We Have 1.06 Merchandise.
I wrote that assertion on a whiteboard at first of a web site brainstorm session.
What does 1.06 merchandise imply?
1.06 sums up my frustration on the adoption price of our new merchandise. Yup, Unbounce is now greater than only a touchdown web page builder. We launched two new merchandise, particularly “overlays” and “sticky bars”, and we grouped them collectively below an umbrella time period “Convertables”.
The #1 represents our flagship industry-leading touchdown web page product (100% of our clients have adopted it), and the .06 represents the tragic adoption price of our new merchandise (6%).
And sure, you’d be right in case you famous that “Convertables” isn’t an actual phrase, however then neither is Unbounce, so we went with it after a notable quantity of company-wide polling, and basic company groupthink. Extra on that later.
So, how does this situation lead to me writing 30 weblog posts about our merchandise?
Rewind to October fifth: I used to be in a gathering with fellow co-founders Rick, Carl, and Carter, overtly expressing my frustration with the adoption numbers, and Carter interrupted me to ask, “Okay, nice, however what are you going to do about it?”.
Then this video occurred…
Superior, proper?! Yeah, it’s, till the second I spotted it’s been precisely 301 days since I final wrote a weblog put up (I’ve been specializing in public talking), making this degree of bravado a tad audacious at greatest. Aaand, sure I understand I used to be just a little intoxicated within the video.
However, I’ve realized through the years, that being a bit ridiculous in my guarantees is the one method I actually know find out how to get shit performed. Once I inform everybody that I’m doing one thing large, the self-imposed peer stress is what motivates me to ensure I full my mission.
Enter Product Consciousness Month (PAM)
This brings me to our weblog. We’ve by no means written a lot about our merchandise on the weblog, in actual fact, we’ve actively prevented it to let the content material communicate for itself as an academic pillar of the group, and to stay non-salesy.
I’ve realized although, that it doesn’t make a lot enterprise sense to be that overtly humble in all advertising and marketing communications. There has to be a solution to stability exposing individuals to your product with out it detracting from the expertise.
It’s my fault in some ways. Once I began our weblog again in 2009, I had a mission to be totally different from our opponents, to not come throughout as a salesman, and simply to offer worth and entertaining content material that stood out.
We dominated the realm of conversion content material for a few years, however in an more and more aggressive SaaS martech house, our content material is now not primary, and it’s time that we alter our strategy.
Which is why we’re doing a weblog takeover for the entire of January.
Our purpose is to discover a weblog matter we’ve not lined earlier than, but in addition to show a clear window – transparency is considered one of our six core values at Unbounce – into our journey as an organization, as a advertising and marketing crew, and myself personally, to develop into higher at advertising and marketing our new merchandise.
For me, it’s the primary time I’ve ever been concerned in product advertising and marketing, which is able to make it a captivating private journey reinventing myself as a distinct type of marketer.
I’m additionally reducing the variety of talking gigs I do in 2018 in half, as a result of let’s be sincere, on this second, the success of Unbounce could be extra quickly impacted by me staying residence than being on the highway.
Transparency
Alongside the best way, I’ll be opening up the Unbounce vault to share our core metrics with you. This may embody our churn and product adoption metrics, which we hope to have the ability to elevate in a giant method all through this 30-day experiment. There might be information check-ins all through, with a midway report, after which a full “Outcomes Present” on the finish.
I’ll even be digging into our analytics to see what the engagement and attribution seems to be like for each one of many 30 weblog posts.
A number of the content material will revolve across the learnings and experiences of turning into a greater product marketer, and the remainder might be an exploration of the methods we’re attempting to rethink what our merchandise are, what they imply to our clients, and the way we are able to do a greater job speaking their advantages (with some case research and new methods of considering – I hope).
I say “I hope” as a result of I’m penning this as you learn it. That’s what tends to occur if you decide to one thing as absurd as 30-in-30.
Comply with Alongside << Mid-Publish CTA
I encourage you to comply with alongside by subscribing to our weekly update emails on the backside of the web page. I’m actually eager to have our group (that’s you) assist us discover how to do that correctly, and hopefully, we’ll all learn to do a greater job of promoting our merchandise.
It is a screenshot of the subscribe kind on the backside of the put up. Thought it is best to know.
You too can subscribe by clicking right here to launch a popup (utilizing the on-click set off characteristic) which comprises the subscribe kind. << product advertising and marketing a lot?
Aaand I’ve configured it so that you’ll see an exit popup if you depart this web page. Be aware, that I’m doing this to indicate the product in a related and hopefully helpful method.
Unbounce Product Adoption Metrics
How will we measure adoption at Unbounce? To know, it helps to clarify just a little about how we outline a buyer. Within the previous days, a buyer was any signup, somebody who began a trial. Over time we realized we needs to be measuring just a little deeper into the shopper lifecycle, and determined a buyer was somebody who paid us twice; after the trial, and once more after sixty days.
In 2017 we modified this additional to somebody who pays us thrice, giving us a significantly better sense of true churn numbers.
To be thought-about a buyer who has adopted our merchandise, we’ve got a further set of app utilization standards:
For touchdown pages adoption means: a buyer who has constructed and printed a number of pages, has arrange a customized area, configured an integration with one other instrument, and has paid us thrice.
