This popped into my inbox just as I was about to write a brief for a blog...Thank god is all I can say. Now, instead, I'll go back to the client and get their product expertise and weave it into the piece. Honestly a revelation and the future for me. Thanks for posting.
I did give this approach a more fancy name: Product-Led Storytelling.
And here's the backstory.
When I first got introduced to PLG, the reasoning that a great product could by itself drive growth didn't make sense to me. And that's because the narrative was that gone are the need for marketing and sales.
I asked myself...
What if a product never goes viral (like Zoom, Slack, and regular examples leveraged to sell the PLG narrative)? And if truly people no longer want to talk to sales but solve their problems by themselves, how does one find a product without being sold to or marketed to?
These questions led me to two things:
1) We all love stories.
2) We all still love and need products, whether we love to sold to or marketed to.
As a content marketer, I thought of how to wield two things no one can tell if our love for would ever get over, using the skill I loved... content marketing.
It's then I thought of telling product stories in a way that doesn't really come off as sales or marketing...
I called it Product-Led Storytelling...
And defined it in a piece for OpenView Partners like this:
"At its core, product-led storytelling is a product-focused form of SaaS content marketing. In more detail, it's the art of crafting discoverable stories that show how your product will help people (specifically, your ICPs) overcome a specific challenge."
Nothing has advanced my career (and agency) more than this discovery.
And here's a beastly guide for anyone who wants to some more digging in:
This was seriously insightful! I'm inspired to try this approach to old content and see where we can weave our product in. If anybody has tried this with a marketplace/aggregator business model, let me know :)
This popped into my inbox just as I was about to write a brief for a blog...Thank god is all I can say. Now, instead, I'll go back to the client and get their product expertise and weave it into the piece. Honestly a revelation and the future for me. Thanks for posting.
That's fabulous to hear! Show me the final results when you have them :)
Great stuff.
I did give this approach a more fancy name: Product-Led Storytelling.
And here's the backstory.
When I first got introduced to PLG, the reasoning that a great product could by itself drive growth didn't make sense to me. And that's because the narrative was that gone are the need for marketing and sales.
I asked myself...
What if a product never goes viral (like Zoom, Slack, and regular examples leveraged to sell the PLG narrative)? And if truly people no longer want to talk to sales but solve their problems by themselves, how does one find a product without being sold to or marketed to?
These questions led me to two things:
1) We all love stories.
2) We all still love and need products, whether we love to sold to or marketed to.
As a content marketer, I thought of how to wield two things no one can tell if our love for would ever get over, using the skill I loved... content marketing.
It's then I thought of telling product stories in a way that doesn't really come off as sales or marketing...
I called it Product-Led Storytelling...
And defined it in a piece for OpenView Partners like this:
"At its core, product-led storytelling is a product-focused form of SaaS content marketing. In more detail, it's the art of crafting discoverable stories that show how your product will help people (specifically, your ICPs) overcome a specific challenge."
Nothing has advanced my career (and agency) more than this discovery.
And here's a beastly guide for anyone who wants to some more digging in:
https://vec.studio/product-led-storytelling-guide
This was seriously insightful! I'm inspired to try this approach to old content and see where we can weave our product in. If anybody has tried this with a marketplace/aggregator business model, let me know :)