The focus on value is clear. But the cadence and momentum are focused—one simple onboarding message with one key action over the first month.
Evernote knows they have a one-month window with users in which to create a dependency on the product. If the user is not getting value by then, they are unlikely to be users much longer.
When Drinking From The Firehose, You Must Manage The Complexity To Deliver Simplicity.
"I am Winston Wolf; I solve problems" (Actor Harvey Keitel, Pulp Fiction) As Quentin Tarantino and the cast wade through that soup of features your company's kitchen keeps on serving up, let's get practical on how we can manage the volume, frequency and quality of the features you are being inundated with. There are three key objectives:
- Make the benefit and value understandable for your customers in a way they can process.
- Make the work manageable for you.
- Reduce the chaos. For everyone.
I often recommend my clients to 'cluster and theme' in this use case. What the heck is that? I hear you say! Simply cluster the features together to create a theme that is time-bound.
Let's say you have quite a few new features that support one particular area of your product, they are dropping from the product team each week, and you are drinking them from the firehose. The controversial part is not to release them as they drop but to put them together, say next quarter and create a customer-oriented theme that your marketing, sales and company communications can rally around. What you are communicating is the theme; the features are a vehicle to ladder up to benefits that are the constituent parts of the theme.
You can rally around quarterly customer-oriented themed releases with Webinars, PR, pitches, and marketing; there's no shortage of things you could do here. Be creative! The key is the delivery of the three objectives listed above and putting your customers at the centre of your comms with something they care about. Not a myriad of features that they don't.
There's so much more to this than I can share here. Internal resistance and the fact that not all features are created equal for starters only scrapes the surface of the work you need to do with the product team in selling the value to them, but I hope I lit the touch paper on your thinking.
We can help our
PMA consult clients with managing the complexity to deliver simplicity.
As The Fleetwood Mac Classic Song Says: 'Don't Stop'. Value can be demonstrated and communicated in many ways. Which way is best is very much a case for you to answer.
However, companies' biggest mistake is that they think their job is done once launched. Looking at the
campaign data from some of the best-executed campaigns, you are only about 20% done at launch. You need to ensure you have more wood to put behind your offering, and key, even once you've made that sale, Don't Stop demonstrating value…your paying customer constantly needs to be reminded of the value of your offering.
Once they fail to get value, it is just a matter of time before you are eating from the 99c menu.
Stay safe. Look after one another.
Harvey.