2-min Technical Product Marketing: SavvyCal, Raycast, Snapchat, and Instagram.
March 2025, Part 2 release
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Lean on your core product features, spotlight your key messaging, and amplify your customer relations anytime there's a competitor fiasco.
Snapchat chose not to "gloat publicly" while Facebook faced privacy backlash. Instead, they launched Snap Kit for developers to integrate Snapchat features without exposing sensitive information, highlighted their company value of privacy-first again, and let their CEO talk publicly about their strict data protection policies.
[2] For crowded markets: Consider buying out the remaining contract value of promising prospects to steal them away from the category leader.
SavvyCal is an alternative to Calendly and operates in the hyper-competitive meeting scheduling category. They make it easy for prospects to switch by removing the financial risk by buying out their annual Calendly subscription.
[3] For platforms: Enlist your users to create and share extensions for your platform to let your community drive organic growth.
Raycast is a Mac app that lets you access and use various tools and commands with keyboard shortcuts. Their app store allows users to publish extensions to let the community members pick from user-built solutions that fit their workflows.
[4] Create a feature importance matrix to find 'high value, easy to understand' features and shape your user's journey within the app.
Plot the features on a quadrant with 'ease of understanding' (on the x-axis) vs. 'core value delivery' (on the y-axis). Instagram uses its 'high value, easy to understand' features to speed up new user onboarding before tackling new content types (ex: reels, shopping) later in the discovery phase (re: explore tab).
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“Just Enough Research: 2024 Edition” by Erika Hall
[1] Simplify any competitive research by asking these 3 questions - (i) User Question: "What matters to our customers?" (ii) Product Question: "How are we better at serving that need than any competitor?" (iii) Marketing Question: "How can we show our target customers that our product is the superior choice?"
[2] Nielsen Norman Group's definition of usability uses 5 components - "(i) Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they come across the design? (ii) Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks? (iii) Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency? (iv) Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are the errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors? (v) Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?"
[3] User research is an extension of ethnography. The fundamental question of ethnography is, "What do people do, and why do they do it?" You only have to add one other question for user research - "What are the implications for the success of what I'm designing?"
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] Start Making Sense: The zero marketing speak way to win over developers - My latest essay for the Product Marketing Alliance (PMA)
[2] The Magic of Marketplaces:Understanding the Lessons of Buying and Selling in an AI World
[3] How To Rest and Recharge In The Tech Industry
[4] The Looking Class: Our Souls Need Proof of Work
[5] Problem Driven Development: Hey bud, what's the problem here?