客户主导增长 | Georgiana Laudi(Forget The Funnel)
Customer-led growth | Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel)
Georgiana Laudi: The problem with funnels and pirate metrics and the favorites that I love to pick on are MQLs and SQLs is that nobody knows what those mean. It puts every customer in the same sort of buckets. It assumes that all customers and all products are the same. It puts businesses, or they, I should say, puts businesses at the center of the business versus putting customers at the center. Right? It’s about the values of the business, not the value to the customer that’s being measured. Also, it just kind of feels gross for people, this idea of pushing people through a funnel. And then probably a particularly relevant for SaaS companies is that recurring revenue businesses, you cannot think about marketing and growth and the business overall as ending an acquisition, otherwise you’re not in business anymore. And the vast, vast majority of these models don’t take post-acquisition, retention, expansion, all of that into account. So yeah, in a nutshell, funnels are bad.
Lenny: Welcome to Lenny’s Podcast. I’m Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today’s most successful companies. Today, my guest is Georgiana Laudi. Georgiana, aka Gia, runs a consultancy called Forget The Funnel, where she works hands on with SaaS companies to help them unlock and accelerate growth.
As you’ll hear, she often finds huge unlocks and opportunities often doubling or tripling conversion in various points in their product flows. In our conversation, she shares the exact process that she goes through to help companies figure out where their biggest growth opportunities lie, and also how to execute on them. We chat about how to identify your most important customers, how to very practically map their journey through your flows and set goals, and then execute on your ideas. There’s a lot of wisdom and some fun stories packed into this episode. So with that, I bring you Gia.
I’m excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John.
John Cutler: Hey, Lenny. Excited to be here.
Lenny: John, give us a behind the scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics, but now you’re getting into experimentation and even just launch a CDP. What’s the thought process there?
John Cutler: What we’ve always thought of Amplitude is being about supporting the full product loop, think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments, and learn. That’s the heart of growth to us. So the big aha was seen how many customers were using Amplitude to analyze experiments, use segments for outreach, and send data to other destinations. Experimenting CDP came out of listening to and observing our customers.
Lenny: Supporting growth and learning has always been Amplitude’s core focus, right?
John Cutler: Yeah. So Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launched Starter Templates and have a great scholarship program for startups. There’s never been a more important time for growth.
Lenny: Absolutely agree. Thanks for joining us, John. Head to amplitude.com to get started.
Right now it’s time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It’s just one scoop and a cup of water every day, and that’s it. There’s no need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/lenny. Again, that’s athleticgreens.com/lenny. Take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.
Gia, welcome to the podcast.
Georgiana Laudi: Thanks so much for having me, Lenny.
Lenny: It’s my pleasure. So we actually met over a decade ago, I think, maybe just around a decade in Montreal. I was working on my startup. You were helping companies with their websites, optimize their websites. Then you went on to lead marketing at Unbounce and a bunch of other great stuff. So just to set a little bit of foundation for listeners, can you talk about what you’ve done in your career in 55 seconds? That’s your time box.
Georgiana Laudi: 55 seconds. Okay. So marketing for probably about 20 or so years, which sounds completely ridiculous when I say it, but I started working for my father’s retail business in the early 2000s, probably 2000 actually. Worked there for a number of years, and then eventually left and started freelancing, worked at an agency. Terrible. And then actually probably around the time I met you, I had this little catalyst moment where I joined Twitter in late 2008, and I discovered the tech scene and startups. And that was, again, probably around the time that you and I met, maybe 2010 ish. And that was-
Lenny: 2011.
Georgiana Laudi: And then I… What’s that?
Lenny: 2011.
Georgiana Laudi: 2011. See, there you go.
Lenny: Mm-hmm.
Georgiana Laudi: So it was right around that time, and then late 2011, I decided supporting five, six companies at a time in their marketing and stuff like that. I was starting to get burnout, I was doing a lot, and I was like, “What would it feel like to sink my teeth into one brand?” So I decided to go in-house and I moved out west, and joined the team at Unbounce. I was there for five years. And then in late 2016, early 2017, I decided it was time to move on, and so I decided to go back independent and just started working with companies and supporting them through marketing and growth and product marketing. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
But in mid 2017, I actually paired up with Claire Suellentrop who led marketing at Calendly, and her and I have been working together since about mid 2017. That’s when we launched Forget The Funnel, and we started pairing up on working with companies and sort of married her customer research background in my strategy, marketing background. And we developed this framework that we now use when we work with predominantly B2B SaaS companies, is who we work with right now.
Lenny: Awesome. So we’re going to spend a lot of time on what you’ve learned working with companies through Forget The Funnel. Why did you call it Forget The funnel?
Georgiana Laudi: Because funnels are gross. I mean, it’s a really antiquated idea. It’s not just funnels that we sort of take issue with, it’s buyers’ journeys or even… I remember actually at Startup Fest 2012, I want to say, Dave McClure was talking about pirate metrics and I was like, “Huzzah, marketing has a role post acquisition. Everybody understands now.” It was a real moment for me. But the problem with funnels and pirate metrics and the favorites that I love to pick on are MQLs and SQLs is that nobody knows what those mean. It puts every customer in the same sort of buckets. It assumes that all customers and all products are the same. It puts businesses, or they, I should say, puts businesses at the center of the business versus putting customers at the center. It’s about the values of the business, not the value to the customer that’s being measured.
Also, it just kind of feels gross for people, this idea of pushing people through a funnel. And then probably a particularly relevant for SaaS companies is that recurring revenue businesses, you cannot think about marketing and growth and the business overall as ending at acquisition. Otherwise, you’re not in business anymore. The vast, vast majority of these models don’t take post-acquisition retention, expansion, all of that into account. They also leave the problem stage out. So the world that customers are living in prior to discovering you, which is a really critical, that context is unbelievably valuable, especially for marketing. So to delete that out of the equation is a big problem. So yeah, in a nutshell, funnels are bad.
Lenny: Okay. So I’m excited to dig into a lot of stuff you’ve learned, but I have a couple other things I just wanted to talk about to set the foundation.
Georgiana Laudi: Mm-hmm.
Lenny: One is, can you talk about some of the impact that you’ve seen working with companies through the process that you’ve come up with? What kind of impact have you seen? What kind of numbers have you seen?
Georgiana Laudi: I would say, far in a way the biggest, most immediate impact of the type of work that we do is realigning with that ideal customer. Generally, the lowest hanging fruit outcome is realigning around better positioning and messaging. And identifying more resonant positioning and messaging that speaks to that context that I was talking about before, before people discover that you even exist, have that moment where they’re like, “Oh my god, this has to change. This sucks,” ties that in, ties in what they care about and what is valuable about your product and then also that desired outcome. I mean, for those in the know, jobs to be done is a big sort of influence here, but if you can identify that type of information about your customers and get to know them at that level, then you are in a way better position to be able to not only position your product but also use much more powerful messaging.
So typically, what we do is, we’ll identify those gaps of almost, I mean I shouldn’t even say nine times out of 10, 99 times out of a hundred, a company’s website is not doing as much as it could do. It’s not being as effective from a messaging and positioning standpoint as it could. So websites tend to get update. We will do a lot of overhauls on messaging on a website and improve performance there. One of my favorite examples of that is a social media tool that we worked with where we did really very simple research for them, honestly, identified two different jobs to be done, zeroed in on one of them, and then updated the messaging on the website.
We shortened the trial from 30 days to seven. The conversion on the website went up with this new messaging by 89%. But the thing that I love the most about that particular story is that we didn’t even touch anything after the signup experience. We hadn’t even gotten there and the trial-to-paid conversion rate increased 40%, and we didn’t touch it. It was just because a more qualified, better fit customer was coming through the door. So there was more of them and there were better qualified. So that’s a really specific example that is very typical of this type of work.
There’s other examples, though, of product adoption and using that messaging and positioning past the website, even in the product onboarding itself, email and app, whatever, and just making sure that they’re getting to and have the calms to get to the parts of the product that they care about the most, which can increase trial-to-paid or product activation. With Autobooks, the product usage of the North Star product usage jumped by 300% or something within quite a short period of time after rolling out email onboarding to support that product experience. I know SparkToro as well, which I think we might end up talking about again when we talk about the process, they doubled their trial-to-paid conversion rate when we worked with them because of post acquisition optimization to their messaging.
Lenny: I imagine people are listening to this and they’re like, “This is what I’m waiting for, some kind of huge win, some huge conversion, a success.” I’m curious, how often do you find companies have something like this, like a latent opportunity to double, triple conversion? Everyone’s hoping a conversion like this.
Georgiana Laudi: Oh, boy.
Lenny: Yeah. What’s the general hit rate?
Georgiana Laudi: So many. I mean I would say, pretty well every company we’ve ever worked with has… Not pretty well. Every company we’ve ever worked with has learned something new about their customers that they can apply at some juncture of their customer’s experience, whether or not it is in campaigns to reach the right people out in the world, whether or not it’s doing a better job with their messaging and positioning on their website, or their go-to market or acquisition strategy on their website using a sandbox account or getting a faux freemium account to let people kick the tires of their product prior to getting on a sales call. That’s something that could potentially happen.
The post-acquisition experience I’m talking about, it is so often an afterthought somehow where that additional of layer… I think part of the reason why it’s an afterthought is because product onboarding in particular, and you’ve probably heard this too, it tends to be kind of like no man’s land. Who owns that? Is it marketing? If it’s freemium, in my opinion it should be marketing because freemium is a marketing tool, but not everybody subscribes to that. Not every company would necessarily agree that that’s the case. A lot of companies might say, “No, it’s product.” So we end up seeing a messy middle there because there’s no natural handoff. So pretty well, every company that we’ve worked with has had an opportunity to improve, especially product onboarding and product activation.
Lenny: Awesome. So basically everybody will benefit from what we’re about to talk about.
Georgiana Laudi: A hundred percent.
Lenny: Amazing. Great.
Georgiana Laudi: Yes.
Lenny: All right. We’ve got wrap detention as a way to maybe transition into your process. So you’re visiting a site once, and I invited you to the Airbnb office we were having a happy hour, and I gave you a tour. You told me later that something you saw while you’re walking around the office transformed the way you think about growth and inform the way you think about approaching this problem. Can you talk about that?
Georgiana Laudi: Yes. This is one of my favorite… It was 2013, so you and I might have met in 2011, and then a couple years later I was in town for a conference and we toured the office, HQ and everything. Of course, it was all stars in my eyes because what a beautiful office too. So it was quite like, I would’ve remembered it regardless. But we went downstairs, very different from the very polished upstairs. We went downstairs to where your working area was, where the product team was, and there were sheets of paper taped to the wall, a bunch in a row. And it would’ve been easy to miss because it’s kind of chaotic down there, but it was the customer journey of an Airbnb customer through two posts.
What struck me, I was like, “Oh that’s interesting. I’m in the middle of building one out for us.” Leading marketing at Unbounce at the time. And I was interestingly with the customer success, he was also with me. So Ryan Engley was there with me, and it was the perfect sort of that him and I saw it together. It was a customer journey that was focused on the customer. So versus that pirate metrics problem or that the typical buyer’s journey problem that I was talking about earlier, it was the complete reverse of that. It was illustrated. The emotional journey was part of it. The role that Airbnb played as a direct touchpoint and also indirect, what was going on in the person’s life that had nothing to do outside of Airbnb, which I thought was really interesting.
It was like, the beautiful little milestones really encapsulated in a sort of snapshot way, such that anybody walking by it or anybody being reminded that it existed could understand in a glance what the goal was at each of those milestones. I was like, “Well, shit, this is completely through the lens of the customer versus the business and the grossness of the funnel.” It’s just so far removed from that experience that I was like, “Ryan, look at this. We need this.” He was like, “Oh yeah, this is good.” I took a picture. Can’t find it for the life of me.
But we returned back to the office the following week, and co-founder and head of product, head of CS, so Ryan, Carter Gilchrist, who’s head of product and co-founder, Ryan, and I, head of marketing, the three of us locked ourselves in the room for two days and made our own. It was a circle. I mean looking back, it’s hysterical, but it was sort of democratized to the rest of the team in a way because it had that buy-in. Everybody was like, “Oh yeah. Okay, this makes sense and I understand.” It made everybody feel a lot better about what they were doing because it was about value, delivering value at each of the points.
So that grossness sort of goes away and we’re like, “Oh cool.” I don’t want to be too kumbaya about it, but it was a bit of a moment. And also, it made communicating with especially the product team and the engineering team a lot easier for me. So we were using a shared language. The rest of the company who aren’t necessarily customer facing really understood, I think, at a different level what we were all doing together in KPIs, yada yada yada. So it was amazing. Honestly, I mean I can’t credit only that obviously to our growth, but it was a pretty impressive couple years that followed that. I think the alignment that that brought us was huge. Yeah. Anyway, that’s the story. Sorry, that wasn’t super short, but it was big.
Lenny: That’s great.
Georgiana Laudi: It was a big thing. Yeah.
Lenny: We’re going to link pictures of this on the show notes. Internally, it was called Project Snow White because it was inspired by-
Georgiana Laudi: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Lenny: Yeah. It was inspired by Brian reading the biography of Walt Disney, and they needed to create the storyboard basically to create Snow White because it was so complicated to make that movie. It might have been the first animated film with storyboards.
Georgiana Laudi: Okay.
Lenny: So it was basically a storyboard of a trip on Airbnb of a host and a guest.
Georgiana Laudi: That’s right.
Lenny: And in detail, I forget if I told you this, but Airbnb hired a full-time storyboard artist from Pixar to draw these key frames.
Georgiana Laudi: I think I did know that. I was very grateful to have seen it. I didn’t realize at the time, but it changed the way, like you said at the beginning, it changed the way that I thought about marketing because it really made it obvious to not only me, of course, and to everybody, that customer experience layer, that marketers are so good at, has such an incredibly important role in driving revenue. Not just in building awareness, but in playing a major role in helping customers get value and catching them when they fall off and all that kind of stuff. So it changed a lot for us.
Lenny: And it informed the way that you approach your consultancy with Forget The funnel. So as a transition to talk about that, the way I’m thinking we approach this is, imagine a customer, what is the process you go through? What are the steps? How do you go about helping a company figure out where they should invest, what they’re doing right and wrong? I should also mention you’re writing a book about this that’s going to explain this whole process, that’s coming out later in the year.
Georgiana Laudi: Right. Yeah.
Lenny: So we’ll talk about that at the end as well. I’ll turn over to you.
Georgiana Laudi: Cool. I mean if I go down a rabbit hole and you want to pull me out and have me unpack something, let me know. Well, the process is pretty straightforward. At the highest level, the idea is, understand your best customers, map their experience, like we were just talking about, map their experience through the lens of delivering value to them, make it measurable, and then evaluate what you’re doing today that is out of alignment with that. Pretty straightforward. I mean that doesn’t sound too hard of a job, of course. But research is an really important part of that. So the story that I was going to use to illustrate this is, there’s a company that we work with from time to time. We worked with them at least twice, arguably three times.
