The Overview #58
Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You’ll find interesting thoughts, articles, and more from around the internet.
In this post:
LaunchAwesome AMA
On July 19th, Alicia and I will be joining the LaunchAwesome community for a special AMA, talking about how we turned a failed product launch around.
Struggling to hire PMMs? Look for customer-focused copywriters
Grace makes a great point: conversion copywriters might just be product marketers in disguise. It’s getting harder to hire talented product marketers, and one of my tips is definitely to look to adjacent roles with a lot of crossover in the basics: customer insight.
Don’t forget about the intended outcome
Something I learnt at advertising school that’s stuck with me ever since: marketing exists to change customer behaviour.
Too often features are shipped just because someone thinks it’s a good idea, without caring if it solves customer problems. Too much of this wastes your time and energy, alienates your customers, and leads to inertia.
Strategy isn’t a deliverable
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is one of my top recommended product marketing books because so few people understand what strategy actually is.
Strategy should be a living, breathing set of principles that set how you’ll move forward. These are determined from a good diagnosis of the current situation, and coupled together with a set of tactics that show how you’ll put principles into action.
How you communicate that strategy is easier – but it’s difficult to share an example of ‘strategy’ without going into detail on the situation, the problems, the solution, the outcomes that were experienced. So we learn and mimic strategy documents, without realising that we’re only seeing the last 20% of the story.
Swipe File: “What I’d tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years.”
???? When you become a free Building Momentum subscriber, you get access to my exclusive product marketing swipe file! Click here to find out more.
This blog post by a startup engineer is worth reading.
My favorite tips and insights from it:
- It’s really easy to kid yourself that you’re “doing customer development” when actually you’re finding ways to make what your customers are saying fit with what you want to build
- Get good at saying no to things, from people asking you for discounts to interesting projects you really don’t have enough time for
- Only say you’re going to introduce someone or send them something if you’re actually going to do it. People quickly get a reputation for never following through
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