How to supercharge product marketing with no budget
Most agree if product-led growth is the future playbook of SaaS, then product marketing should be at the centre of a CMO’s strategy. The product marketing function is blowing up, but is still considered a ‘new field’ in marketing and the core remit is constantly debated. Ironically, though SaaS CEOs verbally agree product marketing is critical, they often put zero budget behind their product marketing teams.
If you are a product marketer in this boat, not to worry. I’ve been there. I’ve pulled my hair out over it. I’ve resentfully watched the demand gen teams take all my budget. Most importantly, I’ve documented what I’ve done when faced with this situation. I’m sharing my no/low cost product marketing playbook. This is meant to get you through the zero-budget days but also help you tee-up your ask for budget in future quarters through low-cost wins that validate and quantify your impact.
Low/No Cost Product Marketing Strategy
If you have not yet read The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries, start with that. Eric illustrates the 2 engines that result in SaaS success: the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis. Value hypothesis is where product marketers play.
Eric says that value comes before growth. The value a product provides is the only reason someone uses it. A value hypothesis tests if a product is valuable to customers. It turns a value statement into a question:
Statement: Customers use product X because Y
Question: Do customers use product X because of Y?
Your value proposition must align with the reason a customer actually uses the product. Awful things happen when a company has the wrong value hypothesis. The company creates features users don’t want. This misalignment is the primary reason companies fail. Remind your executives of this constantly.
How to low-cost test your value hypothesis:
Solicit user feedback through surveys of your existing base (eDMs, in-app notifications, add into your first 30–60 days on-boarding flow) to find your true differentiators. Does your company have an NPS survey? If so, ask for a copy and read end to end.
Measure product adoption. Ask the product team for reports on most used and least used features. Link this back to your current value proposition — does it line up? This insight is hugely valuable and available at no cost.
Interview customer-facing teams (customer success, sales, professional services) to see what customers tell them on what they love and hate about your product. Document and synthesize. I wrote a whole blog on how to do this step by step linked here if you need. This exercise is free to do and hugely insightful to executives.
With the feedback & research done above, map your products & features into 4 categories: True differentiators/Valued features, Add Ons (a small amount of customers willing to pay for these features), Table-stakes (expected features, but not willing to pay for them) and Trash (provide no value to customers).
Other low-cost strategy projects to take on:
Map the customer journey. A customer journey map is a powerful tool to help visualise the current state of your customer experience, but also make sure all actions are based on the Customer Experience Strategy. Mapping customer journeys should always aim for business impact. Here is a great blog on B2B customer journey mapping to start with. Bonus exercise: map the journey for each customer segment you have (big and small customers have a different journey, for example).
Measure and rank collateral. Ask the digital team to provide reports on how your assets rank on lead generation, downloads, conversions etc. Ask sales on which assets are helpful vs. not helpful. Use this feedback to steer your content marketing teams direction and investments.
Is there any part of your product where your company can claim that they are creating a category? Ask product. Ask sales. Ask customers. Develop a storyline about category creation. Here are some great reads on how to do this: The category creation manifesto, 10 category creation examples in SaaS, To create a new category, name the new game
Create a freemium business case. Freemium is one of the most road-tested and honoured acquisition models SaaS companies use to get customers on board. The freemium model is key to combatting skyrocketing cost of customer acquisition (CAC) in SaaS. Here are some resources that are helpful to read on this: Making freemium work, The ultimate guide to freemium, 7 examples of freemium products done right
Low/No Cost Revenue Generation
Create a demo video that evangelises app experience. Video demos are 100% necessary in the SaaS customer journey. Create short, snappy demo videos by recording your screen and a voice over. You can get this video top and tailed with your brand’s logo easily. Check out PlayPlay as an option to auto-edit your videos if you don’t have an internal resource with the skills. Use their free trial or ask for a 1 month subscription to show what you can do with the money. See this blog on 18 impressive demo videos you’ll want to copy. Of course these are high-production demo videos, but a low production video can have high impact if you truly understand what delights your customers and create a compelling use case.
