how to align saas content marketing and product management Ebook

• HOW TO ALIGN SAAS CONTENT MARKETING & PRODUCT MANAGEMENT •

CLOSE THE SUCCESS GAP,

SAVE YOUR BUSINESS Transform Your Product Managers & Content Marketers into a Dynamic Duo for Retention & Growth for SaaS Companies

By Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRO

PAGE 1

Close the Success Gap, Save Your Business

PART 1

PAGE 3

Prioritize the Highest ROI Product Dev Projects Through Content

PART 2

PAGE 5

Protect your Product Dev’s Time (and sanity) and Retain Customers

PART 3

PAGE 8

How Content + Dev = Growth

ONLY WITH CONTENT CAN YOUR CUSTOMERS

– AND YOUR PRODUCT MANAGERS – DO THEIR BEST WORK. What? You must be joking. Content is for marketing, and marketing is a whole other department. If I sent my marketers over to Product Dev, my engineers would laugh me out of our office park.

We hear you. We understand every objection rattling off in your head about the crazy – COMPLETELY CRACKERS! – notion that content marketers could actually help your product development department:

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Do better work, more efficiently Be less distracted by support tickets Align behind a single, shining vision of your ideal customer Produce products, features, and updates that result in retention and growth And have more fun!

These are wild claims to be sure, so allow us to present you with a boatload of proof of why this works, and a guide to how it can work for you.

In this 3-Part paper, we’ll show you how your content creators and product developers can join forces to build the kind of business you’ve envisioned all along. A business with the right products, successful customers, and ZERO LIMITS.

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OUR PROMISE WE WILL NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH FLUFF, JUST BECAUSE WE THINK A 10 PAGE PAPER SOUNDS BETTER THAN A 4 PAGE PAPER.

WE WILL ONLY MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS FOUNDED ON

FACTS, FIGURES, & OUR OWN EXPERIENCES. WE WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH, MAKE YOU FEEL INSPIRED,

& GIVE YOU IMMEDIATE ACTIONABLE IDEAS.

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PART 1 Prioritize the Highest ROI Product Dev Projects Through Content I think we’re all in agreement that the product updates, features or fixes your customers want most should take top priority on your product developer’s to-do List. Consequently, finding out which changes will have the most positive impact (both for your company and your customers) is where many companies falter.

Especially when they’re losing customers.

When support tickets rise and customers dribble out to a sea of competitors, most CEOs are quick to hit the PANIC button – a button that is typically directly linked to the product development desk.

Surely, something is missing. If you had that one extra feature… if you did one big update… if you asked each of your departing customers why they’re leaving and solved all of those issues…

Surely you would succeed.

In product development, there’s a phenomenon known as the “product death cycle,” when panicked business owners make the mistake of asking customers “why aren’t you using my product? What features do you want?” and act accordingly, stumbling into the “next feature fallacy.” The first nail in the coffin is asking every customer for input. The second nail in the coffin is listening to them.

Not only will you run your product developers ragged trying to accommodate everyone, they won’t be focusing on the improvements that are most likely to make the biggest impact. How can you find and prioritize those high-impact improvements?

Your content marketers can help.

Foundational to a content marketer’s job is to identify and attract your ideal customers. That means even if you claim “My product is for EVERYBODY!” (Cumbaya, by the way), your content marketers have done the research and know better. They should know who your best customers are – the ones that have stayed with you the longest, paid you the most, and referred you to their friends/relatives/coworkers/bosses/total strangers on the bus – because that is who they have in mind when creating your content.

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PART 1 This same segment, your ideal customers, is the only one from whom you should ask for feedback.

And your content marketers can help with that too.

You see, all this time that you’ve been building your product and your business, your content marketers have been building relationships with your target audience. They’ve been creating content that is fun, useful, interesting and engaging. They’ve (hopefully) trained your best customers to not only open your emails, but to look forward to receiving them.

This means they have a direct line to your best customers, which allows them to ask them the questions that will lead product development to creating the right solutions.

Through customer development surveys, you can make sure that:

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You really understand your ideal customer’s problems, in there entirety, within their everyday contexts.

The problem is big enough that they are highly motivated to solve it.

They care enough about solving the problem that, if you create the solution, they’ll tell their friends.

These surveys should include open-ended questions asking these customers to describe their problems (and the severity of these problems), how the problems affect their everyday lives, and what their ultimate desired outcome is from using your product.

With their feedback guiding the way, your product development team can prioritize tasks that help your ideal customers achieve their ideal outcomes – and forget about trying to please everyone by doing everything.

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PART 2 Protect your Product Dev’s Time (and sanity) and Retain Customers When not answering the “Bat Phone” from the founder or CEO, product development often gets looped into customer service issues. It seems like every time there’s a “technical” problem that customer service can’t answer, product developers are required to save the day – which isn’t the best use of their time. https://media.giphy.com/media/F7yLXA5fJ5sLC/giphy.gif

How much more could they get done if they didn’t have to answer relatively easy questions?

How much more could your customer service department do if they didn’t have to field those questions either?

The answer is: A lot!

Let’s take a step back and shift focus from problem-solving to helping customers be successful with your product from the start.

