Chapter 5: Content, then marketing

Too often we blow the marketing budget on acquiring new customers – only to ignore them as soon as they sign up. In reality, the best marketing strategies drive not just sales, but also long-term customer success. That all starts with product education.

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Every business should have an active interest in why people buy their products and the situations people find themselves in before they become customers. Do that, and you'll understand why you need marketing that caters to all of them.

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It’s easy to have a highly data-driven view of everything you do and overlook hard to measure things like brand. This leads to a tunnel-vision focus on optimizing funnels and growth hacking button colors, and ignores investing time in equally important tasks. Most notably, creating emotional connections with your customers. In this chapter, we share a few principles about branding that will point any startup in the right direction.

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When you ask people what product marketing is, the first thing that comes to mind is usually product launches. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of product marketing. Launches are the beginning of a process, not the end. Only after launch do you learn what’s working, what’s not and how you can iterate quickly from there.

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Product launches are exciting – culminating with the rush of joy and fear as you finally share your creation with the world. More importantly, launches are one of your best opportunities to drive brand awareness, and ultimately generate new customers. It’s worth taking the time to get them right.

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Thanks to SaaS, there are more features to talk about on a constant cadence. The challenge then becomes, which things do you shout about? With more opportunities, it’s tempting to shout about each and every one of them. Do that, and people will stop listening to you. As a result, here's how we prioritize our product announcements.

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A lot of businesses fail because they’re simply not good at acquiring and retaining customers. That's where demand generation comes into play. Here's our guide to getting started.

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When you’re just starting up, other than knocking on someone’s front door, events are the most targeted, proactive and personal way you can meet the people you need to meet. Do them well, and you turn those meetings into lasting relationships.

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The usual content marketing approach is to make people want to read the things you’ve already written. We knew writing things that potential customers already wanted to read would be easier, and we scaled that strategy by building an editorial team. If you want to adopt the same approach, this chapter makes the case for it – and gives tips to get started.

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There’s a misconception that word of mouth is a mystical force that’s out of your control. Sure, you can’t control what words come out of whose mouths, but you can encourage people to say the right words about your product.

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