MFG #09: Product Adoption, Negative Personas, and Free Competitor Research Template.

[FREE TEMPLATE INSIDE] Why you should include alternatives in your competitor research, how to improve your messaging by identifying product enemies, and more.

Mar 29, 2023

Hi there.

Welcome to the 26 new subscribers that joined Marketing For Geeks since the last issue. Thanks to everyone who shares MFG with their network. Every other week, I share 1 interesting thing from my week, 3 actionable marketing insights that have helped me become a better product marketer, and 5 pieces of marketing that caught my eye.

ICYMI: In my last issue, I wrote about marketing attribution, the marketing flywheel, customer onboarding, and comparison pages.

This week, I share my free competitor research template and talk about product value adoption, negative personas, and product enemies. No guest post in this issue, but if you’re interested in contributing to MFG, check out the guest post guide.

Also, remember in the first issue of this year, I set a goal to build a community around MFG, especially for marketers who reside in Ibadan (but open to marketers everywhere). I’ve started with a small WhatsApp group — please reply to this email with your phone number or drop a comment if you’d like to join. I won’t be sharing the link publicly for now, because I want to begin with high-intent members.

Let's dive in!

🔑1 Interesting Thing

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Marketing For Geeks as a product. Naturally, that made me think about all the pivotal metrics I need to be tracking in MFG. For me, the most important of those metrics (for Marketing For Geeks specifically) is product value adoption. So, I decided to share how I think of product adoption in Marketing For Geeks, and how that can apply to other products.

Value (or product) adoption is a bit similar to the user’s “aha moment.” It essentially tells you when users have unlocked high value from your product. Product adoption is more than getting people to use your product for the first time — it’s getting them to adopt it as their solution because they’ve seen value in it.

It’s a little different from activation, which is when a user hits a milestone (e.g. topping up their wallet, publishing a page, etc) in your product that makes them more likely to come back. Activation typically happens early on in the customer’s lifecycle, at a time when users have only just started using your product (too early for them to have seen high value).

It’s also different from retention, which is when customers continue to use your product (or make purchases) over time. This is because a person could use a product, but not necessarily gain high value from it. I’ll explain more when I talk about product adoption in MFG.

In most products, it’s not so hard to define your adoption moment — the action or moment that indicates that a user is getting value from your product. For example, in an investment app, it could be when a user has gotten returns on their investment. As a real example, I found out recently that Slack’s adoption moment is when a team has sent 1000 messages using Slack.

Now, back to MFG. For now, I’ve decided to anchor product adoption in MFG on open rates. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it’ll have to do for now. It’s tougher because this is a newsletter and my ESP (Substack) has limited tracking abilities.

Here’s why I chose open rates rather than retention/churn (unsubscribe rates):

Only 7 people have ever unsubscribed from MFG, which means I have a retention rate of about 98%. But that doesn’t mean 98% of MFG subscribers see value in the newsletter. It just means that only 2% have felt so unsatisfied that they churned.

On the other hand, I have average open rates of about 40-45%, this means around 60% of my newsletter subscribers don’t see enough value in MFG to keep opening my emails (again, there are a lot of flaws with this system, but it’s the best option for now). More than that though, it means that 60% of my newsletter subscribers can wake up one day and decide to unsubscribe from this newsletter that they never open anyway. It means (theoretically anyway) that my 98% retention rate could drop to 40% if these people ever get around to unsubscribing.

Key Takeaways

Retention & churn are lagging metrics, which means that by the time you realise users have churned, it’s likely too late to get them back. On the other hand, product adoption is a leading metric for retention and lifetime value. For example, if I want to reduce the chances of 60% of my newsletter subscribers unsubscribing, then I need to get more people to actually open my emails. If I notice that a person hasn’t opened 3 emails in a row, then that’s someone likely to churn.
It’s important to assign a value adoption moment. It doesn’t have to be a perfect point; if you have a product with multiple value moments, you can use a value points system instead. I’ll use MFG as an example. A value points system for Marketing For Geeks could look like this:
📌User visits resource bank - 5 points
📌User opens 4 out of 6 emails received - 15 points
📌User likes an issue - 5 points
📌User comments on an issue - 15 points
📌User joins MFG community - 10 points
📌User recommends a new user to MFG - 10 points
You could then say, for example, that a user has seen value in the product if they have at least 20 points in total.
Another example:
Let’s take a fictional savings and investing app called GrowMoni:
📌User gets referral bonus on joining - 15 points
📌User gets monthly interest on saving plan after 1 month - 5 points
📌User gets monthly interest on wallet funds after 1 month - 5 points
📌User gets payout on investment - 10 points
📌User gets interest on funds after a quarter - 20 points
📌User gets referral bonus on inviting new user - 5 points
and so on…
Once you’ve identified your adoption moment(s), all you have to do is implement strategies to get people to those moments. For me, one of the strategies I’m testing is giving free templates and making sure to mention them in the subject line or preview text of my email so people are more likely to open them (😏). For other products it could be things like retargeting ads, email sequences, in-app pushes, etc.

TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read): Beyond activation and retention, you need to think about value adoption. Getting people to see value in your product makes them less likely to churn and increases their lifetime value. You need to decide what point in your product that people get the most value and put strategies in place to get them there.

💭3 Insights

#1. Find your customer’s enemies and make them look deadlier.

Every product has an enemy; the demon the product slays for its customers. It’s easy to unlock great product messaging once you’ve identified this enemy. The enemy in this case isn’t your competitor; it’s the deep problem your customers have that your product solves.