So Rand Fishkin who was the founder of Moz, he’s got a new product. It’s an audience research tool called SparkToro. And when they first launched, actually even pre-launched, Rand and Casey came to Claire and I to help with their positioning and messaging as they were going forward to launch. I mean Rand and Casey, they’re both very, very thoughtful and they take their time with stuff. So they were just looking for that extra layer of like, “Is this good enough to launch kind of thing?” So we help them with their positioning and messaging. And off they went.
About a year later, they came back because though they were doing a decent job generating traffic and interest in SparkToro, I mean Rand is no small fish so he’s got a good audience built in, which is fantastic, but those that were getting to the website… Those that were signing up for the product, those weren’t issues. But the people that were signing up for their free product weren’t converting to paid in the way that they believed they could. So we decided to work with them and basically go to the source and find out, from SparkToro’s best customers, what can we learn from them that we can then reflect back in the product experience and the customer experience for them?
Georgiana Laudi: So I mentioned it before, but we are heavy believers in the jobs-to-be-done theory, which is basically this idea that people don’t buy your product, they buy the better version of themselves, yada yada. I don’t need to explain any of that. But we use that to guide our research. And with SparkToro, we were in a position, and the purists will hate me saying this, but we were in a position to be able to run surveys. So yes, interviews are ideal always, but we did think that we could learn a ton from surveys to then, if needed, double down with interviews. We didn’t end up actually needing to run the interviews because the surface that we ran were pretty decisive and clear in terms of what we learned. So what we did was, we identified SparkToro’s best customers. Now, what I mean by best customers is those that get a ton of value from your product as of exist today, pay obviously. They’re happy. They’re low maintenance. And very importantly, they signed up for your product recently enough that they remember what life was like before.
So generally, we say that’s in the three to six-month range. Because if you go to somebody that’s been your customer for two years, they’re just going to fill answers with what they think might have been going on in their life. But if you ask customers who remember what life was like before, you’re going to get a lot more interesting responses, a lot more accurate depiction of what was going on. So that’s the criteria we went forward. Surveyed their customers. We’re trying to uncover from them what was going on in their life when they were seeking out a solution, what happened, what was that trigger moment when they did start seeking a solution, what did they go to, who did they talk with, what were their influences? Which PS, that’s what SparkToro does, it helps you identify those.
But also, what were they looking for in a solution? What were the must-haves for them versus what were some of the anxieties that they had, some deal breakers, things like that? So basically unpacking what is it that was critical for them in their solution. And then of course, what is it they’re able to do now that they weren’t able to do before. So that desired outcome. So out of that, we identified a couple of different options, a couple of different jobs, customer jobs, and we have to prioritize one, of course, because if you start right off the bat with like, “Okay, we’re going to solve for all of these different customers jobs,” then you end up not being as resonant. You can’t be as effective. So we focused in on one.
And the way that you make a decision on which one you focus on is similar to best customers. So high willingness to pay. There’s no question whether or not they would pay for a product like yours. The handholding that they would need would be minor or less so. And I say that understanding full well the difference between product-led and sales-led. I’m not saying that sales-led is not good, but sometimes there’s a decision to be made. If you’re not set up today to support a sales-led or high touch, then you may want to opt for the more product-led approach. And the reverse is also true if you’ve got a robust sales team, well then, you might actually be better off leveraging sales more in that scenario and might want to attend towards that. But there’s that criteria that you would think through.
So willingness to pay, it’s really obvious. Maybe the most important one is that they have an urgent problem. So the whole pain killer versus vitamin thing, you always want to be selling a pain killer. So who has an urgent problem that needs solving, not something that they might have a problem with six months down the line? Who has a high retention or even expansion potential is also really advantageous for very obvious reasons. So customers who would have a long-term need for this type of product and even potentially have that need expand or change over time and evolve in ways that you envision the product can help them.
And then there’s other criteria too. So sometimes you might want to prioritize one customer job over another, if those customers congregate in a way that make them really easy to market to. That’s an advantage. Or another advantage, and this was the case for SparkToro, is you have an unfair advantage with this market in some way. So there were two different customer jobs that were coming out of SparkToro. One was more focused on service providers and marketing and the other one was more focused on data. And those data purists and those that really wanted verifiable data, well, SparkToro has an advantage on the marketer side more so than on the data analyst side. So that was another thing too. So with that, we made the call to focus on one of those customer jobs.
Lenny: Can I ask a question here?
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah, go.
Lenny: So there’s two parts of this. There’s figuring out who you’re going to go after and then what problem you’re solving for them. Which do you think is more important at this point? Because step one in this process, just to zoom out a little bit, is figure out your customer and what their problems are so that you can actually solve them well. Do you start with here’s who we’re going to go after and then here’s the biggest problem? How do you think about that?
Georgiana Laudi: They’re sort of one in the same. So because we learned from SparkToro’s ideal customers, we already know that they’re a fit for the product. They’re happy, happily paying, prime them out of their golden hands customers. They’re the customers that we want more of. So we’ve already validated that there’s a demand from that customer base. Now, what I’m describing about choosing between two different customer jobs is really just, of those ideal customers, which customer job do you want to lean into? It’s not that you wouldn’t necessarily still be able to solve for that other customer job, it’s just not the one that you would lead with. And I always cautious around this too because sometimes with founders, what’ll happen is, there’s a level set that just because we were prioritizing one customer job in the short term, doesn’t mean you can’t serve that other customer job down the line.
A classic example of that is products that serve both brands and agencies for example. So the customer job for brands will be slightly different than agencies. And if you’ve got an advantage with one, you would just start with one and then you would go back after it. That’s a bit of a level up after the fact. It’s not part of the core processes, it’s what you would do after. But it doesn’t mean you can’t solve for the other customer jobs, it just means put one foot in front of the other, do a really good job of one thing first, and then we’ll add that on later. I don’t know if that a hundred percent answered your question though.
Lenny: Yeah. Yeah.
Georgiana Laudi: Okay.
Lenny: The reason that you start here is… Basically what you’re trying to do is help SparkToro, in this example, grow faster.
Georgiana Laudi: I mean we’re trying to help them figure out why they’re free-to-paid conversion rate was lower than what they wanted. Right? That was the challenge they came to us with. Our traffic numbers are good. Even our signups on our website, our positioning and messaging on our website is clearly doing a good job. But once people get into the product, there’s not enough of them getting to value quickly enough. I mean they still had healthy customer base, but they knew that that number could be increased. So we knew what we were solving for.
Lenny: Got it. Okay. That helps.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: So step one here is figure out who do you want to focus on, not just… Because a lot of people would go at this problem like, “Okay, conversion is whatever, 10%, how do we increase? Let’s look at this data. Let’s look at it. They’re bouncing. Let’s look at why people are confused.” And your approach is, “No, let’s focus on the people we really want to get into this product and focus on making them convert, and not focus as much on the general case of conversion.”
Georgiana Laudi: Right. We would get to that though. That’s a really important part of the process, but it comes after figuring out who you’re even solving for. But it’s definitely important to look at those numbers. I mean, I’m not saying don’t look at the data. Obviously you have to. They wouldn’t have identified a problem had they not been looking at the data. So the challenge that happened so, so often, and I mean this happens with a lot of teams, particularly marketers fall victim to this tactical way of approaching things and piecemealing things, piecemealing campaigns or programs to prove that we’re doing something and we’re driving up numbers, and they don’t take big enough sort of swings. So this is like, zoom out for a second, figure out who is it that you even want coming through the front door. I mean, the social media platform tool that I mentioned, the trial-to-pay conversion rate bumped up 40% because a higher qualified person comes through the front door. So it matters.
So if you can zoom out and keep in your mind’s eye that ideal customer job, that thing that you’re solving for. We’re not at personas. We don’t care about personas at all. They’re important when you start talking about advertising and targeting and that demographic data that you have to know when you’re doing advertising and things like that. That is not what I’m describing here at all. I find that jobs be done too helps tie and bond marketing and product and customer success together a lot more because all three of those teams, or arguably four with sales, should all be focused on this theme customer that’s not revolutionary. So this is just a sort of helpful way to do that.
Product teams know and subscribe for the most part to the jobs-to-be-done theory. So marketers should follow suit, and there’s a lot to be gained anyway on the marketing side. So anyway, the short of it basically is that because we knew we were focused on increasing that free-to-pay conversion rate, the next step after the job is the mapping. So it’s identifying, okay, for this ideal customer, what are those key milestones in their relationship with our product? What are those big of leaps of faith is how I describe it. I mean I don’t need to explain. The Airbnb customer journey tells that story. Where’s a value moment in this relationship? Where are they reaching value?
Lenny: Make some examples of that for folks that are trying to do this for themselves potentially. And then also, how many of these moments would you suggest people have?
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah. So it completely depends on the product and the customer for that matter. I shouldn’t leave that part over it. Obviously that’s important. In general though, what we would do is, we’d break it down into a struggle phase and evaluation phase and a growth phase. Struggle phase is, they’re experiencing the problem, life sucks, they’re using the old way, something’s got to happen, they’ve got to solve this thing. In general, the struggle phase would break down between out in the world experiencing the problem for the first time. So we call that a problem. And generally there would be another one called interest, where it’s like, “Okay, now they’re starting to shop around. They’re getting into solution seeking mode.” They might be on your website. They might be on your competitor’s websites. They’re reading product reviews, things like that. That’s interest stage.
And then there’s the evaluation phase, which generally breaks down, I will say two or three milestones within the evaluation phase. I say two or three because if you have a more complex product, more complex customer is the more likely scenario. There may be more leaps of faith or more milestones, heavier lift for you to take. So we have worked with companies where the evaluation phase has been three or four milestones, I would always default to as few as possible. So if I’m cutting it down to lowest common denominator, I would say a first value would be the first milestone within evaluation. So you want to get them to that product activation really, really quickly. And then value realization is the milestone where you’re solving that customer job. So they reach a point with your product where they’re like, “Hell yes, this is it.” And for the first time, they reach this critical threshold of product engagement. Now, what that product engagement is with your unique product for that specific customer is up for debate, but there still needs to be that moment.
And then there’s the growth phase, which is about the continued value. So getting to frequency of usage and a healthy building of that habit, getting into a cadence that makes sense. What type of feature usage and end product usage should you want to see there and then on what frequency becomes really important. And then there’s another milestone generally after that where you’re like, “Okay cool, they’re in. They’re pro. Now, what else do they need?” What else do they need from a product? And also, how else can we amplify them or work with them to either start teaching our tool to other people? I mean there’s all kinds of things that can happen about growth. That’s where the promise that exponential growth assess sort of comes into play.
Lenny: And as people listen to this, just to maybe help if it’s not super obvious, what people shouldn’t imagine is like a little key frame, a storyboard frame of like, “Here’s something your customer is doing.” Right?
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah. We often talk about it and describe it as the story of how I met and fell in love with your product. It’s like this documentary of being out in the world, finding it, realizing that like, “Hell yeah, this might actually solve a problem for us. This might be it.” Getting that enough value to convince them to keep going to full value realization, to continue value-to-value growth.
Lenny:
As part of their fall season, which Maven just launched, there are over 100 new courses starting in the next few weeks. Many of the people I’ve had on this podcast are teaching courses like Jackie Bavaro on product strategy, Arielle Jackson on startup branding, Emily Kramer on B2B marketing, plus Annie Duke on decision making, Nir Eyal on behavioral design, and how to break into product management with Marily Nika. Check out all of my favorite courses and learn more at maven.com/lenny.
Georgiana Laudi: Now, again, I’m saying that as if it applies to all customers and products, and that’s not actually the case. Sometimes it’s more complicated than that, but in general, that is what we have found. So that’s what we did for SparkToro customers based on the research that we did. The research that we do, we basically take all the responses, we identify the critical patterns, and that’s how we identify the customer job. From those critical patterns, if we segment down just that customer job, we can look at responses and say, “Okay, here’s what they’re likely doing when they’re out in the world experiencing this problem. This is how they described the pain of their current solution. And then here’s what they say about how their search for a solution started. Here’s what they told us about how they started to do that research or find a solution.”
And then there’s questions that are asked in the research like, “What was the moment that convinced you that our product was going to solve this problem for you?” And the answers to that question are going to tell you what your first value should look like, which of that first product activation experience, whatever language you like to use, what should that look like for them? What parts of the product do you need to push right up to the front of that experience so they can get to it really, really quickly after they sign up?
And then value realization obviously would be close to, if not, the desired outcome of that customer job where you’re solving that customer job. And then you’ve got all kinds of… Generally, what happens when I’m going through this process with teams is, all kinds of ideas start to come up about what more they could be doing, even post solving that customer job, especially the product team gets really exciting because they’ve got all kinds of ideas about where the product can go. So that really helps tie everybody together too.
A critical part of that process obviously is identifying we have to measure success along the way. There should be a KPI for each of those stages in that customer journey. And for the most part, they won’t be a big surprise on the struggle side of things. People out in the world experience the problem, how are we going to know we’re doing a good job reaching them? We bring in new unique website visitors. In general, that would be the measure of success for the problem milestone. And then next piece of the puzzle is like, okay, once they discover that we exist, even if they are visiting, reading product reviews and visiting competitor sites or whatever, we’ll know we’ve done a good job of convincing them that we can help solve their problem and deterring the people that we don’t want.
We know we’ve done a good job when the conversion rate on whatever our primary CTA is on our website, whether or not it’s start a trial or request a demo, something like that. Generally, the struggle phase is very straightforward in terms of measurement. That’s like marketers’ bread and butter, that’s where they live and breathe all day long. Where things start to change though generally when we’re working with companies is helping them figure out how should they be measuring first value or product activation and how should they be measuring actual product engagement. Generally, what we do there is, we can associate basically what they told us brings them the most amount of value with the product attribute or parts of the product that deliver that value. We try to tie the KPI obviously to some sort of meaningful product usage of that key part of the product or product attribute.
Lenny: Can you share some examples of that? Because that’s a really important piece.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah. I’ll use SparkToro as an example just because it’s the one that we started with. So for SparkToro, I don’t remember the exact customer job statement necessarily, but for them, what they said were, the parts of the product that gave them a ton of value was two specific features: lists. So being able to organize their findings in a way that made it not only easy for them to organize within their own files but also share because a lot of them were with clients or stakeholders that they want to be able to share with. So lists were a specific feature that honestly, it was in there, but they weren’t front loading the product experience with that. I’m not going to say it was hidden, but it wasn’t front and center enough. So that was one feature that we could associate with being able to organize the data, being able to continue to build on it and make it usable over time and also share.
