🏁 2-min PMM Insights: Canva's freemium, UserTesting's CAB, HashiCorp's journeys, Sentry's PLG motion
May 2023, Part 1 Release
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Choose the freemium model if you're in a big market with many competitors and solve a niche pain point.
Canva adopted the freemium model to quickly scale its customer base while keeping acquisition costs low. Solving a niche problem with a simpler product at a lower cost helped in the company's disruptive growth strategy.
[2] Reduce the number of product roadmap guesses by setting up a cross-functional customer advisory board (CAB).
According to UserTesting, >50% of product teams frequently guess their product-related decisions. The CPO of the company suggests a cross-functional CAB to reduce the likeliness of rework.
[3] Improve product experience by creating distinct paths for the digital journeys of your practitioner and decision-maker personas.
Per HashiCorp's CEO, you want to separate the practitioner's digital journey from the decision-maker. The former should optimize for 'discover & learn' and later 'use & advocate,' while the latter is a 'why try?' buyer journey.
[4] Deploy the outbound playbook in a PLG model after verifying product-market fit through inbound efforts until at least $10M in ARR.
Sentry's CRO suggests outbound efforts - specifically identifying customers to proactively go after - concurrent to the typical inbound motion in PLG. The only caveat is to prove product-market fit by first scaling to $10M in ARR without a salesperson.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
[1] Discover your ideal customer groups by analyzing your customers across three areas - profitability, desirability, and the typical length of the sales cycle, i.e., How long is their journey? How long does it take to close?
[2] Understand the trigger events for purchase by asking the 'Why Now?' question - Why did your prospect take action now, not a year ago or a year from now? What was the specific moment in time forcing them to take action?
[3] Unpack the world through the lens of your persona as they search for a solution - What are they seeing? What are they hearing? What are they doing?
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead
[2] On GenML, Artifacts, and Product Management
[3] The Cost of Craft - Why is it hard to do great work at scale?
[4] How to Write Actionable User Research Summaries
[5] How I Use the Decision Stack in Product Leadership Coaching Sessions