BottomUp - Skills for Innovators

Hello, welcome to the bottom-up skills podcast. I might pass since the CEO of Qualitas and today we start a brand new series and this is going to be big. Emerging trends, both in technology and collaboration, we have so much to get into. So I'm super excited. We're going to start a new series. It's all going to be about what's emerging.

And the first place we need to start is if we want to see what's going to happen in the future, we need to check in and see what's happened in the past. Let's have a look at our back catalog. Now the good news for you is I've been, I've been trying to pick emerging trends for many, many years now. So in front of me, I've got four consecutive years of some good picks since I'm not so [00:01:00] good pigs.

And, uh, today I really want to share with you just some thoughts that I had about trying. Uh, to pick emerging trends and weighing up all the factors and looking at addressable market, what problem does it solve? Is there kind of ecosystem support all those kinds of things that I look for? Well, today we're going to, we're going to look back at the ones I got, right.

And try and decode them a little bit and see why those picks worked. But don't worry. This is, this is not all about self praise here because in the next show, I'm going to go to my flops, my bad pigs, but for now, let's, uh, let's start with the goodies. So for years I've chosen one thing from each year that I got.

Right. And let's talk about why we think it's, it's worked so, so damn well, 2017, uh, I had a big peak for blockchain and [00:02:00] obviously. With retrospect that wasn't such a bad peak. I would have been even smarter if I had bought a few, uh, crypto coins. Um, I could probably retire now if I had, but the point here is what blockchain represents is this.

A fantastic system that is decentralized, um, it's super efficient and the integrity of the system. I mean, if you just look at 2019 and you look at, uh, the fraud, uh, around transactions in the blockchain in 2019, there was zero. So the system is so competent. That it has the incredibly, this incredibly efficient level of performance of integrity.

Whereas you could compare that to the global financial market. It is commonly estimated that more than 5% of transactions were fraudulent, [00:03:00] meaning that they were fake, uh, meaning that they were not real transactions. There wasn't a buyer and a seller. There was not a proper ledger. There was some. Fraud happening in that transaction.

So isn't that interesting how efficient blockchain really is now, obviously born of blockchain. We've got a lot of these cryptocurrencies, which are taking up a huge, huge amount, huge amount of the news at the moment. And I just want to put that into a. Perspective that we're looking at, you know, take Bitcoin, for example, the value of Bitcoin raised over 300% in 2020.

Now I don't want to get into the hype and the cycles of Bitcoin itself, but what we're seeing is whether it is as an asset class or a store value. Um, these coins, which are built on blockchain are proving a safe Haven against [00:04:00] traditional systems. So I think there is huge momentum that is being driven by investment, which has been driven by transaction store value or people finding safe Haven or alternatives to federal reserve government systems.

So blockchain has come along and it has whipped people up into a frenzy. And this idea of a distributed ledger with high integrity is not only great for consumer investors, but what we are starting to see is that more and more. Businesses are adopting blockchain to perform ledger based tasks in the enterprise.

So we've got that one pretty right. And I'm pretty happy with that and excited to see what happens with blockchain in 2018, we picked face recognition. Now, many of you might know this from face ID with your iPhones, [00:05:00] and I want to start there, but that's not the only angle that I took with face recognition.

Without a doubt. Um, you know, if you look at the core of consumer device interaction, it's all about inputs and outputs. And in this case, Entering your whore pink code. It's a thing, password drama. So being able, just to look at your face and open your iPhone is actually a huge reduction in friction for the user and enables them to get their tasks done quicker with less hassle.

So face recognition, we picked that in 2018. Boom, we're off to the races, but what we also saw is the technology from big firms, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. Was so good at face recognition, even IBM as well that they actually took a step back and said, we're not going to sell this to police forces around the world because of where it would naturally take [00:06:00] you.

Um, with. Crime law and order. So the tech was so good that they said, well, we're not even going to supply this to the police force. So I'm not here to really, to cast any judgments about that, but it shows you the power of the technology. So 2017, we picked blockchain. I think Bitcoin would, would serve as evidence that we're in a great place there face recognition.

I mean, I certainly use it on a regular basis and we see just the desire for, uh, police and crime prevention, the huge role they can play now in 2019 sort of building our face recognition, we, we really picked something that we didn't expect, uh, to be this big. Privacy and ethics. That was our, one of our big trends that we picked for 2019.

And what was interesting about that is we were kind of looking at it from the perspective of that. There were so many big systems, whether it was, um, Cambridge Analytica that were, um, kind of stealing, misusing a user [00:07:00] data, or whether there were all those big breaches that we saw. Um, so many different, uh, folks, uh, were, um, seeing their data.

Um, misuse that we saw this huge need to increase privacy and the ethics around it. So the thought here is that users realize that they had become the product and they wanted to get back in to control. So what we saw with both tick-tock and Facebook is we saw these big. Blowups in 2020, where the use of the data, whether it be by the firm or by state actors became a huge issue for users.

And I think we can expect that it's going to stay around for a long time as well. Another big pick from, uh, last year, you know, obviously we had some cloud and automation, pigs. They did really well, but I wanted to kind of continue this theme [00:08:00] of face recognition, privacy and ethics, one that we picked. And I just want to caveat this.

W COVID had not happened at this time. We picked mass surveillance and what we have seen Holy smoke, whether you look at it from a defense perspective, Whether you look at it from health and safety, we have seen three of the biggest state actors, China, Russia, USA, all getting into various forms of mass surveillance of trying to defend the nation state.

Look after the health of people. I'm not here to judge whether they be right or wrong, they're just doing their thing. And surveillance is at the heart of it. It's a combination of face recognition, privacy ethics data. IOT, all of these things really do come together and mass surveillance. And I think all of these things, what's really interesting when you zoom out and you look at each of these big four themes is that they really demonstrate the power [00:09:00] of emerging technology because they're not only alive and well each and every one of these trends is.

Taking off in a big way. And I think what we're seeing is the opportunity to build new products in 2021 that enjoy the efficiencies. Enjoy the exponential natur...

Hello and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I'm Mike Parsons the CEO of Qualitance and today we've got a special little entre mall, a little episode around. Uh, very, uh, dear topic to me, which is podcasting. And I just want to share with you four thoughts around how to start a brand new podcast.

Come on. It's 20, 21. It's a new year. And a lot of people have been asking me recently, you know, For micro recommendations, uh, for any sort of advice on creating a podcast. So I thought I would give you four essential tips. Now these four tips are built out of actually a brand new course that I've. Um, made.

So if you have a look in the show description, you'll find the link to that [00:01:00] course. Or if you head over to bottom up, uh, dot IO, check out the blog and you'll see the links to the podcasting course, but let's get into four essential tips for creating a new brand new successful podcast. Now tip number one is all about the topic that you choose.

To make your podcast about, and my advice here is avoid being too general, avoid being too generic in the topics that you cover. I think here being specific. You might even say picking a niche really well is a really key thing. Now, without a doubt, podcasting is not as big as blogging. So the truth is you can jump in and find that there's not nearly as much competition in podcasting as blogging, but here's the key thing.

