Okerosi Davis’ Post

In the product space, its become evident to me that nothing is cast on stone. While am working on Lattice's multi-product as a strategy deep dive, am also reminded of Keith Rudin. Having worked across Google, Facebook, Salesforce and the major tech giants out here, Keith shared his home-grown ARIA Framework to building features. One key nugget that sticks out for me, and I quote: ' you can drive significantly more growth by focusing on getting users to engage more with your existing key features and user flows' This led to the development of the framework and its initials mean the following: A - analyse all the main features driving growth. R -reduce the friction associated with using the features I - Introduce, more like reintroduce the features to create more awareness and encourage usage. A - Assist users in making most of the features. p.s: Get proven product marketing In tomorrow's Product In Reverse, am writing about Lattice. Link in the comments.

I got my ŌURA ring last weekend and I was so thrilled! Here’s a fun story about the intersection of product marketing and CX. A few seconds after opening the delivery, I put the Oura ring on the charger and it immediately got stuck. Like, STUCK stuck. This thing is not coming off the charger. A quick google search led me to find this is fairly a common problem, so I emailed support for help. FIVE DAYS LATER, I got this official reply. “Try using a knife”. Try using a knife to unstick a $500 piece of tech! And this is no fault of their support team- this is clearly a place they have zero empowerment to be more proactive or helpful. If you google “Oura ring stuck on charger” you’ll see as many reports of this as I did, which means their product, marketing, and support teams know this is an issue. So why isn’t there documentation about this issue? Why isn’t there process to resolve these issues? Why are they still selling a $500 ring that you need A KNIFE to use?! Here’s what we learn from this experience: - If you know your product has an issue- regardless of scale or impact- acknowledge it quickly. Make it clear you’re aware, working on a solution, and happy to help fix the issue. - Your CX team knows what customers are complaining about. USE! THEIR! KNOWLEDGE! Get your product team in the room with them to hash out problems and solutions often. - Marketers: search your company name on Reddit A LOT. You’ll find way more insight from customers posting their experiences publicly than you will ever get from a formal survey. - Humanize your support and give permission for better replies. When things go wrong, they go wrong for everyone, so extend the language and tone you would want to receive. - Mistakes happen, problems are a fixed constant with any product. Go into your product development expecting this. Prepare better replies for it well in advance, with the hope you don’t have to use them. - Don’t tell customers to use knives to fix the problems you shipped.

🤝 Product vs Marketing: Common Source of Friction One of the classic challenges in early-stage (all stages, perhaps) SaaS companies is the dynamic between Product and Marketing. Product operates in sprints, constantly delivering new features and updates. Marketing, on the other hand, has a lead time—time to craft the narrative, create the buzz, and generate interest around these features. And here lies the friction: While Product is focused on shipping value fast, Marketing needs a moment to catch up, strategize, and communicate effectively. Now, this raises an interesting question: Should we solve this friction or embrace it? Two schools of thought: 1. Solve the Silos: Break down the barriers—integrate marketing more tightly with the product team. Some companies even create a "marketing within product" function to ensure every release gets consistent outward-focused communication. 2. Friction as a Feature (not a bug): Maybe this friction isn’t a problem to solve. Instead, it’s a feature. Not every new launch needs the spotlight. The natural delay allows time to evaluate if the feature works, gather initial feedback, and refine the messaging for maximum impact when it’s finally shared. So, do we smooth out this tension or let it play its part? I’d love to hear your thoughts. How does your team balance the need for product speed with the need to ensure more thought-through comms in marketing? #ProductMarketing #Silos

As all Product Marketers know, we have to be able to change direction at the drop of hat 🎩 I find one of the best ways to enable this is to use a "pivot" approach. This means that you're constantly testing and iterating on your messaging, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. If something isn't working, don't be afraid to change it. The best product marketers are those who are willing to experiment and try new things. Here are a few tips for using a pivot approach: 🏁 Set clear goals. What do you want to achieve with your product marketing? Once you know your goals, you can start to track your progress and make adjustments as needed. It's easy to get off track as a PMM, we are juggling so many different topics. Set your goals, keep them insight at all times and you'll always head towards success. 🔢 Use data to your advantage. Track your results carefully and use data to inform your decisions. I am a data person, but you need to be able to see past the data and understand the insights and the why. 😢 Don't be afraid to fail. Sometimes the best way to learn is to make mistakes. So, don't be afraid to experiment and try new things. A/B testing that new messaging and finding out it performs worse than the original is always a scary moment, but take it as a learning moment and move on to the next message. 🎉 Celebrate your successes. When you do achieve your goals, take some time to celebrate your success. A lot of PMM's I know (including myself) find it hard celebrate successes as we're always too busy to stop and appreciate what we've achieved. I recently set up a "trophy room" for my team to log all of our successes. Anything from a nice slack message to an record breaking conversion rate from messaging A/B tests. Setting up this approach will get your Product Marketing team's mindset in the right place. #productmarketing

