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Ramli John:
To a lot of product-led companies, they're using Pendo as a tool and you have this interesting perspective as well because you're coming from product marketing and I do believe... And would you agree, Marcus, I'm curious, product marketing is a critical part of product-led growth strategy. Is that something that you would agree to? I'm guessing you're biased because you're director of product marketing at Pendo but what are your thoughts around that?
Marcus Andrews:
Absolutely, I do think so. I think product-led growth can be kind of scary for some teams and it definitely requires a shift in thinking I think for product marketing and marketing in general, but no, it's been a great thing. When I was at HubSpot, I was at HubSpot for five and a half years before I joined Pendo, and when I started at HubSpot we did not have... we were not a super strong product organization, the company wasn't very products led, and now the company is extremely products led and has a very healthy PLG motion, and during that time product marketing changed a bit but only grew in importance and effectiveness and impact.
Marcus Andrews:
So 100%, I mean we can get into the weeds of it, but I think product marketing is really important for PLG companies to figure out. Probably one of the biggest reasons is because sales is great, like one of the things that sales does really, really well is they educate your buyers. So if you have a lot of salespeople and you have a big salesforce and you're able to get people to have conversations with them, those salespeople are educating buyers, they're helping them understand your solution, they're telling them... you're telling them about your way of doing things.
Marcus Andrews:
It doesn't scale very well, PLG is a much better way to do it, but you've got to replace that education with something. Like some PLG companies don't but the ones that do, product marketing can play that role. So I think it's very, very smart for PLG companies to invest in product marketing early to make sure it's part of the mix and it's not just demand and growth.
Ramli John:
It's only just recently when I started hearing about product marketing. Maybe I'm ignorant, and it's just, I think in the last few years everybody's like product marketing, we're seeing... I'm talking to [inaudible 00:02:24], he's like, "Product marketing is it, who cares about growth hacking, product marketing is where it's happening at."
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah.
Ramli John:
I mean, let's talk about that. What exactly is, for people who might not know exactly what product marketing is, can you give us a 101 of what product marketing does and how that fits?
Marcus Andrews:
Yes. So I think there's been a big shift, like when I first started working in stocks, first started working in software in 2011, and my CMO was this amazing storyteller, and marketing was... we'd come up with a brilliant story that captivates the market, doesn't have to be product-led, who cares if it has anything to do with our product. Then we buy billboards and SFO. And we put out press releases and it's all top of funnel stuff and that was really SaaS marketing.
Marcus Andrews:
Then I think the... It was just way too much of an art. Then I think there was a big swing in SaaS marketing towards the science of this stuff, and so I think you had people who could come along and build a real strong demand gen engine become the CMOs and product-led growth grew with that and there's just been this huge movement towards getting more scientific and building pipeline and having realistic numbers and expectations for marketing teams.
Marcus Andrews:
But, what's gotten lost in a lot of that, is how do you capture attention? How do you differentiate? How do you position your product in a way that it's going to turn all those leads into intent that converts? And at the same time, so there's kind of a swing happening back the other way I think towards marketing that is interesting and captivating and product-led.
Marcus Andrews:
And product marketers, what we do is we're marketers embedded in the product team and so we're creative generalists, we have a broad skillset, which is great because we can go and we can talk shop with anybody across the marketing team and we know a good amount about everything that happens in marketing. We're really amazing storytellers and positioners, so we can help take product, which is features and updates and whatever, and turn it into product launches and stories and interesting things. Then we're also really cross-functional, we're like a cross-functional glue that helps hold organizations together.
Marcus Andrews:
So I think it's just a really interesting time to be a product marketer, I think it's a super important role right now because of all those bigger trends. Companies are trying to go product-led and at the same time there's more competition and more noise than ever. So you've got to figure out a way to stand out, be interesting, and also be products led. That's what product marketers are really bringing to the table.
Ramli John:
Really, really fascinating. I guess the followup question I have around that is it's so important, like let's say there's some people here who are CEOs, they're probably into product. When should an organization or a product-led org hire a product marketer? Particularly for that role. And if it's too soon, should it be the CEO's wearing that hat or should it be the head of product wearing that hat or should it be head of marketing or should everybody have a little bit of hat of product marketing if they're not ready to hire a product marketer?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah. I think it's smart early on to have someone who's doing the job. It doesn't have to be a product marketer. It's usually the CEO, I think is the owner of the story, which is really important. Then also it's a team effort to help position the product in the right way. So for sure I think it's great to have a CEO founding team who really gets product marketing and can deliver that, because it will set you up for success.