Yet because podcasting is taking off like crazy. And [00:02:00] I really believe that you're actually really want to start very small. I want to start with a small group of people who are insanely interested in particular topic. So a great example I gave of how to be specific in Nash, how to pick your niche. Well, uh, would be, uh, around the idea of creating a podcast around running.

Now, if you just went in called it, the running podcast, you will be presented with an let's be honest. It's not so much presented. You're going to be buried in hundreds and hundreds of other running podcasts that have been going for a long, long, long time. So my advice would be is to make it more specific and to make it more niche.

So in the case of running. I would do a little build, I would say, pick the topic running, but then maybe try picking a qualify like marathon running. But even that [00:03:00] might be a little too general. So you might say I'm going to do a podcast on a marathon running for beginners, and it's actually, once you get to that sort of niche, you'll find that you will not have many competitors and.

In an area like running your shorter, find thousands of listeners who are, if you produce some great content, who'd be really compelled by what you have to say. So lesson number one, avoid being too general in the topics you cover. Lesson number two is all about just thinking where your show is on display.

And my advice here is create colorful, iconic eye-popping brand for your podcast. And a special caveat, make sure it works in a small format. Many of the podcast artworks that you will see have small texts, which [00:04:00] when blown up full screen. On your laptop, they look fine when they compressed into like 40 or 50 by 50, uh, on a phone, you can't read the text and again, make sure you choose a really vibrant, uh, relevant, fresh set of colors.

Have a great palette. Use some bold, iconic symbols. Words or photography. So you can really stand out because actually, you know, people are just flicking through the carousel on iTunes or Spotify paps, and you have a job, you got to stand out, you've got to grab their attention. You've got to be memorable.

Uh, Really important because people forget that it is like a, it's like a store shelf. There's literally an aisle full of products and you've got to jump out and get their attention. So make sure you stand out. Okay. So that's the first two tips. Don't be too general in your topics [00:05:00] and be super colorful and stand out in your artwork.

Now the third one is we kind of moving a little bit more now into production is work with simple show structures and make sure that like any good story, you have a start middle. And, and, and this structure is really important because if you're chatting, whether it's by itself or more importantly, when you have co-hosts or guests, that you can keep the show on track.

So make sure you have an introduction, an outro summary, and maybe three, five, six points you want to make in the middle. And this structure is really important. If you want to get a little advanced, you might want to put, um, time markers, you might say three minutes, four minutes per topic. Very important to have those simple structures for the show, because it makes the information, um, very easy to digest for the listener [00:06:00] and part of this show structure.

A lot of people will ask, Hey, like how long should a show be? My sincere advice. Keep talking only. As long as you're creating some value only talk. If there are new or clear compelling ideas being shared, once you're into rambles and tangents, unless they're wildly exotic, are you going to lose your listeners pretty quickly?

So only talk if you're creating value and don't be scared to be short. Sharp and concise. Okay. So that's working with simple structures for your show. Last one, number four. It's all about getting on the same page now, um, depending on whether you're producing most of the show yourself, or whether you are working with guests, co-hosts is really important to have a run sheet of how the show's going to run.

What is the start middle and [00:07:00] end? What are the topics? Are there links? Are there reference materials, but be it either visual audio that you need to reference throughout the show? It's so important. Now, if you stick to your podcasting, it's really going to be important to have those run sheets, because somebody might say, Hey, what was that thing you talked about and show 38 and you'll need a good run sheet structure.

So you can go back and grab that information. Okay. So let's recap. Four points. Don't be too general. Be colorful. Simple structures and get on the same page with a run sheet. If you're about to start launch a brand new podcast, this is the essential advice that I have for you do these four things and you'll be well on your way.

Now, what I intend to cover down the track is how to record and sound like a real professional. And lastly, how to sustain, how to grow your [00:08:00] efforts. Once you've launched out into the world. And how to build an audience. So there's lots to cover there and it's really worthwhile because what's so powerful about the podcasting medium is that it's really, really personal.

Uh, people have a really strong relationship with their shows because it's in there is it's very sensorial. And the great thing is you can connect to other groups of people who are talking about really specific things that you're into. So it's really great for your interests, your passions, the things that consume you, you can get them on demand.

You can make them part of your commute, ritual, your gym ritual. That's why podcasting has taken off so much. It really is the 2021 media format. Of choice. All right. Well, that's it. For this episode of the bottom-up skills podcast, we've talked a lot about how to start and launch a successful podcast. Make sure if you're interested in learning more head over to [00:09:00] bottom-up dot IO, go over to the blog and you'll see the links Podcasting course. 

I hope you've enjoyed it. That's a wrap.

Hello and welcome to the bottom-up skills podcast. I'm Mike Parsons, the chief executive officer at qualitance and we have got to the third installation. And the final part of our three-part series into product and marketing integration previously, you know, we talked about data and what you measure.

We talked about the key starting point, and today we're going to kind of shift a little bit more in to people and teams, because let's be honest, it's people who get the job done. So let's learn six mantras that remind us of the vital vital ingredient for product and marketing teams. And that's collaboration because if we ain't working together, it doesn't really matter.

How good your dashboard, your spreadsheet, your [00:01:00] code, your design, your Adobe XD, your Figma files. None of that really matters if people aren't on the same page. So what I wanted to do now is I wanted to take six mantras that I think you can. Celebrate adhere to remind yourself of remind your colleagues of these matches will bring people together and remind everybody of our common language, because I believe that these six mantras truly do speak to product and marketing people alike.

And my mission here is to really bring them together. To create harmony amongst them, because what is so crazy is decades ago, the, one of the greatest business thinkers, Peter Drucker said that the only two things that really matter are product development. And marketing, they are the true innovation drivers.

[00:02:00] So I've got these six mantras that come from some of the latest cutting edge methods, practices, and frameworks, but I think they would equally inspire you today as they would Peter Drucker some 50 years ago. So let's get into the big six Manches for collaboration. Let's get into six ideas that can bring us a common language, a common set of values and beliefs in order to build product and marketing teams that are truly integrated, that can go out and do great things.

Okay. Number one, build measure, learn. You know, the reason this works for me is when I think about marketing and launching a brand new product with this great campaign is. If you do all this great testing and validation in the product development, why wouldn't you do it in the marketing as well? So when we talk about build, measure, learn as mentioned, number one, [00:03:00] I think this will speak to product and marketing people alike.

And with the. Way in which we need to fight for the attention of the user. We need to understand that the user's changing a lot right now in their behaviors that experiences build, measure, learn. I think that's like the only way a marketer can practice good marketing in 2021. So that's really our first mantra build, measure.

Learn. Hmm. I like that. Number two, test the entire funnel. Now again, equally for product and marketing people. When I was introduced. To the world of marketing and advertising people talk so much about reach frequency, impressions. Um, it's so funny how there was a real obsession of just hit the top line numbers and everything will be pretty good.

But actually when we talk about. [00:04:00] The best marketing practices in 2021, they don't test just the top of the funnel. They test the entire funnel. So test the entire funnel is our second mantra. But the most interesting thing here is if we flip this, if you're a product person, then of course you want to test the entire funnel because you need to identify what your customers like.