And then there was another feature as well, which was an exporting feature. Again, it’s not that it was hidden, but it wasn’t front and center enough. So we tied KPIs to them making use of those features, coupled with obviously the core feature, which is searchability. It was like pairing the search functionality with the list functionality, and then pairing the search functionality with the list functionality, with the export functionality. It’s a bit abstract to me just saying the words. It’s easier with a visual. But the story is basically, help them use the search functionality first. Right after that, make sure that they’re using lists. And if they don’t use lists, let’s help them get back to using it so that they get to that important critical value moment. And then the same applies for the exporting features that we were talking about.
Lenny: Got it. And to be clear, you basically said a metric for each of these moments.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah, milestones.
Lenny: Milestones. Yeah.
Georgiana Laudi: Or just whatever. I mean you have to. I mean it always surprises me when a team is like, “Oh yeah. Yeah, you’re right, we don’t do that.” I’m like, “What? What do you mean?” So at a given milestone, unless they’ve reached that value moment, you can’t keep them on the train to something else. If they haven’t even discovered that really, to them, most valued part of their product, you would need to focus on getting them to that value. Otherwise, you can’t just keep firing off emails and hoping they’re going to jump back into the product as if they’re going to care. So a lot of what we’d do is actually proactive customer experiences, whether or not in app or email or whatever tool, to help them get to that moment within the product.
And if they don’t get to that moment, which is measurable, again, that’s why it’s a KPI, then we can be reactive in helping them get back in. So identifying, “Okay,” not that you would say this like, “it fell off the train,” but just helping them nurture them back into, the product didn’t really discover that feature if they missed it the first time around. So it’s proactive and pushing them forward, but then also catching them if they fall. And the only way to catch them if they fall is if you’re measuring something meaningful along the way.
We have that storyboard that we were talking about. We also have a map where it’s the experience to get them to a certain value moment, but then that win back experience to get them back in should they fall out for any reason. I mean, people get hungry and get distracted, and there’s a ton of reasons why. I mean there’s a lot of stats on the percentage. I think it’s like 70% of people log into an app, log into a product once and never come back. It’s wild. So the fact that so many companies don’t have some sort of win back or re-engagement always blows my mind.
Lenny: So just to recap and then we’ll keep going with the process. Step one, understand what your customers are going through, figure out the most important customer and their biggest problem, then map out the journey that they go through, the struggle they go through before they discover your product, the steps they go through to evaluate, decide to use your product. And then once they use your product, then continuing to use your product and using it more and more. And then once you figured out these steps… And is a rough number like 10, 12 steps? What’s a good number just to put-
Georgiana Laudi: Oh no, I would hope it’s more like six.
Lenny: Six, okay.
Georgiana Laudi: I’m always trying to bring it down lowest, only as long as it absolutely needs to be. I mean that goes for all pages, landing pages.
Lenny: Okay, all right.
Georgiana Laudi: Same thing for customer journey mask.
Lenny: Okay. Airbnb had 12, I think. So you’re involved in-
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: I liked that. Okay. And then you’ve come up with a metric to tell you if that step is performing well.
Georgiana Laudi: If they’d gotten there, did they get to that value?
Lenny: If they’ve gotten there. Cool. One last question before we move on to the next step. Can you give two maybe examples of an actual movement, say in SparkToro’s case, and then the metric that they use to measure, if they’ve gotten to that point?
Georgiana Laudi: Yes. So the measure for success at that tip somebody over into evaluation is performing their first search. So when you’re on their website, you perform a search, it’s not signing up for a trial or signing up for free, although it does tip you into signing up for free when you perform your first search. So signing up for getting your first search and seeing your first search results is that first measure. And then following that for first value, it is using search again. I mean this is very product specific like I said, but generally, a first search is a kind of an experiment where you’re sort of trying the tool on for the first time. Generally, searches start to get better when you do your second and third. So we try to encourage at least five plus.
So that first value KPI, I think it was five plus searches, plus at least one list. So it’s the combination of those two things that have to happen before somebody’s going to really see what this thing does. It’s not that they won’t get value if they don’t use lists, but because we know that SparkToro’s ideal customers really get a ton of value out of lists, people can hang out in that stage all day long if they want to. We’re not going to worry about them. We’re going to worry about the people that really want the actual functionality of the real fully featured tool. So that was the first value, that’s how we would know that they got to product activation.
And then the next one, as I mentioned before, is a combination of actually three things. So it is conducting a minimum amount of searches within a span of time, creating at least a certain number of lists, I can’t remember exactly what it is, and then discovering exporting at least once. And then that is, they’ve reached a meaningful enough threshold of product engagement. And then value growth was that they do all of that on a regular enough basis so that we know they’re not a flight risk basically. So that we know that they’re getting continued value from the product. And if they ever fall out of that ongoing engagement measured success, then we can trigger either one-on-one outreach, an email, whatever. I mean obviously it can’t be an app because if they’re not logging into the app, then you can’t reach them. But to help them back in and to say, “Hey, what’s up? Can we help? Is there anything that we can do?” And basically be proactive in getting them back in. And then value growth, I believe I think it was expansion or upgrade in their case. I can’t remember exactly.
Lenny: Cool. So you end up with these say, six KPIs.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: I imagine this becomes goals you track, and then you probably pick one of these to focus on say, per year, per quarter. Awesome.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah, hopefully not per year.
Lenny: Okay, per week.
Georgiana Laudi: Hopefully short, because I mean I will say that with some of the KPIs, it’s very straightforward with new unique website visitors or the website conversion rate. I mean depending on who owns the website, that’s not something that should take you a year. You should never be focused on only your website’s conversion rate for a year hopefully. But these other KPIs and these other milestones, I mean I have no disillusions about if it impacts the product, obviously there’s a lot of implications there. So yes, generally, once you tip over into that sort of in-app and more product experience, timelines vary widely, to say the least.
Lenny: Okay, cool. Let’s move on to the next step.
Georgiana Laudi: Okay. So after that point, we had a rich voice of customer document that came out of that research. We had a messaging guide for them to use not only in their marketing materials but also through the entire product experience, and also identifying the parts of the product that were so meaningful. Actually, their VP of marketing, the new VP of marketing, Amanda Natividad, actually rolled out checklist. They built a checklist, a product onboarding checklist and also product onboarding emails. And their trial-to-paid doubled. We were like, “Okay, cool, let us know if you need any help or whatever.” And they’re like, “Oh, we’re good. We got this.” Checked in two months later and their trial-to-paid had doubled.
Lenny: I feel like you skipped the important staff of, “Hey, we got KPIs.” And then you’re like, “Oh, we gave them all this information.” So I’d love to spend a little more time on there. You came up with messaging for them, positioning stuff. what happens there?
Georgiana Laudi: Well, this is the thing. They have a team in place. They’ve got very highly skilled, a huge team but highly skilled marketer there at the helm. I mean not the list of which is Rand Fishkin, their CEO. So basically, what we did was we gave them, it’s like a framework. So it’s like, “Here are the bones of this. So got a messaging and positioning guide for you.” Generally, I mean when we do them, they’re five to seven pages long. They hit on the value prop. They hit on the major competitive advantages. They hit on the major value themes that you want to focus on. Those value themes can be broken down by the emotional benefits and the functional benefits tied to the product attributes that drive that value. So that document, and there’s more that goes into it, but that messaging guide basically can be used as the baseline for all kinds of marketing collateral and material, but also email onboarding.
Georgiana Laudi: So when they’re writing their email sequences for whatever it is they’re trying to solve for, whatever milestone they’re solving for, they can use that as their baseline like, “This is what we’re going for. This is the goal here.” And that messaging guide rules up to the job to be done. So the job to be done is sort of like the top line. And then we’ve got that messaging that serves that job to be done. And then we’ve got the sort of operationalized customer experience with those milestones and KPIs. And then you sort of zoom in on like, where is the experience most broken right now? We already knew that for SparkToro. We knew that we wanted to influence that first early product experience. So that’s where we zoomed in and decided on what programs they should roll out. And email onboarding was a natural, as was the checklist.
Lenny: For folks that want to work on messaging, say kind of just like, “Hey, here’s a bunch of messaging advice,” any tips for how to message well, how to think about messaging once you have a sense of your journey, maybe some goals, any just pro tips here you could share?
Georgiana Laudi: Oh, boy. I mean that research and the voice of customer, I mean I’m always going to go back to that. You can guess and you can do use your best judgment. You can use internal stakeholders and the internal team knowledge. And I’m not saying that that is not valuable and that you shouldn’t use that at all. You can, but it should never come before learning from and listening to your best ideal customers and using the language that they use. You want to reflect them back to them. That is what is going to show them that you understand the problem that they have and that your product has exactly what it is that they need.
The hierarchy of messaging is really important as well. So I mean, there’s the classic, sometimes it’s hard to see the label from inside the jar, so it’s really helpful to get out and be like, “Okay, how do customers see us?” Generally, you can identify the hierarchy of what is important to them, what is the thing that they say is most valuable about their product? What was that aha moment or what was that first value moment? Or what is the thing that makes you stand out over everybody else? And it can literally be a numbers game. If you take a hundred or so survey responses, you can break that down like, “Here’s the thing they said they cared about most. Here’s the thing they said they cared about second most and third most,” not to be so paint by numbers about it, but there’s art in the science. But in general, you want to reflect back what they said they care about, not what you think is the coolest thing about your product. That’s obviously not the best way to go.
That’s something that we all inherently know, but it becomes really hard when there’s a lot going on and things are changing and the product is evolving and there’s a lot of teens and people are coming and going. It’s easy to lose sight of that, especially when you’re just trying to get shit out the door. So that messaging guide is mentally like, “Okay, here we are. This is my baseline, these are my guardrails for everything that we produce.” It’s also really handy to hand off to copywriters when you bring in… I mean not just copywriters, lots of people, but particularly when you’re producing copy, providing that messaging guide is solar platter for them.
Lenny: Is this available anywhere, the template that you end up sharing with a customer? Just like, here’s a guide, the layout, messaging, recommendations.
Georgiana Laudi: Oh, we have so many.
Lenny: Maybe a little-
Georgiana Laudi: We have so many templates and stuff. Yeah, I’ll include a couple links.
Lenny: Great. I’ll put it in the show notes.
Georgiana Laudi: We got lots of stuff like that. Yeah.
Lenny: Okay, great. A few final questions around jobs to be done.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: So you said that they doubled their conversion from free to paid.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: Amazing. What was their job to be done in the end? And then I just have a few questions about the jobs to be-
Georgiana Laudi: I think it was when they’re struggling to identify opportunities that aren’t as obvious. So generally, when you’re doing marketing research, you’ll end up signing the same things over and over again. And if you are a service provider or if you’re in-house for that matter and you’re tasked with always coming up with novel and new and more and more and more, you tap that pretty quickly. So what customers were coming to them for was like, “Give me more. I need to impress here. I need more to work with. I need to identify opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.” Actually that was exactly what it was. I helped me identify opportunities as I wouldn’t otherwise be aware of. So the customer job statement is, “When I am in a certain situation, help me,” which is filled in by what those things that they’re looking, for those motivations, “so I can,” which is the desired outcome.
The help me was about, I believe it was in a way that is organized and that is shareable and usable over time that I can build on and really rely on over time. And the desired outcome was about, I mean this isn’t going to be surprising, but it was about getting stakeholder by hand and getting people on board with, and sharing and looking good, looking like a pro, and doing their job more effectively and driving better results for either their own team or for their clients.
Lenny: Awesome. We got there. We gloss a little bit over jobs to be done. I imagine many people listening have no idea what this is. So maybe as our final question, can you just explain what this framework is and how folks can learn to use it, or any resources you recommend that comes to mind?
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah. I mean a heavy influence for us definitely is Bob Moesta, who’s one of the original architects of jobs to be done. There are lots of materials online for jobs. I am not the foremost authority in jobs at all. I think jtbd.info is a good website. There’s a bunch. Also, Bob Moesta wrote a book called Demand-Side Sales that goes into it. There’s also a lot of books written about jobs to be done. When Coffee and Kale is one that a lot of people love. I digress. Point being that what matters is identifying what it is that customers are trying to accomplish. So demographic data doesn’t matter. The classic example is, if you look at… Oh, King Charles, now the example has changed. If you look at Ozzy Osbourne, and it was Prince Charles the original, but now it’s King Charles, if you look at those two men, they’re the exact same age and live in the same area. They both have a dog. They both love cars.
From a demographic standpoint, they are identical, but they obviously lead very different lives. What motivates them is very different. So that is where typically personas sort of fall down. So what jobs to be done, to us, is help you figure out what is that desired outcome, what does that better life that customers are seeking out. You were just the vehicle to get them there. That’s all it is. I mean there’s so many tired analogies so I don’t even want to use them but-
Lenny: Milkshakes maybe.
Georgiana Laudi: What’s that?
Lenny: The milkshake analogy.
Georgiana Laudi: The milkshake one, it’s not even the analogy. I think that was one of the original job stories that is the milkshake one.
Lenny: Any other things you want to share about the process that you go through with the companies, things you’ve learned, before we get to a very exciting lightning round?
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah. One of the objections that we often get to this type of work is that research takes a long time and that research can often lead to more questions and can slow everything down. You can end up in analysis paralysis, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be very straightforward, honestly, in a survey scenario. With SparkToro, in just that scenario, I have lots of examples of companies where we ran surveys, it can be a couple of weeks. Two or three weeks, you can actually come out with something solid to move forward with, and you don’t get stuck in the bickering or all those stakeholders, the too many cooks in the kitchen. You can come to something decisive. You can get value out of that.
The other thing too, the other objection that we get a lot from founders in particular is because they build products to solve a problem that they had, which is cool and it definitely makes you one of the most knowledgeable people about your solution. But products change, markets change, customers change, teams change in a ball. Not everything can live inside of your head, and there’s a ton of value in learning and getting inside the heads of your best customers that you may have been really close to the inception of the product. But if any span of time has changed, you’ll always learn something new. I’ve never been in a scenario like this where a founder has not learned something new from their research and been able to leverage it in a way that makes their product experience better.
Lenny: Awesome. We’ll come back to how folks can reach out to you if they want to experience this process, could work with you, learn more. But before we get there, we’ve gotten into a very exciting lightning round. I’ve got five quick questions for you. We’ll go through them quick, whatever comes to mind. That’s what we’re doing. Okay, sounds good?
Georgiana Laudi: Okay.
Lenny: Okay. What are two or three books that you recommend most to people looking to get better at marketing?