Marcus Andrews:
So I think it's usually the founders who are doing that and the right place to start with the founding team is just to talk about positioning and the story, like constantly. So the positioning is really like who you are for what and the mistake that most companies make is that it's just very unclear who they are, for what, and so they're trying to cater to too many audiences, and they end up lacking a point of view.
Marcus Andrews:
So you've seen a lot of... What usually happens in startup marketing is that you either have... you've positioned yourself as something that is super relevant and interesting to the market but has nothing to do with your product, which is vaporware, which we know about. Or you go the opposite route and you have a marketing story that's very accurate to your product but nobody really cares about and it's just extremely boring, like there's no point of view, like you don't stand for anything, nobody knows exactly if you're right for them or if you're wrong for them and that's more the status quo.
Marcus Andrews:
So thinking about that a lot, talking about that a lot I think is what's really effective. I mean, at HubSpot our CEO Brian Halligan was really, really obsessed with the company story and positioning and it was just always an ongoing conversation. I've never worked at Drift but I think David Cancel's the same way, and when he started Drift, I know from conversations with Dave Gearhart that was always happening, those conversations around the story and how we position ourselves and who are we for and who are we not and what is our point of view on this space is always happening.
Marcus Andrews:
I still think it's smart to hire a product marketer early because the thing is is that you as the founders can have this conversation but then it's like who is going to executive this, who's going to bring it to life. Because I see that a lot too. I see companies come up with a good story, spend a lot of time on positioning and area of design, and then they go to market with it and it's just like womp womp. It's like they have a hard time, it's like you can clearly tell the thought was there and they have a good story, but then there's just nothing to back it up. And that is very dangerous because if it's very good it makes it easy for people to copy but you've got to go out there and you've got to iterate the book on this or you've got to create content around it, you have to build it around your website, you have to make sure your sales team knows about it. And all of that is what product marketing, having a product marketer will deliver.
Marcus Andrews:
And it's good, it's early on to have someone, if you're a PLG company you're probably going to hire someone who can help figure out the science of marketing. You should also hire someone who can help figure out the art and story of marketing too, pair those two people together.
Ramli John:
I love that, I just tweeted recently around marketing is about balance. Like there's the art and then there's the science and you're kind of talking a lot about this. So I might be reading into this too much but a product marketer might fit really well with a growth marketer who's very technical then, would you say? I'm seeing your head nod, okay.
Marcus Andrews:
Yes, totally. I mean product marketers struggle to structure stuff in the right way. Like I'm talking to Niti, who I work with, who's our director of growth. Super smart growth marketer and I'm trying to... I want to get some messaging and some positioning out on to a landing page and I want to test it, and that's like as far as I got. She's like, "Here's how we're going to test it, we're going to structure it this way, we're going to put these things in there." I'm just like awesome, Niti, I don't know anything you just said but it's great, let's do it.
Marcus Andrews:
But she knows all of that but I think when it comes to trying to figure out hey what is the copy for this site going to be and how are we going to position ourselves in a way that's going to have a very unique point of view for this audience we care about that we know is going to win? That's just not... she's not spending all day doing that. Put us both together and we can figure that out in a really strong way. So 100%, I think.
Marcus Andrews:
And I see that a lot, where growth teams or like our team that was in charge of freemium acquisition at HubSpot, they liked working with us because they had all these tests and experiments and things they wanted to try and they knew that they could come to us because we could pump copy into that or stories into that or customer examples into that, like product details into that. And they have to get all that stuff because you can create all the tests and experiments and new growth channels you want but if the copy and the message and the product details are shit, it's just not going to perform well.
Ramli John:
I love that. I'm glad you told that story, it's really cool that okay, you went to your growth person, "I want to test this," and they just ran with it. I think that's a good way to look at it is there's a lot of partnership that can happen between product marketing and growth marketing.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah.
Ramli John:
There's a followup question I had from Janelle. She asked an interesting question, whether you'd recommend transitioning somebody who's already part of the marketing or part of the product team to take on the part of marketing at... or would you suggest against that or what kind of qualities might that work for?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, so it's... I think the qualities you want to look for in a product marketer are it's like they're creative generalists so they're good at lots of different parts of marketing, they're a good storyteller, and then they are very good cross-functionally. So a lot of the times that is a PM, like I think PMs, product always starts the positioning process really, and they are cross-functional teams so I think it's smaller companies, a lot of times the product org is playing this role. They're just not going to... usually they're not going to bring the creative storytelling power that product marketing can because these people are marketers and they spend the time thinking about it and they have the experience doing it.
Marcus Andrews:
But certainly now that product, like when I first started working in software, all the PMs were super technical CS majors, but now you've got super good storytellers, like creative people who are PMs. So certainly there are some PMs who are really good at this stuff, but I think it is good to make it somebody's job.
