CXL - We're in 'beyond product' era

Your host today is Peep Laja, Founder at CXL

A winning strategy 10 years ago: build an objectively better product + some marketing.

A winning strategy today: great product + win on things beyond the product (brand, narrative, positioning, messaging, POV marketing).

A decade ago the market had way more openings in the market. Coming out with a product that made something easier/faster/better was a solid approach and people hopped on a better solution.

Today most markets are saturated and breaking at the seams.

While innovation will always be a strong play, less than 1% of companies are truly innovative. 99% play in existing categories and have tens if not hundreds of direct (often well-funded) competitors.

You absolutely need a strong product, but it's not enough anymore.

To win, you need to make smart plays about things beyond the product: how you position it, the stories you tell, what kind of marketing you do, how you do messaging, building a brand, and so on.

The key ingredient to winning: speeding up feedback loops to find what resonates with the customers, faster.

Nobody knows what will work. Nobody has a crystal ball. So everyone is making bets, looking for positive signals. Based on those signals, you either lean in or adjust course.

While most are still taking weeks and months to react (build-measure-learn), winners get feedback from their target market in a day or two. They can iterate and get to things that work so much faster.

You need to move beyond traditional planning cycles based on data representing how the world used to be. Instead, you need an intelligence system.

Speeding up feedback loops requires accurate, nearly real-time data, distributed broadly and quickly, and presented in detail so team members can see and react to patterns in deciding for themselves what to do.

Planning systems constrain information to those who “need to know.” Intelligence systems require democratizing data. You can't move fast unless you give everyone access and enable autonomous decision-making.

Invest in systems that enable you to get better intelligence on your target customer. Iterate and validate in days, not weeks and months.

If we play chess and you can make 2 moves every time I make 1, you beat me every single time. Even if I'm a better chess player.

Connect with Peep on LinkedIn.

Your weekly dose of marketing updates

1. Playbook community

Whatever your audience is, they don't want the raw data. They want the main takeaways, told through a story, visually.

That's what Tim Wilson, Senior Analytics Director at Search Discovery, will teach you with this playbook playlist.

It features everything from preparing the right story, reducing cognitive load and creating the actual presentation.

Get your free data visualization playbooks here.

Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Inside the Playbook community, you can suggest improvements or help us update playbooks with comments. We pick the top contributors and feature their work.

2. What is growth hacking really?

Growth hacking is how Slack went from 15,000 to half a million daily users in its first year. It’s why Canva can call itself a multibillion-dollar platform and how ConvertKit pulled itself up to compete with goliaths like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor.

Growth hacking isn’t about deploying sleazy tricks. It’s about making calculated, data-driven moves for fast growth.

In this article, you’ll learn what growth hacking in marketing is and what it’s not. We’ll look at strategies to reach and engage potential users and break down examples of brands that have used growth hacking to achieve success.

Read the entire article here.

3. CXL job board

Some great new job offers on CXL’s Job Board this week. There’s more here.

If you want top brands to reach out to you, sign up for CXL Talent Pool. It's free. 

And if you're a company looking to directly access the best marketing talent and skip all the spammy applicants, apply here.

4. Lates episode on How to Win 

Jean-René Boidron is the person you want to hear talking when it comes to raising brand awareness via prioritizing product quality.

He's the President and CEO at Kameleoon, an A/B testing, full-stack, and personalization platform.

He can tell you all about why they focused on non-English speaking market openings before expanding globally.

Listen to him spill his beans on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or your favorite podcast platform. 

5. It depends

In the world of experimentation, things aren’t always black and white. Often the answer to any good question is: “It depends.” That’s the inspiration behind our new show, featuring Speero’s senior strategists Paul Randall and Shiva Manjunath.

Check out the first episode here. They discuss "Should you always go with 90 or 95% statistical significance to declare a winner?"

First time here? You can get these weekly by subscribing here.

Ognjen Bošković
Growth Lead at CXL

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