with Claire Suellentrop & Georgiana Laudi

#forgetthefunnel @clairesuellen @ggiiaa

 THINKING ABOUT
MARKETING-AS-A-PRODUCT
What SaaS marketers can learn from PMs and UX designers

Margaret Kelsey, Brand and Content Marketing Team Lead at

Appcues

#forgetthefunnel @ClaireSuellen @ggiiaa @margaretannk

 Thinking about
Marketing-as-a-Product
What SaaS marketers can learn from PMs and UX designers
Current state of marketing
Does this look familiar?
 THIS IS A SUBHEAD AND A GREAT PLACE TO PUT INFO

Hey this is an important centered headline

GROWTH MARKETING
GROSS MARKETING
Title of your presentation - Appcues.com
So what’s good marketing
look like?
 COMPANIES WHO HAVE DONE THIS WELL

Wistia’s One, Ten, One

Hundred Campaign

● The video series equivalent of a

nesting doll
Drive user engagement and retention - Appcues.com

● Completely ungated: They want you

to watch it
● Meta: Video marketing for video folks
for a video product company
● Aligned to a higher marketing
message: Great video doesn’t have to
be expensive
13
 COMPANIES WHO HAVE DONE THIS WELL

Buffer’s #bufferchat on
Twitter
● A chat about social media with social
media managers on social media.
Drive user engagement and retention - Appcues.com

● Virality: Would naturally pop up in

other folks’ feed.
● Drinking their own champagne:
Probably buffer’d the questions
beforehand.
● Repurposed content: Blog article
recap. Especially useful since Twitter is
so ephemeral.
13
 COMPANIES WHO HAVE DONE THIS WELL

InVision’s DSM: Expert Advice

Campaign

● A video series reminiscent of

MasterClass
Drive user engagement and retention - Appcues.com

● Bingeable product marketing content!

● Good UX: CTA changes from email
collection to “start watching” once
they’ve cookied you.
● Accessibility and convenience: Video
and full text transcript—consume
either or both.
13
 COMPANIES WHO HAVE DONE THIS WELL

Airtable Universe

● User generated content

Solves the problem of “if I can build
Drive user engagement and retention - Appcues.com

●
anything, what should I build?”
● Subtle social proof: Highlights
impressive customers like Twilio, Cole
Haan, and Sandwich Video
● Not quite a free trial?: You can access
and play around with Airtable before
ever putting in your email.
13
How did their marketing
break through the noise?
 Enter stage left:
Marketing-as-a-Product
 3 frameworks marketers can learn from product design

1. The UX of marketing 2. Marketing-market fit 3. Include all of your ‘users’

Auditing or pre-planning your users’ Ensuring your marketing programs fit Including not only end users, but
digital interactions with your in the current competitive landscape internal stakeholders when planning
marketing of marketing your marketing programs
1. The UX of marketing
 Ways to improve the UX of your marketing

Audit how people are
accessing your content.
What does their path look like? If your
asset is gated, how easy is it to get
access once they’ve signed up?
Consider your content
progression
For example, don’t jump from a very
high-level, top-of-the-funnel content
asset straight to a pitch for your
product. Provide value again and
again (and again) before asking for
anything in return.
Think about readability,
consumability, & accessibility
Do you need to use subheads? Bullet
points? Edit words down to be more
concise? Are your graphs and charts
able to be read by someone who is
color blind?
 How can we as
marketers measure intent
if the only way to do so is
introducing friction?
Title of your presentation - Appcues.com
2. Marketing-market fit
 How to find marketing-market fit

Do user research... ...to figure out user intent

Talk to your users/readers. Take a page from user
research and user interviews to poll, survey, or send
one off emails to your readers — anything to make it a
two-way conversation. Use quantitative feedback to
look at the bigger trends, but qualitative feedback to
figure out the “why” behind the behavior.
Consider what people are trying to do in that very
moment. Do they want to binge all of the content à la
Netflix? Give them that option. Are you hosting a live
event? Make sure it’s easy to add to a calendar.
 What goes in to marketing-market fit?

Medium Topic Promotion

Decide what format
your marketing should take. Think
about video (streaming, static),
written (long form, short form, blog
post, ebook, physical book), spoken
(podcast, or IRL event series).
Decide what topic(s) resonate Decide how best to distribute your
with your audience. marketing. Think about owned
channels, SEO (folks find it when they
They should also align with your need it), social media, communities,
company mission and purpose. They Slack, email).
should exclude some folks.
3. Include all of your ‘users’
 Your two main ‘users’

External audiences Internal audiences

Your audience Your other marketers

Your prospects Your stakeholders
Your customers Your CEO
The benefits of
Marketing-as-a-Product

● Easier buy-in from stakeholders on your

ideas
● Ability to secure budget/resources
● Establish yourself as a leader and strategic
thinker
Title of your presentation - Appcues.com

with humans.
It’s all about interfacing
So, how do we
break through
the noise as marketers?
Recap:
Marketing-as-a-Product

1. Audit/consider the UX of your marketing

2. Ensure marketing-market fit
3. Include all users—that means internal
stakeholders, too
 appcues.com/blog

@margaretannk

#forgetthefunnel @clairesuellen @ggiiaa