What they're prepared to pay for how long you can retain them. And at the bottom of the funnel, the lead generator, ironically enough is the referral. How often do our customers refer the product to new customers? I mean, that is definitely one of the most important things, because face it, if your customers come to you, Through the good words of your existing customers, new people come because existing customers love the product.

Well, they will convert [00:05:00] better. They will convert quicker. And if you get your viral coefficient, right, every customer you win. Imagine this another entire customer was recruited. Thanks to that. I mean, that's momentum, that's scalable as well. So whether your product or marketing test the entire funnel. Now, the next thing is, you know, my big thing here is I don't just, you know, noodle away on all these methods and frameworks and so forth.

I truly believe that the same attention needs to be paid towards customers. So you have to build trust for high-performance team. And I've done a lot of work with Patrick. Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team. That's the starting point. And at the anchor. Of high-performance team is trust. They believe in each other.

They believe in that each and every member will take care of not only of their own job, but the entire mission as well. So trust is essential. So whether you're productive, [00:06:00] Or a marketing team or cross discipline multidisciplinary team trust is key, particularly if you're not as experienced with an area of practice, um, you really do need trust because you might not know if they're a good marketing person, because you're a product person.

Well, That's where trust will be essential. So vulnerability is the key to trust. Go check out, um, our work that we've done on, uh, culture and teams [email protected]. If you're interested in that, I'm a big proponent of the work of Patrick Lencioni and the five dysfunctions of a team. Now we've got three mantras so far build measure, learn, test the entire funnel and build trust for high performance teams.

I got another three for you here. Stimulate the senses. This is born out of my breakthrough. My aha moment of any idea should be put in front of a customer. Any idea can [00:07:00] be tested, can be prototyped. And I really encourage you to embrace that. So whether you want to. Work out what story to tell for the product or what's actually should be in the product.

It doesn't matter stimulate the senses. Now I'm very particular about saying the senses because when people sit in a focus group and prob Noster Kate about whether they would like something, they're just guessing. Because it's not in front of them. It's not in context. It's not the direct experience. If you truly want to know if you've got a product worth building, stimulate the senses, test it, validate it through prototyping, really essential stuff.

Now the next one is that obviously brings us all that prototyping brings us to a great practice. Uh, this is one where you demonstrate when you really live empathy for your users, walk in their shoes, see how they feel, think, and do work out the things that might relieve their pains and create their gains.

[00:08:00] It's all about empathy for your users. And lastly, rounding out the six build small teams. I continually see small teams working faster and better than big teams. You know, Jeff Bezos has the two pizza rule. If a team can't be fed by two pizzas, it's to be, and I really wholeheartedly agree, build small teams.

Let them be autonomous, give them on audacious, go and just let them go and ask yourself, what can I do to help? So there you've got six matches and what's interesting is each and every one of those build off a practice that you can go to bottom up.io and study take the course we've got build, measure, learn that's classic lean startup.

We've got a course on that tick test, the entire funnel. Well that's growth marketing that you will find on our site very soon. And there's already some great marketing courses there today. [00:09:00] Build trust for high-performance teams. That's all about people and culture stimu...

Hello, welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I'm Mike Parsons the CEO of Qualitance and we're in the second  Of our product and marketing series. That's right. We are bringing together these two worlds and today is all about what we measure. And we have this little belief that you only get what you measure.

So imagine if you could get product designers and growth hackers, all working off the same data, the same results, the same dashboards. I mean, just think about the metrics. Think about the business insights that you could have. Well, what I'm going to propose to you today is I've got five, five big buckets with a really specific things that you can measure.

And I think they serve product and marketing equally, so let's get into them. [00:01:00] Okay. Five stages of a product journey, five stages of what I would argue to you might be things that we can measure in a marketing team. Things that can make our products so much better. So I'm thinking you probably want to know what they are.

Okay. It's empathy, stickiness. Virality revenue and scale. That's right. These are what I argue will be universal paradigms that both product developers and marketers will have to use in order to bring their worlds together. And what's so interesting is how these will demonstrate for you. Just actually, how similar the needs of data and insights are for product teams and marketing teams.

So let's jump into them. Let's break each of these five down and let's [00:02:00] ask ourselves, what's the sort of gate, what's the sort of objective each of them need to reach in order to go forward into the next stage, because you know, there should be some control method here because you don't want to be blasting away with some big ad campaign when you have yet to prove that this product really satisfies your early adopters.

All right. So let's jump into the world of empathy. And you'll hear me talk about this so much because. My whole bottom-up philosophy really stems from working very closely with customers. So empathy is the key thing we need to embody the key thing we need to do. And in this case, it's stage one, because if you have empathy for your customers, you're actually taking the time to see what jobs they're trying to get done.

What are their pains and gains? And here's the key thing. If you've got a value prop canvas handy, you want to be able to ensure [00:03:00] that the pain relievers, the gain creators, the features of your product, answer to the needs of these customers. Do they truly get the job done? And it sounds insanely simple.

Doesn't it? I always just make sure that we're getting the job done here. But many products don't and I'm going to talk about later in this episode, I'll talk about some of the common mistakes with how we get people on the same page, but let's stick with this idea of empathy and measuring the right thing.

If you are a product developer or marketing person, your number one step is to make sure you have that problem solution fit that there truly is a need in the market. And that it actually could be solved. So what you would measure is the response to prototypes, [00:04:00] uh, the response to interview questions or survey questions you would want to conduct sufficient testing of those three things you'd want to measure those.

When I do a user survey user interview, and then a rapid prototyping session, this will give you the signal that, Hey guys, we found a real PolyMet need that are reachable market faces. Okay. So this is the first data point that you want to have. Now once you've got that, you start getting going, you start building the momentum, and this is for me all about the stickiness.

That's right. Have we got something that's sticky? Have we figured out how to solve that problem in a way that actually the user can adopt, keep using and wait for it, pay for? So this is where we might see. The building of a minimum viable product of some type, [00:05:00] it could be, um, somewhat of a super-light one.

So it's a little bit faked, but it feels real, or it could actually be real code ticking along and actually satisfying the needs of a user group. The key thing here. Is, could you get those early adopters to actually do this roar? Just very essential experience and were they satisfied? And you have to be tough on yourself.

You have to ask yourself where they truly satisfied. Okay. Stickiness. So you have to really help ask yourself here. Do we truly satisfy the user? Did we meet their need? Are they willing? To pay for the product, even in its essential raw. Bare bones, uh, state, because if they will, then you're onto a good thing.

And that means that we can go onto our next thing to test, which is fire reality. Now, if you are from the product world, you may have [00:06:00] heard of the  coefficient, which is simply said for every customer that takes on the product, how many do, how many new customers do they recruit? So what we're really talking about here is testing advocacy.

And testing net promoter scores, very good metrics that inform not only the product people that I talked about, but think about if you're a marketeer and you know that your product is capable of generating new customers without paid marketing efforts, then you have this thing that we call organic growth.

And this is so important because if you have to pay. To attract every single customer that's going to be expensive. But if nobody is talking about rating, reviewing, sharing your product to both teams, it's a signal that things are not quite right. So you've got empathy. You've got [00:07:00] stickiness, you've got virality.

Now we need to move into the world of revenue. Now, this really comes down to some classic marketing metrics, CPC. And a R P U. Now what do all these things mean? Cost per customer? Like what does it cost you to go, go out into the world, place your paid advertising, get your customers, and then attract them into your product.

And what is your average revenue per user? These are key metrics that you would build the marketing campaign on. And likewise, a product person would sit there and say to themselves, Okay. Um, it looks like, uh, we're solving a problem, but it is so hard to reach the customer that we are paying huge dollars per customer conversion.

So. That could blow your business model. On the other hand, you might have a great product, but the willingness to pay, but use it is not particularly high [00:08:00] or maybe what you're monetizing is the wrong part of the product. Many, many, many lessons in there. So regardless of who and where you are, you need to understand what it costs to attract.

The customer and what, what actual revenues you're generating per customer equally, once again, product and marketing people will truly thrive. Now, there is a stage that happens after this. This is the scaling. This is the distribution conversion fit that goes into some sort of continuous iterative process, which is really.

I think at that point, we're getting into growth marketing, which is a whole separate topic, which actually I will be covering on a brand new course this year. So stay tuned for that one. But here we are. The five things that whether you're a product or marketing person, you can all agree to measure empathy, stickiness, vitality, revenue, and scale said differently.

What did we [00:09:00] get back in tens of data? When we actually did a user survey, when we did user interviews, when we prototyped, did we confirm the problem solution? When we build the MVP. Did we satisfy the early adopters in that raw clunky experienc...

Hello and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast, where we are starting another new series. Boy, they come quickly. Don't they? And today it's all about product and marketing coming together. Now these two things, product development, marketing. Advertising. They don't usually live together and putting them together can be a little clunky.

So what I'm going to do for you today is part of this three part series that we've got coming up. I'm going to give you three really powerful suggestions, ideas that, again, help you bring marketing and product together. Just that little bit more, just that little bit easier. And. Today, we're [00:01:00] going to start with perhaps one of the most powerful things that I discovered when I jumped from the marketing world to the product world.

It's this idea of identifying pains and gains of a user. Now these pains and gains are all what people experience as they're on the way to getting a particular job done. Being healthy, losing 10 kilograms, uh, going for a run, uh, being productive, sending emails, writing a document, whatever the job they're trying to get done, they get are running into all these blockers that can ever have all these hopes and dreams.

And we call those the pains and gains of the user. So we might ask ourselves, you know, what prevents your customer from getting that job done? And what gains would make the customer's life better. Okay. So let's build this up and start with product traditionally. Like a product person is going to look for pains and gains through research, [00:02:00] prototyping, being close to the customer.

And from that begin to build some user cases, some user. Flows, you might even call them. And this is sort of a, an idea of how the product might start and how it might start to serve the problem solving that needs to happen here. Now, once you have your use cases that you've kind of mapped out, you know, imagine that it's on a big whiteboard and you've got like a 10 stage process for getting a job done.

You might then go and build a prototype because you've kind of validated the use cases in Ingram and prototype. Now, importantly, with bottom up, we always always prototype with the end user, none of this, like a fantasy, uh, you know, innovation theater in the boardroom. No, no. Get on the streets and work with your real customers.

Now let's say you've. Dan you're prototyping. You've learned a lot. I think then you're ready to build an MVP. And once you validate that, then you can launch [00:03:00] version one of your product. Okay. So this is a straight through line of what really good product people will follow. And then a lot of this is based on lean startup, lean analytics, um, and you know, you want to test and learn at every step of the way.

Now what I discovered when I was presented with this thinking almost 10 years ago, it like all the lights went on because it maps beautifully to marketing. And in fact, what I'm going to propose to you today is the pains and gains of your end-user of your audience. These pains and gains hold not only the secret to great product, but they actually hold the secret to great marketing because here's what can happen when you actually test pains and gains.

For your product, you can also discover the emotions that your user, that your consumer customer or audience what they experience when they hit the pains and even better [00:04:00] when you relieve those pains and create the gains. And these emotions become the great starting point for telling the proposition.

We've got something great. That's going to be remarkable and it's going to create new value for you and you'll have the right emotions to tell that given story, that proposition. Now, once you've done your proposition testing, you can then bring that alive in some really rich vivid interactions. And after that, if you validate that and you can even test how customers might tell each other how they might advocate, how they might share your story.

And what's so powerful about this is whether you want to build the product or you want to build the marketing and promotion of it, the source of the right powerful insights. His pains and gains of the user. And it's one source, one single source of truth. And you can build both great product and promotion, [00:05:00] but I got a little excited about this because what I've discovered is that not only.

Can pains and gains of the user use, uh, be the starting point for our marketing team and a product team, but all those Excel wizards who like to make sure we've got a business case, they can profit from this too, because it's the pains and gains are the very starting point of your business hypothesis.

So you can go off and build, measure and learn around that hypothesis and make it even better. But, you know, I've had a couple of coffees today and. Therefore I am so excited because I think not only can we build great product from pains and gains, we can do great promotion and great profit. Like we just talked about with that lean hypothesis, but the fourth pay the people.

Can actually start with pains and gains as well, because think about it. If you have your marketing team, your [00:06:00] business team, your product team, all obsessed with solving and relieving pains for your users, creating gains for them as well. Then this becomes the mission that becomes very attractive for people to join the team, right?

So you can actually build a culture. You can build a team that wants to address. I want to relieve those pains and create those games. So the sort of behaviors that you model in the office, the systems, the symbols, all the things you say and do to celebrate, to bring your culture to life can STEM from the very same thing.

It is the pains and gains of the user. So. Just to recap, if we all take a step back and actually reflect on what are the pains and gains of users, how are we going to relieve the pains? How are we going to create the gains? I propose to you that beyond just creating a [00:07:00] product, we can create great promotion, great people and culture, even great profits too.

Now what's really important is that you do these step-by-step. Actually, you need to do these in lockstep together as a system so that you can do this on a continuous iterative basis. This is not just like a ha a habit. Or a startup process. This is sort of a lifestyle. This is sort of a way of being as a business.

And what I call this is bottom up innovation. It's really working with users. No more guessing, validating everything, building teams around a really well tested, well validated hypothesis. So there you go. That is the first of our three part series in how we can bring product and marketing people together, because there's never been a better time for this conversation [00:08:00] because when you look at Patagonia, when you're looking at Apple, when you look at Nike, what you really see here are companies where product and marketing come together, where you might say that the best product.

Weapon that these companies have is their marketing, or you might say the best marketing weapon that they have is their product. So without getting too grandiose, I think. What is seriously being something that has been so siloed. That is the partnership between product and marketing people. I believe that we already have the evidence that the best companies on the planet are already blurring the lines in merging these efforts.

