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Product Marketing Project
New Feature Launch

This is a redacted version of a homework assignment I completed as a candidate in Q3 2023. The role is the first product marketer at a Series A fintech SaaS company. The assignment is as follows: 

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Spend no more than 1-2 hours completing this. We care more about substance than beauty. 

 

Challenge: We're releasing the new feature/product, Identity Verification (IDV), into the COMPANY NAME product suite. 
 

About IDV/key features/selling points

  • Identity verification service for user onboarding/KYC (know your customer).

  • Mitigate fraud with instant ID verification. Combat identity theft with our advanced Identity Verification services.

  • 3D face mapping technology to instantly and accurately identify your customers in your onboarding process 

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Make a plan for this launch by answering these questions:

  • Who should we target?

  • What metric should we try to move?

  • What is the key message you would want to get across / what is the value prop?

  • What content would you create?

  • How would you distribute this content?

  • What other marketing activities would you do?

  • Besides yourself, who would you need help from on this launch?

  • Anything else we should keep in mind?

Who should we target?

Summary

  1. Existing customers

  2. Early adopters within our SAM niche

Detailed

First and most importantly, existing customers. I believe that is almost always the best ROI on resources, and think it would hold true in this case. No CAC, they already know (and hopefully) love the product, are much more willing to provide candid feedback and purchase (we’re already in), etc. 


Then triangulate the early adopters, who match most or all of these characteristics:  

  • Already use ID identity verification in their onboarding flow.

  • High fidelity identity verification is crucial for their business model. 

  • Sign up flow yield is a key drop off point in the customer journey. 

  • Do not currently use a product with 3D face mapping technology (if possible to ascertain). 

  • Our existing customers are a meaningful reference point. 

  • Actively advertising to acquire new customers.  


With those generalities leading the charge, I made an effort to get more granular. I used COMPANY NAME’s customers, COMPANY NAME’s founders’ former companies, and COMPETITOR NAME’s customers as a base case. Then from this dataset, I took a pulse of the industry/segments I see as potentially relevant. The following table show total headcount estimate: 

Admittedly, headcount isn’t the best - but it’s something to start with. I’d go much deeper on this in role, for now, let’s say this points to the US and financial services as the largest SAM. This aligns nicely with COMPANY NAME’s existing customers and founders’ former companies. COMPETITOR NAME’s customer base appears to be much wider spread across industries. I’d use counter-positioning as a tailored specifically for financial services ‘enterprise grade’ solution. I bet there’s a better term than enterprise grade to use here. 


So we’re looking for the ‘early adopter’ characteristics in the financial services space, with a lean towards the US locale. To me, anything to do with Crypto currency and/or alternative asset classes seems like a great segment to start with - then moving upstream from there, leveraging the founders as a foothold for large enterprise customers (e.g. CUSTOMER NAME, CUSTOMER NAME, CUSTOMER NAME). 

What metric should we try to move?

Summary

​Sales engaged accounts. 

Detailed

If I have to choose only one, I’d choose the number of accounts sales engages with (SALs in waterfall funnel speak, but existing customers too).

 

The rationale is as follows:

  • We’re a new company with a new product suite, launching an even newer capability. I’m assuming there’s a myriad of knowledge we don’t yet know. 

  • I’d prefer to tether to a financial outcome for the business - but at this stage, there’s probably too many unknowns in between. 

    • Additionally, something like revenue or pipe can be skewed by a few big wins.

    • And is too far from a controllable input, again at this stage. 

  •  What I want at this moment in time is: 

    • Something I/we can realistically move and calibrate quickly to. 

    • To learn by injecting energy into spinning the feedback loops (internal and external). 

  • Lastly, HIRING MANAGER mentioned the sales leader/team is strong. I’d look to leverage the strength by focusing on sales activity out of the gate.

What is the key message you would want to get across / what is the value prop?

Summary

  • Who we are and what we believe

  • the problem customers have

  • our approach to solving the problem. 

  • Pain/gain across the dimensions of cost, time, and risk. 

    • Risk being most important. 

  • Use the 3D face mapping capability as the chief protagonist.

Detailed

Another assumption - almost all or all of our potential customers are verifying identity somehow already. Which means they know the problem(s) and have solved the problem before. So we have an established status quo to compete against and in some cases, personal or organizational pride to contend with. All that is to say two things. 

 

First, we’ll need to be considerate in our messaging - e.g. not saying there’s something wrong or stupid about how they’re solving the problem today. 

