Branding Tips

Why Read: Learn essential strategies for effective brand messaging, positioning, and identity creation. It offers practical tips for developing memorable and consistent brand communication.

Featuring: Kevan Lee (@kevanlee), Co-Founder at Bonfire

Link to Article: “532. Consistency & Cereal”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding the Importance of Consistency in Brand Messaging:

  • Point: Recognize that consistent repetition is key to making your brand memorable.

  • "A person must hear about your brand seven times before they'll remember it, let alone be moved enough to buy something from you. This old marketing adage might be due for an upgrade in the age of the attention economy. Instead of seven times, it might be 70 times!"

• Balancing Creativity and Persistence in Brand Positioning:

  • Point: Approach brand positioning as a combination of creative crafting and stubborn application.

  • "When you are coming up with your brand's positioning and messaging, the internal debates and wordsmithing are only half the battle. The other half is about applying whatever you come up with consistently and repeatedly until it sticks. Fifty percent craft. Fifty percent stubbornness."

• Leveraging Category Creation for Brand Identity:

  • Point: Consider creating a new category to define and own your product's niche.

  • "Category creation is the process of you determining a new name for the type of thing you sell because all the current names just don't quite fit. The process is incredibly taxing and resource intensive as a marketing team because you must define a new category and then go out and own that category, while doing all the other necessary parts of marketing like brand and product and growth."

• Utilizing Use Cases as an Alternative to Category Creation:

  • Point: If category creation isn't suitable, focus on defining clear use cases for your product.

  • "Not interested in category creation? My favorite alternative is a use case."

• Developing Memorable Taglines or Slogans:

  • Point: Create and consistently use catchy phrases to describe your brand.

  • "Not interested in a use case? You might pick a catchy tagline or slogan that you can consistently communicate again and again across all your channels. In other words, go Full Cereal Mode."

• Creating Your Own Brand Narrative:

  • Point: Don't wait for consensus; create and commit to your brand description.

  • "You are unlikely to discover the 'right' answer for how to describe your brand. Instead, you get to create the right answer. Do some customer research. Listen to how people talk about you. Figure out what you believe about you. Don't wait for a consensus on any of it. Pick something. Go for it. Keep going for it, for at least six months. Reconvene, survey people, and be amazed at how far you've come!"

How to Add a PLG Motion

Why Read: Understand product-led growth strategies, avoid common pitfalls, and learn how to implement PLG alongside traditional sales approaches for maximum business impact.

Featuring: Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan), Author at Lenny’s Newsletter and Lenny’s Podcast

Link:“Summary: The ultimate guide to adding a PLG motion | Hila Qu (Reforge, GitLab)’

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding Product-Led Growth (PLG):

  • Point: PLG is a user-focused approach that allows customers to try products before buying, popular due to changing consumer expectations.

  • "PLG is popular due to the shift from sales-driven B2B business models to user-focused, try-before-you-buy tactics: Consumers have become accustomed to testing products before committing, which has led to increased demand for similar experiences in the B2B space."

• Implementing Both PLG and Sales Strategies:

  • Point: Companies should use both PLG and sales strategies, with PLG broadening reach and sales targeting big customers.

  • "The question is not either or but both and a matter of sequencing. PLG is perfect for lowering the barrier for more people to try the product and broaden the reach. Sales motion is for a very targeted list of big customer for big orders and having a clear hit list for revenue targets."

• Key Components of a Product-Led Company:

  • Point: Successful PLG companies have low entry barriers, self-service checkout, and products that spread organically.

  • "Low barrier to entry: PLG products like Zoom often have a free version or free trial, making it easy for people to start using them without needing approval from their bosses or even knowing much about the product beforehand."

  • "Self-service checkout flow: PLG products allow users to upgrade to paid plans or access more advanced features on their own, without needing help from a sales team."

  • "Product spreads on its own: The nature of PLG products encourages organic growth and word of mouth, as people who find value in the free version are likely to share it with others, expanding its user base."

• Avoiding Common PLG Pitfalls:

  • Point: Make your product accessible, commit to the process, and focus on data-driven decisions.

  • "Make your product more accessible: A big pitfall for many B2B companies is that the entry point to product-led growth (PLG) is often cut off. Their 'biggest CTA is called book demo,' which means you have to submit a form before even getting a taste of the product."

  • "Commit to the process: Some companies may think a simple three-month free trial will bring in leads and conversions, but that's not the case."

  • "Don't just go 'free', go 'data-led': Companies that want to do PLG but lack usage data are setting themselves up for failure. When offering a free product, the two returns you want are broader reach and user data."

• Essential Elements for Successful PLG:

  • Point: Have a vehicle for user entry, focus on time to value, and establish a strong data foundation.

  • "Have a Vehicle: A company needs to have a free version, a free trial, an open-source product, or a realistic experience for their product to successfully utilize a PLG strategy."

  • "Time to Value: You also need to think about how to provide value to your users quickly."

  • "Data Foundation: With the data, you can design a user journey in the product, via email, or through other tools to guide the user to the next step."

• Mapping Out the PLG Funnel:

  • Point: Understand the difference between PLG and sales-led funnels, and map out key steps in the user journey.

  • "The first step in understanding the difference between the PLG funnel and the sales-led funnel (SLG)"

  • "Start by mapping out the major steps of how users would interact with your product-led growth motion, such as marketing site, free version, and checkout flow."

• Focusing on Activation and Conversion:

  • Point: Prioritize activation if users are confused about initial product use, and improve conversion if the checkout process has friction.

  • "Focus on activation if users are confused on their first interaction with the product: Identify the ideal aha moment metric and design a product experience that leads users towards that goal."

  • "Improve conversion if the checkout process has friction: If your activation is in good shape but your conversion is low, it could be that the checkout process is too difficult or confusing."

• Building a PLG Team:

  • Point: Start with a dedicated team or a cross-functional "tiger team," and evolve towards a PLG organization.

  • "There are two different ways to start a growth team. The most common one is to create a dedicated team with a head of growth and resources to support the growth initiatives. However, she also mentions a 'tiger team,' a cross-functional group assembled for a specific purpose for a period of time."

  • "After the initial growth team is established and has achieved some early wins, it's time to extend and formalize. You need to move from just a PLG team to a PLG organization."

• Implementing the Right Tools for PLG:

  • Point: Start with essential tools like product analytics and a data hub, and expand as needed.

  • "Start with a Product Analytics Tool and a Data Hub: Start with a product analytics tool as it's hard to get it wrong completely. Also, consider adding a data hub, such as Segment, which allows easy integration with many different tools."

  • "When a business starts gaining data users, it's time to consider setting up a data warehouse and an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) solution."