And hopefully if you embrace this idea of starting with user pains and gains, you will be able to as well. Okay. I hope you've enjoyed this. There's another two parts of this series. And ...

Hello, welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I'm Mike Parsons, I'm the CEO of quality teams and were going to talk about time. Time is essential for product people, because I can tell you, we always have that beautiful constraint. Have a deadline, we all have to meet the clock. So this idea of time management and prioritization is my third part of the essential, the top skills for 2021 for product people.

And as I've said earlier, yes, there are these broad themes of working virtually and critical thinking and learning and resilience. No question, but what I'm doing here in this show is I want to go deep. I want to go specific [00:01:00] in the skills that product people need. So I'm talking about designers, developers, creators, and entrepreneurs.

What do they need in 2021 to be successful? Now we've already talked about growth marketing. We've already talked about this product mindset. So we've got product and marketing, two essential things for innovation. Great off to the races. But the reality is we have so many things competing for our time.

You know, it's funny because it doesn't really matter who I speak to startup people or really senior executives. Everybody is time poor. Everybody is trying to figure out how to reduce workloads, how to manage their time better. And so with this, um, New reality of 2021. And perhaps you're working in a hybrid mode some days at work in the office.

Some days [00:02:00] from home, maybe you're working with more global distributed teams. The days become really big. And so what's really important is to work out what you do now. In fact, a lot of people. Are struggling on, I feel like I've got a very big list and I don't know what actually has to happen right now.

There's too many or. People just try and do everything now. And it's just too much, you know, the human mind is designed to be doing one thing at a time. Science continually validate some proves to us that it's one thing at a time, not two. And we know multitaskers are far less productive and people that are focused and do deep work.

So how do we do that? Well, one of the things that I worked so hard on myself is to prioritize my time and I have found a tool that I want to share with you that I think is super powerful. [00:03:00] This is something I've also been recommending to a lot of people to help them. Make better decisions on where they, uh, how they spend their time, because where we spend our time is what we're saying matters.

And that really ladders up to us reaching our objectives. And, you know, sometimes we put our time in the wrong place. And this is often the reason, this mysterious reason why we kind of, why aren't we on track here? Like I'm working really hard, but it's not quite coming together. It's often because we haven't managed our time and priorities in the right way.

So now, now that we're kind of all in that problem, Headspace let's. Discuss the Eisenhower matrix. This is a great tool, which will provoke you to ask the right questions, but equally to take the right actions. So let me share [00:04:00] this with you and let's get into the world of the Eisenhower matrix. Okay. Now what the Eisenhower matrix does is I want you to imagine you're looking at a quadrant.

In front of you and the top left is a corner. And in that top left, I is the important things and the urgent things. And diametrically opposite. So on the bottom, right. Of the things that you should eliminate, because they're not urgent and not important. These are the two extremes we're working in, things that are really important and urgent and things that are not urgent and not important.

Let's give this some context. So if something is critical, say it's in your OKR, it's in your KPIs. It's your big priority and that makes it an important activity. But if something is urgent and it's the [00:05:00] most it's related to the most important thing you can be doing. The most important goal or objective that you have, this becomes a dual item.

Okay. So we're in the top left of that quadrant. It's important and urgent. You do that now. Okay. Now that one's probably the least surprising of these, but here is where we start to breathe a little easier. What feels really good. Is when you can start to plan and allocate your time. And there is no better thing for that, for that allocation is when something, when an activity that you have on your task is important, but it's not urgent.

Okay. So let's say it could be done today or tomorrow this week or next week. But it is really important. It relates to one of your big objectives or here's the important thing that the Eisenhower matrix does. It [00:06:00] says you need to plan that activity, book it into your calendar. So a good judge of that. If you look at your calendar, how much of your calendar for the next couple of days is actually allocated to important things, because here's the thing.

You can breathe a sigh of relief that you don't have to do it right now. But you can also take some knowingness, some calmness, some wellbeing from the idea that you've allocated time to something that's important in the coming days or weeks. It's not urgent, but you've planned it. So you know that it will be executed if you disrespect your calendar.

So there we go. We've got the first two parts of the Eisenhower matrix. If it's urgent and important do now. If it's important, but it's not urgent plan that activity in your calendar. So open up your calendar and allocate a block of time and label it for [00:07:00] that priority for that task. And there you've done something really good because you're working on important things, but you're doing it now, whether you're planning it for later, this is the essence of something and the magic inside of the Eisenhower matrix.

There's two other parts of the quadrant, which. Do equally good a job, but don't get discussed too much. Now the third part, the third quadrant is where something is super urgent, but for you, it's not really important, but it's in your inbox. And the key thing, the action that you need to do if it's urgent, but it's not important for your goals is to delegate it to the right person.

Who in fact, this is important too. So this third action is the delegation. So we've got doing, we've got planning and we've got delegating. Delegating might mean that there is someone who's far better skilled to do the task, but [00:08:00] also it's very important to their role in the team. So you can delegate it to them.

So we've got, do delegate the fourth one. Is when something is neither important nor urgent. And we need to do only one thing with those things, eliminate them. Don't delegate them, don't plan them. And certainly by no means do them, you eliminate them because it's not important and there's no urgency for it as well.

And you know, the funny thing is so much of managing our time and priorities. Actually happens in these lower areas of delegation and elimination, because we often carry many things that are. Either not important or not urgent for us. And they would be much better delegated or even just eliminated. Just don't do them say no, thank you.

I can't do that. I cannot be part of that. I cannot attend that [00:09:00] meeting, eliminate those things from your time from your calendar and you will feel relieved, but you'll also have more time and more space. To focus on things that are important and urgent because Hey, if you're out there building a product or you're a growth marketer, who's testing the entire funnel, or you're working in a remote virtual hybrid team, you're going to be busy already.

There's g...

Hello and welcome to the bottomup skills podcast. I’m Mike Parsons, I'm the CEO of quality terms. And we today are going to talk about a product mindset. Now, this is all part of our special series on the best, the top skills in 2021 for product people. In the previous episode, we talked about growth marketing.

And in this episode, we're going deep into the world of a product mindset. Now I know, uh, you know, the call upon us in 2021 is to deal with so much change working virtually, uh, learning new skills, uh, dealing with uncertainty. It's like the whole playbook got. Tone up in 2020, and we're all [00:01:00] reinventing ourselves, learning new skills to be the very best version of ourselves in 2021.

So this product mindset is as essential for product people. And I want you to, whether you're a designer, developer, creator, or entrepreneur, I want you to know. That is really important to have this product mindset, to be really strong in the fundamentals of building product in the digital age, because.

Every business needs it. And so few businesses truly have the skills of product design and product development, product discovery, you name it. It is very, very rare. The call for product managers as, as high as it's ever been. So hopefully what I can do for you in this show is to showcase what I think. The product mindset really looks like in 2021.

And I hope this really helps you in your work to build great products and [00:02:00] to create value for your users. Now I want to get into kind of the six specific ingredients that I think make up a product mindset. And, um, they actually all each reflect a practice, a methodology, but I think these are also mantras that we can hold to be true as product people.