Crazy story: Zappos actually tries to increase the number of customer support interactions. Why? Because they found that customers who interacted with support were 5 to 6 times more valuable than those who didn’t. Modcloth, another online clothing retailer, has a similar model, offering live chats not just with customer service, but with “ModStylists” who can help customers achieve their ultimate goal: Looking fabulous in clothes that fit.

Both of these extremely lucrative businesses are coming at customer service from a customer success perspective, doing what it takes to make their customers successful – achieving their desired outcomes – in the real world. As a result, their customers are fiercely loyal, enthusiastically supportive, and are likely fighting mild shopping addictions.

How can a SaaS company get in on that action –

especially if you don’t have a robust customer service department?

Through content that closes the success gap.

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PART 2 The Success Gap Most people, product developers and CEOs included, think that a successful customer is someone who uses their product correctly. They log in, do what they need to do, have minimal questions, & log out.

The problem with this is that success, 99% of the time, isn’t found within your program.

It’s outside.

In the real world.

For Zappos’ clients, success means attending a 3-day conference in shoes that are professional – but most importantly, comfortable, so they aren’t limping from session to session and begging for Band-Aids in between.

For Modcloth clients, success means going out to a trendy restaurant on date night in a dress that fits like it was bespoke, with just the right pumps and color-coordinated cardigan.

But let’s take another example, closer to the SaaS world.

AdEspresso is a platform for purchasing and placing Facebook ads. But success for their customers isn’t the act of placing an ad on Facebook – success only happens when people make purchases from those ads. AdEspresso isn’t a “creative” agency. They don’t design ads or write copy. But for their customers to achieve their end-goals, AdEspresso has gotten into the business of education.

The company created the AdEspresso Academy to teach their users how to design and write effective ads that attract and push their buyers through their sales funnels, closing the success gap between their in-product experience and success in the real world.

They publish blog posts, guides, webinars and eBooks. They have a gallery of 14,000 ad examples that anyone can peruse for inspiration, and 14,000 more that are reserved just for their newsletter subscribers.

As a result, their customers become better at what they do because they use the AdEspresso product.

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PART 2 And, as the saying goes, you may forget who gave you something – but you never forget who taught you something. This is unforgettable marketing.

It’s also content marketing that solves problems before they happen, easing the workload of tech support and/or product dev by educating the client through evergreen materials that work at every stage of the buy cycle – they attract, build trust, convert, and do much to retain.

And while we’re on that thought, let’s look at how we can use educational content in the onboarding process to retain users from the very beginning.

Designing Onboarding for Retention Product managers are often in charge of designing onboarding processes, but they typically approach it from a “let’s teach the customer how to use our product” angle. Using the wealth of information gleaned from content marketers, as well as the content marketer’s talents for crafting informative content that’s easy to read, product developers can tackle onboarding from this perspective instead: “Let’s teach the customer how to use our product to achieve their specific, desired outcomes in the real world.”

Notice that it’s the customer’s desired outcome that is the key – not what you think represents the customer’s successful use of your product.

And that successful outcome will likely be different for different types of customers.

This is where product developers can help by designing customer success processes into onboarding, like an initial survey asking what the desired outcome is…

Which segments the user into a category based on what they want to achieve…

Which introduces the user to a system of success markers as they get closer to that goal…

And helps them stay on track with reminders (and celebrate achievements, reinforcing the value they get from your product).

By including customer success tracking within the product, developers give content marketers the insights they need to create content around common sticky points which users can reference if and when they need it.

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PART 3 How Content + Dev = Growth How important is it for content marketers and product developers to ensure SaaS customers are successful from day one?

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According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 25% to 95%.

In a study of over 500 SaaS companies, Patrick Campbell, CEO and Founder of ProfitWell, found that increasing retention had a 6.71% impact on a company’s bottom line – compared with acquisition, which only had a 3.32% impact.

Gartner Group found that, on average, 80% of a company’s future profits come from 20% of their existing customers.

That support can come from beefing up your customer service department, but that only solves problems that have already arisen. Believe us, it’s much more efficient to prevent problems before they happen.

Or, that support can be there from your first contact with a prospect – when they find a post, or guide, on your website that shows them how to do something that helps them achieve their goals – through the onboarding process, in which your content is designed to teach them to use your product to create their own successes – through years of growth, updates, and new features guided by feedback from your ideal customers. When supporting customer success is this pervasive, you establish trust in your brand and fanatical loyalty.

For most, the name of the game is “maximizing customer lifetime value” and “minimizing churn” (churn has been called “the most important metric for long-term SaaS success”) – both of which require a company-wide focus on customer success.

But when you work to make your customers’ real-world lives better, giving them more time to spend with their loved ones or pursuing their passions, we call the name of the game something different

IT’S MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

Y E P, W E W E N T T H E R E .

ARE YOU USING YOUR CONTENT AS EFFECTIVELY AS YOU COULD?

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CLOSE THE SUCCESS GAP AND SAVE YOUR BUSINESS

HOUSTON 2000A Edwards St. Suite 314 Houston, Texas 77007 Phone: 877.519.0555 Email: connect@inturact.com