I know what you’re thinking. This edition is a whole week late! Well, that’s because this newsletter is run by an intern (that’s me, hello!) who went on a little vacation and moved into a new apartment last week.
That’s my bad. Busy times. But here we are, back and better than ever.
This week, we’re going to switch it up a little bit. Nathan and I, who run product marketing at HeadsUp, are going to touch on the essentials of product marketing at a PLG company. There are some excellent articles out there on this topic, like this one from Eduardo Esparza, and we thought we’d pitch in as well.
Let’s get started with...
How marketing is different in the product-led world
It’s all about the end-user
Product-led companies live and die by the end user. We know that much. So it goes without saying that product marketers need to spend much more time with users than in traditional marketing. Product-led marketers need to listen and take sales calls, do customer support, and stay close to the sales and customer success teams.
What’s more, as PLG companies spin up more sales-assist roles – where sellers are in charge of moving people from sign up to activation – marketers need to spend more time in these roles. This way, they gain a better understanding of how the product helps users solve specific problems, which in turn allows the marketer to create content surrounding those problems. And on that note…
Drop content that helps users solve problems
In the PLG world, the product marketer must be at the forefront of this problem-solving effort: they should be consistently releasing helpful content such as detailed guides, tips for success (just like this edition, isn’t that meta?), and any other solution-oriented content that helps the user in any way possible.
Not only will this direct people to your product, but it will also put you on the road to thought leadership. You'll be slated to become the authority on everything related to the problems you’re addressing.
Understand your user personas
PLG means serving end-users better. One sales leader we spoke to said “In enterprise sales, you are usually pitching to senior execs, and procurement, sysadmins, legal, and compliance departments. In PLG these are still important, but the end-user is much more central.”
Marketing well to individuals requires the product marketer to understand all of the user personas they must appeal to. Marketers must be more attuned to how to serve up the right messages to the right folks. For instance, at HeadsUp, here’s one of the user personas we are building for:
As an Account Executive, I need a prioritized list of product-qualified leads, so that I know who best to reach out to today. I’m really busy and under pressure to hit my quotas. I need someone to make my life simpler by concentrating my attention on high-impact leads and high ROI activities.
You must develop a deep understanding of these personas, and refine your messaging so that what you say on your website, in your pitch, in your product all resonate with what the user is thinking. This means top product marketers ought to be talking to at least 1-2 customers a week.
Helping the seller
We’re sure you’ve heard why sales is so important to PLG. Well, product marketers are also crucial in sales efforts. Marketers in those PLG companies often do sales enablement, like creating materials for sellers, writing content to help guide users, and collecting reviews and feedback from users. Marketers in PLG are usually the tip of the spear – they’re delivering sufficient volume to the free trial/free tier to get conversions, which are typically only 1-5%.
Go fast. ⌛️
If we had to ballpark it, product marketers in the PLG need to spend 10% of their time brainstorming, and 90% of their time executing. At HeadsUp, we have a lot of ideas spinning up all the time: start a newsletter (and here we are!), start a podcast, post a meme, post another one, release a blog post, release another one, drop content updates to our advisors, work on the language and visuals on our website… The to-do list doesn’t end.
Check out this article from First Round Review on why speed is important and how to speed up your marketing org.
Product marketing is a lot of work. And if you’re not constantly executing, you’re going to fall behind. The PLG sphere is getting more and more crowded with excellent products and excellent marketing to boot. The key is to stop hesitating and just do.
Random tips
The LinkedIn gods will like you better if you post your content at certain times. We’ve found a lot of success on Wednesday and Thursday mornings around 9am EST.
We like to put our links in the comments of our posts instead of within the post itself. We’ve been told this is better somehow.
Memes are fun. The PLG space could use more of them. In fact, if you reply to this email with a meme of any kind, we’ll feature it in the next newsletter.
Using Canva and Figma to create your blog post graphics is absolutely the move.
What did we miss? Drop us a comment!
Here‘s some more awesome stuff from the past few weeks: