How great marketing “upgrades” people
Ramli "RJ" John ??
Product onboarding for B2B companies. Bestselling author of "Product-Led Onboarding" (+40K copies sold). Founder @ Delight Path.
At the heart of it, marketing is about telling stories of what a product?does?for customers.?
How can it help them be more productive, connected, or entertained?
Great marketing helps people envision who they could be, what they could do, and where they could go.
As marketers, we often get caught up with how sexy, exciting, and cutting-edge our products are.
People don’t buy products. They buy better versions of themselves.?
In her book?Badass: Make Users Awesome?(what a great title, right?!?), Kathy Sierra explains:
“Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras – build better photographers.”
What does that even mean?
Let me share the three ways that products upgrade people.
?? 3 ways that products upgrade people
In the?Jobs-to-be-Done theory, people “hire”?products for three interconnected reasons: functional, emotional, and social.
Understanding and using these for your marketing is a potent power-up.
1. Functional upgrade ??
Products give people new abilities and superpowers that they couldn’t do before.
Samuel Hulick?visualizes this using Super Mario. When Mario touches a flower power-up, he can hurl fireballs at his enemies!
Great marketing empathizes with people’s current struggles and paints a vivid picture of a better world with the product.?The better you can do that, the more likely people are to try out the product and become customers!
AbstractOps, a platform that allows you to create and sign legal documents, does an excellent job of doing that.
Rather than having to deal with a back office that feels like a tornado, AbstractOps makes it easy to create, sign and file all your contracts
What can your customers do now with your product that they couldn’t do without it?
2. Emotional upgrade???
The second way that products upgrade people is by helping them feel or avoid feeling things.
It could help them feel?confident?with a new strategy or direction.
Or it could be to remove the?frustration?of doing tedious tasks.
Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, said that?The Disney Company’s goal?is to “create?happiness,” and they do this “by providing the best in entertainment for people of all ages everywhere.”
You don’t even have to call out the emotion like Disney.
You can visualize it with descriptive words (e.g., “Hike all day without the blisters.”)
Can you feel the pain of having blisters from hiking day? Describing scenarios that evoke emotions is a great way to motivate people to act.
How do you want customers to feel or avoid feeling after using your product?
3. Social upgrade ?? ??
The third way that products upgrade people is socially.?
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When we invest time and effort into a product, we do so in a social context, whether at home with family or work with colleagues.
As per?Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once we have the basic needs, we look for additional ways to feel loved, connected, and accomplished by others.
Take, for instance, one of Canva’s Facebook ads.
This ad makes Canva’s social upgrade obvious: it’s to help create professional designs that?your boss and co-workers will notice, even with zero design training or experience!?
You might hear them say, “Wow! This design is beautiful. I didn’t know you were so creative. Good job!”
For your product, how does it impact how others perceive your customers?
Are they seen as more knowledgeable? Do you make them look more professional? Do you help them become the hero in their workplace?
?? Crossing the chasm (plus a free resource)
When I visited the Grand Canyon many years ago, I remember looking over the ledge and feeling deathly afraid.
Imagine if I had to cross over it on a flimsy, untested bridge.
Hell, naw!
Change often feels like that.?
Our job as marketers is to help people feel safe and secure, so they cross the chasm to a better world with your product.
Vividly describe the product's functional, emotional, and social upgrade.
I created the User Success Canvas to help you put that into practice.
Join the Marketing Power-Ups newsletter via email, and I'll email you to right away!
Here’s a?short 3-min video?on how to use the User Success Canvas to power up your marketing.
?? Mini power-ups
Fun-sized blurbs to help boost your marketing.
??Jay Clouse’s cold email formula: Jay used this simple cold email formula to interview folks like Seth Godin, James Clear, Codie Sanchez, and Sara Dietchy on his podcast, Creative Elements. I’ve swiped it and plan on using it to reach out to guests of my new show. You should to!
??B2B marketing isn't boring, you are: Adam Goyette dishes out some brutal truth. He also shares four tips to help you brainstorm creative ideas for interesting B2B marketing.
??How content fuels product-led experiences: I chat with Brett McGrath, VP of Marketing at The Juice, about how content is the fuel that drives the product-led growth flywheel. In a self-serve flow, content and copy replace the biz dev, sales, and customer success team.
Have a powered-up day!
Ramli John
P.S. Thanks for reading Marketing Power-Ups! Subscribe for free to get downloadable resources and bonuses that I share exclusively with my email subscribers. Join 2.4k other marketers below.
P.P.S. Wow, you’ve read until the end! ??
If you found this helpful, would you let me know by tapping on the like below? And if you’re feeling generous, tag your colleagues in the comments.
SaaS Company? I’ll rewrite your vague landing page into a clear, conversion-focused page in 7 business days.
2 年Loved it, this is all I got say for this post Ramli John
I help coaches and entrepreneurs attract and convert their ideal clients with high-conversion email marketing. Email copywriting and consulting.
2 年Thanks for sharing! Informative read
Founder at Growth Union: We help B2B SaaS companies scale fast and efficiently
2 年Wow! Thanks for including me.
CEO ? ScreenSpace ?? From Hollywood to GTM → I make products & ideas memorable through immersive, story-driven demos & videos.
2 年?? → "Great marketing helps people envision who they could be, what they could do, and where they could go." Love this, Ramli! Marketing is about telling a story that allows your audience to *feel* that superpower - that better version of themselves. Give them a taste of that upgrade - and the "flimsy, untested bridge" to success magically transforms into the Golden Gate. ??
Unf*ck your pitch deck ? Pitch deck coach for first-time founders ? 6 startups, 4 exits, 1?? IPO
2 年Ramli John Great post with lots of meat. Additional thought on why people buy and how to lean into that decision driver in your marketing: I believe business people buy products primarily because they want to significantly improve the business metric that drives their job performance. I call it the “existential metric” because it’s the metric they must crush if they want to keep their job, earn their bonus, and get promoted. For a Growth leader that metric might be trial conversion rate. For a Customee Success leader that metric might be customer sat or retention rate. With this mindset, you focus on how your product is the fastest/easiest way for them to crush their existential metric. It’s got elements of JTBD and Mazlov, but it’s very focused on pushing one button.