Georgiana Laudi: I very, very, very rarely read marketing books, but there’s two that I think are pretty foundational and recent. So Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. I’m sure you’ve heard that one a ton. It’s kind of required reading, I would say, especially for founders. I told April when she first wrote, I’m like, “I’m going to require every single founder I work with to read your book before we work with them,” because it’s foundational, you have to know that.
And then the other one that I really enjoyed flip side was Hooked by Nir Eyal. That one was great too. But like I said, I don’t read many marketing books. The other one that I would be remiss not to mention is ours that we’re writing about the process, which is really about the step by step how to do this thing. So as much as we love going through this process with companies, I sort of took a page from April here too, in that telling the process and having people be able to rule this out and do this internally themselves has been wildly gratifying. We do it with a training program and this is our next step in getting out into the world even more. So you absolutely can do this stuff yourself. So that process is later in that book. And then another book that I read recently, which has nothing to do with marketing at all, but was really nice was 4000 Weeks. I don’t think-
Lenny: I’m reading that right now.
Georgiana Laudi: Oh yeah, I enjoyed it. It was a nice sort of coming back to base a bit. I don’t know when I read it. I just finished it a couple of weeks ago. It was just the timing was perfect. I feel like what’s going on in the world right now and how everybody’s probably feeling right now, it’s a good solid read for now.
Lenny: I’m enjoying it. I just started. I’m glad to-
Georgiana Laudi: Okay.
Lenny: Well, you encouraged me to keep reading it.
Georgiana Laudi: Yeah.
Lenny: Okay. Favorite recent movie or TV show?
Georgiana Laudi: I have young kids. I just bought a second property. We’re renovating three houses right now. I do not watch movies almost ever. The only thing that I’m currently binging is YouTubers that do DIY interior design and renos. Reason being my partner and I bought a property with four very, very old cottages lakefront, almost like tiny houses, little cottages. We are slowly renovating each of them. So my sort of fill is learning about interior design and DIY home rentals. Yeah.
Lenny: Who’s had the most impact on you in your career?
Georgiana Laudi: This is the worst question. I hate saying this, but it’s probably my dad. I have to say my dad because he’s an entrepreneur through and through. And I remember very vividly, I worked for him for I think eight years early in my career. One of the things that he always said was like, “It was the joy of the business.” He didn’t care what, he’s like, “It doesn’t matter what you’re selling.” He could be selling anything, but it was the joy of entrepreneurship. And that really stuck with me. So even when I was in house, I always knew that I needed to do something on my own and be in charge of that journey. His joy in it has impacted me a lot. He was the reason why I knew I was always going to do this.
Other than that, I would say I have an incredible network of women that I have been very lucky. We’re part of a group that we call Shine Crew. I think I’m supposed to copyright that or something to somebody because I think the term Shine Theory is what it’s based on basically. But I’m very, very lucky to be heavily influenced by April Dunford, Tara Robertson, Joanna Wiebe, Talia Wolf. And then obviously my business partner, Claire, obviously changed everything for me. Having that partnership in business, I don’t think I would’ve lasted this long. So yeah, definitely a huge influence for sure.
Lenny: What’s one thing that helps you stay focused and productive during the day?
Georgiana Laudi: Definitely carving up time, like time blocking. I do a lot of time blocking in advance with a little brain emoji of safeguarding my time. Because we’re a small team and we use Slack obviously, something else that we do to protect each other’s time is not time stamp, but we put a little code in all of our messages that’s either like, “You don’t have to listen to this before the end of the day,” or, “It’s timely,” or, “It’s no rush,” so that we know when we need to mentally process messages in Slack, so we can drop in there just periodically. And then the only other thing that I would say that I do maybe once a month or once a quarter is, we’re pretty buttoned up about our time tracking, so we go back and it sort of keeps us honest about how our time is actually spent. And then we can sort of adjust and time block accordingly to make up for the shortcomings of our previous quarter.
Lenny: That was really clever. I haven’t heard of that trick. What’s the emoji for “You can do this later”?
Georgiana Laudi: We actually just use no rush or EOD for end of day, or timely. We do have the alarm emoji, is the “Now. This is going to be dealt with ASAP.”
Lenny: Amazing. Gia, thank you for making time. For this final question, where can folks find you online? How do they pre-order your book? How can they learn more? And then also, just how can listeners be useful to you?
Georgiana Laudi: Thank you for asking. Twitter is probably the best way. My Twitter handle is atrocious, @ggiiaa is me on Twitter. I’m on LinkedIn every once in a while obviously. My email address is gia@forgetthefunnel.com. So if anybody has any questions, whatever, feel free to email me. If you want any templates or whatever that don’t get included in the show notes, just ping me. I’ve no problem with that. And then forgetthefunnel.com, we’ve got a book page where there is a wait list for the… Well, we’re going to do presale, and then the published physical book will be early in 2023. But we are going to do presale because… Get it in those hands. Why not?
Lenny: Love it. Gia, thank you for being here.
Georgiana Laudi: Thank you so much for having me.
Lenny: Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| aha moment | aha 时刻 |
| Amanda Natividad | Amanda Natividad(SparkToro 营销副总裁) |
| analysis paralysis | 分析瘫痪(analysis paralysis) |
| Annie Duke | Annie Duke(决策制定专家) |
| April Dunford | April Dunford(定位专家,Obviously Awesome 作者) |
| Arielle Jackson | Arielle Jackson(创业品牌专家) |
| Autobooks | Autobooks(金融科技产品) |
| Bob Moesta | Bob Moesta(待办任务理论最初架构师之一) |
| Brian | Brian(Airbnb 联合创始人 Brian Chesky) |
| Carter Gilchrist | Carter Gilchrist(Unbounce 联合创始人兼产品负责人) |
| Casey | Casey(SparkToro 团队成员) |
| CDP | 客户数据平台 |
| Claire Suellentrop | Claire Suellentrop(曾领导 Calendly 营销) |
| competitive advantages | 竞争优势 |
| Customer-led growth | 客户驱动增长 |
| Dave McClure | Dave McClure(500 Startups 创始人,海盗指标提出者) |
| deal breaker | 一票否决项(deal breaker) |
| Demand-Side Sales | Demand-Side Sales(Bob Moesta 著作,保留原文) |
| Emily Kramer | Emily Kramer(B2B 营销专家) |
| emotional benefits | 情感利益 |
| evaluation phase | 评估期(evaluation phase) |
| flight risk | 流失风险 |
| Forget The Funnel | Forget The Funnel(品牌名,保留原文) |
| free-to-paid conversion rate | 免费→付费转化率 |
| freemium | 免费增值 |
| functional benefits | 功能利益 |
| growth phase | 增长期(growth phase) |
| high touch | 高接触 |
| Jackie Bavaro | Jackie Bavaro(产品策略专家) |
| Joanna Wiebe | Joanna Wiebe(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Jobs to Be Done | 待办任务(JTBD,产品创新理论框架) |
| John Cutler | John Cutler(Amplitude,播客嘉宾) |
| leaps of faith | 信心飞跃(leaps of faith) |
| Lenny | Lenny(播客主持人) |
| Lex Fridman | Lex Fridman(知名播客主持人) |
| Marily Nika | Marily Nika(产品管理讲师) |
| Maven | Maven(队列式学习平台,保留原文) |
| MQL | 营销合格线索(Marketing Qualified Lead) |
| Nir Eyal | Nir Eyal(行为设计专家) |
| Ozzy Osbourne | Ozzy Osbourne(英国摇滚歌手,保留原文) |
| personas | 用户画像(personas) |
| pirate metrics | 海盗指标 |
| positioning and messaging | 定位和传播信息 |
| product activation | 产品激活 |
| product attributes | 产品属性 |
| product-led | 产品驱动 |
| Project Snow White | Project Snow White(Airbnb 内部项目名) |
| Rand Fishkin | Rand Fishkin(Moz 创始人,SparkToro 创始人) |
| Ryan Engley | Ryan Engley(Unbounce 客户成功负责人) |
| sales-led | 销售驱动 |
| sandbox account | 沙盒账户 |
| Shine Crew | Shine Crew(Georgiana 所在的女性职业互助小组) |
| Shine Theory | Shine Theory(女性互助理念,保留原文) |
| SparkToro | SparkToro(受众研究工具) |
| SQL | 销售合格线索(Sales Qualified Lead) |
| struggle phase | 挣扎期(struggle phase) |
| Talia Wolf | Talia Wolf(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Tara Robertson | Tara Robertson(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Tim Ferriss | Tim Ferriss(知名播客主持人、作家) |
| time blocking | 时间块(time blocking) |
| trial-to-paid | 试用→付费转化率 |
| Unbounce | Unbounce(SaaS 落地页平台) |
| value prop | 价值主张 |
| value realization | 价值实现 |
| value themes | 价值主题 |
| voice of customer | 客户之声 |
| When Coffee and Kale | When Coffee and Kale(JTBD 相关书籍,保留原文) |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
客户主导增长 | Georgiana Laudi(Forget The Funnel)
逐字稿
漏斗的问题
Georgiana Laudi (00:00:00): 漏斗、海盗指标(pirate metrics),以及我最喜欢挑刺的那些——MQL 和 SQL——的问题在于,没人知道这些东西意味着什么。它把所有客户放进同样类型的桶里。它假设所有客户和所有产品都是一样的。它把企业——或者说我应该说,它把企业放在了商业的中心,而不是把客户放在中心。对吧?它衡量的是企业的价值,而不是对客户的价值。而且,把人推过漏斗这种想法,对人们来说多少有点令人反感。然后,对 SaaS 公司来说尤其相关的一点是,经常性收入业务不能把营销、增长和整体业务看作在获客阶段就结束了,否则你的生意就做不下去了。而这些模型的绝大多数都没有把获客之后的留存、扩展以及所有这些考虑进去。所以,简而言之,漏斗是不好的。
节目开场
Lenny (00:01:04): 欢迎收听 Lenny’s Podcast。我是 Lenny,我在这里的目标是帮助你在打造和增长产品的手艺上变得更好。我采访世界级的产品领导者和增长专家,从他们在打造和扩展当今最成功公司过程中积累的来之不易的经验中学习。今天的嘉宾是 Georgiana Laudi。Georgiana,也就是 Gia,经营着一家名为 Forget The Funnel 的咨询公司,她亲自与 SaaS 公司合作,帮助它们解锁和加速增长。
Lenny (00:01:30): 正如你将听到的,她经常发现巨大的突破口和机会,经常将产品流程中各个节点的转化率翻倍甚至翻三倍。在我们的对话中,她分享了她帮助公司找到最大增长机会所在的确切流程,以及如何去执行。我们聊了如何识别你最重要的客户,如何非常实际地绘制他们穿越你产品流程的旅程并设定目标,然后执行你的想法。这期节目里有很多智慧和一些有趣的故事。那么,话不多说,我为你请出 Gia。
Amplitude 赞助
Lenny (00:02:05): 我很高兴和播客赞助商 Amplitude 的我的朋友 John Cutler 聊聊。嘿,John。
John Cutler (00:02:10): 嘿,Lenny。很高兴来到这里。
Lenny (00:02:11): John,给我们讲讲 Amplitude 幕后的故事。大多数人想到 Amplitude 时,想到的是产品分析,但现在你们进入了实验领域,甚至刚推出了一个 CDP(客户数据平台)。这背后的思路是什么?
John Cutler (00:02:23): 我们一直以来对 Amplitude 的定位就是支持完整的产品循环——想想收集数据、指导假设、上线实验、学习迭代。这对我们来说就是增长的核心。所以关键发现来自于看到有多少客户在用 Amplitude 分析实验、使用用户分群做触达,以及把数据发送到其他目的地。实验和 CDP 产品正是从倾听和观察客户中诞生的。
Lenny (00:02:44): 支持增长和学习一直是 Amplitude 的核心关注点,对吧?
John Cutler (00:02:48): 是的。所以 Amplitude 尝试在客户所在的地方服务他们。我们刚推出了 Starter Templates,还有一个很棒的初创公司奖学金项目。现在比以往任何时候都更是增长的关键时刻。
Lenny (00:02:57): 完全同意。感谢你的加入,John。前往 amplitude.com 开始使用吧。
Athletic Greens 赞助
Lenny (00:03:03): 本期节目由 Athletic Greens 赞助播出。基本上我听的每个播客都在谈论 AG1,比如 Tim Ferriss 和 Lex Fridman 的节目。所以今年早些时候我终于试了一下,它很快就成了我早晨日常的核心部分,尤其是在我需要深入写作或录制像这样的播客的日子里。关于 AG1 我喜欢三件事:第一,一小勺溶解在水里,你就能吸收 75 种维生素、矿物质、益生菌和适应原。我有点把它看作我营养上的安全网,以防我的饮食中遗漏了什么。第二,他们把 AG1 当作一个软件产品来对待。显然,他们已经迭代到第 52 版了,而且不断根据最新的科学、研究论文和他们所做的内部测试来改进它。第三,这就是我每天可以做的一件简单的事来照顾自己。
Lenny (00:03:58): 现在是时候重新掌控你的健康,用便捷的日常营养来武装你的免疫系统了。每天只需一勺加一杯水,就这样。不需要一大堆不同的药片和补充剂来关照你的健康。为了方便你,Athletic Greens 将在你的首次购买时赠送一年份的免疫支持维生素 D 和五份旅行装。你只需要访问 athleticgreens.com/lenny。再说一遍,athleticgreens.com/lenny。掌握你的健康,拿起终极的日常营养保障。
Gia 的职业经历
Lenny (00:04:33): Gia,欢迎来到播客。
Georgiana Laudi (00:04:36): 非常感谢邀请我,Lenny。
Lenny (00:04:38): 是我的荣幸。我们大概十多年前认识的,可能刚好差不多十年前,在蒙特利尔。当时我在做我的创业公司,你在帮公司优化他们的网站。后来你去了 Unbounce 领导营销,还有很多其他了不起的经历。所以为了让听众有一点背景了解,你能用 55 秒谈谈你的职业经历吗?这是你的时间限制。
Georgiana Laudi (00:05:03): 55 秒。好的。大概做了 20 年左右的营销,说起来简直不可思议,但我从 2000 年代初开始,可能实际上就是 2000 年,在我父亲的零售企业工作。在那里工作了几年,然后最终离开开始做自由职业,在一家代理公司工作过。很糟糕。然后大概在我遇到你的那个时候,我在 2008 年底加入了 Twitter,发现了科技圈和创业公司。那大概就是你和我在 2010 年左右认识的时候。那是——
Lenny (00:05:43): 2011。
Georgiana Laudi (00:05:43): 然后我……什么?