Marcus Andrews:
So yeah, a lot of times PMs will do this but 100% you can take someone who maybe they came out of support and they know the product really, really well and you can teach them how to do marketing and the storytelling bit. I've done that at HubSpot and it worked out really, really well. You can also do it the other way. You can bring in someone who is a creative storyteller, good generalist marketer, and immerse them in the product. They just have to have an appetite for it is the big thing, because there's a lot of marketers who do not care about product, don't want to talk about product, aren't interested in it.
Marcus Andrews:
I am very much a creative person, but I love product. But I don't want to be a PM, I would never want to be a PM because I'm not interested in some of the details of how things work or working through requirements and all that. So I think that's the important part, you have to find someone with the right skillset and then someone who really loves the intersection of marketing and product, and then also just has an appetite for the cross-functional nature of product marketing.
Ramli John:
That makes a ton of sense. I want to get into the weeds of product marketing, but before I do one of the questions we get asked a lot is what does a product-led growth org design look like? And obviously Pendo is running that, like your CEO Todd Olson, he wrote a book called Product-Led Organization. So I'm curious, from your perspective, what does that organization look like and how are you... Obviously you're working hand in hand with product but how are you working with sales and marketing and other teams?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, so there's a lot to it. I think the things that help are how we use data. I don't know if this will exactly answer your question but I'll answer it from my point of view. The company is very product-led and in that way we all rally around the product experience and the customer experience through the lens of the product. It's always product first and how do we think about...
Marcus Andrews:
We've got a sport challenge, let's think about this through the lens of the product before we solve it with a human. Or we're trying to grow into a new product line, we're trying to crack the nut on a different audience for sales, how can we you think through the lens of the product to do that?
Marcus Andrews:
And we're still evolving, I think our freemium motion is still pretty new and it's coming around so it's not like we've got it all solved or anything, but the things we do really well I think are how we use data, so we're a product analytics company, which is great because we should be good at this. But product data is everywhere and everybody has the same language around it, so everybody can talk about adoption, stickiness, retention, and they understand what their part of the org is doing to impact those things, and we can easily share the data.
Marcus Andrews:
There's a PM that has a dashboard or I just go into Pendo myself and I look at stuff. That helps a lot. So once you've got this common language around the data and everybody's looking at the same data and you're all using the same... like you have the same baseline and that is like, we all know what's important, it's adoption and stickiness and growth, and we have a way to talk about it, it really brings your teams together and I think makes a product-led... or makes the company more product-led.
Marcus Andrews:
And the other one is collaboration, so how or CS team works with product, how marketing works with product, how sales and leadership work with product. Collaboration and everybody being able to speak product and talk to product and work together is extremely important and something we focus on a lot. An example of this is just like CS is talking to product and we're figuring out ways in the product that we can introduce guides or introduce new features or change something that's going to deflect support tickets. So we're making sure we're using the product in the right way to help out all of these different teams. So that conversation between support and product and implementing things in the product that maybe a PM can do themselves without code, to deflect support tickets, that's something that's happening all the time.
Marcus Andrews:
Same thing with product and marketing. If we have... One cool thing being the product marketer at Pendo is that we have this amazing new channel, which is the product. I've never had that before in my career where there's this awesome marketing channel in the product and in-app messaging is something that we can use to really motivate people. I tweeted this the other day but you could spend millions on advertising to try and get people to buckle their seatbelt but it's that dinging that you hear when you don't buckle your seatbelt in the car that actually gets you to do something. That's in-app messaging.
Marcus Andrews:
So you've got to be super careful with letting marketers into the product to deliver in-app messaging but we are very careful about it and we can deliver guides to specific audiences that really get people to take action. So that collaboration is happening all the time, so another example.
Ramli John:
That makes a ton of sense. I love how you led with data. I mean I've said this before, spoke with a lot of people, you can't be product-led if you're not data-led first because that's the thing that ties the themes together, which brings up the question, another question we get asked a lot is what does tech stack look like in terms of... you want the sales to have that data so they know who the product qualified leads are, and product is using it to drive more of those qualified leads.
Ramli John:
Obviously marketing, everybody is tied around data and to do that you need to have this integrated, holistic approach to data. What's your suggestion in terms of getting everybody on the same page with data?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah. That's a tough one. Our stack is... So Pendo's pretty big, we're like 600 people now and we've got a messy stack of lots of tools, which I like, because I like software. So we've got a ton of different things and a ton of different places to get data. The biggest one, the most important one, is for product-led growth, for product-led companies, I think is CRM to your product analytics. So we've got Salesforce and then [Merkle 00:20:10] and Pendo, all of those are integrated. The most important thing is to have the CRM and the product analytics integrated so we know who are the accounts and customers with the users and visitors in Pendo, that data's married together. So we know who is in the product. So if you've got your book of business is like a CSM and it's like hey we're trying to... we've got some renewals coming up for these customers or whatever, we have a clear view of how they're using the products, because if they not using the products at all, very, very dangerous. If we know that they're using one thing but not another, that's the conversation we want to have.