For “Convertables” (Overlays & Sticky Bars) adoption means: a buyer who has constructed and printed a popup or sticky bar, put in our one-line world Javascript on their web site, acquired no less than 10 conversions, and has paid us thrice.
Full transparency: 6% adoption for a brand new product sucks.
So what went fallacious? Why was adoption so low?
Properly, first, and most significantly, product advertising and marketing is de facto exhausting.
We additionally made a number of (effectively supposed) errors, particularly…
Mistake #1: We known as a popup an overlay.
Mistake #2: We created a fictitious umbrella time period “Convertables” for less than two baby merchandise, and for a number of months, just one baby product.
Mistake #3: We assumed that individuals would discover and use these two merchandise, hidden behind stated umbrella time period within the app.
Mistake #4: We assumed that the useful consumer of our touchdown web page product can be the identical one who wants to make use of popups and sticky bars.
How will we un-f*** this downside?
The very first thing we’re doing is eradicating public-facing mentions of the time period “Convertables”. This has excited the advertising and marketing crew as a result of it’s a lot simpler to market one thing when you understand how to explain it, and a multi-product worth prop is way tougher than a single-product worth prop.
Past that, the strategy I’m taking is a mix of 4 major tenets:
- First, is an idea I name “Productizing Our Expertise” or POT for brief. That is about discovering new and novel ways in which our platform can be utilized, that individuals both haven’t imagined or just didn’t know was attainable.
- Second, is exploring the whole Unbounce ecosystem, from the app, to the web site, our content material channels, and our group, to see how we may do a greater job of exposing the advantages of our merchandise to those that can profit from them.
- Third, is utilizing the Product Consciousness Month weblog takeover to create interactive demonstrations proper right here on the weblog – the purpose of which is to scale back the Time to Worth (TTV) by creating extra apparent ah-ha moments.
- Fourth, understanding who the assorted goal personas and useful customers of the totally different merchandise are, and adjusting our concentrating on and advertising and marketing communications to search out and communicate to these probably totally different customers.
With reference to #3 the weblog takeover, in case you check out the highest of the display screen, you’ll see a header bar like this:
Or this one, if in case you have scrolled down the web page:
When you have a look at the hierarchy of data from left to proper, you see: 1) Who we’re: emblem, 2) What we do: worth prop, 3) How one can take motion: the three large orange buttons.
That is vastly totally different to the remainder of the weblog, which retains the navigation of the entire web site (I’ve thought that was incongruent for a very long time).
My hope is that the brand new header bar helps extra individuals know what we do, and the way our merchandise can assist. I’ll be monitoring engagement with the three CTAs and evaluating these 30 posts towards our different weblog content material when it comes to its means to get individuals to enroll.
Productizing Our Expertise: Touchdown Pages, Popups, & Sticky Bars
I had my very own ah-ha second once I began imagining all of the ways in which I may hack/modify/prolong the methods the Unbounce conversion platform can be utilized. Now we have 3 core items of product know-how (not together with our AI/Machine Studying efforts that can energy our know-how sooner or later): touchdown pages, popups, and sticky bars.
By taking our core tech, combining the obtainable options, with new jQuery scripts, CSS, and a few Third-party integrations, it’s attainable to create a plethora of latest “mini-products” that if embraced by the group, may inform future product course.
Check out the spreadsheet under. That is my POT matrix. The entire sheet at the moment homes over 120 new product concepts.
(Click on picture for full-size view)
Throughout the highest (in yellow) are the core merchandise, their options (corresponding to concentrating on, triggers, show frequency), and the totally different hacks, information sources, and integrations, that may be mixed to supply the brand new merchandise listed in inexperienced within the first column.
Every product is flagged as being in considered one of three states:
NOW: These merchandise are attainable now with our current characteristic set.
MVP: These merchandise are attainable by including some easy scripts/CSS to increase the core.
NEW: These merchandise would require a a lot deeper degree of product or web site growth to make them attainable. These are the examples that got here from “blue sky” ideation, and are a helpful higher anchor for what might be performed.
I’ll be explaining these use instances in higher element because the month progresses, and I’ll be constructing a few of them instantly into these weblog posts as I write them. << FTR this can contain me reverting to my long-extinct coding background to hack the shit out of the weblog to indicate you what I’m speaking about.
Please Comply with Alongside
That’s the intro, that’s what occurred, and what we’re going to do to try to repair it. Subscribe to the weekly email updates, be a part of the dialogue in the comments, and chat instantly with me on Twitter.
There is also a calendar on the backside of each put up that can hyperlink to all 30 PMM matters as they roll out.
What’s approaching day 2 of PMM?
Tomorrow’s put up is named “50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness”. It’s primarily based on the outcomes of rapid-fire brainstorms which uncovered quick-win techniques all product entrepreneurs can use to show your merchandise in small and easy methods, to construct to a vital mass of consciousness.
This needs to be very related to anybody in advertising and marketing, and doubly so to these working for a SaaS enterprise.
Right here’s to kicking off 2018 in a blaze of product advertising and marketing glory.
Cheers,
Oli Gardner
p.s. Please bounce into the feedback under to let me know what merchandise you’re at the moment attempting to take to market.