And the reason. But these mantras are so important. And the subsequent methodologies that they represent that they showcase is that we need to be champions, not only inside of our product teams, but in the outside broader. Business, even outside of the business, in our external business communities, because I think everybody is, is talking about building a digital app, a digital thing.

Um, and it's complex. It's hard. It's not an easy thing. So I really want you to be able to [00:03:00] provide them with a point of view. Simple powerful managers that really serve the mission of building great products that put the user at the front and center. All right. So I'm going to hit you with six. Um, I'm going to give you these mantras.

We're going to talk about them. And the great news is we already have courses in five of these and we plan to launch a another course very soon. So you'll be able to take really big, deep dives into each of these ideas. All right. So let's get into the world of product mindset. If someone says to you, what is this world of product all about?

What do you guys believe? What is your vision for the world? Well, I'm going to take a shot at it. Okay. So I think there are these six ideas and they are all core. To building a great product. If I remove one of [00:04:00] these from a product project, from an effort to build a product, if I remove any of these six ideas, we're going to have some trouble.

So I think these are the six essential ideas for a product mindset without a doubt. Number one. Is build measure, learn great product building is all about learning. So you will never have all the answers at the start. You will never have them all at the start, but what you will do is have the capacity to grow, to learn and understand throughout the journey it's intuitive.

Okay. So mantra number one, build measure. Learn the next one. Stimulate the senses when you're building very early, early versions of your product, do not build some sexy, shiny PowerPoint thing. And have the belief that you just validated your product. No. I want you to stimulate the senses, build something [00:05:00] that people can touch, pick up, use something that you can test task completion with, and you need to go out and build these prototypes.

These will help you so much, particularly in the early stages of product development. And of course, if you're going to be building prototypes, stimulating the senses, if you want to learn, you need to do that with your users. And this is the third idea I want to propose to you. That is a true product mindset, empathize with users.

If you have no empathy for your end user, your product will fail. But if you can be humble and curious, if you can listen and learn, understand. Walk in their shoes, you will go very, very far with your design. And obviously as we get around to building a product, um, the real engineering part. You need to build small [00:06:00] agile teams, you know, so true.

There's this very traditional idea about the mythical man month, where in it, people used to just throw people at projects, make the team bigger, bigger, and bigger. And what they found is that that actually gives diminishing returns. That gets to the point where it's, there's no incremental improvement by throwing.

More people at it because it gets too complex. It can't move fast to building small agile teams. That's mantra number four for us. So, so far we've got build measure, learn, stimulate the senses, empathize with your users and build small teams. Now, once you've got that product, you need to go out into the world.

You need growth, you need distribution, you need conversion. And this is all about the idea of test, the entire funnel. Don't just, you know, Tell everyone and announced to everyone, the products there and leave it at that [00:07:00] go through and acquire them, activate them, retain them, grow them, get some referrals.

Test the entire funnel. Very important. Fifth mantra. And lastly, and I sort of a different flavor here is build high performance teams. Now this one, the sixth one is super important because everything that we've just talked about, the last five ideas is all happening. In the context of culture and it's done by people and it requires trust.

So you could be the sharpest growth marketing funnel optimizer in the universe, but you need to know how to work with people, how to build a trust. Okay. So let's take a little bit of a step back and look at those six mantras and let's reveal, which practices, which methodologies they all represent. And remember what I'm presenting to you is [00:08:00] this is what a product mindset is all about.

Number one, it's the lean startup idea, build, measure, learn. So head over to bottom-up dot IO. If you want to know more about lean startup, super powerful, we have Eric Reese to thank for that is very valuable. So you don't make the mistake of guessing what your product should be. The second one is rapid prototyping.

It's a great practice. Some might say it's actually part of design thinking, but the reason that I pull it out is it yields so much value in the early stages that this idea of stimulating the senses early is really critical to your success. The earlier you prototype the earlier you learn. And obviously design thinking is a huge part of this as well, empathizing with users, knowing the paradigm by which we might create a user experience, build user interface, create interactions in the [00:09:00] end, helping users get their jobs done is a critical thing.

And that starts with empathy. And so tied up in this wonderful practice of design thinking. And obviously something born of the technology and agile and software world is agile software development. And the mantra that best describes that is building small autonomous teams that write code that works.

This is the focus. T...

Hello, welcome to the bottom skills podcast. I am Mike Parsons, the CEO of quality  and we are starting a brand new series for a brand new year. To welcome into 2021. We are going to discuss the top three skills that product people are going to need. Now let's talk about 20, 21st. I mean, it was crazy, very unpredictable fires, riots.

COVID elections, you name it. It was pretty crazy. And with all of that new uncertainty and that change, there was definitely some broad themes that I think largely affect. Most people working in those sort of knowledge worker roles. So I think that, um, you know, obviously working virtually and, uh, you know, quarantine was a particularly [00:01:00] timely skill that we've needed to develop.

And I think that's going to continue into 2021. We needed to be a bit more agile or needed to be good at, you know, Accepting some uncertainties, um, um, doubts. And we were presented with a whole new series of problems. So we need to be able to think critically and learn along the way. And these are what I call very broad themes that I think apply to not only product people, but to.

People, uh, in business in general. Now, what I thought would be very interesting is to double click in and really zoom into, okay, what are the skills they're going to be most required for product people? When we'd say product people, we were talking about designers, developers, creators, and entrepreneurs, people who are trying to build brand new products and bring them to the world.

So I am going to present you today with the first of three, and I really hope to get [00:02:00] your feedback on this. Tell me what you think. Because we're going to be making masterclasses really deep courses on each of these three skills that we think are essential for 2021. All right. Let's get into the first one.

And that is growth marketing. Now growth marketing is really Tivoli new over the last five or 10 years. And, uh, for someone like myself who spent a great deal of time in the advertising world, it was. Really a breakthrough. Uh, when you know, it was all of the marketing, uh, skills and practices of a digital world, what kind of collected into this banner, this marquee of growth market.

It was kind of super helpful in pulling it all together. And here's why, because as marketing and advertising experts, we generally focused on very traditional metrics. Reach and frequency, [00:03:00] basically get your brand, get your message out there and try and grab the attention of as many people as possible.

Now, what happened after you got their attention was not really in the consideration? Yes. There was some direct marketing, uh, agencies and experts, but. They were much smaller than the traditional brand advertising television, uh, ad making people. So. Here's the thing with growth marketing growth marketing is about the full funnel.

It is about the end to end journey of the user from when you don't know them to when they are so keen to tell the world about you. And that is a full and complete journey. It's a full funnel. And traditionally in advertising and marketing, we had a real focus on just the first two. And that's why it is so [00:04:00] important to put our heads into the world of growth marketing and break it down.

Now, just for this show, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you an introduction just to the funnel and give you a kind of sense of what it might be. And I'm really keen to hear back from you what you'd like me to include in the masterclass, because I'm really excited about this proposition. Okay.

So let's talk about the funnel, the. Growth marketing funnel is built up of two major parts. Some people like to include five steps in the funnel or six. I'm going to give you the full six. And this is famously called the pirate metrics because it's three, A's followed by three RS. So it's nice and easy to remember.