Marcus Andrews:
So that's the most important thing, and then what's cool and what we're trying to do more of is also like when you know what people are doing, when you have all this behavior data of what people are doing in the product, you know the products they've adopted, you know how often they use whatever features, certain reporting, you know they're power users of this thing but not the other thing, you can then use that for behavior based marketing, or sales, or CSM outreach.
Marcus Andrews:
And that's really cool, like as marketers we're always trying to increase personalization and relevance, and you can do that with different types of data, like behavioral data, but what's really cool if I can send you a personalized message about like hey, I know you use guides a lot in Pendo, we came out with this awesome new guides feature that is going to help you do your job better, check it out. Like deliver it in-app, based on product usage data. But yeah, really CRM product analytics.
Ramli John:
I'm surprised you didn't plug Pendo in there.
Marcus Andrews:
Well, I mean Pendo's product analytics so that's what... not to... There's other you can use, it's not a Pendo commercial, but Pendo is by far the best product analytics company Ramli, if you put a gun to my head.
Ramli John:
Shameless plug, no, it's cool. We consistently see that, people are using Pendo for their analytics, help them out with scaling their product-led. And you're right, thank you for not making this into a Pendo commercial but Wes and I are a big fan.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, good. I mean tools for product managers is all pretty new, really. Having the right stuff is really, really important to do your job, so we love product teams and solving for them and digging into all this stuff.
Ramli John:
That makes sense. I want to ask this... Often when people are like, "Oh we should do product marketing." It's somebody else's job and it's not their primary job. They have a ton of things they're doing and Paige asked a question around her being a marketing team of one but I'm sure other product folks as well has 101 things to do when you only have 100 hours to do it at. But if they had to... Can you break down, if you're starved for time, here are the few things that you want to be doing if you want to button down your product positioning as well as getting your product marketing set up?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, so the most impactful thing I think you can do as a product marketer is help figure out your positioning. Because your positioning is one of those things that just, it's very foundational to all the marketing you do, and if you get it wrong it doesn't matter how fast you're running if you're running in the wrong direction. I think getting good at positioning and being able to run positioning exercises with your team, with product and with leadership, it's 100% a superpower and it will give you good direction.
Marcus Andrews:
What I mean by that is this isn't the decision of the marketing team would make necessarily, but if you think about two software companies that people might know, Gong, so Gong does sales intelligence, and then Descript. Descript is software you can use to edit your podcasts. Those two pieces of technology are extremely similar, like the basis of them are... it's natural language processing technology. But one is positioned to help sales teams do better at their job and the other one is positioned to help podcasters edit their podcasts.
Marcus Andrews:
And so much of that is just the application of how are we going to take this technology and who is it for and how will they use it? Most of the time your company will have a good idea of it but it's just not very clear and it's not crystallized. So instead of saying we are whatever, like audio technology for marketing teams, saying like hey we're podcast editing software for podcasters is way more specific, way more focused, and doing that well and then keeping it updated is just so important because it's going to really give you a stronger voice, it's going to help you do better marketing, it's really going to help you resonate with a specific audience.
Marcus Andrews:
So that's the thing I would advocate for. On my podcast, Daniel Murphy just did a mini series on positioning which is really, really good if you're looking for a place to start. He interviewed April Dunford, who wrote a recent book on it. Jack Trout wrote the positioning book on it back in the day too. So there's good resources out there to figure this out but how I do it with my teams, I run positioning workshops with my product team so I think that helps a lot.
Ramli John:
That's awesome. I really love how you're really focused. I use Descript, I'm not sure if people, do you use Descript?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah.
Ramli John:
I use Descript to edit my podcast, you can also edit videos with it. Once again this is not an ad for them but I didn't know... Yeah, you're right, Gong and Descript, at the core of it, same tech, right?
Marcus Andrews:
Kind of. Right? I'm sure someone smarter than me and a software engineer would disagree with me but there's other examples of that, right? It's like it's not too different, the only thing is they're positioned in radically different ways. So it's like, there's other... And it's good, if you're trying to break into the CRM market, you're not just going to go right at Salesforce, you have to position yourself as... you wouldn't say, "Hey, we're the CRM for everybody and we're taking on Salesforce." It's like good luck, you're going to get crushed.
