Fomenting Producer Evangelism

When setting out to build a product dubbed as a “Platform” or a“Marketplace”, there is always the problem of the chicken and the egg. The market forces that attract both sides of a market — consumers, and producers, are so compelling that traditional businesses are throwing vast amounts of resources to establish themselves as an intermediary between both sides and extract value this way.

Where to start?

In this post, I’ll focus on the producer side. A producer, in this case, is someone that is generating value. It can be from offering a physical product like an apple to a service that is completely ethereal. At ShareHouse where I work as a product manager, we are building a marketplace where producers a.k.a Warehouse Owners, provide a service — storing goods in their warehouse. Many people are constantly looking for space to store their stuff, so a place online where you can easily find one right away is our product’s vision.

So how do we get producers to spread the word?

Three words: positive feedback loops.

Producers have to feel good enough with the product, in order for them to advocate their own customers and other Warehouse Owners to join them on this new platform, and so on. This is what Sangeet Paul Choudary and his colleagues call Producer Evangelism.

The “producer evangelism strategy” involves designing a platform to attract producers who can then persuade their customers to become users of the platform. Crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter thrive in this regard by targeting creators who need funding with the infrastructure to host content about their idea and manage the fundraising campaign.
Read more about other strategies

In our case, we are just getting started and a lot of hypotheses have to be tested before dishing out any recommendations but here are some ways we are fomenting this strategy in the warehousing and logistics industry and forging positive feedback loops:

1. Tailored profiles — for producers that want to display their best qualities i.e. certifications, necessary equipment to carry out any heavy lifting or details about their buildings this is where they start.
2. Open negotiation — it wouldn’t be a proper market if you were not able to negotiate a sweeter deal on the spot. We created an order ping-pong area before the order is completed where both sides can talk directly and add, subtract or modify any value-added service or a discount based on volume and/or contract duration.
3. Broader diffusion — usually getting noticed when you’re business is smaller or remotely located is a futile marketing exercise. Even though we are working within a niche (warehousing & value-added services), our growing network makes it virtually free for producers to gain exposure and offer their business to interested parties.
4. New revenue stream — a platform is a great way to expand horizons and having clients that come straight to you after cutting through the noise of the world wide web is tapping into a new source of income.

Last thought

Going back to the first terms “fomenting” and “evangelism” — both might be a little over-the-top or carry a negative connotation as according to the dictionary one usually foments a rebellion or discord, and evangelism is to preach the gospel with a missionary zeal.

So as much as anyone would want to encourage a whole side of a market to advocate your product with the same conviction as Hernan Cortes advocated Christianity to the Aztec empire, well… it could get out of hand quickly.

Nevertheless, that is what we are striving to.

I am very interested in finding out how others — especially other product managers, implement this or any other strategy in the link above from Prof. Choudary to build a marketplace online. Leave a comment or send a tweet.