Lenny (00:05:45): 2011。
Georgiana Laudi (00:05:46): 2011。你看,这就对了。
Lenny (00:05:47): 嗯嗯。
Georgiana Laudi (00:05:48): 差不多就是那个时候,然后 2011 年底,我决定同时支持五六家公司的营销之类的事情。我开始感到倦怠,做的事情太多了,我就想,“把精力真正深入投入到一家品牌上会是什么感觉?“所以我决定全职加入企业,搬到了西部,加入了 Unbounce 的团队。我在那里待了五年。然后在 2016 年底、2017 年初,我觉得是时候继续前进了,所以我决定重新独立,开始与公司合作,在营销、增长和产品营销方面支持它们。这就是我一直在做的事情。
Georgiana Laudi (00:06:27): 但在 2017 年中期,我和 Claire Suellentrop 搭档了,她曾在 Calendly 领导营销,我们从大约 2017 年中期开始一起工作。那时我们启动了 Forget The Funnel,开始搭档与公司合作,把她的客户研究背景和我的战略、营销背景结合在一起。我们开发了这个框架,现在在与其他公司合作时使用——主要是 B2B SaaS 公司,这就是我们目前服务的对象。
Lenny (00:06:57): 太好了。我们会花很多时间讨论你通过 Forget The Funnel 与公司合作所学到的。你为什么叫它 Forget The Funnel?
Georgiana Laudi (00:07:04): 因为漏斗很恶心。我是说,这是一个非常过时的概念。我们反感的不仅仅是漏斗,还有买家旅程,甚至……我记得实际上是在 2012 年的 Startup Fest,我想是 Dave McClure 在讲海盗指标,我当时就觉得,“太好了,营销在获客之后还有用武之地。大家终于明白了。“那对我来说真的是一个高光时刻。但漏斗的问题,以及海盗指标的问题,还有我最喜欢挑刺的 MQL 和 SQL,是没有人知道这些东西到底意味着什么。它把所有客户放进同样的桶里。它假设所有客户和所有产品都一样。它把企业——或者应该说,它让企业——把自己放在了商业的中心,而不是把客户放在中心。它衡量的是企业的指标,而不是为客户创造的价值。
Georgiana Laudi (00:08:01): 而且,把人推过漏斗这个概念本身对人们来说就有种让人不舒服的感觉。然后对 SaaS 公司来说尤其相关的一点是:经常性收入业务,你绝不能把营销、增长和整体业务看作在获客那里就结束了。否则你的生意就做不下去了。绝大多数这些模型都没有考虑获客之后的留存、扩展等环节。它们还把问题阶段排除在外了——就是客户在发现你之前所处的那个世界,而这其实是极其关键的,那个上下文的价值是不可估量的,尤其对营销来说。把这个因素从方程中删掉是一个很大的问题。所以,简而言之,漏斗是有害的。
客户研究带来的实际影响
Lenny (00:08:52): 好的。我很期待深入聊聊你学到的很多东西,但在此之前还有几个事情想先聊聊,打个基础。
Georgiana Laudi (00:08:58): 嗯嗯。
Lenny (00:08:58): 一个是,能不能聊聊你在与公司合作、运用你们那套流程的过程中,看到过哪些成果?你见过什么样的影响?什么样的数字?
Georgiana Laudi (00:09:07): 我会说,我们这类工作带来的最大、最立竿见影的影响,远远超过其他的,就是重新对齐理想客户。一般来说,最低 hanging fruit(最容易摘到的果实)的成果就是围绕更好的定位和传达重新对齐。找到更能引起共鸣的定位和传达,去呼应我刚才提到的那个上下文——就是人们在发现你存在之前所处的那个世界,那个”天哪,这必须得改,这太糟糕了”的时刻——把那些串联起来,把他们在乎的东西和你的产品价值串联起来,然后再连接到他们期望的成果。对于了解的人来说,待办任务(Jobs to Be Done)在这里是一个很大的影响因素。如果你能识别出关于客户的这类信息,在这个深度上了解他们,那你就能处于一个有利得多的位置,不仅能更好地定位产品,还能使用更有力量的传达信息。
Georgiana Laudi (00:10:06): 所以通常我们做的,就是找出那些差距——几乎……我甚至不该说十有八九,而是百分之九十九的情况下,一家公司的网站都没有发挥它应有的作用。从传达和定位的角度来说,它没有那么有效。所以网站通常会得到更新。我们会对网站的传达做大量改造,提升那里的表现。我最喜欢的一个例子是一家社交媒体工具公司,我们和他们合作时做了非常简单的研究,老实说,识别出了两个不同的待办任务,锁定其中一个,然后更新了网站上的传达。
社交媒体工具的案例
Georgiana Laudi (00:10:46): 我们把试用期从 30 天缩短到了 7 天。换了新传达之后,网站转化率上升了 89%。但这个案例中我最喜欢的一点是,我们甚至都没有碰注册之后的任何东西。我们都还没到那一步,而试用转付费的转化率就提高了 40%,我们什么都没改。原因很简单——更合格、更匹配的客户走进了门。数量更多了,质量也更好了。所以这是一个非常具体的例子,在我们这类工作中非常典型。
更多案例:产品引导与激活
Georgiana Laudi (00:11:19): 还有其他例子,关于产品采纳的——把传达和定位延续到网站之后,甚至应用在产品引导本身中,邮件和应用内的都算,确保用户能到达、也有机会到达他们最关心的产品功能,这可以提升试用转付费或产品激活。以 Autobooks 为例,北极星产品使用量在推出邮件引导来支持产品体验后,在相当短的时间内就跃升了 300% 左右。还有 SparkToro,我想我们后面讲流程的时候可能还会提到——他们跟我们一起合作时,通过对获客后传达的优化,试用转付费转化率翻了一倍。
Lenny (00:12:01): 我想听众们现在可能在想,“这就是我一直在等的,某种巨大的胜利,某种巨大的转化提升,一个成功案例。“我很好奇,你发现有多少比例的公司有类似这样的机会——一个隐藏的机会能把转化率翻倍、翻三倍?每个人都在期待这样的转化提升。
Georgiana Laudi (00:12:18): 天哪。
Lenny (00:12:19): 对,总体命中率是多少?
Georgiana Laudi (00:12:22): 太多了。我的意思是,我会说,我们合作过的几乎每一家公司都……不是几乎,是我们合作过的每一家公司都从客户那里学到了新的东西,可以应用在客户体验的某个环节上。不管是在面向外界的推广活动中触达正确的人群,还是在网站上做好传达和定位,或者是网站上的上市和获客策略——比如使用沙盒账户,或者做一个仿免费增值账户,让人们在进入销售电话之前就能先试用产品。这些都是可能做到的。
获客后的产品引导为何常被忽视
Georgiana Laudi (00:13:06): 我说的获客后体验,不知为何常常被当作事后的补充。我觉得它之所以被忽视的部分原因是,产品引导——尤其是产品引导——往往有点像是无人区。谁负责这一块?是营销吗?如果是免费增值模式,在我看来应该是营销来负责,因为免费增值本质上就是一个营销工具。但不是所有人都认同这一点。不是每家公司都会同意这个判断。很多公司可能会说,“不,这是产品的事。“所以我们经常看到中间出现一团糟的状况,因为没有自然的交接。所以几乎我们合作过的每一家公司都有改进的空间,尤其是在产品引导和产品激活方面。
Lenny (00:13:53): 太棒了。所以基本上所有人都能从我们接下来要聊的内容中受益。
Georgiana Laudi (00:13:56): 百分之百。
Lenny (00:13:56): 厉害。好。
Georgiana Laudi (00:13:56): 是的。
Airbnb 办公室的启发
Lenny (00:14:00): 好的。我打算用一个小插曲来过渡到你的流程。你有一次来参观,我邀请你来 Airbnb 办公室参加 happy hour,带你转了转。你后来告诉我,你在办公室里走动时看到的一些东西,改变了你对增长的思考方式,也影响了解决这个问题的方法。能聊聊这个吗?
Georgiana Laudi (00:14:24): 是的。这是我最喜欢的……之一。那是 2013 年,你和我可能是 2011 年认识的,然后几年后我来镇上参加一个会议,我们参观了办公室、总部什么的。当然,我满眼都是星星,因为那办公室也太漂亮了。所以就算没有后来的事,我也会记住那次参观。但我们下了楼,楼下和楼上精心装潢的风格截然不同。我们下楼到了你的工作区,产品团队所在的地方,墙上贴着一排排的纸。本来很容易忽略,因为楼下有点乱,但那是 Airbnb 客户通过两篇帖子的客户旅程。
Georgiana Laudi (00:15:12): 打动我的是,我心想,“哦,有意思。我正好在给我们做一套。“当时我在 Unbounce 负责营销。有趣的是,客户成功那边的人也和我在一起。Ryan Engley 也在,正好是他和我一起看到了那个东西。那是一套以客户为中心的客户旅程。所以跟之前说的海盗指标的问题,或者典型的买家旅程的问题完全相反,是那个的完全倒转。它有配图说明。情感旅程也是其中一部分。Airbnb 作为直接触点和间接触点所扮演的角色,以及那个人的生活里与 Airbnb 无关的其他事情也被呈现出来,我觉得这一点非常有趣。
Georgiana Laudi (00:16:01): 那些美好的小里程碑,以一种快照的方式被精炼地呈现出来,以至于任何路过的人或被提醒它存在的人,都能一眼看懂每个里程碑的目标是什么。我当时就想,“好吧,见鬼,这完全是站在客户的视角,而不是站在企业和漏斗的那些恶心东西的视角。“它和我之前接触的那些体验差得太远了,以至于我说,“Ryan,你看这个。我们需要这个。“他说,“哦对,这个很好。“我拍了张照片。但现在怎么也找不到了。
Georgiana Laudi (00:16:39): 但接下来那周我们回到办公室,联合创始人兼产品负责人、客户成功负责人,也就是 Ryan、Carter Gilchrist——他是联合创始人兼产品负责人——Ryan 和我,营销负责人,我们三个人把自己关在房间里两天,做出了自己的版本。是圆的。回头看的话,挺好笑的,但它确实以一种方式向团队其他成员做了民主化的推广,因为它有了那种共识。所有人都说,“哦对。好的,这说得通,我理解了。“它让每个人对自己正在做的事情感觉好多了,因为它是围绕价值的——在每个节点上交付价值。
Georgiana Laudi (00:17:13): 所以那种恶心的感觉就消失了,我们觉得,“哦,太好了。“我不想把它说得太理想化,但那确实是一个时刻。而且,它让我跟产品团队和工程团队的沟通变得容易了很多。我们在使用一种共同的语言。公司里那些不直接面对客户的人,也真的在另一个层面上理解了我们所有人一起在做的事情,KPI 什么的。所以那段经历非常棒。说实话,我显然不能把我们的增长完全归功于它,但接下来的几年确实非常亮眼。我认为它带来的那种对齐是非常巨大的。对。总之,这就是那个故事。抱歉,不是很短,但它真的很重要。
Lenny (00:18:02): 很好。
Georgiana Laudi (00:18:03): 那是一件大事。对。
Lenny (00:18:05): 我们会在节目备注里链接这些照片。在内部,这个项目叫 Project Snow White,因为它的灵感来自——
Georgiana Laudi (00:18:13): 哦对,没错。
Lenny (00:18:13): 对。灵感来自 Brian 读 Walt Disney 的传记,他们需要创建故事板来制作《白雪公主》,因为那部电影太复杂了。那可能是有史以来第一部使用故事板的动画电影。
Georgiana Laudi (00:18:24): 好的。
Lenny (00:18:25): 所以它基本上就是一个 Airbnb 房东和房客旅行体验的故事板。
Georgiana Laudi (00:18:30): 对。
Lenny (00:18:30): 而且说个细节,我忘了当时有没有告诉你,Airbnb 专门从 Pixar 雇了一位全职故事板画师来画这些关键帧。
Georgiana Laudi (00:18:38): 我好像确实知道这件事。我很庆幸看到了那个东西。当时没有意识到,但它改变了——就像你一开始说的——它改变了我对营销的思考方式,因为它让我不仅仅是我,当然还有所有人,清楚地看到:营销人员非常擅长的那个客户体验层,在驱动收入方面扮演着极其重要的角色。不仅仅是在建立认知方面,而是在帮助客户获得价值、在他们掉队的时候接住他们等等方面发挥重要作用。所以它给我们带来了很大的改变。
从客户旅程到咨询方法
Lenny (00:19:19): 而且它也影响了你通过 Forget The Funnel 开展咨询工作的方式。那么作为过渡来聊聊这个,我在想我们可以这样展开:想象一个客户,你们会经历什么流程?有哪些步骤?你如何帮助一家公司判断他们应该在哪里投资、做对了什么、做错了什么?另外我也应该提一下,你正在写一本关于这个的书,会讲解这整套流程,今年晚些时候出版。
Georgiana Laudi (00:19:40): 对。是的。
Lenny (00:19:41): 所以最后我们也会聊到那本书。交给你了。
Georgiana Laudi (00:19:46): 好的。如果我跑偏了你把我拉回来,让我展开讲讲就行。嗯,这个流程其实挺直接的。最高层面来说,思路就是:了解你最好的客户,映射他们的体验——就像我们刚才说的那样——从为他们交付价值的视角来映射他们的体验,让它可衡量,然后评估你目前做的哪些事情与此不一致。挺直接的。当然这听起来不算太难。但调研是其中非常重要的一部分。所以我准备用一个故事来说明这点:有一家公司我们时不时会合作,至少合作过两次,说三次也不为过。
SparkToro 的案例
Georgiana Laudi (00:20:34): Rand Fishkin 是 Moz 的创始人,他有一个新产品,是一个受众研究工具,叫 SparkToro。他们最初发布的时候,甚至还在发布之前,Rand 和 Casey 就来找 Claire 和我,帮他们做定位和传播信息,为即将到来的发布做准备。Rand 和 Casey 都非常深思熟虑,做事很从容。所以他们就是想要多一层确认,“这够不够好,可以发布了吗?“那种感觉。所以我们帮他们做了定位和传播信息。然后他们就发布了。
Georgiana Laudi (00:21:08): 大约一年后,他们又回来了,因为虽然 SparkToro 在获取流量和引发关注方面做得不错——Rand 也不是小角色,他自带一个很好的受众群体,这很棒——来到网站的人……注册产品的人,这些都不是问题。但那些注册免费产品的用户,没有以他们相信可以达到的比率转化为付费用户。所以我们决定和他们合作,基本上就是回到源头,从 SparkToro 最好的客户那里弄清楚,从他们身上我们能学到什么,然后把学到的东西反映回产品体验和客户体验中去?