Marcus Andrews:
But if you're the CRM for... you're trying to break into the market and you're the CRM for marine biologists or whatever, of course people who are marine biologists are going to be like, "Yeah, I want that one, I don't want Salesforce." I don't know if marine scientists use CRMs, but you get my point.
Ramli John:
No, I got it. It's just, I'm on Twitter a lot and there's this tweet from Arvid, he wrote the book called Embedded Entrepreneur just this morning. He tweeted that a lot of people think about product market fit and they start from the product. He said that the best way to position is start from the market, figure out the problem, think of a solution, and then get to the product. And really I think that's what you were getting at, is start with the market, and figure out exactly what the core problems are.
Marcus Andrews:
For sure. And even better, this was... Halligan at HubSpot would always say this but he's like, "Just study people. Just study people, be an observer of change in humans and opportunity will present itself. If you're paying attention to humans right now, there is a pandemic obviously and it totally changed how people learn. So college got shut down, everybody's at home, everybody's trying to pick up new skills, tech got pushed forward in a big way so people are trying to switch careers. If you're paying attention to all that stuff, there's a way for you to create a technology company in education that's different and new and..." So that's the other thing too, I think the more you can be a student of human change and observe that stuff, then you can position yourself in a way that's new and unique.
Ramli John:
That makes a ton of sense. I mean, whenever I hear this, find that micro niche or that market, the pushback I get often and I'm sure you do as well, maybe, is I'm afraid that I'm going to be saying no to people who might want this. What do you say to that? I mean, a followup question which I'll ask later, which we can talk about later as well, is how do you know that you haven't zoomed too far in, that you're only targeting 10 people with that specific niche?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, I mean usually that doesn't happen but I think the thing, I mean the thing, it is good at first especially if you don't know what your product is to be open to that and then show it to a lot of people and talk to a lot of people and get that feedback. What you're looking for, the people that get the unique value from it. I think it's smart to go in with a thesis and be paying attention to the change in the world and trying to figure out how are we going to solve for this in a unique way but then this is over my head in terms of product development, but I think good product teams are out there listening to their users.
Marcus Andrews:
So if you're talking to a bunch of audience As who you think the product is for and they're all just lukewarm about it and then you talk to audience B who's using it for something else and they're super passionate about how this is solving for them, I think then you've got some signal that shows you where the audience is.
Marcus Andrews:
But for sure, you have to be... if you're going to solve for product marketers, there's not a billion product marketers out there in the world. So the TAM isn't the biggest thing. But certainly you can start with product marketers and then work your way into the marketing org where the TAM is larger. So I think that's part of it too. It's just way better to take an approach that is different and new.
Marcus Andrews:
Like, what I see is that a lot of companies, they're young and they go into a space where there's a lot of established players. And instead of trying to be unique and different and focused on a specific audience, they come out of the gate and they copy other people or they look like everybody else.
Marcus Andrews:
And in SaaS, B2B SaaS right now, everybody looks like everybody else and says the same messaging and looks the same because there's safety there. And I think that there's this really dangerous thought that if we create a product, the easiest way for us to get some traction is to sort of look and sound like the big players in the space because maybe that will trick people into thinking that we're actually legit when we're still just young, but it's such a trap because you have this opportunity to be different and new and weird and unique and if you do it the right way, it may start off with a small audience but you're just trying to break in.
Marcus Andrews:
I think it's really important to do that and to think wildly different about your company story and your narrative and it's like, I don't like category creation, I think that idea's pretty flawed for a lot of reasons, but you do want to design a narrative and a story that separates you from the pack because any market you go into right now there's going to be a ton of competitors and everybody's going to be saying the same thing and you don't want to just get lost in that sea of sameness.
Ramli John:
That's such an important point. Like a lot of B2B SaaS companies, their website looks the same with illustration like Jack Trout.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah. Same colors, same graphics, same like... And I don't know, I'm not a designer but I think with the story there's a big opportunity to be different.
Ramli John:
I want to jump on that because a lot of the people we have on the call right now are working in an industry that's not very sexy, like [inaudible 00:32:42] data privacy, you've got Janelle in gov tech, Kristina is from [inaudible 00:32:49], it's an email tool. This stuff is not sexy particularly and is very saturated. How do you craft a story or how do you help them stand out? What would be your suggestion to make sure that they stand out right in the get-go? Especially with, like you talked about this, established once. You already found the market, what is your tips around storytelling?
Marcus Andrews:
Yes, gov tech, I thought it was golf tech and I'm like oh, golf tech is kind of sexy. Gov tech, less sexy, sorry Janelle. And privacy, I mean I don't know. Cool or sexy isn't the right word. The thing that you want to do is create stakes, right, because privacy maybe isn't cool but it's really damn important and it's especially important right now because of X, like the thing you want to make... if you want people to perk up and pay attention, you have to talk to them about change and the good thing about that is the world is constantly changing, now more than ever. Like privacy is an amazing one because privacy is like... You know, what's a relevant story in privacy right now, is that I just upgrade my iPhone with the new software and now people have to ask me for...
