Rudyard Hopkins

A Secret Hidden Indicator to Product Launch Success... At this point if you have been around long enough you have a pretty solid idea of best practices when it comes to product launches. The bad news is that so does everyone else. These factors include: 1) High search volume 2) Low competition per unit of search volume 3) Segment revenue growth 4) Strong reviews out of the gate 5) Solid SEO 6) Etc... After countless launches there has always been one thing that stood out to me in hindsight and that is aggregate search volume. What is aggregate search volume? Aggregate search volume is how much total search there is across all tight product type keyword touchpoints. Essentially it is better to have 100 tight product type keywords that add up to 50k in search volume than it is to have 5 that add up to 75k. The more relevant targets there are, the more opportunity there is for a new product to penetrate the market on long tail terms that share a semantic core (root keyword). Its a warzone on well defined high search keywords. Experts like to tell you that you can top of search bid your way out of it but you cant. Top of niche brands can because they have a higher CVR, win placements at prime times of the day, etc. They have advantages that the underdogs don't. The good news is that if you can identify a lot of search that contains high search keyword fragments, you can still incrementally rank in those places and eventually win better placements at lower CPCs. Long story short - If you are doing product research pay close attention to aggregate search volume and beware of niches with few high search keywords even if there is a lot of money there.

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Reddit is a goldmine for feedback loops. 1. Find communities related to your product. 2. Engage with potential users. 3. Listen to their pain points. Improve your solution with it.

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PSA: you should ask AI tools about your brand and search what you think your ICPs would ask. What information comes up and is it accurate?

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“Most SMS I assume is a scam. Why would I click some link to a promotion or coupon?” This was a concern I poised to Ryan O'Hara and Jeremy Boudinet in a workshop we were running around creative and omnichannel marketing campaigns for PetCo. They talked about doing three things… 1) Have appropriate timing. If you send a text on someone’s birthday, or a specific date tied to your relationship with the customer, it’s more legit 2) Personal details help. If you note something personalized in the SMS to the customer that isn’t public, that is more trustworthy 3) Consent matters. Asking customers upfront if they want to receive coupons or promotions via SMS will set the expectation. Nuance matters for effective execution. Telling someone to run an “upgrade to annual” email campaign isn’t very helpful. What would the subject line be? When should I send it? Who should I send it to? What if the customer has 3 open support tickets and is pissed off? Nuance matters for effective execution. Telling someone to run a holiday promotion campaign isn’t very helpful. Who should be included? Will recent customers be pissed if they get a promo for cheaper than what they are paying? What is the subject line? When do the coupons expire? How many touch points? What tone is effective at standing out from the million other holiday promos they will get? Nuance matters for effective execution. Telling someone to send a personal letter to customers because “human matters” isn’t very helpful. What customers and when? Is the messaging generic or actually personalized? Who does it apply to, because I imagine what might work great for a real estate agent would be really weird for a toilet paper company. As we give advice and try to help guide folks through growth strategies, it is vital to include nuance if you actually want to help people get to a result. If you do, you immediately will gain trust with your audience.

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Over the last 12 months, one clear throughline has emerged as Patrick Thompson, Ondrej Hrebicek and the whole team at Clarify has been building: 👉 It's never been easier to solve GTM problems with tools ... if you can figure out which tools to use and how. The expansion of tools is both powerful and debilitating. I sat down recently with Pranav Piyush to talk about the tooling landscape, tips and tricks to building a good stack, a framework for thinking about stack flexibility, and how to structure your team to get the most out of your tools over time. Jump into the podcast and blog to get it all. There were so many topics that we DIDN'T get to cover, including attribution, MMM, incrementality and probabilistic modeling -- core technical marketing outputs that rely on a world class, high fidelity GTM stack. Excited to be partnering with Pranav Piyush and Paramark.com to build a next generation CRM and a next generation set of marketing models to help GTM teams win 🔥 If you're excited about this stuff, drop us a line below or shoot us a DM!

