Knowing When Enough is Enough in Product Marketing

Hello, Alex. Hey, Christian. How's life? I mean, Nemo is answering that question. That's good. Yeah. I mean, today I managed to take some time in the nature. So I'm pretty relaxed, not to say tired by this time. So I'm glad you're bringing me back into the work mode. I was doing the same thing yesterday, by the way. Walking through the forest with rain coming down, just relaxing and shutting down. My phone was in airplane mode all the time. That's nice. Again, good thing. As most people know, I'm still having issues with my mobile phone provider. So I don't have internet when I'm out, when I leave my house. But I'm not connected to a Wi-Fi. I don't have internet. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. However, Alex, let's talk business since you introduced it. And I have a question and I was wondering, what is your general marketing philosophy? My marketing philosophy? I trust whoever runs marketing and hope they don't take wrong decisions. That's my marketing philosophy. Okay. What do you call as a good marketing if you look out looking at the product of your choice? I mean, without knowing where you want me to go, I think there's many roads when talking about marketing. So I can start general and you just continue wherever you want to know more. But I mean, I think a good marketing is consistent with the brand and the vision, mission of the company. Good marketing understands their customers, knows who the customers are and how to reach them and how to target them. I would generally say that it should also be cost efficient. So optimized for the different channels, optimized for the different product. And overall, if marketing is not effective, it's bad marketing. So obviously, and I think that's the beauty of marketing, right? It's easy to measure. It's easy to optimize. I mean, if you don't have a product like mine, where obviously like sales or marketing cycles are extremely long, you get feedback relatively quick. And that would make good marketing, like constantly optimizing it, being consistent, having good messaging. Then obviously you can go into the creative, into the area of creatives, which is the one that I'm more interested in. Generally, I love if a company managed to find some smart, witty messages, messaging that really nades the communication also. I mean, those are a couple of points. Does this help? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, since we were recently talking about branding, I was also interested in diving a little bit into the combination of marketing and brand, right? Because I was also recently scrolling through the internet and I was stumbling up on this marketing philosophy white paper from Apple in 1977, I guess. And I found it really interesting. I'm just looking it up right now because Apple was actually very clear, right? So one thing that they said was, which is, and I think you will comply to that, that they truly understand the need of their customers, right? Better than any other company. And the next point was that they focus on doing a good job. So to make sure that they eliminate everything that is not important. And last but not least was also how they reach people. And something I really liked was that they were saying people do judge a book by its cover. So the idea behind that was, I mean, of course, right? And the idea behind that was to make sure that they position and sell the product in a way that it also addresses a certain level of quality, right? Because if I promote something poorly, people will get a poor image of the company or the products. While a highly qualitative advertisement, for example, in combination with the brand will lead to a complete different perception of the product. The reason I wanted to pick that up. Like just to react on that. You obviously can't paint shit with gold and suddenly it's worth $60, $70 a gram, right? It's still shit. So it's not just like selling something. I think the product needs to be good as well. And at the same time, like also the selling needs to be good, right? And I mean here, just like think if you have any, if you remember any product that has overall that at the surface looks bad, right? Is it marketing? Is it the campaigns? Is it the messages? Is it the product? But it's like a great product that has great sales. I think there is very few examples. I agree. I agree. And I disagree. You can't paint shit to gold and make it golden. And you might going to sell it. I mean look at the internet. I mean there are so many shitty products or services that are regularly getting sold to people. But very likely only once. Short lifespan. Yeah. That's not how you win. And that's I think where I would never recommend anyone to do that. Like don't oversell. You only sell once if you oversell. And I think that's maybe a good point when it comes to the whole topic of overselling. When does overselling start? Well, when you're not honest about what you're selling. Okay. Well, I mean I think – well, it's actually a good question, right? I think the idea is to maybe look at how you generally structure your marketing message. Will you for example – I mean there are many ways how you can sell on the internet. You can for example sell a blank feature list by clearly providing what you will get when you buy the product. Another example could be to be more focused on the pain points and its solution, right? Which would be rather a highly