The MicroConf Hub Page with links to all the notes for all the talks can be found here.
Speaker: Hiten Shah (@hnsah)
Watch the video (sorry, but I’m not allowed to embed it here)
Slides:
- Learn things by doing them
- Two strategies:
- Hire as few people and try to make as much money per employee as possible (CrazyEgg)
- Try to grow as much as possible (KISSmetrics)
Story of a Product from Idea to Acquisition (KISSinsights)
- Do customer development
- Find the core problem (of your customer)
- Learn how to ask the right questions
- Always begin with a hypothesis
- Problem hypothesis: Our hypothesis is that [certain type of person] have a problem doing [certain type of task]
- As specific as possible (e.g. localize the people to people in your city)
- Example: Our hypothesis that product managers have a problem doing effective customer research
- How we learned
- 20 phone interviews
- 3 paper user tests
- 2 landing pages
- 1 hacky MVP
- What we learned
- People are NOT doing customer research
- They want private feedback and targeting
- It requries developer involvement
- It is a constant pain
- “How you get to the customer is as important, if not more, than what you get to the customer” – Patrick Vlaskovits
- Channels get crowded fast.
- Dropbox used Adwords –> Cost Per Acquisition: $233 – $388. For a $99 product –> FAIL
- Solution: Make your own channel (double incentivized referral program)
- Customer Development
- Who are your customers? (product managers)
- Where do they hang out? (other people’s websites)
- How should you engage them?
- Your marketing has to align with your customers
Create Your Audience
- Build, Grow, Convert
- “The more I help you, the more you will trust me” – Nathan Barry
- Build: Free Content
- Grow: Paid Content
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
- “Write with the intention of appealing to a specific audience.” – Brennan Dunn
- Build: Email newsletter
- Grow: Paid Content
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
- “Who has time to learn every new piece of software they run into? Not me. I’m pretty sure you don’t either” – Ruben Gamez
- Build: Free Guide and Newsletter
- Grow: Sample Proposal (mini-demo of his SaaS product)
- Convert: SaaS Subscription
- Teach people how to solve their problems
- Learn from your audience and customers
- Questions you can ask your customers:
- How did you first find about us?
- What persuaded you to purchase from us?
- How would you describe [PRODUCT] to your friends?
- What prompted you to start looking for this type of service?
- If you could change one thing about this website, what would it be?
- What other products or services should we offer?
- Which other options did you consider before choosing our products?
- Why did you decide to use [PRODUCT]?
- Why do you use [PRODUCT] instead of an alternative?
- What would persuade you to use [PRODUCT] more often?
- How would you persuade people like you to use [PRODUCT] ?
Strategies for B2B distribution
- Use Platforms with distribution potential
- How to optimize integrations
- Integrations make YOUR product better
- Measure your conversions and revenue
- Discover valuable integrations
- Ask customers about integrations
- Make your partner pages awesome
- How to optimize “Work Emails”
- Optimize on-boarding
- Show people who they should follow
- Utilize invitations during on-boarding
- Measure # of people in every company
- Discover the engaging interactions
- How to optimize embeds (like Youtube, Slideshare)
- Why should people embed?
- Make it as easy as possible to embed
- Track how well your embeds convert
- Test relevant call to actions
- Optimize for search, but don’t obsess
- How to optimize “Powered By”
- What are you Powering?
- Test the copy of your call to action
- Test and optimize your landing pages
- Track views, clicks, conversions and LTV
- Measure individual effectiveness
- How to optimize “Free Stuff”
- Build a free tool that helps your customers
- Map to customer decision making
- Think about what you can repurpose
- Educate your prospects
- Test your ideas minimally (ghetto)
- Measure and optimize revenue
[…] Hiten Shah: "Killer Content Marketing" […]