 

Second, we need them to change. Change requires buyers to change how they think, how they perceive, and then take action on it. For the adult brain to change (rewire), it requires the learner to self-direct. So we need to give them a compelling reason or reasons why their current vantage point isn’t optimal. Then ensure they have the pathways to learn about our vantage point. 

 

What about the messaging? Did I lose the thread? Almost :). Let’s get to it. 

 

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I’d go with a narrative arc and sprinkle in pain/gain to each part. What does that look like in practical theory? 

  • What we believe and why

  • Our fresh POV on the space and problem customers face 

  • Our approach to solving the identify verification problem (+evangelise the problem!)

  • The product story (what it is, why and how we made the thing)

  • Where we believe our product, approach, and the space are headed in the future

 

In the value portion of things, I see three ways this product helps customers: risk, time, cost. Out of these, I believe risk is the paramount dimension. 

 

In pain/gain format, something like: 

  • Reduce risk / future sustainability and investment

  • Reduce time / solve more problems

  • Reduce cost / free up capital to allocate or retain (FCF)

 

And before we close this section, one more thing. If I understand correctly, the 3D face mapping capability is the super special part. The approach outlined above will create a natural wedge, customers either agree or don’t. After that, I’d use the 3D face mapping as the secondary wedge, customers either think it’s cool/useful or not. I’d dress it up of course with all the trimmings, why it’s important, how it works, what’s in it for customers, etc. 

 

I like to pick out a critical component that shines a light on uniqueness and forces a choice. I think the 3D face mapping is that critical component here. Consequently, it’d be the chief protagonist of the product story.

What content would you create?

Summary

​A balance of written and visual content, flexible enough to be re-packaged in multiple ways, heavy dose of evidence based argumentation. 

Detailed

  • Evidence (product efficacy/scores/research, social proof, pain/gain research and data, customer stories, etc.)

  • This flows through the rest of the content, and should produce stand alone content as well. 

  • Long form copy 

  • Short form copy

  • Webpages (product page, sprinkle where appropriate across the site)

  • Referral - people not named COMPANY talking about COMPANY

  • Product in action (visual)

  • Short form video

  • Short form webinar (20-30 mins)

  • Audio (if we can get distribution)

How would you distribute this content?

Summary

Owned assets, contacts, organic channels. 

Detailed

  • Email

    • Nurture flow

    • Newsletter

    • Customers

    • Contacts

  • Social (including video platforms)

    • All that we currently or will be playing in, multiple times/ways 

    • Company and personals

  • Website

    • Stand alone web page

    • Sprinkle into rest of site as appropriate

  • Sales tools

    • One pager

    • Sales meeting decks

    • Battlecards

  • PR/referral avenues

    • Podcast appearances

    • Investors

    • Industry publications

    • Content creators

    • Existing customers (as appropriate)

What other marketing activities would you do?

Summary

Tactical paid activities, ‘ABM lite’, boots on the ground event, customer workshop. 

Detailed

If we have the budget and bandwidth, I’d advocate for very tactical paid search, paid social, newsletters and podcast ad placements to augment organic efforts.

 

I’d like to explore ‘ABM lite’ for a handful of high propensity to purchase accounts. ABM seems like a great fit for the product, market segment, and team.

 

If feasible, a boots on the ground event in a target geographic segment would be fantastic to pair with the launch.

 

Lastly, a customer workshop with one or several existing customers would be excellent. 

Besides yourself, who would you need help from on this launch?

Summary

Company leadership team, product SME. 

Detailed

Definitely the marketing and sales leadership, and the founders. If we can’t ‘tool’ our way to high quality video assets, then I’d need help there. The last thing that comes to mind is someone(s) who can help me become intimately familiar with the product - current, roadmap, landscape, etc. 

Anything else we should keep in mind?

First off, if I had more time and was in role, this would be replicated as a deck or interactive document. In the time constraint, I thought this was the best format to communicate a sufficient amount of information. 


Based on my understanding and observation of where COMPANY NAME is right now, I wouldn’t recommend this launch plan for the current state. I’d certainly want to roll out to customers, and have it as part of our capabilities set. The part I’d recommend holding on is using the launch to acquire net new folks. I’d rather get a few foundational pieces in place before launching to maximize ROI.


You may infer that I don’t subscribe to the idiom that you can launch more than once, which would be correct. I think launching, then relaunching the same thing is a really good way to lose trust. It’s also a suboptimal use of resources. 


I’d be very happy to change my thinking on this in the face of new information, to be clear. Just adding my $0.02 for now :) 

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