emotional sales message that you send to people. So, I think there are different ways how you can generally set up your marketing message. And based on that I think it's very important to extremely understand what people need. Whether it's a feature list or whether it's an emotional marketing message where you present a solution to a problem. You have to make sure that you grasp the core problem of the customer in my opinion. So, the moment you start – the moment you ignore that and you start focusing on a feature list just for the purpose of having a feature list for example. I think that's the moment where you already start overselling your product. Because you're not – I think you need to look at it always from the glasses of a customer. And what I see many times when I talk to people or when I look also at product marketing or marketing in general. I see that there are these just easily engineering like written down feature lists. Or something like that, right? And I think that's already a moment where I need to ask myself, okay, what's the value that I'm getting? And even if the feature list looks kind of complete or not. You always end up at the point where you ask yourself, okay – where I ask myself, hey, what am I getting out? Yeah, but – I mean I think it takes us a little bit back to – this is true in a lot of places. And a format I would use or love to use also for product and design. It's like the feature itself is already the solution. And it is the solution to a problem or to something someone needs to do, right? I think jobs to be done is one of the best frameworks that I will always want to pick up in multiple things. Because I guess here, it's not the feature that you buy. It's a specific job that you want to get done, right? So obviously like from a sales perspective, it doesn't matter like that I tell you, oh yeah, API, blah, blah, blah, integration or something. I just need to tell you what you can achieve with that. I think – and there was a very interesting thread. And I think it's a couple of weeks ago, so probably hard to dig it out again. From the founder or CEO from Product Hunt. It was like on Twitter helping people that were launching products on Product Hunt to just review their headlines. Because that's obviously like you mess up that headline and you mess up your Product Hunt campaign. Absolutely. And I think like this was definitely also something where I've seen him constantly optimizing. It's not just about this feature. It's not about being the new language learning model that does X, Y, Z. But it's like really of like, okay, how does it make your customer's life easier? Because that's where your mind is at. Yeah. And again, let's say we have ChattyPT as one of the most used and most known products in general. And let's assume there is a new language model that is coming out. So even if you, for example, list that it's maybe faster, maybe more on point in certain areas. You can bring that up in your marketing message, but always connect to a context. And I think that's something where it's most of, not most of the times, but many times when I look at, especially startups who are advertising their products, they're missing the link to the context behind it. So just explain that it's faster, a fast language model that is two times faster than every other language model. Yeah, generally. Okay, good. But why should I switch as a customer? Yeah. And that's the point where it gets interesting. You do it for the speed or you don't just do it for the bigger or the better or the faster and so on. And I mean, then again, right? Like there's certain instances where these things are important, especially like you look at computers, you look at processors and so on and so forth. So of course, there is a point like nobody needs to sell me on a computer. I just want to make sure I have a very fast computer to do my job well or to play my games well all night long, which I don't. But here's the thing. I mean, let's say when Apple is introducing a new MacBook with a new processor or something like that, they are explaining that it's 10 times or two times faster than the previous one. But always in the context that you can even run more applications in parallel to be more productive. Yeah. So there's a complete difference, right? You can either say, hey, you have a two times faster product or you have a two times faster product to do your certain job. Think of like ads like shot with iPhone. Yeah. Good point. It's like what are you doing with it? Like you're capturing specific emotions. Oh, it looks good, blah, blah, blah. It's all better than the new Huawei with 53 megapixels and six cameras. Nobody cares about your 53 megapixels. But I mean, again, and there is also a lot of time and storytelling that goes into building this brand, into building the emotional connection that people have with the companies like Apple, with the companies like the Coca-Cola that we talked about last time. I mean, there is a certain image that you have in your mind and a certain emotion that you want to reach when you buy specific products. And that's why I'm saying there is one very technical level of like, oh, yeah, I need a new MacBook and I need to render my videos and I know where to go. And now I'm like in the checkout and I'm sure I want to go for the fastest processor because I want to achieve X, Y, Z. But then there is the emotional layer to a brand. Just like how do you select what shoes you buy or