Georgiana Laudi (00:21:54): 我之前提到过,我们是待办任务理论的坚定信奉者,这个理论基本上就是说,人们买的不是你的产品,他们买的是更好的自己,等等等等。这些我就不需要再解释了。但我们用这个理论来指导我们的研究。在 SparkToro 这个案例中,我们的处境——纯粹主义者会很反感我这么说——但我们当时是能够跑问卷的。是的,访谈始终是最理想的,但我们确实认为可以从问卷中学到很多东西,如果需要的话,再深入做访谈。最后我们实际上并不需要跑访谈,因为从问卷中得到的结果非常明确、清晰。所以我们的做法是,先识别出 SparkToro 最好的客户。所谓最好的客户,我指的是那些从你现有产品中获得大量价值的人,当然也付费,他们很满意,不费事。而且非常重要的是,他们是最近才注册你产品的,还记得没有产品之前的生活是什么样的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:22:57): 一般来说,我们会说是三到六个月这个范围。因为如果你去找一个已经是两年老客户的人,他们只会用自己以为当时生活可能是什么样的来填答案。但如果你问那些还记得没有产品之前生活的客户,你会得到有趣得多的回答,对当时情况也会准确得多的描述。这就是我们推进的标准。对他们的客户做了问卷。我们试图从中揭示的是,当他们开始寻找解决方案的时候,生活中正在发生什么,发生了什么,那个触发他们开始寻找解决方案的瞬间是什么,他们去了哪里,和谁谈过,受到了什么影响?顺便说一句,这正是 SparkToro 做的事,帮你识别这些。
Georgiana Laudi (00:23:42): 同时,他们在解决方案中寻找的是什么?哪些是他们的必备项,哪些是他们有的顾虑、一些一票否决的 deal breaker 之类的东西?基本上就是拆解清楚,对他们来说解决方案中什么是关键的。然后当然,他们现在能做到什么之前做不到的事,也就是那个期望的成果。从这些中,我们识别出了几个不同的选项,几个不同的客户任务,当然我们得优先选一个,因为如果你一上来就说,“好,我们要同时解决所有这些不同的客户任务,“那你的共鸣感就会大打折扣,效果也没法那么好。所以我们聚焦到了一个上。
Georgiana Laudi (00:24:23): 而你做决策的方式——选哪个来聚焦——跟筛选最好客户类似。所以,高付费意愿。他们对是否愿意为像你这样的产品付费没有犹豫。他们需要的手把手帮助会比较少。我说这话的时候完全了解产品驱动和销售驱动之间的区别。我不是说销售驱动不好,但有时候确实需要做一个取舍。如果你现在还没有准备好支撑销售驱动或高接触的模式,那你可能更倾向于产品驱动的路径。反过来也一样,如果你有一支强大的销售团队,那你实际上可能更适合在那种场景下更多地借助销售,可能想要往那个方向靠拢。但你就是要考虑这些标准。
Georgiana Laudi (00:25:10): 所以付费意愿,这个很明显。也许最重要的一个是,他们有一个迫切的问题。就是止痛药和维生素那个说法——你永远想卖的是止痛药。所以谁有一个迫切需要解决的问题,而不是那种六个月之后可能才会有问题的人?谁的留存率高,甚至有扩展潜力,这也是非常有利的,原因显而易见。所以那些对此类产品有长期需求的客户,甚至这个需求可能随时间扩展或变化,以你设想产品能帮助到他们的方式演进。
Georgiana Laudi (00:25:47): 然后还有其他标准。有时候你可能想优先选一个客户任务而非另一个,因为这些客户聚集在一起,让你很容易去做营销。这是一个优势。或者另一个优势——SparkToro 的情况就是这样——你对这个市场有某种不公平的优势。SparkToro 当时冒出了两个不同的客户任务,一个更偏服务提供商和营销方向,另一个更偏数据方向。而那些数据纯粹主义者、那些真正想要可验证数据的人,SparkToro 在营销人员这边比数据分析那边更有优势。这也是一个考量因素。所以我们据此做出了决定,聚焦到其中一个客户任务上。
Lenny (00:26:35): 我能在这里问个问题吗?
Georgiana Laudi (00:26:37): 可以,说。
Lenny (00:26:37): 这件事其实有两部分。一个是确定你要去追谁,另一个是确定你要为他们解决什么问题。在这个阶段你觉得哪个更重要?因为把镜头拉远一点,这个流程的第一步就是确定你的客户以及他们的问题,这样你才能真正很好地解决它们。你是先确定”我们要追这些人”,然后”这是他们最大的问题”?你怎么看这个先后关系?
Georgiana Laudi (00:27:01): 它们其实是一回事。因为我们是从 SparkToro 的理想客户那里学习的,所以我们已经知道他们跟产品是匹配的。他们满意、乐意付费,是从他们手里抢都抢不走的黄金客户。他们就是我们想要更多的那种客户。所以我们已经验证了来自这个客户群体是有需求的。现在我说的在两个不同的客户任务之间做选择,其实只是,在那些理想客户中,你想偏向哪个客户任务?并不是说你以后就不能解决另一个客户任务了,只是它不是你率先打出去的那个。这一点我也总是很谨慎,因为有时候跟创始人交流会出现一种情况——需要先对齐一个认知:我们在短期内优先一个客户任务,不意味着你之后不能服务另一个客户任务。
Georgiana Laudi (00:27:57): 一个很经典的例子是同时服务品牌方和代理商的产品。品牌方的客户任务和代理商的会略有不同。如果你在其中一方上有优势,你就先从一方开始,然后再回过头来攻克另一方。这算是之后的一个进阶动作,不属于核心流程的一部分,是你之后才会做的事。但这不意味着你不能解决其他客户任务,只是意味着先把一只脚迈出去,先把一件事做到很好,然后我们以后再加。我不知道这是不是百分之百回答了你的问题。
Lenny (00:28:32): 是的。是的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:28:33): 好。
Lenny (00:28:34): 你从这里开始的原因是……基本上你想做的就是帮 SparkToro,在这个例子里,增长得更快。
Georgiana Laudi (00:28:40): 我的意思是,我们想帮他们搞清楚,为什么他们的免费→付费转化率低于预期。对吧?这就是他们来找我们时带着的挑战。我们的流量数字不错。甚至网站上的注册量,我们网站上的定位和传播信息显然也做得不错。但一旦人们进入产品,足够快地抵达价值的人不够多。我是说他们的客户基数本身还是健康的,但他们知道那个数字还可以更高。所以我们很清楚自己在解决什么。
Lenny (00:29:11): 明白了。好的。这就清楚了。
Georgiana Laudi (00:29:13): 嗯。
Lenny (00:29:14): 所以第一步就是弄清楚你想聚焦于谁,而不是……因为很多人面对这个问题会这样想:“好吧,转化率大概 10% 吧,怎么提高?看看数据。看看,用户在流失。看看为什么用户会困惑。“而你的方法是,“不,让我们先聚焦于那些我们真正想拉进产品的人,专注让他们完成转化,而不是过多关注笼统的转化问题。”
Georgiana Laudi (00:29:39): 对。不过我们之后会做到那一步的。那是流程中非常重要的一部分,但前提是先搞清楚你到底在为谁解决问题。但看那些数据当然很重要。我的意思不是说不要看数据,显然必须得看。他们要是不看数据,也就发现不了问题。所以那种经常出现的困境是——我意思是很多团队都会遇到这种情况,尤其是市场营销人员特别容易陷入这种战术式的工作方式,东一块西一块地拼凑,拼凑各种活动或项目来证明自己在做事、在拉升数据,而没有做出足够大的动作。所以这里的意思是,先退后一步,搞清楚你到底想让什么样的人走进你的大门。我前面提到的那家社交媒体平台工具,试用→付费转化率提升了 40%,就是因为有更高质量的潜在客户走了进来。所以这件事很重要。
聚焦理想客户与待办任务
Georgiana Laudi (00:30:40): 所以如果你能退后一步,在脑海中始终牢记那个理想客户的待办任务,即你正在为之解决的那个核心问题——我们这里不谈用户画像(personas),我们完全不在乎用户画像。当你开始讨论广告投放、精准定位,以及做广告时需要了解的那些人口统计数据时,用户画像确实很重要。但这完全不是我在这里描述的东西。我觉得待办任务框架能更好地把市场营销、产品和客户成功这三个团队绑定在一起,因为这三个团队——如果加上销售可以说是四个——都应该聚焦在这个主题上——客户,这并不算什么革命性的观点,只是实现这一目标的一种有用方式。
Georgiana Laudi (00:31:24): 产品团队大多已经了解并接受待办任务理论了。所以市场营销人员也应该跟进,而且营销侧本身就有很多收获。总之,简单来说,因为我们知道目标是提高那个免费→付费转化率,待办任务确定之后的下一步就是做映射。也就是识别:对于这个理想客户,他们与我们产品关系中的关键里程碑是什么?那些巨大的信心飞跃(leaps of faith)在哪里——我是这么形容的。我不需要多解释,Airbnb 的客户旅程就讲述了这个故事。在这段关系中,价值时刻在哪里?他们什么时候触及了价值?
Lenny (00:32:06): 给那些想自己动手做这件事的人举些例子吧。另外,你觉得应该设立多少个这样的时刻?
客户旅程的三个阶段
Georgiana Laudi (00:32:13): 好的。这完全取决于产品和客户——这一点我不应该略过,显然这很重要。不过一般来说,我们会把它拆分为三个阶段:挣扎期(struggle phase)、评估期(evaluation phase)和增长期(growth phase)。挣扎期是指,他们正在经历问题,生活很糟,还在用旧的方式,必须得做出改变了,必须得解决这个问题。通常,挣扎期会进一步细分为:在外部世界中首次体验到问题——我们称之为”问题”阶段。然后通常还会有另一个叫”兴趣”的节点,就是”好的,现在他们开始四处寻找了,进入了寻求解决方案的模式。“他们可能在你网站上,也可能在竞争对手的网站上,他们在看产品评测之类的。这就是兴趣阶段。
Georgiana Laudi (00:33:00): 然后是评估期,通常我会把它拆成两个或三个里程碑。我说两到三个,是因为如果你的产品更复杂——更准确地说,是你的客户更复杂——那可能就有更多的信心飞跃或里程碑,你需要做的事情也更重。我们合作过的一些公司,评估期有三四个里程碑,但我总是倾向于尽可能少。如果我要把它精简到最基本的形态,我会说评估期的第一个里程碑是”首次价值”。也就是说,你想让用户非常非常快地达到产品激活。然后”价值实现”是你真正解决客户待办任务的里程碑。他们用你的产品达到了这样一个时刻:“太棒了,就是这个!“他们首次达到了产品参与度的关键阈值。至于这个产品参与度在你独特的产品中对于特定客户具体是什么——这有待商榷,但必须得有这样一个时刻。
Georgiana Laudi (00:34:08): 然后是增长期,关乎持续价值。也就是达到一定的使用频率,健康地建立起习惯,形成合理的节奏。你希望看到什么样的功能使用和整体产品使用,以及在什么频率上——这些都变得非常重要。在这之后通常还有另一个里程碑,你会说:“好的,他们已经进来了,已经是高级用户了。现在,他们还需要什么?“他们还需要什么产品层面的东西?另外,我们还能怎样放大他们的价值,或者与他们合作,比如教其他人使用我们的工具?增长期有各种各样的事情可以做,这就是指数级增长的承诺真正开始兑现的地方。
Lenny (00:34:54): 大家听到这里,为了帮助理解——如果还不是特别直观的话——不应该想象成一个个小关键帧、分镜图那样的东西,比如”这是你的客户正在做某件事”。对吧?
Georgiana Laudi (00:35:04): 对。我们经常把它描述成——“我如何遇见并爱上你的产品”的故事。就像一部纪录片:在外部世界中,找到它,意识到”太好了,这可能真的能解决我们的问题,可能就是这个”,获得足够的价值让他们愿意继续,直到完全的价值实现,再到持续的价值增长。
Maven 广告
Lenny (00:35:28): 本期节目由 Maven 赞助。我从第一天起就是 Maven 的投资人、顾问和用户。我甚至通过 Maven 教过我的产品管理课程。Maven 是一个基于队列的学习平台,你可以和同学一起学习,并与讲师直接交流。Maven 上有大量面向产品经理、创始人和高管的课程,帮助他们在各个方面提升。来自 Airbnb、Coinbase、Google、Tesla 等公司的超过一万名学员,已经跟随真正的专家和有着数十年经验沉淀的从业者学习了课程。
Lenny (00:36:01): 作为 Maven 刚刚推出的秋季学期的一部分,未来几周将有超过 100 门新课程开课。我曾邀请到播客上的许多嘉宾都在这里授课,比如 Jackie Bavaro 教产品策略,Arielle Jackson 教创业品牌,Emily Kramer 教 B2B 营销,还有 Annie Duke 教决策制定,Nir Eyal 教行为设计,以及 Marily Nika 教如何入行产品管理。查看我推荐的所有课程,了解更多信息,请访问 maven.com/lenny。
从关键模式到客户旅程的关键绩效指标(KPI)
Georgiana Laudi (00:36:31): 再说一次,我说这些的时候好像它适用于所有客户和产品,但事实并非如此。有时候情况比这更复杂,但总体而言,这就是我们的发现。所以基于我们做的调研,这就是我们为 SparkToro 客户所做的。我们的调研方式基本上是——收集所有反馈,识别出关键模式,然后由此识别出客户任务。从这些关键模式出发,如果我们只针对这一客户任务进行细分,我们就可以审视反馈,说出这样的话:“好的,这是他们在现实中经历这个问题时可能在做的事情。这是他们描述现有解决方案痛点的方式。然后这是他们关于自己如何开始寻找解决方案的说法。这是他们告诉我们自己如何开始做调研或寻找解决方案的。”
Georgiana Laudi (00:37:17): 然后调研中还会问这样的问题:“是什么时刻让你确信我们的产品能为你解决这个问题?“这个问题的回答会告诉你首次价值体验应该是什么样子的——也就是首次产品激活体验,不管你喜欢用什么说法——对他们来说应该长什么样?产品的哪些部分需要被推到体验的最前面,让他们在注册之后能非常非常快地接触到?