Marcus Andrews:
It's like, people are all of a sudden way more... the individual is way more attuned to the big issues that are happening in privacy. What is the impact that is having on your audience? So that's the thing, this is my tip, is like find this big, dramatic change in the world that is happening in your space and then your job as the translator, you translate what impact that has on your audience.
Marcus Andrews:
So for example, Pendo, this is the one I'm working on right now, Pendo, everybody knows what a great product experience looks like. Like when you order a coffee from Dunkin' with the app, it's this beautiful, powerful, amazing piece of software. We're all highly in tuned to what good looks like, and in our personal lives we usually get it. Then you go into the office and most B2B software is still a really painful experience.
Marcus Andrews:
This is a big change in the world, like consumers have much higher expectations and there is an impact that this is happening on B2B software companies. The impact that it has is that if you can deliver a great product experience, you're going to win market share, you're going to grow faster, you're going to have happier customers, you're going to be higher adopted. If you can't figure it out it's basically a slow path to death right now, and that's what's happening in B2B.
Marcus Andrews:
And that is where I start the story and everybody pays attention to that and it's easy to capture people's attention when you say, "Hey, there's a big, undeniable, massive change that's happening in the world that you have probably thought about before, here is the impact that it's having."
Marcus Andrews:
And that translation bit, it hard because you have to get it right, you have to know your audience, you have to know your space, you have to actually do the work. It's not a story, it's like what's really going on. Like, that is what they're trying to figure out. And usually they're just on their own trying to figure that out, so it's really nice to have a helpful guide, a buddy. So that's my advice. Whether it's gov tech or privacy or whatever, there is big, hairy, important issues happening in that space and people are desperate for your help to understand the impact that's going to have on them. So that's where you start.
Ramli John:
It's interesting because one way to get people to move is to trigger them with an emotion. And it's such an emotional trigger. Like stories is about emotion, at the heart of it, and you're talking about that stake. It's essentially what is that emotional trigger that will get people to not just pay attention but to act upon that thing you're doing. Am I reading in between the lines too far or is that something you would say is...
Marcus Andrews:
No, for sure, yeah, we're emotional creatures. I think it's a great place. You want to introduce the stakes, and so it's important to figure this out and there's the carrot and the stick to that. So it's like hey, I don't like marketing, that is just like do this or bad things are going to happen, like that's bad marketing. But you do want to tell a story that says like, "Hey, you're at this decision point, you're at this place, and you've got to make a decision around what kind of company you want to be or what kind of person you want to be or whatever," and you can pick a path that is full of reward or you can pick a path that's really dangerous and not good for you and going to be hard.
Marcus Andrews:
That's the kind of question you want to introduce into the minds of people. Then you want to show relevant examples of who are those winners, especially those winners. And that introduces some FOMO, which is very motivating to people. And it's good because it's not you as the marketer or the person crafting the company or the company story, you're talking about where people can go and it's aspirational and then you help unpack what those... like you're just this journalist or scientist that's trying to understand what those winners have done to get where they are and people really appreciate that, it's not like you're selling to them, they want that help. I don't know, yeah. So emotion, think emotion. It's like stakes, FOMO, and yeah.
Marcus Andrews:
And you don't want to overdo emotion, you don't want to... it's just software, it's not life or death. It can be dangerous if you try to lean into it too much but most people go the other way, most B2B marketing is really boring, there's not a lot of emotion in it, it's very to the point, so yeah. Big opportunity for that for sure.
Ramli John:
That's such a great... Do you have any resources around storytelling? Because you just kind of broke down your... Like, tell the past, show relevant examples of winners, introduce FOMO. I mean, where can people, if they wanna know more about this storytelling that you're talking about, I'm guessing your podcast is one place to look at but any books, any blogs that you can suggest to get people to know? Because I'm curious as well, this is my weakness, like my background exactly in data and I have a bachelor of math and I'm a growth guy so my weakness is storytelling for sure.
Marcus Andrews:
And that's what's good about this. Storytelling, it's always just been something I've been naturally good at and I think that's what people think about storytelling, is that some people are good at it. And I'm not like... I can't always captivate a room, I'm good at writing stories and structuring stories. But it's not black magic, it's not magic right? There is a structure that you can apply to tell a good story consistently, because that's what I always struggled with, like I would get it right once and then people would come back and they'd be like, "Oh let's do that again." And then I would try again, people would be like what the hell is this?