what clothes you buy? Because there is like a specific value also to the brand. You might give something more like you would put it into the corner of like, oh, this is like great quality because they produce it in X, Y, Z ways. I mean, at the end, most of it produces the same way. My argument is always if Alex is wearing it, it must be nice. We don't look that similar. And I know you have your stylist, but I think that's it, right? And I think the overselling doesn't come in place when you start like selling an emotion or you don't need to be like super cold and like focused on just like the features that you have. The overselling comes in place when you sell, I don't know, you're selling freedom or let's say reliability. Let's talk about the Volvos and so on. There is this ad on the social media. It's an old ad about Mercedes where they interview a guy on the street to toast cars. And they're like, ooh, which German car brands do you know? And he names everyone except Mercedes. And then the interviewer is like, but have you heard about Mercedes? And the guy's, oh, yeah, yeah, true. There's also Mercedes. Zoom out and you see he drives the tow truck, right? So human mind connects to, oh, yeah, so Mercedes is reliable in this case because the guy didn't remember, but he did everyone else. Now, you would be overselling if then all your cars break down in the first month that you own them or that someone owns them, right? That would be overselling. And that's where then people lose trust in a company. That's where then your brand gets completely hurt. So I think it's always about honesty. You can also sell a cheap product, right? When it's clear that you're selling a cheap product, people buy it because it's cheap and they don't care if it lasts forever. But if you then try to overpromise and sell that same product at a higher price and sell it as the most reliable, long-lasting, high-quality thing that breaks down, it's probably the last time you sold it. And, I mean, when we talk about generally structuring good marketing messages and not overselling or also focusing on the emotion, I believe that something to easily learn is to look at landing pages. I think there's a big difference between well-designed landing pages and good-designed landing pages. And when I talk about design, sorry, I have to correct myself, I'm not talking about the design by definition. I'm talking about the way the headlines are structured, the way that the first paragraph starts, the way the last paragraph ends. So, I mean, that's a whole science in itself. And there's a really, really good article called How to Create Free Articles, Reports, and Blog Posts that sell. I just want to link it to this episode. So feel free to look into the description while you're listening or afterwards because it clearly explains how you sell value and talk to your customer in a way that they feel seen, addressed, and realize that they are the number one focus and not your product. Yeah, and I mean, wording is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult. In fact, it is extremely important. We have chat GPT for that. I don't need to ask the product head CEO. I'm kidding. Of course, I would take his experience. Sure. I mean, yes. And I think these tools help a lot. These tools help a lot nowadays, especially also for someone like me who doesn't consider themselves to be like great copywriters. I love to use it or even just like to use it to validate how something can be interpreted. I think that's also something that I do. I still feel like and hopefully GPT 4.0 makes things better, but I still feel like there is always a bit of a GPT-ish notion to everything written in GPT. And I know you disagree. I would challenge that. It just comes down to how you write it and how you prompt it. Of course. Let's be honest, 90% of the people don't prompt GPT well and they read so much stuff where I can pinpoint that it sounds like GPT and I hate that. Absolutely. That's terrible. But I told you about in one of the previous episodes the A-B test I was doing. So I was sitting down with a marketing expert who we will, by the way, interview in the next week. So be excited. However, so I did the A-B test. So I talked to him and we created email headlines and I used ChatGPT and fucking hell, ChatGPT was outperforming the marketing, the opening rates of the emails. It was nuts. Actually, it was sales at the end of the day. I mean, at the end of the day, luckily it's like trained on what works well or at least that's like what you can use as references. So, I mean, it's not a surprise that then it works well, right? But it just at times reads very computery. You have to squeeze out everything from the machine that you can. Yeah. But good. Okay, Alex. So how do we proceed? So I would say our marketing guest is already in the pipeline. So you will hear a great podcast episode about product marketing in the next weeks. And whatever your marketing message is, feel free to review it again and make sure that you set the right context, set the right framing and make sure that it's about the experience and your customer. Yeah. Always talk about the jobs that someone wants to do. And wants to get done. Episode. Nice. We're done. Then have a great rest of the day, evening or start into the day. Click to follow and subscribe so that you also hear our next episodes and talk to you soon. This was the Product Bakery. 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