产品激活与价值实现的度量
Georgiana Laudi (00:37:40): 然后价值实现显然会接近——如果不是完全等于的话——那个客户任务的期望结果,也就是你解决那个客户任务的地方。接下来你会看到各种各样的……通常,当我跟团队一起走这个流程的时候会发生的情况是,各种关于还能做什么的想法开始涌现,甚至在解决那个客户任务之后。尤其是产品团队会非常兴奋,因为关于产品可以往哪里走,他们有各种各样的想法。所以这确实也能把所有人拧到一起。
Georgiana Laudi (00:38:10): 这个流程中一个关键部分显然是——我们必须沿途衡量成功。客户旅程的每个阶段都应该有一个 KPI。在大多数情况下,挣扎期这一侧不会有什么意外。人们在现实中经历问题,我们怎么知道自己做得很不错、触达到了他们?我们带来了新的独立网站访客。一般来说,这就是问题里程碑的成功衡量指标。然后拼图的下一块是:好吧,一旦他们发现我们的存在,即使他们在浏览产品评测、访问竞争对手的网站之类的事情,我们会知道自己做得很不错——当我们网站上主要 CTA(不管它是”开始试用”还是”申请演示”之类的)的转化率表现好的时候。我们已经成功说服他们我们可以帮助解决他们的问题,同时也劝退了那些我们不想吸引的人。
Georgiana Laudi (00:38:53): 总的来说,挣扎期在度量方面非常直接。那就是营销人员的看家本领,是他们整天耕耘的地方。但当我们跟公司合作时,情况开始发生变化的地方通常是——帮助他们弄清楚应该怎么衡量首次价值或产品激活,以及应该怎么衡量实际的产品参与度。一般来说,我们在这边做的是——基本上把客户告诉我们给他们带来最多价值的部分,跟交付该价值的产品属性或产品功能模块关联起来。我们显然要尽量把 KPI 跟那个关键产品功能模块或产品属性的有意义使用数据绑定在一起。
以 SparkToro 为例的具体实践
Lenny (00:39:49): 你能举一些具体的例子吗?因为这是非常关键的部分。
Georgiana Laudi (00:39:52): 可以。我就用 SparkToro 来举例,因为这是我们最初做的案例。对于 SparkToro,我不一定记得确切的客户任务陈述,但他们说的是,产品中给他们带来巨大价值的是两个具体功能:列表(lists)。能够以一种方式整理他们的发现结果——这种方式不仅方便自己在文件中组织,还便于分享,因为他们中很多人需要跟客户或利益相关方共享。所以列表是一个具体功能,说实话,它在产品里已经有了,但他们并没有在前端产品体验中突出它。我不会说它被藏起来了,但它的位置不够突出。所以这就是一个我们可以跟”整理数据”、“持续在此基础上积累、让数据长期可用”以及”分享”关联起来的功能。
Georgiana Laudi (00:40:55): 然后还有另一个功能,就是导出功能。同样,不是它被藏起来了,而是位置不够突出。所以我们将 KPI 绑定到了他们对这些功能的使用上,当然还要搭配核心功能,也就是搜索能力。做法就是把搜索功能跟列表功能配对,然后把搜索功能跟列表功能、再跟导出功能配对。光靠嘴说有点抽象,有图会更直观。但故事基本上就是:先帮助他们使用搜索功能。紧接着,确保他们在使用列表。如果他们没有使用列表,我们就帮他们回到使用它的路径上来,这样他们就能到达那个重要的关键价值时刻。导出功能也是同样的道理。
里程碑与主动/被动的客户体验
Lenny (00:41:43): 明白了。简单来说,你刚才说的是为这些时刻中的每一个都设一个指标。
Georgiana Laudi (00:41:48): 对,里程碑。
Lenny (00:41:50): 里程碑。对。
Georgiana Laudi (00:41:50): 或者随便你怎么叫。我是说你必须这么做。我一直很惊讶当团队说,“哦对,你说得对,我们没有这样做”的时候,我都会想,“什么?你什么意思?“所以在某个里程碑节点,除非他们已经到达了那个价值时刻,否则你不能把他们继续往下一站推。如果他们连那个对他们来说最有价值的产品部分都没发现,你就得先把他们带到那个价值点上。否则你不能只是一直发邮件,指望他们会跳回产品里、好像他们会在乎一样。所以我们做的很多事情其实是主动的客户体验——不管是在产品内、邮件、还是什么工具——帮助他们到达产品中的那个时刻。
Georgiana Laudi (00:42:32): 如果他们没有到达那个时刻——这是可衡量的,再说一次,这就是为什么它是一个 KPI——那我们就可以做出反应,帮助他们回来。所以就是识别——“好的,“你当然不会直接说”他们掉车了”这样的话——而是帮助他们重新培育、把他们引回产品中——他们并没有真正发现那个功能,如果他们第一次错过了的话。所以这是一方面主动地把他们往前推,另一方面在他们掉队时接住他们。而接住他们的唯一方式,就是你沿途在衡量一些有意义的东西。
Georgiana Laudi (00:43:02): 我们有前面说的那个故事板。我们还有一张图——引导他们到达某个价值时刻的体验路径,然后还有一套挽回体验——万一他们因为什么原因掉出来了,把他们拉回来。人们会肚子饿、会分心,原因有很多。关于这个比例有很多统计数据。我想大概是 70% 的人登录一个应用、登录一个产品一次之后,就再也没有回来过。这太疯狂了。所以那么多公司居然没有任何形式的挽回或重新参与机制,这事一直让我匪夷所思。
Lenny (00:43:41): 好,我们来回顾一下,然后继续讲流程。第一步,了解你的客户正在经历什么,找出最重要的客户以及他们最大的问题,然后梳理他们经历的旅程——他们在发现你的产品之前所经历的挣扎,他们评估、决定使用你的产品的步骤。然后一旦他们使用了你的产品,就是持续使用、越用越多。等你把这些步骤理清楚之后……大致来说大概 10 个、12 个步骤这样?什么样的数量比较合适——
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:13): 哦不,我希望更像是六个左右。
Lenny (00:44:16): 六个,好的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:17): 我总是尽量把它压到最低,只要绝对必要就行。我是说这对所有页面都一样,落地页也是。
Lenny (00:44:25): 好的,好的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:25): 客户旅程地图也是一样的道理。
Lenny (00:44:27): 好的。Airbnb 好像有 12 个。所以你参与了——
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:29): 是的。
Lenny (00:44:29): 那个我很喜欢。好的。然后你要想出一个指标来判断那个步骤是否表现良好。
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:36): 他们有没有到达那个点,有没有获得那个价值?
Lenny (00:44:37): 他们有没有到达。好。在进入下一步之前还有最后一个问题。你能不能举一两个实际的步骤例子,比如以 SparkToro 的情况为例,以及他们用什么指标来衡量是否到达了那个点?
SparkToro 的实际步骤与衡量指标
Georgiana Laudi (00:44:52): 好的。促使某人进入评估期的成功衡量标准,就是执行他们的第一次搜索。所以当你在他们网站上的时候,你执行一次搜索——这不是注册试用或注册免费账户,虽然当你执行第一次搜索时它确实会让你注册免费账户。所以完成第一次搜索并看到第一次搜索结果,就是第一个衡量标准。之后,关于首次价值的衡量标准,就是再次使用搜索。我的意思是这非常因产品而异,就像我说的,但一般来说,第一次搜索是一种实验,你第一次试着把这个工具穿在身上看看。一般来说,搜索在你做第二、第三次的时候会开始变得更好。所以我们尽量鼓励至少五次以上。
Georgiana Laudi (00:45:38): 所以那个首次价值 KPI,我记得是五次以上搜索,加上至少创建一个列表。所以是这两件事的组合必须在某人真正看到这东西能做什么之前完成。并不是说如果他们不使用列表就得不到价值,而是因为我们知道 SparkToro 的理想客户真的从列表中获得了巨大的价值——人们如果想的话可以在那个阶段一直待着。我们不会担心他们。我们担心的是那些真正想要这个完整的、全功能工具的实际功能的人。所以那就是首次价值,我们就是通过这个来判断他们是否到达了产品激活的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:46:21): 然后下一个,正如我之前提到的,实际上是三件事的组合。在一段时间跨度内执行最低数量的搜索,创建至少一定数量的列表——我记不清具体是多少了——然后发现并导出至少一次。达到这个标准就意味着他们达到了一个足够有意义的产品参与阈值。然后价值增长就是他们在足够规律的基础上做所有这些事情,这样我们基本上就知道他们不是流失风险。这样我们才知道他们在持续从产品中获得价值。如果他们一旦从那个持续参与的成功衡量中掉出来,那我们就可以触发一对一的主动联系、发一封邮件之类的。我的意思是显然不能通过应用来做,因为如果他们不登录应用的话,你就联系不到他们。而是帮助他们回来,说一句,“嘿,怎么了?我们能帮忙吗?有什么我们可以做的吗?“基本上就是主动地把他们拉回来。然后价值增长,我记得在他们的案例中是扩容或升级。我记不太清具体细节了。
Lenny (00:47:27): 好的。所以最终你得到了这大概六个 KPI。
Georgiana Laudi (00:47:29): 是的。
Lenny (00:47:30): 我猜这些就成了你们追踪的目标,然后你们可能从中选一个来聚焦,比如按年、按季度。很棒。
Georgiana Laudi (00:47:37): 是的,希望不要按年。
Lenny (00:47:38): 好的,按周。
Georgiana Laudi (00:47:40): 希望短一些,因为我的意思是,我可以说对于某些 KPI,比如新独立网站访客或网站转化率,这些是很直接的。我的意思是取决于谁负责网站,那不应该花你一年时间。你绝对不应该只盯着网站转化率盯一年。但其他这些 KPI 和其他这些里程碑,我的意思是,如果它影响到产品,那显然会牵涉到很多东西,对此我没有任何幻想。所以是的,一般来说,一旦你进入到应用内和更多产品体验的范畴,时间线差异非常大,这是最保守的说法了。
Lenny (00:48:18): 好的,好。我们进入下一步吧。
交付成果与效果
Georgiana Laudi (00:48:21): 好的。在那个节点之后,我们从那项研究中产出了一份丰富的客户之声文档。我们为他们提供了一份传播信息指南,不仅用于他们的营销材料,也贯穿整个产品体验,同时还识别出产品中那些特别有意义的部分。实际上,他们的新任营销副总裁 Amanda Natividad 推出了一个清单。他们做了一个产品引导清单,还有产品引导邮件。他们的试用→付费转化率翻了一倍。我们的反应是,“好的,很棒,需要帮忙的话告诉我们。“然后他们说,“哦,我们没问题,我们自己搞定了。“两个月后我们再去跟进,他们的试用→付费转化率翻了一倍。
Lenny (00:49:03): 我觉得你跳过了一个重要的环节——“嘿,我们有了 KPI。“然后你直接说”哦,我们给了他们所有这些信息。“所以我想在这里多花点时间。你们为他们制定了传播信息、定位之类的东西。那里发生了什么?
传播信息与定位指南
Georgiana Laudi (00:49:16): 嗯,事情是这样的。他们有一个完整的团队。他们有一支规模很大、技能非常高的营销团队在掌舵。其中不可不提的就是 Rand Fishkin,他们的 CEO。所以基本上,我们给他们的是一个框架。就像,“这是骨架。我们给你做了一份传播信息和定位指南。“一般来说,当我们做这种东西的时候,大概五到七页。它涵盖价值主张,涵盖主要的竞争优势,涵盖你想要聚焦的主要价值主题。这些价值主题可以按照情感利益和功能利益来拆解,并与驱动那些价值的产品属性挂钩。所以那份文档——里面还有更多内容——但那份传播信息指南基本上可以作为所有营销宣传物和材料的基准,也可以用于邮件引导。
Georgiana Laudi (00:50:16): 所以当他们在撰写邮件序列时,不管是为了解决什么问题、针对什么里程碑,都可以以此为基准,“这是我们的方向,这是我们的目标。“而那份传播信息指南向上对齐到待办任务(JTBD)。所以待办任务(JTBD)就像是顶层纲领。然后我们有服务于那个待办任务的传播信息。再往下,就是通过里程碑和 KPI 运营化的客户体验。接着你就可以聚焦到:体验中目前最薄弱的环节在哪里?对 SparkToro 来说我们已经知道了。我们知道我们想影响早期产品体验。所以我们就聚焦在那里,决定他们应该推出哪些项目。邮件引导自然是一个,用户清单也是一个。
Lenny (00:51:03): 对于想要做传播信息的同学,假设就只是简单地说”嘿,这里有一堆传播信息方面的建议”,关于如何写好传播信息、在已经有用户旅程认知和一些目标之后如何思考传播信息,你有什么高招可以分享吗?
Georgiana Laudi (00:51:21): 天哪。我觉得,研究和客户之声,我总是会回到这一点。你可以猜,你可以用你最好的判断。你可以利用内部利益相关者和内部团队的知识。我不是说这些没有价值,也不是说你完全不该用。你可以用,但它永远不应优先于向你的最佳理想客户学习、倾听他们,并使用他们的语言。你想把他们的话原样反射给他们。这样才能让他们看到,你理解他们的问题,而你的产品恰好有他们所需要的东西。
传播信息的层级
Georgiana Laudi (00:52:06): 传播信息的层级也非常重要。经典的说法是,身在罐中看不到标签,所以走出去看看很有帮助,“好,客户是怎么看我们的?“通常你可以识别出他们的优先层级——什么对他们最重要,他们说产品的哪些方面最有价值?那个 aha 时刻是什么?或者第一次感受到价值的时刻是什么?或者让你在所有人中脱颖而出的那个点是什么?这其实可以是一个数字游戏。如果你收集一百来份问卷回复,就可以拆解出:“这是他们最在意的,这是他们第二在意的,第三在意的,“不必过于刻板地照搬,但这其中科学里有艺术的成分。但总体而言,你要反射的是他们说自己在意的东西,而不是你觉得你的产品最酷的地方。那显然不是最好的做法。
Georgiana Laudi (00:53:05): 这些道理我们骨子里都懂,但当事情很多、变化很快、产品在不断迭代、团队很多、人来人往的时候,就很难保持这个意识了,尤其是在你只想把东西赶着上线的时候。所以那份传播信息指南在心理上就像是,“好,我们在这里。这是我的基线,这是我做所有东西的护栏。“当你请外部文案写手进来的时候,把这份指南交给他们也非常方便……不只是文案写手,很多人都能用上,但特别是在生产文案的时候,提供那份传播信息指南就等于给他们端上了一份银盘大餐。
Lenny (00:53:46): 这个模板在什么地方能找到吗?就是你们最终分享给客户的那个?比如”这是一份指南,传播信息的布局、建议”之类的。
Georgiana Laudi (00:53:53): 哦,我们有很多。
Lenny (00:53:55): 也许可以小小地——
Georgiana Laudi (00:53:55): 我们有好多模板之类的东西。对,我会附上几个链接。
Lenny (00:54:01): 太好了,我放到节目备注里。
Georgiana Laudi (00:54:02): 我们有很多这类东西。对。
Lenny (00:54:04): 好的,很好。最后几个关于待办任务(JTBD)的问题。
Georgiana Laudi (00:54:09): 好。
Lenny (00:54:10): 你提到他们把免费→付费转化率翻了一倍。
Georgiana Laudi (00:54:13): 对。
Lenny (00:54:13): 太厉害了。他们最终的待办任务(JTBD)是什么?然后关于待办任务(JTBD)我还有几个问题——
SparkToro 的待办任务
Georgiana Laudi (00:54:19): 应该是——当他们苦于难以发现不太明显的机遇时。一般来说,做营销研究时,你最终会反复看到同样的东西。如果你是服务提供商,或者你在甲方工作,而你的任务总是要不断产出新颖的、更新的、越来越多的内容,你很快就会力竭。所以客户来找他们的目的就是,“给我更多。我要在这里出人头地。我需要更多可以操作的素材。我需要发现那些我本来注意不到的机会。“实际上就是这句话——帮助我发现那些我本来不会注意到的机会。所以客户的任务陈述是,“当我在某种情境下时,帮我——“,这里填入的是他们寻找的那些动机,“以便我可以——“,这就是期望的结果。
Georgiana Laudi (00:55:18): “帮我”那部分是——如果我没记错的话——以一种有组织的方式,而且是可分享的、可持续使用的、可以不断积累的,真正能长期依赖的。而期望的结果则是——说出来不会让人意外——是获得利益相关者的认可、让人们买账、分享成果、看起来很专业、更高效地完成工作,以及为自己的团队或客户带来更好的结果。
待办任务(JTBD)框架简介
Lenny (00:55:48): 太好了,我们终于讲到了。前面我们对待办任务(JTBD)讲得比较粗略。我猜很多听众完全不知道这是什么。所以也许作为最后一个问题,你能不能解释一下这个框架是什么,大家可以通过什么方式学习使用它,或者你推荐什么资源?