So here we go. Uh, first part of the growth marketing funnel is all about awareness. This is the beginning. This is making sure you reach enough people. [00:05:00] Then we go to acquisition. We, you know, we've got to acquire them, but just because we've acquired them, brought them to us. We still need to do the third step.

We do. We need to activate them. We need to get them to do something with us. Then we need to get them to do a transaction with us. That's where we step into this kind of second area is called revenue. And as we build this relationship and we provide a product and a service to them, we then need to. Next step part five, we need to retain them.

Okay. So this far we've got awareness, acquisition and activation. That's the top of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is obviously revenue and retention, but there's one more referral and referral is obviously all about people introducing your product or service to others. So. Here's the interesting thing.

What you need to do is open your mind and think about the growth marketing funnel as this complete journey, this [00:06:00] complete journey from awareness right through to referral. So I'm going to give you six questions. Uh, that relate to each of these steps, which will help you get a little bit more of a sense of what we mean in this funnel.

Okay. So awareness, if you're sitting around with your colleagues and saying, how's our awareness, we'd be asking how many people are we reaching? How many people are seeing us and hearing about us? Are we in the right directories? Are we on Google? Are we. There in the universe, whatever, uh, awareness, touch points that might be relevant, then obviously where it starts to get really intense listing is where you actually start to acquire them.

And for example, let's use an example of bringing them to your website. That's a classic question of what you might ask us. How are we doing on acquisition? Which is like how many people were getting to the website. We look at our reach and look at our acquisition. There's a very important thing that there's a rate of conversion.

[00:07:00] All the people that know us, how many of them are we getting to our website? In this example, it's a very good acquisition question. And then obviously activation huge, because this is where you would ask the question, how many people take the first and important. Step or activity with us. This might be a trial.

This might be a booking, a meeting, a service, an onboarding, whatever your activation mechanism is, that's really important. And so what you would do here is you would look at your funnel, look at your total awareness, ask. How many of those people are coming to our website, that gives us a sense of acquisition.

And then how many of those people take the first step and then we've got activation covered. So that's the three A's, that's the R F um, the, a part of these pirate metrics that you used in growth marketing. Now, if you've got the three A's, it's followed by those three other [00:08:00] ares, and that therefore gives you that big Hardy har pirate metric now.

Let's get into what those are. So first thing is following up from activation is how many people actually start paying for our service? How, how, and when do they pay, how much do they pay? These are the key revenue questions. And then obviously once you start having. Uh, your customers and people paying, you need to work out.

How many of them are coming back for a second, third, fourth, fifth time. How are you retaining your customers? That's obviously the fifth and important part of the funnel. And then at the last part of the funnel, which almost starts to. Kind of loop the process back to th...

Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I might pass. And I'm the CEO of quality tenants and we are there. Ladies and gentlemen. The final pot, the 12 pot of our unstuck series, where we really face the biggest challenges that product managers face, and we try and find solutions and answers to these problems.

And in the last show we dealt with the top of the funnel, and today we deal with the bottom half of the funnel. And we ask ourselves, how do we keep our customers? Now, this assumes that the product is live. You've had problem solution, fit, product, market fit. This is all really part of the distribution and conversion fit and, um, asking ourselves some critical questions about how customers are behaving.

Are we creating enough value? Are we capturing enough value? This is the really big question. So there's three ways to go about [00:01:00] answering this question of how do you keep your customers? And like the top of the funnel, the second half of this funnel is built around. Retention revenue and referral three R's to match the three A's that are at the top of the funnel.

Now each of these areas, retention, revenue and referral, we'll have some key questions. And so I'd like to talk about those key questions. I'd like to. Really dig into those and, um, present to you our way of thinking about keeping customers. And I really do hope that this inspires you to serve your customers, create value for them.

And if you do that, you're going to have a fantastic little part. Okay. So let's start with retention now, retaining customers, you know, sometimes. Uh, retaining customers is a kind of a tricky process. Look, if we've worked really hard, we're sort of a bit relieved when we actually got a customer, but then the work starts all over [00:02:00] again because we have to retain them.

And look, if we've done a good job, chances are somebody will see our product. And I know wait for it. They're going to copy it so very quickly there will be competitors. And once these competitors, people will undercut you on price. So you've got to retain your customers. And the key question to ask is how many people come back a second, third, 10th, time to our product.

Now, when we break down retention, This is really good. Cause th th somewhere in retention, there's this real truth, uh, to the product. And that's really finding out for ourselves, how much do people come back, which is a proxy for how satisfied are they? So you might want to, um, uh, really ask yourself. Are we really satisfying, not only the early [00:03:00] adopters, but here's the important thing.

The early and late majority, this is really, really important. Now another big metric in retention in, uh, on top of satisfaction is going to be your churn rate. Um, now your churn rate is how many customers, uh, out of every a hundred customers, how many are leaving you and within. What sort of time period.

This one is really important to get into. Obviously it's a bit tricky in the early stages of a company because you haven't had a lot of customers leave because it, frankly you haven't had many customers, uh, to begin with. But this retention rate is, is really, really important because it's such a clue because if you can see a good cohort of people coming back regularly, Weekly, maybe daily to your product.

Then this is such, I mean, you should be relieved when you see that. Um, if people are using it as what happens with most products, they use once and never [00:04:00] return, that's a terrible retention situation. So you really want to get over that hump of getting them back for that second or third time. This is really, really important.

Now another part of the, this funnel next up Dan is okay, how many are we retaining? How many people stop paying and how much do they pay? This is really, really important because. Sometimes we make the mistake of vastly overestimating, how much our customers are going to pay. So key revenue metrics to have in your mind is what does it cost us to acquire a customer?

And then what does it cost us to get them to first purchase and does their average monthly revenue. Map out on an annual basis. And if we grow at this rate, at what point will we be a viable business? This is really, really important because [00:05:00] you know, when we think about revenue, the other thing here is that the acquisition costs could be out of control.

So what I mean here is that, look, we've got customers that are paying, but actually let's say each customer pays $5 a month. But it's costing us $10 to acquire them. Then you've obviously stopped studying to have a problem. So what do you want to make sure that, you know, if a customer lasts, uh, let's say customer spent a hundred bucks, uh, on their first two purchases and it costs you $20 to get them.

Can you afford, is that a viable cost of acquisition? This is a really important thing because a lot of early stage companies find that their acquisition costs are much higher and that whilst they are having revenue, they're not making any profit. Like there is no margin in the business to say it differently.

So this is why revenue's really important. Why retention is very important. Now [00:06:00] I want to get to, uh, the, the last bit really important, um, part of the funnel, which is referral. Um, we know that a fast majority of people will be influenced by the most powerful, uh, model of customer acquisition, which is advocacy.

When people recommend your product or service to others, this. For every outreach has the most effective results. So what we often talk about in lean startup is your viral coefficient, and you want to try and get your product for every active customer to generate one complete new customer, because that viral coefficient is really good because it means if you.