Marcus Andrews:
And I didn't like that, and so then... I just studied it and researched it a lot and so the people... The two books I guess I would really recommend are the one we talked about, April Dunford's Obviously Awesome, because it will help with positioning. Then I would also read Think Bigger by Christopher Lochhead, which is a really... It will give you... I don't know if I would follow everything that he says, with all these books right, you've got to make it your own. I don't know if I would follow everything he says in that book but it will help you think differently about this stuff.
Marcus Andrews:
Then I wrote a blog post I guess a couple years ago now that people really enjoy, which I'll share, and it talks about how I think that this stuff is evolving. I've got a course, too, I'm happy to send you the link to the course. I know we're in a course right now so I don't want to do too much but if I really want to go deep, that would be the place.
Ramli John:
What was that book by Christopher? Think Bigger? Who is that by?
Marcus Andrews:
Sorry, Play Bigger by Christopher Lochhead.
Ramli John:
Oh, Play Bigger by Christopher Lochhead, okay, I will share those links after for sure, and any links that you have I'm sure I'm going to devour them, like I said this is something I've been curious a lot about lately.
Marcus Andrews:
So Narrative Design, actually I wrote an updated blog post and what I call it is Narrative Design for Business, so there's this concept in video games of narrative design, which is essentially you're like building out the story, and so that was one place that helped me think about it and I call it Narrative Design for Business and I've got a good post on that I'll share with you too right now.
Ramli John:
Thank you. Meanwhile you're searching through that, Keith actually asked earlier around your perspective on category creation. I'm sure you have opinions about this with conversational marketing and other things that hey, you said that it's a bad idea. I mean you said earlier that you don't really think it's [inaudible 00:42:20], but can you expand a little bit more on your perspective on category creation and when would it work? When would it work to actually create a category or should you just wait somebody to start it and just pounce on them and destroy them?
Marcus Andrews:
No, I think you should... So the thing that I will, I'll share two pieces there and I talk a lot about... I used to think differently about it when I wrote the first one I think a couple years ago, I talked more about category creation and I backed off of that since then, mostly because of conversations that I've had with April Dunford, and she gave me a ton of really good perspective around it just from talking to her and working with her.
Marcus Andrews:
But category creation I think, it's just too much. There are great examples of it working but in terms of it working for everyone it's just very flawed. Like if we're all trying to create a new category, it just doesn't work. There are instances of it working where people have created a new category and a category has emerged, like Drift did this with conversational marketing and now you will find conversational marketing as a category on G2 crowd, analysts will talk about it, it's a legit category.
Marcus Andrews:
Most of the time when people try it it just comes off as a okay, it's too much, this is marketing bullshit, right? Like your bullshit meter goes off and it's too much too soon. So it's risky. If you think you can pull it off, go for it, good, but it's probably not going to work. If it does work, you're not just going to become a $100 million company, you're going to become like a $2 billion company, and most of us don't... Of course we all want that, but it's not the right approach for most people.
Marcus Andrews:
What's better is to design your narrative or to create a narrative. So the example of this is HubSpot. So HubSpot, they went into a crowded market, which is marketing automation, and at the time it was young, it was early, but Oracle or Eloqua was already there, Eloqua invented marketing automation, they created the category. HubSpot was a later entry.
Marcus Andrews:
So instead of trying to create a different category or trying to own the marketing automation category that was already there, they created a narrative, and the narrative was inbound marketing. So they said that the way that marketing is done today is flawed and wrong and outbound and interruptive and annoying and awful and there's something new emerging based on a change that we've noticed in humans that's different. It's a secret that only a few companies know about and they're using it to really, really effectively grow and win, et cetera.
Marcus Andrews:
Then they called this trend that was happening that they identified, they didn't make it up, they just noticed that people were blogging and using social media and doing SEO, and they wrapped a name around that. They called it inbound marketing and they said, "This is the new thing that's coming."
Marcus Andrews:
So that's different. Inbound marketing is not a category recognized by forester or G2 crowd or whatever, and HubSpot doesn't care. They didn't try to create a category, they simply wanted to introduce this narrative that they can own. And everybody can do that, everybody should do that. That's the nuance between narrative design and category creation. Like I'm an advocate of narrative design, design your narrative, take control of it, make sure it's different, make sure it's unique, make sure it's rooted in real change in the world. Don't worry about... It's going to have the same effect but better and it's definitely not going to fail like trying to create a new category can.
Ramli John:
While you're saying that, another narrative is product-led growth.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah.
