Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com

The Art of Product MarketingHow to attract, entice, and convert the right audience

for the product(s) and company you’re creating.

Slides online atBit.ly/artproductmarketing

Why Do Startups(and new products) Fail?

CB Insights compiled an analysis from startup post-mortems.

I’d argue these 5 are mostly “couldn’t find

enough customers” or “couldn’t affordably find

customers”

“Lean Startup” methodology teaches us to build a product people actually want and will use:

From Eric Ries’ slide deck on The Lean Startup

But it misses how to market and grow an audience of right customers so our product can scale…

From Eric Ries’ slide deck on The Lean Startup

What’s after the MVP?

Identifyingthe Right Customers

I’ll use 10K’ as an example to illustrate

Who wants this product and isalready seeking it out?

What else is our audience searching for?And what else do they use to describe this problem?

Note: AdWords’ numbers should be viewed as ranges, not

absolutes (e.g. 880 might mean 300-1,200 actual searches/month)

More Detail on AdWords’ Data Weirdness

AdWords hides many searches that Google thinks are non-commercial, so use Suggest + Related, too.

Search queries can often lead to great sources of audience and customer discovery

This can help tell us what matters to reviewers &

customers

Once you have real people signing up for your product,

you can learn more about them

Now we just need to find out where

people like this guy hang out

Have a community & can find/recruit

folks excited about your product?

Do that!

Then you can survey this

audience to identify their

clones

Targeting the Right Audiencein the Right Places

SEO & PPC for relevant keywords

are obvious starting points

On average, paid results get ~18% of search

clicksOrganic gets

~82%

Smart marketers invest throughout the funnel,

to maximize opportunity

Facebook’s ad creator can give some sense of audience size for many fields/interests

SimilarWeb Pro can show you where other sites get their traffic (relatively accurate except for the long tail)

Via SimilarWeb Pro

SimilarWeb can also show search keywords:

Via SimilarWeb Pro

The KWs sites pay for are most often those that convert

best

And referring/social media traffic:

Via SimilarWeb Pro

These sites can lead you to potential press opportunities, content ideas, partnerships,

etc.

Don’t be too biased to invest only in Google or Facebook – there are tons of opportunities

Many products’ entire, very successful, strategies fit into channels w/ <0.1%

of global web traffic.

Attracting an Audienceto Your Platform

The 5 Paths to Audience Attraction:The Product Itself

Network & Viral/WoM

Paid Advertising

Influencers, Press, & PRContent + Search, Social, Email, et

al.

Using the Product Itself:

How’d they do that?!

Using the Product Itself:

The product is naturally appealing to Reddit’s

audience, and the visuals fit squarely into the current zeitgeist.

Using the Product Itself:

Using the Product Itself:

Unless you can envision headlines like this about your product, don’t rely

solely on the product to sell itself.

Network & Viral / Word-of-Mouth

Everyone who takes a SurveyMonkey survey is a potential future customer

Network & Viral / Word-of-Mouth

Via First Round Capital’s Article on Slack

Slack is a product where 1 or 2 people can convince an entire organization to

use it.

Network & Viral / Word-of-Mouth

Via Skarp’s Kickstarter page

Kickstarter is an inherently WoM & viral-

driven marketing Launchpad. Products only get made if people who

want them share & amplify.

Paid Advertising

Thanks to retargeting, RLSA, browser-ID’ing, and social logins, paid ads are more

intelligent than ever.

Paid Advertising

Via Recode on DraftKings & FanDuel

Influencers, Press, & PR

Via Techcrunch on Quora’s Growth

Quora has intentionally foregone some forms of growth (SEO notably) to

focus on influencers, press, & PR-style

partnerships.

Influencers, Press, & PR

Via YouAreAwesome’s Blog Post

Urbanspoon needed to compete w/ Yelp’s domination in restaurant

reviews, so targeted bloggers who felt left out of Yelp’s ecosystem.

Influencers, Press, & PRBeardBrand continues to generate great press

and has started their own beard-focused magazine.

Content + Search, Social, Email, et al.

Moz invests relentlessly in content strategy & distribution.

Publish

Amplify

Grow network Rank for slightly more

competitive terms & phrases

Get links Grow authority

Earn search traffic

Content + Search, Social, Email, et al.

Free tools (& freemium) can be great forms of content marketing.

Via Crew.co’s App vs. Website and VoilaNorbert

Nearly every startup & new product uses a combination of these:

The Product ItselfNetwork & Viral/WoM

Paid AdvertisingInfluencers, Press, & PR

Content + Search, Social, Email, et al.

Convertingthe Right Customers

Remember those people who signed up for your product

& loved it?

We need to identify the traits that separate customers who’ll use & love our product from those who won’t.

My Favorite Process:

From Conversion Rate Experts’ case study

Boom.

And Shakalaka.

Didn’t try the product

Tried, but didn’t love it

Tried & loved the product

What do you think the product does?

What made you try it? What made you try it?

What would make you more likely to try it?

What are your biggest objections to signup?

What objections did you have and how did you overcome them?

What caused you to stop using the

product?What would have made you stay a

customer?

What objections did you have and how did you overcome

them?What’s been most valuable to you?

If you’ve loved it, can we share your story?

Retaining, Delighting, & Growing Amplification

ID usage & profile characteristics shared by your most loyal users.

Nudge those traits to the rest of your

audience (both in the product & through

external marketing).

Recognize & reward, as personally as

possible, users that exhibit behaviors that trend toward

loyalty & amplification.

Don’t be fooled by my oversimplification; this process is even harder than acquisition marketing.

Which marketing channels & tactics should you invest in?

The Biggest Mistake Companies Make When Investing in Marketing?

Assuming non-paid mediachannels work like paid media:

People

Pour more dollars & people in

+ Dollars =IF:

ELSE:

Positive ROITHEN:

Find new channel/tactic

Organic channels, like products themselves, need time to experiment, fail, learn, & iterate

The 1st WB Fridays were some of our worst

performing content.

But, after years of experimenting, we found a formula & an

audience, & now they’re some of our best.

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com

Bit.ly/artproductmarketing