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Voistory is live on Product Hunt! Your conversational voice journal that turns reflections into something truly meaningful. Why Voistory stands out: Just talk: It listens, then delivers a private summary and image. Easy reflection: Capture insights on health, gratitude, relationships, and more. No writing needed: Journaling now feels natural and effortless. Curious to see it in action? Join us on Product Hunt and share your thoughts! 🙌 We would greatly appreciate it if you could take a look and share your feedback. https://lnkd.in/gAN97Kz7

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📣 PSA to all HubSpot users. It's May 2024 and time to stop jamming your lifecycle stage values inside of the lead status field (and vice versa). They are not the same thing. It's like making a field called "contact info" and using it to store phone numbers and email addresses together. Lifecycle stages should describe every contact in your CRM. And HS has a bunch of built-in tracking and automation to make this field very powerful. Lead statuses only describe how pre-deal sales outreach is going. Use this field to signal to sales that they should reach out, and sales can tell you how outreach went. If sales opens up a deal on a contact, track subsequent activity at the deal level and stop using the lead staus field (but do continue using the Lifecycle Stage field). Or better yet, use the new Lead object from HS and things are even easier. 😖 "But we use Salesforce and have to do it like this" Lifecycle stages and lead statuses aside: If you're using Salesforce and HubSpot together, you are hobbling your business and destroying your ability to align sales and marketing. I know the sales team insisted on using SFDC, but this little exercise is guaranteed to have a very high TCO because someone is always making little edits in one system and not the other. So the integration is always broken, causing headaches for your team and keeping them from making you money. (I dare you to go check how many sync errors you have right now.) 😕 "But we don't like the default lifecycle stages" No problem. HubSpot allows for custom lifecycle stages, so you can go SAL, SRL, MAL, MSL, and FML to your heart's content. And you can keep your lead statuses separate. ❌ "But HubSpot set some lifecycle stages automatically once and ruined everything, so we need to build our own frankenstatus field to capture what we need" If you don't want contacts to become Opportunity lifecycle stages when they are associated with deals, there is a setting--turn it off. If you don't like contacts to adopt their company's lifecycle stage, there is a setting--turn it off. If you don't want contacts to become Customer lifecycle stage when their associated deals move into closed/won stages, there is a setting--turn it off. How have you uncrossed the streams and separated Lifecycle Stages and Lead Statuses back into intelligible, separate fields?

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Any other consultants out there getting tired of telling HubSpot clients that an expected function is paywalled behind expensive upgrades? Need more than 100 custom reports? Paywall Automated sequence enrollment? Paywall Want to set permissions on an integral operational field? LOL Hubspot can be great! But costs are increasing with every feature they add. If you're ponying up the money for the Hubspot Enterprise suite of products, you really need to do some shopping to decide if it can meet your needs and if it's worth the cost. I've seen a plethora of 'HubSpot is better than outdated Marketo' posts recently. Just a reminder that HubSpot partnerships can be very lucrative, especially with costs going up. Treat any one dimensional pro-platform posting as what it is - a sales pitch.

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You have been lied to... There is nothing called product positioning. This is my reason. Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect. So it’s incorrect to call the concept “product positioning.” You’re not really doing something to the product itself. You are doing it to your clients. If you understand this you can easily win.

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YOU ARE THE PRODUCT! 🌟 Spotlight on LeRon Grier: Product Innovation, Product Marketing, and Strategy Consultant 🌟 Over the years, the remarkable LeRon McKendrick Grier has mastered a key truth in product marketing: how a product is packaged often determines whether it gets purchased. Imagine two identical products sitting on a shelf—same contents, same quality—but one package has a dent. More often than not, consumers will reach for the pristine package because presentation matters. LeRon has applied this lesson to her consulting career. She understands that no matter how great the product is, it must be packaged in a way that attracts and engages the consumer. And now, she’s turning that insight inward. ✨ Today, LeRon is the product. ✨ As she redefines and repackages her personal brand, we’re working to present her as the innovative, strategic consultant she is. Just like any product on the shelf, her brand packaging will influence how she’s perceived—and, ultimately, how she sells. Take a second to see how this proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sets off her new brand by packaging her brand to sell! #ProductMarketing #Consulting #Strategy #PersonalBranding #youareaBRAND Direct message or click the link in my bio for more information on how to build your brand on LinkedIn.