Georgiana Laudi (00:56:07): 好的。对我们影响很大的无疑是 Bob Moesta,他是待办任务(JTBD)理论的最初架构师之一。网上有大量关于待办任务的资料。我绝对不是待办任务方面的最高权威。我觉得 jtbd.info 是一个不错的网站。还有很多其他的。另外 Bob Moesta 写了一本叫 Demand-Side Sales 的书,里面有详细讲解。还有很多关于待办任务的书。When Coffee and Kale 是很多人喜欢的一本。扯远了。关键是识别出客户到底想要达成什么。人口统计数据并不重要。经典的例子是——哦,查尔斯国王,现在这个例子变了。如果你看 Ozzy Osbourne,原来用的是查尔斯王子,现在是查尔斯国王——如果你看这两个人,他们年龄完全相同,住在同一个地区。他们都有狗。都喜欢车。
Georgiana Laudi (00:57:04): 从人口统计的角度来看,他们一模一样,但他们显然过着截然不同的生活。驱动他们的东西完全不同。所以这也是用户画像(personas)通常失效的地方。所以对我们来说,待办任务(JTBD)帮助你弄清楚那个期望的结果是什么,客户追求的那种更好的生活是什么样的。你只是帮助他们到达那里的工具。就是这样。关于这个有很多用烂了的比喻,我甚至不想用——
Lenny (00:57:34): 奶昔那个?
Georgiana Laudi (00:57:36): 什么?
Lenny (00:57:37): 奶昔的比喻。
Georgiana Laudi (00:57:38): 奶昔那个,那甚至不算比喻了。我觉得那是最早的待办任务故事之一,就是奶昔那个。
Lenny (00:57:45): 关于你和公司合作的过程,还有什么想分享的吗,在你学到的经验方面?在我们进入非常精彩的快问快答环节之前——
研究工作的常见质疑
Georgiana Laudi (00:57:54): 是的。我们在这类工作中经常听到的一个质疑是,研究很耗时,而且研究往往会引出更多问题,拖慢一切进度。你可能会陷入分析瘫痪(analysis paralysis),但其实不必如此。说实话,在问卷调查的场景下,它可以非常直接。以 SparkToro 为例,仅就那个场景而言,我有很多公司的案例,我们跑问卷调查,大概两三周就够了。两到三周,你就能得到一些扎实的东西来推进工作,而且不会陷入争论,也不会被太多利益相关方、太多人插手所困扰。你能得出明确的结论,从中获得价值。
Georgiana Laudi (00:58:47): 还有一点,另一个我们经常听到的质疑,尤其来自创始人,是因为他们当初做产品就是为了解决自己的问题,这很酷,也确实让你成为对自己解决方案最了解的人。但产品在变,市场在变,客户在变,团队整体也在变。不是所有东西都能装在你脑子里,走进你最好客户的内心世界有巨大的价值——也许在产品诞生之初你和他们很亲近,但只要过了一段时间,你总能学到新东西。我从来没有遇到过这样的情况:创始人从研究中没有学到新东西,并把它利用起来改善产品体验。
Lenny (00:59:35): 太棒了。我们稍后再回到大家如何联系你——如果你想体验这个流程、想和我们合作、想了解更多的话。但在那之前,我们进入了一个非常精彩的快问快答环节。我准备了五个快速问题。我们快速过一遍,想到什么说什么。就这么来,好吗?
Georgiana Laudi (00:59:50): 好的。
快问快答:推荐书籍
Lenny (00:59:51): 好。你会推荐两三本什么书给想提升营销能力的人?
Georgiana Laudi (00:59:58): 我非常、非常、非常少读营销类书籍,但有两本我觉得相当基础而且比较新。一本是 April Dunford 的 Obviously Awesome。我相信你听过无数次了。我觉得基本上是必读,尤其是对创始人来说。April 刚写完的时候我跟她说,“我会要求每一个和我合作的创始人在合作之前先读你的书”,因为这是基础性的东西,你必须了解。
Georgiana Laudi (01:00:23): 另一本我很喜欢的是 Nir Eyal 的 Hooked。那本也很好。但就像我说的,我不怎么读营销书。还有一本我不能不提的就是我们自己正在写的关于这个流程的书,真正讲的是手把手教你怎么做这件事。虽然我们很喜欢和公司一起走这个流程,但我某种程度上也学了 April 的做法——把这个流程讲清楚,让人们能够自己内部推广和执行,这让我非常有成就感。我们通过一个培训项目来做这件事,这本书是我们把它进一步推向世界的下一步。所以你完全可以自己做这些事情。那个流程在书的后半部分。还有一本我最近读的书,和营销完全无关,但真的很不错,是 4000 Weeks。我觉得——
Lenny (01:01:15): 我正在读这本。
Georgiana Laudi (01:01:15): 哦对,我很喜欢。它有点像让人回归本真的感觉。我不记得具体什么时候读的了,几周前刚读完。时机刚刚好。我觉得考虑到现在世界上正在发生的事情,以及每个人现在的感受,这是一本当下很适合读的书。
Lenny (01:01:38): 我读得很享受。刚开始读。我很高兴——
Georgiana Laudi (01:01:40): 好的。
Lenny (01:01:41): 嗯,你鼓励了我继续读下去。
Georgiana Laudi (01:01:43): 是的。
快问快答:影视剧
Lenny (01:01:43): 好。最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧?
Georgiana Laudi (01:01:46): 我有小孩子。我刚买了第二处房产。我们正在翻修三栋房子。我几乎从不看电影。我目前在追的唯一内容就是 YouTube 上做 DIY 室内设计和翻修的博主。原因是我和伴侣买了一处湖滨房产,上面有四座非常古老的小木屋,几乎就是微型房屋,小别墅那种。我们在慢慢翻修每一栋。所以我现在的消遣就是学习室内设计和 DIY 房屋出租。是的。
快问快答:职业影响最大的人
Lenny (01:02:31): 谁对你的职业生涯影响最大?
Georgiana Laudi (01:02:31): 这是最难回答的问题。我不想这么说,但可能是我爸爸。我不得不说是因为他彻头彻尾是个创业者。我记得很清楚,我职业生涯早期为他工作了大概八年。他经常说的一句话是,“经营企业的乐趣所在。“他不在乎是什么,他说,“你卖什么不重要。“他可以卖任何东西,但那种创业的快乐是真的。这深深影响了我。所以即使在公司上班的时候,我也一直知道自己需要做点自己的事,掌控自己的旅程。他从中获得的快乐对我影响很大。他就是为什么我一直知道自己会走上这条路的原因。
Georgiana Laudi (01:03:26): 除此之外,我想说我有一个非常棒的女性网络,我非常幸运。我们属于一个叫 Shine Crew 的小组。我觉得我应该给这个词注册个版权之类的,因为它基本上是基于 Shine Theory 这个概念的。但我非常、非常幸运地受到 April Dunford、Tara Robertson、Joanna Wiebe、Talia Wolf 的深刻影响。当然还有我的商业伙伴 Claire,显然她改变了我的一切。拥有这种商业伙伴关系,我觉得如果没有的话我撑不到现在。所以,是的,绝对是一个巨大的影响。
快问快答:保持专注与高效
Lenny (01:04:10): 有什么方法帮助你白天保持专注和高效?
Georgiana Laudi (01:04:15): 一定是切分时间,比如时间块(time blocking)。我会提前做很多时间块规划,加一个大脑 emoji 来保护我的时间。因为我们是一个小团队,显然用 Slack,所以我们还做了另一件事来保护彼此的时间——不是时间戳,而是我们在所有消息里加一个小标记,比如”今天结束前不需要看这个”,或者”这个很紧急”,或者”不着急”,这样我们就知道什么时候需要在心里处理 Slack 消息,所以我们可以只是偶尔进去看看。还有另一件事,我大概每月或每季度做一次,就是我们对时间追踪非常严格,所以我们会回去看,这让我们对自己时间的实际去向保持诚实。然后我们可以相应地调整和时间块规划,来弥补上一季度的不足。
Lenny (01:05:10): 这个真的很聪明。我没听说过这个技巧。“你可以稍后处理”的 emoji 是什么?
Georgiana Laudi (01:05:15): 我们其实就用 no rush 或者 EOD 表示 end of day(今天结束前),或者 timely。我们确实有闹钟 emoji,代表”现在。这个需要尽快处理。”
Lenny (01:05:29): 太棒了。Gia,谢谢你抽出时间。最后一个问题,大家在网上哪里可以找到你?怎么预购你的书?怎么了解更多?还有,听众怎样能帮到你?
Georgiana Laudi (01:05:39): 谢谢你的提问。Twitter 大概是最好的方式。我的 Twitter 账号有点糟糕,@ggiiaa 就是我在 Twitter 上的账号。我偶尔也会上 LinkedIn。我的邮箱是 gia@forgetthefunnel.com。所以如果大家有任何问题,什么的,随时发邮件给我。如果你想要一些没有放进节目摘要里的模板什么的,直接联系我就行。我完全没问题。然后 forgetthefunnel.com,我们有一个书籍页面,上面有一个等待列表……嗯,我们会开启预售,然后实体书会在 2023 年初出版。但我们确实会做预售,因为……先送到大家手上嘛。有何不可呢?
Lenny (01:06:18): 太棒了。Gia,谢谢你来参加节目。
Georgiana Laudi (01:06:21): 非常感谢你的邀请。
Lenny (01:06:24): 非常感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅本节目。另外,也请考虑给我们评分或留下评价,这真的能帮助其他听众发现这个播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于本节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| aha moment | aha 时刻 |
| Amanda Natividad | Amanda Natividad(SparkToro 营销副总裁) |
| analysis paralysis | 分析瘫痪(analysis paralysis) |
| Annie Duke | Annie Duke(决策制定专家) |
| April Dunford | April Dunford(定位专家,Obviously Awesome 作者) |
| Arielle Jackson | Arielle Jackson(创业品牌专家) |
| Autobooks | Autobooks(金融科技产品) |
| Bob Moesta | Bob Moesta(待办任务理论最初架构师之一) |
| Brian | Brian(Airbnb 联合创始人 Brian Chesky) |
| Carter Gilchrist | Carter Gilchrist(Unbounce 联合创始人兼产品负责人) |
| Casey | Casey(SparkToro 团队成员) |
| CDP | 客户数据平台 |
| Claire Suellentrop | Claire Suellentrop(曾领导 Calendly 营销) |
| competitive advantages | 竞争优势 |
| Customer-led growth | 客户驱动增长 |
| Dave McClure | Dave McClure(500 Startups 创始人,海盗指标提出者) |
| deal breaker | 一票否决项(deal breaker) |
| Demand-Side Sales | Demand-Side Sales(Bob Moesta 著作,保留原文) |
| Emily Kramer | Emily Kramer(B2B 营销专家) |
| emotional benefits | 情感利益 |
| evaluation phase | 评估期(evaluation phase) |
| flight risk | 流失风险 |
| Forget The Funnel | Forget The Funnel(品牌名,保留原文) |
| free-to-paid conversion rate | 免费→付费转化率 |
| freemium | 免费增值 |
| functional benefits | 功能利益 |
| growth phase | 增长期(growth phase) |
| high touch | 高接触 |
| Jackie Bavaro | Jackie Bavaro(产品策略专家) |
| Joanna Wiebe | Joanna Wiebe(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Jobs to Be Done | 待办任务(JTBD,产品创新理论框架) |
| John Cutler | John Cutler(Amplitude,播客嘉宾) |
| leaps of faith | 信心飞跃(leaps of faith) |
| Lenny | Lenny(播客主持人) |
| Lex Fridman | Lex Fridman(知名播客主持人) |
| Marily Nika | Marily Nika(产品管理讲师) |
| Maven | Maven(队列式学习平台,保留原文) |
| MQL | 营销合格线索(Marketing Qualified Lead) |
| Nir Eyal | Nir Eyal(行为设计专家) |
| Ozzy Osbourne | Ozzy Osbourne(英国摇滚歌手,保留原文) |
| personas | 用户画像(personas) |
| pirate metrics | 海盗指标 |
| positioning and messaging | 定位和传播信息 |
| product activation | 产品激活 |
| product attributes | 产品属性 |
| product-led | 产品驱动 |
| Project Snow White | Project Snow White(Airbnb 内部项目名) |
| Rand Fishkin | Rand Fishkin(Moz 创始人,SparkToro 创始人) |
| Ryan Engley | Ryan Engley(Unbounce 客户成功负责人) |
| sales-led | 销售驱动 |
| sandbox account | 沙盒账户 |
| Shine Crew | Shine Crew(Georgiana 所在的女性职业互助小组) |
| Shine Theory | Shine Theory(女性互助理念,保留原文) |
| SparkToro | SparkToro(受众研究工具) |
| SQL | 销售合格线索(Sales Qualified Lead) |
| struggle phase | 挣扎期(struggle phase) |
| Talia Wolf | Talia Wolf(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Tara Robertson | Tara Robertson(Georgiana 的职业网络成员) |
| Tim Ferriss | Tim Ferriss(知名播客主持人、作家) |
| time blocking | 时间块(time blocking) |
| trial-to-paid | 试用→付费转化率 |
| Unbounce | Unbounce(SaaS 落地页平台) |
| value prop | 价值主张 |
| value realization | 价值实现 |
| value themes | 价值主题 |
| voice of customer | 客户之声 |
| When Coffee and Kale | When Coffee and Kale(JTBD 相关书籍,保留原文) |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)