaning into some word they have chosen to be their brand generally succeed in stuffing it full of vagueness

-&gt; The ad agencies and media companies win big in this game, but the companies whose brands are getting stuffed generally find themselves trapped

-&gt; The exceptions to this brand-building rule are the purpose brands for aspirational jobs, where the brand must be built through images in advertising. The method for brand building that is appropriate for these jobs, however, has been wantonly and wastefully misapplied to the rest of the world of branding

-&gt; The fact that purpose brands are job specific means that when a purpose brand is extended onto products that target different jobs, it will lose its clear meaning as a purpose brand and develop a different character instead—an _endorser brand_

_-&gt;_ Marriott adopted a two-word brand architecture that appended to the Marriott endorsement a purpose brand for each of the different jobs its new hotel chains were intended to do - the new chains actually reinforce the endorser qualities of the Marriott brand because they do the jobs well that they are hired to do.

-&gt; A clear purpose brand is usually a more formidable competitive barrier than superior product performance—because competitors can copy performance much more easily than they can copy purpose brands. Milwaukee Electric Tool example.

-&gt; P&amp;G’s fluoristan-reinforced toothpaste made cavity-preventing fluoride treatments cheap and easy to apply at home, replacing an expensive and inconvenient trip to the dentist. P&amp;G could have positioned the new product under its existing toothpaste brand, Gleem, its managers chose instead to build a new purpose brand, Crest, which was uniquely positioned on a job

*-&gt; Crest began losing its distinctiveness as it transitioned into endorser brand. The exhibit “Extending Brands Without Destroying Them” diagram below articulates the two ways marketers can extend a purpose brand without eroding its value. The first option is to move up the vertical axis by developing different products that address a common job. This is what Sony did with its Walkman portable CD player. When Crest was still a clear purpose brand, P&amp;G could have gone this route by, say, introducing a Crest-brand fluoride mouth rinse. The brand would have retained its clarity of purpose.*

*-&gt; Focusing a product and its brand on a job creates differentiation. Car Market example.*

-&gt; Executives everywhere are charged with generating profitable growth. Rightly, they believe that brands are the vehicles for meeting their growth and profit targets. But success in brand building remains rare.

-&gt; *Marketers who choose to break with the broken past will be rewarded not only with successful brands but with profitably growing businesses as well.*

sure DM me.  I work primarily with d2c/ecommerce brands.

Their B2B targeting suite has just launched. Don't think we have enough usage to determine if it works  yet

Thanks for the update <@U02PDC6B0HH> Have you tried using Facebook otherwise for B2B? Maybe for retargeting?

I know <@U02PDC4883V> has experimented during our CT days

I have a love-hate relationship as a Marketer with FB. I will tell you why. Their segments (previously) were super interesting on the outside. But when we created segments, we got really really different results.  

I tried it for different funnel metrics and my campaigns led me to this conclusions (remember I was Targetting marketing, product and growth folks)

1. Brilliant for reach for diff formats
2. Great for brand launches 
3. Absolutely useless for MoFU
4. Less than avg for BoFU
My takeaway was - FB is used a entertainment place and people don't wanna see or hear about business. Hence the disappointment across MoFU and BoFU. 

Wrt to retargeting the metrics do get confusing. And I have rarely seen senior management buy into retargeting as a strategy ( When I say buy into, I mean buy into not all the flow but also give it substantial budget &amp; time). 

The above move is targetted at breaking the monopoly of GAds and LI in B2B - hopefully this will impact ROI metrics so B2B Marketers can add another channel to their mix. 

1. `Absolutely useless for MoFU`
2. `Less than avg for BoFU`
Curious - how can it be useless for Mofu and above avg for BoFU?

<@U02PDC4883V>

BoFU basically we got a few folks who wanted a walkthrough of t bhe Product (albeit on the lower side of ACV)

No one even interacted with MoFU assets like - how are we better, case studies etc. 

We use Facebook for many of our clients. We predominantly use Facebook as our message testing tool. 

Where we will test value props, solution based messaging and do tests to check engagements. 

Winner of the test will be used to create a landing page with the same taglines. 

Even before Fb introduce this feature I asked our clients to use clearbit or metadata to get this Firmographic or LinkedIn level layering with fb. 

If you are spending $10k+ on fb it's worth to
Spend $1k to clearbit to get the right audience 

saw this today - <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/letschbang_schbanger-story-activity-6962293012399874048-j-Zn?utm_source=linkedin_share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop_web>

Are you looking for something along these lines?

<https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6850774411432235008>

Thanks a bunch, <@U03SUBD476H> <@U02V8PH46PM> :slightly_smiling_face:

Vinoth, our CEO, posted this last year when we onboarded my man <@U036EJRS87M>  - <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vinothjohnpeter_paperflite-culturefirst-activity-6826463560269492224-207z|https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vinothjohnpeter_paperflite-culturefirst-activity-68264[…]207z>

This was a delight to read. Thank you <@U02VAPDACUQ>

image.png

Our new hire posts at Builder are very basic compared to above great examples :smile: I think this might be because of the scale, 5-10 hire per week and social media team put these new hire posts every Friday

Some fun examples here
<https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/1522793406170238977?t=Ehb_VnMxPCxoqSV2ru_Tzg&amp;s=19|https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/1522793406170238977?t=Ehb_VnMxPCxoqSV2ru_Tzg&amp;s=19>

You can also search for posts by inFeedo and Hubilo on LinkedIn.