Work hard and acquire a hundred customers. You'll have delighted those customers satisfied those customers to such a degree that they'll each recommend the product once [00:07:00] to another customer. So a hundred becomes 200 and then you can see how it sort of snowballs from there. So when we think about referral metrics, the King of referrals is MPS.

So if you want to understand how likely. Your customers to refer someone, do an NPS survey where you ask them this question, and, um, sometimes you can follow up and give them an incentive. If they're in advocate, you know, in an advocacy status, am I really, really delighted with your product? You can actually give them an incentive.

Or a means to go out and, um, you know, refer your product or service to others. Now, um, you can do some other things. Like you can look at your, um, building, sharing into your product and how much social sharing people do. It's good. It's not as good as the NPS. Because, um, you know, sharing, um, has slightly different characteristics to MPS.

[00:08:00] Um, but it's still a decent metric to look for. And, um, there's a whole practice around referral marketing and how to carriage customers to refer your product to others. Well, there you go. For today. We've looked at retention revenue and referral as all ways of keeping the customer and keeping your customer is a very close relative of getting your customer.

And that used to the three A's awareness, acquisition, and activation coming together, that six parts of the pirate metrics funnel, which is a great way. To put growth marketing at the heart of your product. I know this has been like a rip roaring quick dash through these key challenges we face as product designers, creators and builders.

I really hope you've enjoyed some of the things we've talked about and how they've really helped you. Um, maybe remind you of some thin...

Hello, and welcome to the bottom Mount skills podcast. I might pass since I'm the CEO of Qualitas and we are at the second last episode of our unstuck series, and we are asking a mighty. Big question. This question trips up a lot of startups. In fact, a lot of grown-up companies get stumped on this one.

And the question is, how do I get customers for my product or service? Now it is, um, really. A big challenge because we often spend so much time working on designing and building the product that we often neglect this question. And in the previous episode, we talked about the launch strategies, which was really the start of.

Getting some customers, but I want to give you a framework that will help for not only getting customers, but in the last episode, in the next one, after this, we'll ask, how do you keep customers? But we're going to break the [00:01:00] customer question up into two parts, and we're going to talk about how we get customers.

And we're going to use some thinking that is growth marketing. Inspired now you might've heard of growth hacking growth marketing. Let me tell you a little bit about those. And then I'm going to give you three key questions that represent three steps in the growth marketing funnel. So growth marketing is quite disruptive in the world of marketing and advertising because.

The historical way that the marketing world has sort of tackled, um, you know, launching products and selling products is they try and make as many people as possible aware and, uh, tell them to go to a destination or to a retailer. Um, and this is kind of what we call the top of the funnel, but what's really quite interesting is that growth marketing is enormously [00:02:00] disruptive because it says, well, that's only.

Like one third of the funnel, there's still another two thirds. And in fact, the only way to think about the funnel is in whole. So you think about the end to end cycle, that customers, that audience, um, go through when they actually experience a product or a service. And, um, so much money gets spent on the awareness and the reach stage in traditional marketing, that growth marketing is like, Oh no, no, no.

We run the full funnel. And every step of the way in this funnel is a key moment of conversion. So conversion is the magical thing inside the funnel. This funnel is made up of six steps and at each step you're looking to convert as best as possible. So I'm going to introduce to you the funnel and we're going to use the first three steps in the funnel.

Uh, to tackle, how do I get customers? And we're going to use the last three steps on how we keep [00:03:00] customers. So this is going to be great. So make sure you've listened to, by this episode in the following one. If you want to see the whole funnel, it's kind of big. So I thought for the podcast, let's make it two parts.

Okay. So you got a funnel and you want to reach as many people as possible and go through a series of conversions with them. So I'm going to break it down. Um, but first let's talk about the name of this funnel. This is called. The pirate funnel. The one that I use it is called the pirate funnel because when you actually take the acronym of the six steps in the funnel, it's are just like a good pirate.

So it's a R R R. That is the pirate funnel. The first three A's stand for awareness, acquisition and activation. Okay. Now they all come in a logical sequence, so let's break them down and let's talk about. What really matters in each of these stages. So awareness let's imagine [00:04:00] we're running. Um, and, uh, we've built a SAS software as a service product, and that's the context of these questions.

So we've got the product. We've just launched now we're on the mission to go get customers. So the first step is asking ourselves what's the awareness look like? How many people do we reach? And for me, the, the key key key thing here is it's all about. Being present in, in the case of a SAS startup, it starts with Google.

Um, so the key question is how many people are you reaching? Are you even in Google? And you start to see here, that awareness starts with being find-able to being. Present out there in the world because you know, so many people forget, even some of the basics of what is crucial to making sure that people are even aware of you.

So let's go through like a win. [00:05:00] Um, and then this is really where you build your brand. So you're going to want to make sure you're on a you're indexed on Google, but also you're going to find all sorts of marketplaces to launch a product like product hunt or beta list. Want to be in there. Step further.

You, if you're a SAS, you can list yourself in all sorts of directories, um, where people review SAS products, G2 being one of the bigger players. So awareness is all about being listed. Uh, if you're running paid, how many impressions do you get? Um, you know, you're really looking, uh, For SEO as being a big practice in your awareness.

The other thing here is that as you get more mature, you do want to see some more sophisticated advertising things like retargeting. And if you're on directories or review sites, you might even have affiliate partnerships to drive that reach. So that's really the top of the funnel. So [00:06:00] that's a witness that we're talking about.

So once you've got that awareness, you need to drive people to your website. This is what we call acquisition. So as you start looking at the acquisition part, this is like, okay, how many people are visiting, visiting our site? So, um, you might see people, um, turning up, uh, visiting your site, bouncing on your site.

You want to start looking at what content they're looking at. Um, you know, what are the. Um, uh, what are the things that their behaviors that they're doing on your site really starting to discover? What's interesting. A big clue here would be, um, What is the most popular content on your site? What's getting the most indexing from search, obviously.

Um, you know, we shouldn't forget part of the awareness is social media, so you should be on LinkedIn and Facebook and all those millions of other social networks. You really want to be driving that engagement with your content, [00:07:00] um, with your services and then comes the next big step. This is activation activation is super important because it activation your really presenting your customers with the first step in the relationship.

This could be a trial. This could be a freemium signup. Um, this could be some sort of request to fund demonstration. Um, this could be any sort of metric that you have for activating the customers. The first step. It's not necessarily the full value in a transaction, but it could be something that feeds into your funnel.

Maybe it's a webinar who knows. But what you see here is this clear funnel, awareness, acquisition, and activation. And the key question for each of those goes, how many people did I reach? How many people visit our website [00:08:00] and how many people take the first step? Now, what you'll notice is obviously there's going to be some attrition here.

So. And, you know, if you reach a hundred people, you might get 22 website and only five take the first step that's okay. Because there, you see the conversion rates and your job in terms of getting customers is to improve those conversion rates obsess on the conversion rates, make those numbers better.

And that'll force you to come up with innovative new ways to engage your customers, to drive them through the funnel, to drive them through the funnel, better, more efficiently to create more value for you as a business who this is a big one. How do I ge...