Onboarding Segmentation as Product Marketing and Customer Education
“Hey, look, I actually might want to use this for my team.”
- Person who didn’t already have team usage in mind.
Notion provides a customized onboarding experience, but also uses the moment to highlight certain features. So let’s say you’ve heard about Notion for personal productivity and are just looking for a place to get some work done. But… if you have a team, then it might be valuable to know that you can work with them in this tool.
This is a great education moment to have people understand: “Hey, I can actually use this with other people on my team and maybe get some value out of it that way.”
So I like this for a couple of reasons.
- The persona picker and the customization of onboarding.
- But also: this is a moment where you can show all of the use cases you’ve got right here for someone.
Have you seen any other best in class onboarding steps?
#productmarketing
Every Product Maketing hire should go through onboarding as a sales rep before (or concurrently with) anything else. ⬇️
You need to understand their world as it exists today before you can level it up.
What else should be on every PMM’s 30/60/90?
#productmarketing
Amazon’s packages aren’t “easy-open”.
They are “frustration-free”.
Lead with the problem, not the benefit.
#productmarketing
Launching any product without social proof is ill advised.
Giving early adopters a “backstage pass” to how the product is made, and giving them a voice in the product’s direction in exchange for a customer testimonial is a pretty big win for everyone.
The best product marketing teams need to drive three things:
- Help the product team build what sells.
- Help the sales team sell what we build.
- Help customers get the outcome we promised.
Product Marketing Fail
Just saw a product reposition themselves as:
“The all-in-one platform for businesses, Now with AI”
It may sound good in the echo chamber of your zoom meetings but this is literally meaningless to the potential customer.
It could also dismay your current customers, who might perceive that the app they love has now lost focus.
How to stop the hoarding of knowledge
Knowledge hoarding is the biggest problem in the workplace today. And it’s not always intentional on the employees part.
Building a culture of creating great documentation in the team wiki, Notion Confluence , or Tettra ( knowledge sharing ) starts at the top. If the CEO isn’t contributing and/or engaging with the knowledge the team is creating, the incentive for the leadership team to do the same is lessened. And that trickles down to the mid-level managers and individual co tributes too.
If you want to encourage a more collaborative workspace as a leader within your company, you have to lead by example and communicate that you expect your behavior to be an example.
Lead from the front. Not from behind the curtain.
Nostalgia is a powerful weapon.
It can stir emotions that change minds, sway opinions, even win elections…
Use it for good. Not evil.
Active listening
Active listening is such an important topic. I have tried to work on it and get better over time. I’m convinced it’s a skill everyone needs to get better at.
Especially in product management, where I’ve seen a lot of folks doing user research by leading the witness and looking for confirmation of what they believe.
Read this article by my friend, Pete Caputa to learn more. The article is aimed at sales folks, but applicable to everyone.
The “break-up email” in this SDR sequence is sure to at least get some replies. But I’m not sure it works as they intended.
It would be much better as the first message to get the back and forth going.
Relationships FIRST, business second.
Product-led vs. Sales-led isn’t a mutually exclusive choice. See this example from Toggl, who understands that different buyers have different needs. They signal that if you want to engage sales, you need to be considering the teams version (with 10+ seats). This page is very well executed.
Problem Marketing > Product Marketing
People don’t wake up in the morning excited to buy tools. They wake up in the morning excited to solve problems.
Sales-Led or Product-Led? Why not both?
Looking to start a @shopify eCommerce store after being out of the game for several years.
My thought is that it should serve a specific audience with curated products for multi-faceted lives, not a just be category of products.
Pros, where do you look for inventory? Do you drop ship or keep stock?
Do as I say, not as I do.
Do as I say, not as I do. 🚴 🪖 👨👩👧👦
Every day I ride my bike along the Trinity River in Fort Worth, TX.
Every day I see inevitably see a family out riding together where the child has a helmet on, but the parent(s) are riding without helmets.
What kind of message does this send for the children?
- Helmets are something that you can outgrow.
- Helmets aren’t cool.
- Helmets are good for you, but I (the parent) am too special for them.
How does this example show up in the workplace? Have you worked with people or managers that have the exact same mentality?
True leaders are out there setting the example by picking up random trash, showing up on time, being considerate of others, exhibiting the behaviors they want to see in their team.
They are wearing the helmets so their team knows what is important. They are showing true #leadership.
This is especially true in #productmarketing. There needs to be a shared vision, mission, values to keep everyone aligned, agile, and focused on building and selling the right product.
P.S. Helmets are cool.
The best reps KNOW THEIR CUSTOMERS. Those reps? Restaurant servers who bring the kid’s meals out ASAP and drop the check with the meal. How can we learn from these geniuses?
Product marketing is about giving your customers a clear story and the words to use to describe your product. How are we feeling about this clarity?
70mm
Prediction: the frontier of the web is “Identity”.
Twitter used to be a de facto standard for ones online identity.
They blew it.
The next big battle and opportunity for value creation will be how and where I am able to prove that I am who I am.
The implications are enormous.
Some good ideas here for replicating the impromptu real-time mentoring missing from distributed workforces.
Is Forcing Employees Back to the Office Wise?