A lot of our work in product marketing is playing the long game - personas, positioning, strategic narratives - but I think balancing these with some quick wins that help drive revenue is a great way to showcase the value of product marketing to stakeholders that don't quite understand what we do. One of my tips? Dive into customer campaigns! Especially in start-ups and scale-ups, most of the times we're sending emails or in-app messages to our customers are during the onboarding period and when we launch a new feature. But what about the in-between or after? Use campaigns to help customers get the most out of what they're paying for, discover features they might have missed, and learn how to do their job better. You likely be increasing LTV and open up the door for an easy upsell (hello revenue 👋 ). I shared the rest of my tips to drive revenue by year-end with my friends at SaaSiest along with some other B2B marketers who have some great ideas I'll definitely be borrowing 💡. Read more in the comments 👇

SaaS growth starts with product marketing. Congrats on last week's 1.5M raise Thomas Vanhumbeeck and Jan Abeel! You guys are building a really great product at Fixform, the worlds deserves to know it. Another product marketing project launched in 4 weeks, just on time for the big press release day. Wanna know our not-so-secret secret? As always, we really took the time to understand the product and empathize with its users. Result? We were aligned from the first narrative proposal and designs. 😏 Clearly, we speak the same language. Doesn’t that all give us that little energy boost as product marketers? Shout out to the addmore® people that made it happen. If your product is evolving faster than your marketing, let's fix that. ⚒️ Philippe Delfs Noemi Gonczar Jens Deryckere Patrice Van Delm

Many make the mistake of building a product for months, then launching with a single tweet, expecting instant success. However, a successful launch involves strategic steps and planning. Start by preparing: - Compile email lists - Build a following - Gather contacts - Stay active in communities Next, activate your marketing channels. Test three different ones, analyze results, and iterate. When launching Feedbackloop, I sent an email before bed and woke up to surprising sales. Yet, sales slowed as I focused on feedback and optimizing the landing page. Here's my launch plan 🚀: After finishing my MVP, I share it with a select few from my network for feedback (using Feedbackloop). Then, I draft a series of emails for my newsletter, telling a story around the new SaaS. I rely on emails, content, and word of mouth—three channels that work excellently for me.

Product marketers are Connectors - connecting product, marketing, sales, support, data, etc. Most times all the information you need are scattered across different teams and a good PMM has to consolidate all that information into one place and get everyone on the same page. Product marketers are Customer advocates who champion user needs. We advocate for the customer throughout the product lifecycle and marketing process, making sure that the product meets and exceeds customer expectations. Product marketers are Storytellers who bring products to life. We understand what customers need, what makes the product unique and create stories that help the right customers use the product. Product marketers are Growth drivers who accelerate product adoption. We develop and execute go-to-market strategies to launch products successfully and drive adoption. Working closely with sales, marketing, and customer success teams to ensure a smooth customer journey and maximize product impact. Got inspired to make a compilation of what product marketing is. I'll keep adding them as I compile them. Who are product marketers in your definition?

I'm sharing about collaborating across Product Marketing and Demand-Gen in today's Sharebird AMA 😎 Got questions? There's still time to submit! Looking for answers? They're going live throughout the day! #DemandGen #ProductMarketing #MarketingStrategy #ContentStrategy

Many marketing ops teams do not have a roadmap. The truth is - if you don’t have a roadmap, someone else will create one for you. Here are some ideas on how to create a marketing ops roadmap that works for you: 1 - Confirm Top Goals: Start by identifying and confirming the overarching GTM goals. These goals should be closely tied to the organization's broader objectives. 2 - Assess Current State: Take a hard look at your current tech stack, processes, and ways of working. What's working? What's not? Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is crucial for building an effective roadmap. 3 - Confirm Top Problems: What causes the most pain in sales and marketing? What are the biggest bottlenecks? List them out and the impact of solving them. 4 - Host Brainstorm Sessions: Gather your partners, both internally and externally. Have them share their wants, ideas, and pain points and brainstorm together how to solve them. Capture all ideas and initiatives on a spreadsheet. 5 - Create an Impact-Effort Matrix: Map the initiatives by impact and effort, prioritizing the low-effort, high-impact initiatives. 6 - Implement Weighted Scoring: Not all initiatives are created equal. Use a scoring system to prioritize your action items based on their strategic importance. I like the RICE method but consider using REVENUE instead of REACH and USERS HELPED instead of IMPACT. 7 - Get Agreement on Resources: You need everyone on board. Make sure your team is aligned on resource allocation and expectations. 8 - Plot Action Items Against Time: Use a simple slide like the one below. Group initiatives by category and extend a bar to show completion time. 9 - Do a Roadshow: Take your show on the road. Share your roadmap with stakeholders and drum up support for your vision. Make some time to create a roadmap. It will create alignment, clarity, efficiency, and, most importantly, accountability. What resonates with you? What else would you add? #marketing #martech #marketingoperations PS: I'm writing more about this in my newsletter next week; subscribe to stay updated - https://lnkd.in/g_3YC7BZ