📕 Amplifying Content Via Thought Leaders; The Adjacent Customer; “Obviously Awesome” Product Positioning…

Republished By Plato

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Happy Friday folks. We can’t be the only ones a bit behind on our 2021 business planning, so we thought you all might get some use out of this template from our very own Ed Byrne, which will help you review last year’s progress and set thoughtful 2021 goals. It’s a roughly two-day process that requires some buy-in from your team and serious self-awareness… let us know what you think!

🔊 One of content marketing’s superpowers is what SEO pro Rand Fishkin calls amplifier groups, which consist of thought leaders who have significant sway on your target audience. Your job is to make life easy for those amplifiers by creating content specifically for them (not your customers or potential customers) that will earn them engagement when they share. This won’t immediately drive product sales from your amplifier group’s followers, but that’s ok. The #1 goal here is to leverage their credibility to increase your brand’s authority and build trust for a purchase down the road.

🔗 The link building debate is one we hear often. Is it really worth it, or are you just wasting time trading links when you should be focusing elsewhere? This in-depth feature in the SaaS marketer falls into the pro link building camp and lays out why it’s so important (namely increased domain authority and referral traffic). Some low hanging link building fruit they point to are review sites – they are easy to set up (you control the process) and ~90% of customers visit these sites before purchasing, so there’s some easy traffic for you.

🤔 There’s no one-size-fits-all process in product development. This read from the Neerventure CTO does a great job of summarizing some of the most common methods (Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking), and argues it’s unwise to firmly stick to the policies of one of the three. Instead, they would have you take some of the best practices of each while subscribing to the idea of IP-Thinking, which has one clear goal – building your IP’s value. Those previously mentioned methods can be rigid and take products in directions that veer off from your real goals (raising funds, exit strategy, etc.). IP-Thinking helps keep you heading down the path.

🔐 An often overlooked customer segment with strong growth potential is the adjacent customer. These are folks who are aware of your product (and may have even tried using it) but never successfully converted. That “just missed” conversion could be because your positioning doesn’t resonate with them or they see too many barriers to adoption – in either case, it’s extremely difficult to backtrack and figure out why exactly they chose to pass. To start to solve for these users you can look at who is successful on your platform today, and why. Comparing side by side may highlight where the disconnect is with adjacent users. The linked article from Brian Balfour offers more ways to dig deeper, it’s worth the read.

👍 Q1 is when most rebrands and product launches happen – if you are planning yours, you may want to check out Obviously Awesome first. It emphasizes the need to nail positioning before all else, otherwise, your other marketing efforts simply won’t take you far. The book covers a 10-step process to positioning, but also includes 5 specific components which we thought were great:

Competitive alternatives. Know what your customers would use if your product didn’t exist.
Unique attributes. What features does your product have that those competitive alternatives lack?
Value and proof. The benefit those features unlock for your customers.
Target market characteristics. The characteristics of buyers that make them care about the value you offer.
Market category. The market you label yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value.