This is how Slack went from 0 to $1B without having a chief marketing officer
The story of how Slack after just eight months become a unicorn by listening to customers without a CMO or any big marketing budget.
Vancouver, Canada.
Stewart already is a famous entrepreneur because of his contribution to building Flickr.
He decided to build a game.
Stewart invites Cal, Flickr’s chief software architect, and Flickr employees Eric and Serguei.
They kickstarted Glitch.
His team used Internet Relay Chat to communicate.
This way they (for a while) cope with the challenges of teamwork across multiple time zones.
It didn’t take long for Stewart and his team to realize Internet Relay Chat wasn’t up to the task.
They needed something better.
Stewart decided to start building their own communications tool.
They started working on the app at the end of 2012.
Stewart said,
We started inviting teams in batches and watched what happened. Then we made some changes, watched what happened, made some more changes…
By May of 2013, Slack was preparing for extraordinary growth.
And after just 8 months, they hit $1B valuations.
BOOM!
Without a CMO. Without any big marketing campaign.
From the get-go, Slack leverages the help ticket system as an opportunity to solidify loyalty.
Listening to customers, then building accordingly, is in the DNA of Slack.
Every customer's touchpoint is a marketing opportunity.
Don’t guess.
Don’t build stuff for a fictional customer in your head.
“Make Something People Want”
Marketing isn’t yelling. Great marketing is listening.
This is how you can get started:
- Implement a survey when people want to leave your website, and ask, “What things stopping you to “here write your desired action” now?
- Try block 30 minutes every week to talk with your loyal/ideal customers
- Find out with user research (or your sales and customer support team) what is the most frequent questions people ask and answer them earlier in the buyer journey
- You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to roll out a good thing and then based on people’s feedback improve it.
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