Growth Newsletter #112

"If you sell to everyone, you sell to no one." – Common saying remixed many ways.

Most startups get a bad case of shiny objective syndrome: trying to collect a bunch of wins, and sacrificing focus in the process. Examples:

Product: They want to have a “rich feature set.” Which turns into a feature dump.‍

Messaging: They want to make as many sales as possible. Which results in distilled messaging that connects with no one. 

The almost-inevitable result: The team spreads itself too thin, employees feel lost, and growth suffers.

Three ways to overcome shiny objective syndrome:

#1) Define your core persona. Make it niche—almost scarily so.

Lenny Rachitsky calls this the “super-specific who.” Examples he shares from companies’ early days:

• Substack: “successful veteran online newsletter writers”
• Cameo: “B-list athletes in Chicago”

#2) Define your north star metric and the levers that move it.

Examples:

• Monthly active newsletter subscribers
• Orders
• Number of transactions per week
• Percentage of paid subscribers

What levers affect active newsletter subscribers?

• New monthly subscriber rate
• Unsubscribe rate
• Email bounce and spam rate
• Open and click rates

So, if active newsletter subscribers is the North Star Metric, every one of your growth initiatives should be centered on those levers.

#3) Try fewer channels for more concentrated growth.

Don't invest in Twitter, TikTok, SEO, influencers, Facebook Ads, and cold emails all at once.

Look for the one or two channels that have the greatest chance of success, given your specific goals and constraints.

The seven criteria we recommend considering are: scale, targetability, effort, time to results, intent, context, and cost.

Nail one, scale it up, systemize it, and only then move on.

Imagine you own a mountainside rental property and want to attract more applicants. Which of these statements do you find more useful when writing the listing?

1. George is a single 32-year-old software engineer in Philadelphia. He has a bachelor’s degree, earns $120k/year, and lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his pet dog.
   
   
2. George is feeling cooped up working from his downtown apartment—with very little green space for his energetic border collie.

We’re guessing #2.  

Knowing that, you would emphasize that your property is dog-friendly, has a yard, and has many nearby nature trails and excellent Wi-Fi.

Then why do we all build customer personas that sound like #1? Focused on demographic details like age, education, and profession.

It’s not that this info is irrelevant—but you’ll attract more of your ideal customer when you focus your messaging around your customers’ frustrations and motivations. Not their demographic and firmographic details.

Otherwise you get this:

 When developing personas, prioritize answering these questions:

• What are prospects stressed about?
• Where are they looking for solutions?
• What solutions are they trying, and what are their shortcomings?
• How do prospects describe success?
• What are they nervous about?

These questions follow the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework, a customer-centered approach where companies focus on meeting users’ real-life needs, aka jobs. Use it to pinpoint where and how your product provides the most value.

You likely have oodles of sales pages on your site, but do you have an “Objection Smasher?” 

This is a landing page that lists the top 5-10 reasons why people don’t buy your product or why they churn.

Seems like a potentially bad idea telling people how you don't live up to expectations, right?

So, what’s the point of creating an Objection Smasher? 

I bet whenever you buy something, you almost always consider multiple products or vendors. And so do your leads.

And since every company is trying to sell to them, they’re usually wary when companies claim that their "the best," or that they're for everyone. 

An Objection Smasher builds trust and credibility with potential buyers since it acknowledges upfront why others churn or choose another business over yours.

And you can even weigh in to explain why certain customers aren’t a good fit for your product, or what you’re doing to improve your product further.

Here are a few examples of Objection Smashers:

• Drift’s article, “4 Reasons Customers Quit Drift in 2017,” lists their top customer complaints and then explains how they’re tackling these issues.
• Monday.com chooses a slightly different angle by naming Salesforce as its best alternative.

The Objection Smasher addresses common objections and builds trust—so chances are the leads who see it yet still continue to move down your marketing funnel will actually convert.