The Three Golden Rules to Using Humour to Grow, Tactics to Find Product Market Fit - Tactician: #0098

We’re using humor to grow by replacing all desk chairs with pogo sticks.

Sure, typing is harder, but have you ever seen a sales person with low energy on a pogo stick?

Exactly!

12/04/24

The Three Golden Rules to Using Humour to Grow

Why Read:

• Tactical strategies for using humor effectively to boost user engagement, brand loyalty, and growth.

Featuring:

• Tom Orbach, Head of Growth Marketing at Wiz.io, guest posts for Aakash Gupta of Product Growth

Link: 

• “Humor for Growth: The Strategy You’re Missing”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• The Benefits of Using Humor:

  • Point: Humor increases word-of-mouth and viral sharing.

    • "When we laugh, we want to pass our joy along to others, seeking connection, and sharing the humor. This is why memes go viral."

  • Point: Humor can motivate and energize users.

    • "When we laugh, our brains release endorphins that help us relax and make us feel good. It creates positive experiences and makes you want more, becoming a motivating factor in our decision-making."

  • Point: Using humor helps brands stand out, especially in B2B.

    • "Especially in B2B, formal communication is the standard. There's nothing wrong with being professional and straightforward, but infusing your brand messaging with curated humor can differentiate you from the competition."

• The Three Golden Rules to Using Humour to Grow:

  • Golden Rule 1 – Be funny where everybody else isn’t:

    • "If there’s only one thing you remember from this guide at the end of the day, let it be this: be funny where everybody else is not funny."

    • "That’s my number one rule of thumb. Catching your audience off-guard and commanding their attention when and where they least expect it will create the most shock-value and memorable experience with your startup."

  • Golden Rule 2 – Be specific to your industry

    • "When it comes to humor, inside jokes are a secret weapon."

    • "Sticking to industry-specific comic insights is the best way to engage customers and industry thought leaders. Why? Using inside jokes and speaking to your audience in “their language” makes them feel loved, because no one usually spends the time or effort to create humor made specifically for them and their interests. That’s the magic of humor in startup growth."

  • Golden Rule 3 – Play off an unspoken insight everyone already knows

    • "Ask yourself: What’s the one thing in your industry that everyone has emotions towards (love, excitement, fear, hate, anger, etc) — but no one really speaks about out loud?"

• What to do if you are not funny:

  • Solution 1 - Keep it simple

    • "Stay professional and accurate, but use down-to-earth, everyday language to make content more relatable to your audience."

  • Solution 2 - Find common ground

    • "What do you and your audience already share insight on?"

    • "Like my Viral Post Generator, I was able to quickly connect with my audience once I found a common denominator – the cringeworthiness of LinkedIn."

  • Solution 3 - Be data-driven

    • "I never would have found the common thread that led to creating a viral application if it wasn’t for data."

    • "Analyze your audience to find out what they care about, the kind of language they use (how they “talk” online), and find common threads that aren’t really spoken out loud."

    • "Take that data and use it to develop humorous content curated specifically for them."

  • Solution 4 - Be relatable, but not controversial

    • "The key is to find the boundary and get close without crossing it, playfully acknowledging uncomfortable facts, beliefs, or circumstances without being offensive or insensitive."

    • "The balance of dark with light humor is what determines the success of the joke – too much of either and the joke can fail to land or worse, backfire." 

  • Solution 5 - Don’t fake it ‘til you make it – keep it real and keep trying instead

    • "Authenticity is key to making the connection, according to acclaimed comedian Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up."

    • "Basing comedic and humorous content on your real, lived experiences, viewpoints, and brand values is the key to win loyal followers."

  • Solution 6 - Tell a made-up story

    • "It’s possible to breathe new life into something people are already familiar with – like the time we ran an atypical story on the Wiz blog. It wasn’t the usual tech-focused write-up."

    • "I retold human history, featuring our branded socks woven into every major event and on every historical icon from The Big Bang to the Mona Lisa. People loved it."

    • "They were familiar with the true history behind the events I outlined, but adding the funny, surprising, and nonsensical element of the socks made them laugh."

  • Solution 7 - Play off others

    • "Being adaptable, especially in interactions with our peers or audience, can produce brilliant, spontaneous moments of humor with major impact."

    • "In improv, this is called the “Yes, And” concept, outlined in this book by the same name, where you agree and add to a person’s suggestions to create the scene."

    • "Use improv to collaborate with teammates internally, using each others’ ideas and suggestions to build something humorous together instead of closing the conversation."

  • Solution 8 - Crowdsource your material

    • "In 2023, we announced our annual Meme Battle at Wiz. We asked employees to create cybersecurity memes and tasked the public with voting for the best one."

    • "We didn’t anticipate what would happen next: A huge cybersecurity LinkedIn page (The Cyber Security Hub) with more than a million followers shared one of the memes and tagged us."

  • Solution 9 - Use tried-and-true comedy formulas to break down barriers

    • "Here are some of the most common, established comedic premises to build your jokes and stories and deliver your concept to the audience:

      • Situational Irony

      • Observational humor

      • Rule of Three"

Tactics to Find Product Market Fit

• Why Read:

  • Advice for founders on using customer interaction, quantitative feedback, and long-term strategic thinking to reach product market fit.

• Featuring:

  • Nick Moran , General Partner at New Stack Ventures and Nate Pierotti, Principal at New Stack Ventures interviews Brian Long, CEO & Co-Founder at Attentive

• Link: 

  • “427. The Playbook to Finding Product-Market Fit, When Founders Should Begin to Scale, and Lessons from Building Attentive”

• Key Concepts and Tactics:

  • Save time by talking to a tremendous amount of customers: 

    • "I think that what we got right were two things. One, I think that we talked to a tremendous amount of customers, before we started building things. So we learned to hear their problems, hear their issues, and then start building and assaulting those, you know, rather than kind of just jumping right into build-build-build, so that saved us a lot of time."

  • Get quantitative scores from customers, not just qualitative feedback, to overcome politeness bias: 

    • "I think you're also looking at things like NPS, you know… because if that number starts dropping, it's often because you're no longer solving the problem."

  • Take a long-term view and have a thesis about where the market is going when building the company: 

    • "I think that we've taken an even longer term focus. We know what can be big. And we know it's dangerous to start getting an ego to think you can do things because it's always very hard. You've always got to think towards taking a longer term view, having a thesis around that view, and then understand how the pieces can come together for success."

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