Ramli John:
Like look at what OpenView did, right? Like with OpenView and Wes with there's new change coming, guys, and this is what's happening in B2B SaaS.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, exactly. And a good way to think about it is what is the... it's a new game, so Andy Raskin, he writes a bunch of great stuff too. He came up with that idea, it's like what is the new game that people are going to play? And that is an awesome way to think about it because inbound marketing is a game, it comes with rules, it comes with winners and losers, it comes with tools, it comes with characters. It is a game that you can play, people love games, people absolutely love... humans love games, we love rules, we don't like the ambiguous, confusing, scary, chaotic world. We want ways to think about this stuff.
Marcus Andrews:
So product-led growth is an amazing game. There are lots of ways you can grow your business and freemium and in-app upgrades, but when you call it product-led growth and you say this is what it is and this is what it isn't and this is how it works, you've essentially created a new game that's driven by a narrative. And OpenView may have invented the game or coined the game but nobody tells you the rules of the game or how to play it or how it works or what it is or what it isn't other than ProductLed, right? You guys are doing an amazing job of that because you have the book and you have the course and you have the community, you've done all the work to make it a real thing. So yeah.
Ramli John:
Well, thank you for that, for hyping us up.
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, it's good.
Ramli John:
I want to start wrapping up and if people have any questions feel to drop it but we've talked a lot about narrative, I've learned a ton. As well as product marketing, if you can share one or two pieces of advice to product-led champions, people who are leading product-led growth, and they can be in marketing, some of them are engineering, some of them are CEOs, but clearly their thing right now is we're championing product-led growth in my organization. What would be one or two pieces of advice you'd like to give to them?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, I mean I think the big thing is to be able to... So product-led is a strategy, and strategies are usually complicated. I think the biggest thing is to be able to articulate why the strategy is important through a story pretty quickly. So I think the thing about product-led growth is that humans really, really love it, right? People like freemium, people expect that your software is going to start free today, they expect that it's going to be frictionless, that they're not going to have to talk to sales to get pricing information.
Marcus Andrews:
So just rooting it in hey, these are trends that are starting to happen now or already happening now, and are only going to go into the future. That's got to be the foundation. So I think convincing people that this is a big change in how humans expect software to be delivered is where I would start, and then show the opportunity for that, right? Like if we adapt to this change quickly, there's a big opportunity for us. If we don't figure out this change until five years down the road, we are screwed.
Marcus Andrews:
And that's pretty accurate. In some industries it's happened faster than others. I don't know where it's at in gov tech, in privacy, it's in some form, a different stage in everybody's journey. But those are the things... if you can tell those stories then it's easy to convince people that they need to pay attention to this, to buy into it. Pendo makes product analytics, once you have product analytics then you have a real baseline of... It's like turning the lights on inside of a dark room, it's like all of a sudden you have a view of how people are using your apps, your products, what are they doing, how are they retaining, how are they upgrading.
Marcus Andrews:
Then you also have all these tools to help do it, so you have no code, in-app guidance that allows you to implement more product-led ideas without having to go knock on the door of engineering because that's usually a big, big blocker where it's like oh yeah, we love product-led growth but the engineers are busy and we only have so many of them. So having something that's low-code, no-code, that a product team can implement themself I think is important. And yeah, those are some tips.
Ramli John:
Thank you for sharing that. Just to reiterate, I took out PLG as a story for your customers and even internally I think a huge challenge often for companies is getting buy-in for product-led and you're saying that people love stories, and what are the opportunities that people adapt to that change or what would be some of the things you could lose out on, what are the risk if you don't adapt to that change?
Ramli John:
Just one final question, where can people find out more about your work? Obviously you blog a lot, you have this course, like if people had more questions what's the best way to share, to ask you questions? Is it LinkedIn, is it Twitter? Where do you want to send people if they have questions?
Marcus Andrews:
Yeah, LinkedIn, definitely let's connect on LinkedIn and if you ever have a question just shoot me a DM. I try to post everything I'm working on or thinking about on LinkedIn. And Twitter, I post some of that too, but there's also a mix of me complaining about the Celtics not playing to their performance this season. So if you want that too, you can go to Twitter, but no, LinkedIn's really the place for me.
Ramli John:
Awesome. I just dropped it in the chat here for people to connect with you.
Marcus Andrews:
Cool. Yeah, these are great questions, thanks for having me. I think it's so interesting how... I think there's such a big opportunity for companies that are not at the very cutting edge of some of these trends, so if your audience is a dentist or something, you've still got a lot of time to figure out how this stuff is going to impact them, and so it's fun to be able to bring this to companies in gov tech or privacy or whatever, I think it's a big opportunity for folks.
Ramli John:
Awesome. Well, Marcus, to everybody else, thank you for tuning in and you guys have a great rest of your Friday and weekend, thank you.
Marcus Andrews:
See you guys, thank you.