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Don't get it twisted — messaging and copy are not interchangeable. In fact, treating them as such could be damaging. I recently heard a product marketing podcast make this mistake. Their advice? Create website copy first, then transfer it to a messaging document. The logic: Ensure your messaging is concise enough to work on key assets. It's a tempting idea. But it's fundamentally flawed. Messaging is the essence of what you want to say about your brand or product. It's the foundational context you need to align your entire company. A messaging document isn't just a place to write pithy, punchy words. It's a framework to help others understand your brand's most important talking points - and how to discuss them authentically. Copy, on the other hand, is the translation of that messaging for specific conversion-focused channels. It takes the essence and adapts it to engage your audience. In other words, messaging defines what you should say. Copy defines how you'll say it. Does your messaging document need to be perfect? Absolutely not. It's a starting recipe that can be tweaked and adjusted for different media and formats. The key is preserving that essential context. Mixing messaging and copy too early robs you of that important foundation. So please, stop equating the two. Messaging and copy serve different purposes — and you need both to build a cohesive, compelling brand. After all, the most effective communication doesn't just sound good. It also feels authentic, relevant, and actionable.

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Hey #HubSpot folks! I'll be at INBOUND next week and eager to connect with those who use both HubSpot and Salesforce. I’d love to hear your feedback on the integration between the two platforms—what’s working, what’s not, and what could be improved? I'm happy to provide some gift cards (the types that aren't "maybe I can buy half a coffee") in exchange for real-world feedback. #inbound #inbound24

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Do this if you don't have a community Start with communities talking about your product. If there are none, start with ones talking about your competitors. Get in there and listen to the: • Use Cases • Common Complaints • Product Feature Wish Lists • Alternative Solutions • Jerry-Rigged Work Arounds • Other Communities Referenced This will give you all the customer intelligence you ever need, after that, start surveying, interviewing and building a community of your customers.

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HubSpot CRM is becoming HIPAA compliant (see below)! Here's what you need to know: - Public beta launched June 4 - Available to HubSpot Enterprise customers - Turn on HIPAA-specific sensitive data settings in Settings > Privacy & Consent - Store protected health information (PHI) covered under HIPAA in HubSpot’s Smart CRM - The HubSpot BAA is included by reference in the Sensitive Data Terms in your account - Ask a Solutions Partner (like us) or HubSpot if you'd like access to the public beta This is big news and something we've been asking #HubSpot about for years. 👉 This solves for #heathcare companies that use HubSpot for marketing but have to use other CRMs or EMRs to store data. This new feature will help reduce integration and software costs.

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Latitude Park has perfected the approach, so you don't have to. To revolutionize your website design for conversions, we focus on user-centric designs that drive customer actions. 💡 Here are some ways we do just that: 1. Prioritize easy navigation. 2. Use clear calls-to-action. 3. Optimize for mobile. Share your experiences or connect with us on social media: @LatitudePark #WebDesign #Conversions #DigitalMarketing #SEO #DigitalAds #FacebookAds #InstagramAds #FranchiseMarketing

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B2B marketers when buyers ask what qualifies their software to be called "world-leading," "AI-powered," or "most-loved." ...Listen, I'm all for swinging for the aspirational fences in our copy. But I appreciate it more when there's a clear reason, narrative, fact, stat, or award to back up a claim. (And you probably should, too.)

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🚀 Big shoutout to our Director of SEO, Max Desiak, for his outstanding work! (as usual) A VC we're working with just sent this sweet note over. As part of our website redesign process we delivered a custom SEO strategy that had actionable insights they could apply immediately (no need to wait for a new site) - specifically content optimizations to dominate AI-related keywords they were targeting. Within 2 weeks of following our recommendations they hit their goal 🎯 hmu if you've been struggling to dominate any competitive keywords in organic search. 💪

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With the rise of generative AI, producing mediocre content at scale has never been easier. I'm an optimist, so I think this is a good thing for creators. ...because YOUR experience and perspective are more important than ever. I'm hopeful that this will usher in a new era of content: Topic-driven content > keyword-driven content. Specific, focused content > comprehensive guides. Fresh, novel insights > regurgitating what everyone else already said.

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