Everything is community and utility
I’m not giving anyone advice on creating a product. There are tons of people out there who are very excellent at product design and development.
All you’ll hear from me is what to do once you have a product. It doesn’t need to be fully formed — I’ve worked with enough v0.1s to know how to handle them.
There are only two things you need to remember when marketing marketing your product:
- Community
- Utility
Community: giving and getting from customers and users
The law of reciprocity means whenever you offer value to someone, they’ll feel obligated to return the favour. It’s the human condition; how we’re wired.
And so while I want to appeal to the better angels of your nature and say be humble and benevolent when it comes to your customers, in business and our capitalist society, your gestures — unless guided by the ghost of Mother Teresa — will always be about bottom line ambitions.
With the added advantage it’s a heck of a lot easier convincing your CFO to fling more kindness at your customer acquisition and retention strategy when everything you’re doing is to help them get a bigger bonus.
We’ve talked extensively at Winning Customers about doing all the discovery work to know your customer, competition, and compelling proposition.
Today it’s all about sweating your most valuable asset — the customer.
Your job is to be more than what your customer expects from you.
The more equity in the relationship, the easier it’s going to be getting the social proof you need to soar.
There are tons of ways to generate validation for your products, service, and customer commitment.
I’ve yammered on about this before — but I will always think that a carefully crafted case study is the most intoxicating weapon in your marketing arsenal.
Writing a case study is art and science. It starts by knowing what prospects and customers need.
Often it boils down to a reticence to make their first, or a repeated, investment in your product.
That nervousness will commonly be about:
- Compatibility — I need to know it interfaces beautifully with my existing processes, and the efficiency it offers won’t be eroded by the time it takes to integrate this product into my business
- Function — I need to know the product is precisely what my people tell me they need
- Support — I need to know that no matter what the problem, and no matter when it arises, I’ll have a team on hand to resolve it; and I want to know that aftersales includes a suite of tricks, tips, tactics, and techniques to maximise the product’s effectiveness
- Value — money’s tight. I need to know this is more than going to pay for itself in lots of different ways; I actually expect to be surprised by how many times this product pays for itself.
Case studies are the tip of a very long social proof spear, though. Other ways to generate value from your customer relationships include:
- Reviews, showcasing satisfaction and success. 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Etsy displays reviews and star ratings prominently in product listings and reports five star reviews sell almost twice as fast as their four star cousins.
- Expert endorsements and influencer partnerships. Thought leadership increases conversion rates by up to 5X, according to Hubspot.
- Social media posts and videos. UGC receives 4X more clicks and 2X more conversions than anything you’ve created. Airbnb asks guests to share photos of their stays, which help generate twice as many bookings as those locations using only host-provided photos.
Utility:
Properly inspired by cleaning product company Grove Collaborative and its blog showing you how to keep everything sparkling.
Allbirds has, with its Meet The Wool Runners campaign, succinctly captured the essence not only of what makes their trainers unique — but why you should buy them.
Thrive Market makes for an irresistible proposition. A ton of customer research has resulted in a homepage that’s precisely what its target audience needs to be reminded this is where their people shop — and there’s no other place worthy of their dollar.
Talking food — HelloFresh conducts in-depth market research to identify customer needs around healthy, home-cooked meals. The company crafts messaging centred on convenience, variety, and family appeal: all the benefits.
How could you argue with Superhuman?
Imagine if you could steal back 10% of your working week by switching your email app.
It’s a big promise. And one that, time and again, is validated by customers (see Community, and social proof).