1. Do what you love. Find people who need the skills that you love doing. Charge people for said skills. Profit. 
2. Multiple ways. Ask your manager/HR for a mental health leave and get some sunlight. Cut down on anything you are consuming in excess. Switch diets for a day. Treat your senses to something new. 
3. Yup confused means we are thinking of different ways to solve a problem. Thanks to Google we now have a series of confusing problems that we can get answers for. 
4. Refer to 1. Get certified in as many relatable courses by authenticated vendors. 
5. Didn’t understand. Please elaborate and/or DM. 

Before sharing answers, let me highlight the elephant in the room - Marketing is a creative profession. And just by virtue of being creative, the possibilities are truly endless. That’s the terrain we’re playing in. What do you do when you’re playing in such a terrain? The same thing you do when you’re trying to make your way in a lost forest - you pick a direction that makes sense and start walking.

1. Improving your craft in any profession takes patience and perseverance. And because of the creative nature, it takes more time. But the answer is a combination of focus and time. Set time aside every week to just read marketing blogs, take up courses, explore ideas in your head. Be more present in your work - observe what you’re doing and highlight what your learning to yourself. 
2. I tell myself that if I’m overwhelmed, it means that I’m not complacent - that helps. If you’re overwhelmed because there’s a lot to learn - give time some time. If you’re constantly feeling overwhelmed many days, it means you’re being too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break. 
3. Read, read and read some more. Also podcasts!
4. Looking for this as well ;’) 
Hope this helps!

<@U03R79R6935> Never felt a question to be more relevant than this one. Glad this got featured in the s11s newsletter so I could get a chance to read it.

Digital marketing does feel overwhelming, especially when social channels like LinkedIn constantly seems to feature folks joining new job positions, getting promoted, funding news, someone upgrading and getting certified etc. Great power to all the individuals upgrading in life, but it does seem to make one feel left out on this journey that seems like a fast sprint race.

There's no perfect answer to your questions. However let me try to add some points based on my experience:

1. There are lot of great certifications, newsletters, blogs that could guide you well. My advice here would be to: Any brand you like, or relate to their content copy, following their top content folks would be a game changer into how you look at content writing.
2. Two things here that help me a lot. i) Music - I'll make a cup of tea and listen to some of my favorite playlists to calm myself down (P.S Udaan's album by Amit Trivedi is pure bliss). ii) Share your thoughts with a friend/colleague/partner when you feel overwhelmed. I know this is a very generalized advice. But it works wonders. Being understood is an underrated feeling.
3. Following a lot of things does make things difficult. But all the thought leaders, newsletters or podcasts I follow, I make it a point to go through their content only at a time I feel comfortable in. So even though I follow multiple channels, I read it only when I completely feel free and available to consume content with an open mind.
4. This still feels like a work in progress. As most of the systems I have tried, I am unable to follow due to daily work commitments. But maybe try something that appeals to you and follow it for 21 days until it becomes a habit. 
P.S Apologies for the long answer. More power, respect and mental wellness on your journey ahead :slightly_smiling_face:

You know, the best part about this response is listening to Udaan's album. I have no idea why I never thought of that before. But honestly, this is very helpful. I'll keep coming back to this, thank you. <@U02V62L966R> :slightly_smiling_face:

Founders are good folks.

I get to know from their investors' team

this is my favorite till now: <https://competitors.app/>

Thanks <@U02UFNZS7NW>, will check this out

I'd used Crayon briefly in the past - was pretty good
<https://www.crayon.co/competitive-intelligence/types-market-intelligence>
Don't know pricing etc but worth looking into

Folks! Going through a career upgrade from demand gen to product marketing where the focus is shifting FROM traffic, signups, demo requests TO MAU, upgrade requests.

Suggest a few folks from LinkedIn who talk about _*SaaS product led growth, product activation, adoption, retention*_ and relevant stuff. Looking forward to idea exchange the KPIs, best practices and guidance from their feed.

PS: Have been using resources from Heap Analytics, Intercom to understand the basics. But it's too much of data to consume and finding it hard to relate. Would be really helpful if you can share the LinkedIn URL of relevant folks.

Different brands have different perspective wrt ORM, some want to focus on Social Engagement while some want to focus on back end resolution. Whats your priority?

Any sales reps or account executives here? I'm doing a survey on tech stacks used across different stages and would love your input

Very unsure how I feel about being featured there :eyes::see_no_evil:

I didn’t get the email :sob: Not even in my spam/promotions. <@U02TTEFFU6B> 

Omg, I was featured 🥹 

Love the format. It's like a mini guide to everything.

Started my Monday morning by reading the newsletter. Kudos <@U02TTEFFU6B> &amp; team s11s :fire:

Neat one <@U02TTEFFU6B> suggestion: can the snippets be hyperlinked so that we can catch to the threads from newsletter? not sure if too many images + links impacts deliverability