A/B test CTAs on your website. Do you know the performance of your call to actions (CTAs)? A/B testing is one of the most reliable testing methods for your CTA as it isolates one variable at a time. This allows you to optimise CTAs based on the performance of each one. Here is a guide on how to do this.
Create a customer referral program. Make your customers part of your marketing department. Get your current customers to tell their peers about how much they love your software through a referral program. Better yet, allow your current customers to send demo invitations to those that may need it. Referral of a SaaS product from a friend / peer makes it four times more likely that someone will make a purchase, and their lifetime value following referral can be 16% higher. A rewards points model, discounted bills, referral bonuses — all of these tactics are effective.
Develop a video content strategy. Video has been outperforming other mediums exponentially over the last few years. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. Video production can be expensive, but there are so many emerging tools that are helping marketing teams produce effective videos quickly. Wave Animatron has a ton of stock video and photo and a drag and drop editor that helps you make quick branded content. Shakr is also amazing for making super graphic brand videos to announce sales, new products, etc.
Develop co-marketing strategies with adjacent companies. Consider running a co-marketing campaign with other companies that complement your product offering or share a similar point of view. Usually this entails creating a piece of content, such as an ebook, host a webinar, or publish some research together. The leads generated and the costs incurred are also shared by both parties. Both companies have the opportunity to leverage each other’s following and reach new audiences. If both teams are aligned, co-marketing can be very effective.
Turn employees into ambassadors. If you cannot get your employees excited about your product, it will be impossible to get outside customers excited. Your employees are part of the community you serve and have all sorts of contacts that can help you. Try inviting employees and their extended families to a fun event at your business? You may find you get new word-of-mouth business or hear about a potential new business partner. Create an employee engagement program to supercharge their personal channels and get the word out about product announcements and launches. Check out this podcast on how Drift Went Viral With LinkedIn Video Without Spending a Dollar
Low/No Cost Product Roadmap Impact
Use customer insights to influence roadmapping. Get yourself invited to the product discovery discussions. Come with a strong understanding of your market, your customers (in particular the buyer persona), the competitive landscape, win-loss data within sales, campaign performance, and with data on how our products are performing (e.g. pipeline/bookings) by region/customer/by channel. This is key ensuring you are perceived as an important and strategic function of the business.
Revamp feature announcement strategy. Help your PR/product teams decide what to announce and how to manage release communications strategically. Map channels of communication per customer segment (acquisition, existing customers) and which features should be communicated where. Intercom wrote an excellent blog on how to do this here.
Low/No Cost Product Adoption
Review your on-boarding experience. Physically sign up for your product online and go through your activation flow. When was the last time you did this as a product marketer? Probably too long ago, if ever. What is your 30,60,90 day experience as a new user? Compare to a best-in-class SaaS app in another industry… is there something you can learn?
In app / push notifications. The average push notification open rate is well above 50%, which is exceptionally high. It’s natural for users both on desktop and mobile to receive. It’s more in context and direct than sending something to an email inbox. Creating in-product tips and visual walkthroughs will help users better understand your product and accelerate that “aha” moment that turns them into product adopters. Provide extra “hand holding” for new users who want to learn your product and for existing users who want to get more value out of new features.
Use segmented eDMs to re-engage users. If you can send the right emails at right moments during lead nurturing, on-boarding, and product discovery, you can greatly increase conversions at each stage and overall product adoption. Vero provides a great example of this in action.
Host webinars & live demos to train & up-sell users. We use these tools for acquisition but how often do you use these low-cost strategies to impact product adoption?
Pamper your existing customers. It’s typically 5x as expensive to make a sale to a new customer as it is to an existing one. Consider taking your best customers out to dinner and using the opportunity to ask them about how to improve your product marketing. You could also personally write to your top 10 customers to thank them and tell them they’re part of your new loyalty program or invite them to sneak preview your latest product.
Product marketing continues to be an essential function in the fiercely competitive SaaS industry. I hope this blog helps product marketers generate ideas to showcase our value, even when you are given limited or no budget.
