The Overview #87
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:
It’s all about momentum
Duh… why do you think this newsletter is called Building Momentum?
Momentum is that vibe where things are getting easier, faster, better. You’ve gone from slipping and sliding all over the place, to now feeling confident in what’s happening. You’re climbing the rollercoaster, the clack-clack-clack of being pulled up the slope to start the ride.
P.S. Simon is CEO of Plain, a customer support platform for developer tools and they’re hiring a Founding Product Marketer (£65k-95k + share options, remote within GMT +/-2).
Where to drive impact
This image, in a tweet from @round, fascinated me.
At the bottom are the most impactful, deep opportunities to have leverage and drive impact – the paradigm and goals of a system. Interestingly, the power to transcend paradigms is number 1 – akin to escaping an existing category, and building your own. These are conceptual.
Moving up, you have the makeup of of the system – rules of engagement, and how it works. These are things that can be designed and mapped out, optimized.
Then feedback loops – the inputs, and how quickly the system can adapt to change. These help optimize the system, tweaking here and there.
Finally, the least impactful leverage points are the deliverables themselves, and very shallow optimizations to tinker, here-and-there.
Why is this systems-thinking diagram in a product marketing newsletter?
Because there are some interesting ideas here on how to have the most impact – as an individual, and as a product marketing function. Help define what the system should achieve. Design the system. Contribute to feedback loops for optimization. And then deliver targeted support as necessary.
Measuring product marketing
This comes up time and time again, so I thought I’d reshare my previous post on measuring product marketing – along with this tweet.
As product marketers, we don’t align with metrics we solely impact. So we should:
- Pick a north star metric that we have significant impact over
- For example, at previous businesses I’ve aligned PMM to ‘net new MRR growth’ – whether we are consistently improving new business attraction and conversion – because we had most control over that experience
- Measure the impact of specific projects on target metrics
- Whether it’s measuring the impact of PMM work on revenue from a particular customer segment, sales funnel stage conversion rates, or reducing churn, finding numbers to champion can help celebrate achievements with quantitative results
- Avoid ship-goals and tracking deliverables
- It just drives low impact busywork
Case study formats
I love this format from Mutiny – case studies as playbooks, showcasing the results – but also walking through the lessons learnt and the gotchas. One to steal.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought – find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
P.S. If you’ve found value in Building Momentum, could you buy me a coffee? Here’s my tip jar – any support is gratefully appreciated!
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