Sunday Shuffle v. 3

Happy Sunday, Marketeers! Welcome back to another edition of Sunday Shuffle: your 4-minute recap of the week's top news, tips, and insights. As we approach the end of summer and gear up for a busy week ahead, many of us are not only aiming to finish the qtr/year on a high note but also diving into strategic planning for 2024. In light of this, this week's issue focuses on resources to aid in your "planning season" preparations.

Inside this week's Shuffle:

• Top "Strategic" Stories of the week
• Quick hitters
• Framework of the week
• Feedback

Top Stories of the Week:

What Makes for a Great Strategist?

Professor, author, ex-Dean and overall big-brained strategic advisor - Roger L. Martin - has been writing a lot lately on his blog about business strategy given the time of year. But, it is this piece from last August, What Makes for a Great Strategist that I found particularly interesting going into the planning season.

• Why it matters: As marketers, we're often asked to collect the sales/marketing data, competitive insights, market trends, etc. to prepare the team for the strategic planning process. But before diving in, it's important to avoid getting stuck in old methods and be the "strategic change agent."
• The Takeaway: To be a great strategist, it's recognizing that strategy starts with an intimate understanding of customer needs and desires. While data is valuable, it's only through deep conversations with customers where we discover the hidden insights and nuances that fuel strategy. Have the confidence and ambition to invent the future, not just optimize the present.

2023 Product Benchmarks:

OpenView recently published their 4th Annual Product Benchmarks Report. The nearly 50-page opus is chock full of good data, especially for SaaS businesses that use a product-led growth (PLG) motion. It's also worth checking out Kyle Poyar 's blog - one of the authors - for his analysis and commentary on the report.

• Why it matters: As a foremost authority on PLG, OpenView has long asserted that the B2B customer journey starts with self-service and enabling users to experience products with as little friction as possible.
• The Takeaway: If possible, consider if PLG can be a central part of your go-to-market motion. We cannot expect the same returns from our traditional investment-heavy and people-intensive programs, so see if the product can work for you as a leading intent signal.

This Agency Decided to Give Away Their Strategy Secrets

In the spirit of "freemium", a London branding agency, Saboteur took the plunge and decided to give away all of their brand strategy and design secrets?. Read why they did it.

When a colleague first suggested that we share our entire brand toolkit, via our website, I thought he’d lost his marbles.

• Why it matters: That's right, you can even productize your services and use those in a PLG-motion! Saboteur unbundled their branding toolkit and packaged into various modules for us to use for free. They are pretty darn amazing and worth a look.
• The Takeaway: Saboteur realizes the value is not necessarily inside the IP of their toolkit, but instead how it bridges to their ultimate value: The creative skills and talents to execute the brand strategy.

Quick Hitters:

• AI For Strategy Creation: Rich Holmes from the Department of Product published a cool piece on how to leverage AI for strategy creation and gives a sample prompt to craft a vision statement.
• Bigger Than Electricity: Goldman Sachs recently reported that AI investment could potentially impact US GDP more than electricity and personal computers.
• Amazon bringing AI to Thursday Night Football:?As the official broadcast partner of TNF, Amazon has a slew of AI-driven features to make the game more immersive, including the 4th Down Metric, Defensive Alerts and yes, the first ever Black Friday Game with in-game cross promos.
• Traditional TV Viewing Hits Historic Low: In a related story, the WSJ reported this week that TV accounts for <50% of US viewing time for the first time, with streaming now accounting for 39% of Americans' viewing.

SaaS Framework of the Week - Customer Listening Tour

If you're starting your strategic planning process, consider Customer Listening as part of that preparation. There are many ways to do that, but one approach is to start with a mini-tour. If it works, which it should, you can institute it as an ongoing monthly habit.

Here is a framework I've developed to help guide you.

Remember!

Your feedback is encouraged, and if I can help you in any way get started, just reach email me at [email protected] or arrange a time at https://calendly.com/saasmarketeer

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