If your product is a productivity tool, for example, the enemy could be long tedious meetings or inefficiency at work. But identifying the enemy is just the first part. Next, you need to press the wound and make the enemy look even more deadly. The best way to do this is to think of the consequences of these enemies. So, for tedious meetings that cause inefficiency, the consequence could be having to work late and missing time with family, missing deadlines because of meeting fatigue, limited time to actually do work, or falling behind on KPIs.

Now that these enemies look deadly, it’s easy to position your product as the hero coming to slay them. If you use this angle in your messaging, it’s important to make sure the enemy is clear. For example:

More free time to spend on getting work done❌

Spend less time in unproductive meetings and more time doing actual work✅

No more lengthy meetings taking away your family time✅

We’re taking away dead-end meetings and giving you back your productivity✅

Whichever angle you choose, your product becomes more than just a productivity tool. It becomes their comrade and weapon in the war against a common enemy.

P.S. You can make competitors a product enemy as well if you do it right. Apple did this excellently in their Mac vs PC ads (you should really watch them; they’re delightful). You can also do this with comparison pages (I discussed this in my last newsletter)

TL;DR: Your customers have a problem that your product has come to solve. You need to make that problem your product’s enemy and press the wound to help customers to realise just how bad the problem is. Once that’s done, your product becomes the natural hero.

#2. Alternatives are your competitors too.

Making competitors your product’s enemy only works if you really understand what your product does better than competitors and what features your customers really value.

However, too many people only consider direct competitors (e.g. Cowrywise vs Piggyvest, Trello vs Asana, Apple Music vs Spotify) when conducting competitor research. But the truth is that your direct competitors aren’t the only ones “stealing” your customers.

For example, rather than Piggyvest, your potential customers might be using kolos, bottles, or traditional banks to save. Rather than Trello, your customers might be using Google Sheets to track productivity. Rather than Spotify, your customers might be getting music from pirate sites like NotJustOK.

This means you need to think about what alternatives people currently use to solve their problems or get their jobs done as your competitors as well. The great thing about this is that it’s typically a lot easier to win beat out alternatives than it is to beat out direct competitors. For the most part, you and your competitors will likely share similar basic features — features that easily win over alternatives.

Of course, there will be some customers who use alternatives for reasons that your product simply can’t beat (e.g. price, lack of technical requirements, etc). But there will also be customers who you can win over by presenting the ways your product is better than their current solutions.

Btw, I developed my own competitor research template, which I’m sharing with subscribers (non-subscribers reading this, all you have to do is subscribe and I’ll send it over in my welcome email).

TL;DR: Ask people what they currently use to solve the problems or do the jobs that your product aims to solve or do. Consider these alternatives as competitors as well and include them in your competitor research.

#3. Negative personas help filter bad-faith customers.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know all about the customer/buyer persona and how it’s important for all teams to have one (especially marketing and product teams).

However, there’s another less-talked-about type of persona — the negative persona. The negative persona (or exclusionary persona) is the type of customer you absolutely don’t intend to serve. Negative personas save you money and help you focus your marketing on the right people.

It’s important for your negative personas to be very specific so you don’t accidentally lump in potential, but hard-to-reach, customers with them. You could identify certain behaviours that are associated with them and disqualify them as customers on this basis.

Negative personas are especially important for products or businesses that can be seen as controversial, have a strong stance, or that often cause public debate. It’s also useful for early-stage sales-led companies with small budgets because it lets you know what kinds of leads you shouldn’t waste money on.

TL;DR: Create negative personas to identify the type of customers you don’t want to waste money on.

⚡5 Pieces of Marketing

#1. This Unsusbcribe Page From SmartBlogger👍🏽

In MFG #06, I mentioned that if you send emails with relatively high frequency (e.g. daily), you should give people the option to reduce the messaging frequency. It’s a great way to reduce unsubscribe rates.

#2. This ad in TechCabal by Moniepoint👍🏽

Great copy, great imagery. There was a tiny risk of alienating readers who don’t stay in Lagos or who are unfamiliar with Katangua, but the imagery strengthened the message and made up for any confusion (imagine if they had just put the copy on a plain background with an image of the POS).

#3. LifeLock’s Audacious Campaign👍🏽

Great idea. If only the product actually worked. Image credit: Swipewell

#4. This excellent ad campaign by Surreal👍🏽

For context, they got regular people who had the same names as celebrities and got them to endorse their cereal.

#5. This Cross-Sell by Nutzy👍🏽

Nutzy sells peanuts, and on the back of their packaging, they cross-sell their peanut butter.

A little about you

I’m on a quest to know more about my subscribers, so every month, I’ll have a random question here to help me know a little about you.

Last issue, I asked this question (If you could only keep your subscription to one marketing newsletter, which would it be?) and everyone aired me🥲.

So this week, I’d like to make newsletter recommendations. I counted recently and found out that I am subscribed to over 50 newsletters across various niches — marketing, product, sales, customer success, etc (and I read every single one of them). Here’s this week’s question:

Tell me what you do or/and what type of content you’re interested in, and I’ll recommend a newsletter for you.

What I’m Reading

The Objection Smasher — Great LinkedIn post about objection smashers (public-facing landing pages that list the reasons people might not want to buy from you and responds to each objection)

How PayPal Fixed a $100M Churn Problem — Another great LinkedIn post

The Psychology Behind Loom’s Explosive Growth — Excellent case study from growth.design as always, this time about Loom’s growth loop and onboarding.

Marketing For Geeks