TTV is the time before customers experience the value promised after 'purchasing' the product (e.g., a free trial or a freemium).
Let's take @canva as an example. You can use it immediately. You get sucked in and don't even notice that you've just become their customer! :)
You can easily minimize #TTV by using the Bowling Alley Framework. It's like using "bumpers" to guide users to the outcome your product promises.
There are two types of bumpers:
1. Product Bumpers
Their goal is to help adopt the product within the application.
a. Welcome Messages — displayed after logging in. It's an opportunity to greet users, make them feel invited, and restate the value proposition. They can also set expectations.
b. Product Tours — Eliminate distractions and allow users to focus only on the most critical options. It commonly starts with the question about what users would like to accomplish with the product. Let your users choose their adventure.
c. Progress Bars — Help users understand what's their progress. It's a good practice to start with a substantial percentage of the bar filled in so that users can feel that they are already underway instead of starting from scratch.
e. Onboarding Tooltips — Helpful messages are displayed when interacting with application elements (e.g., mouse hover). It shouldn't be too intrusive; e.g., forcing users to click every detail on a page may not be a good idea.
f. Empty states — After the first login, many applications are tedious. There is no data specific to you; without it, it's virtually impossible to understand what value you will get once you start using the product.
There are two ways:
a) Present users required steps and prompt them to take action.
b) Prevent it from happening. Dynamics 365 Sales populates every trial with sample data. I presented it at the beginning of this article.
Conversational bumpers work to educate the users, set their expectations, bring them back to the application, and eventually upgrade their accounts. I selected the two most popular forms:
a. User Onboarding Emails — can include welcome messages, usage tips, sales touch (to upgrade accounts), case studies, communicating the benefits, information about trial expiration, or post-trial surveys. You can easily automate most of them.
b. Explainer Videos — The name is self-explanatory. Videos can generate even 1200% more engagement than text and images. I highly recommend it, especially for complex products.
As a PM, you need to remember that every product serves two purposes:
- Creating value for the customers
- Capturing some part of that value for the business
But many product teams struggle with the latter.
(1/9)
The most popular discovery tool, the Opportunity Solution Tree, is excellent for teams focused solely on customer value (many teams in large organizations).
But it doesn’t always help you pinpoint capturing business value.
Because it wasn’t designed for this.
(2/9)
Some suggest using the Impact Mapping technique.
Here, affecting business outcomes comes naturally. But the tool is missing two critical elements:
- No connection between feature ideas and customer needs > poor insights
- Identifying and testing assumptions > waste and rework
- Asking customers about the requirements.
- Writing detailed specifications.
- Creating prototypes and wireframes.
- Assigning tasks to developers.
- Verifying and accepting the work of others.
(1/10)
- Obsessing over velocity, deadlines, and roadmaps.
- Mastering Scrum or any other framework to perfection.
- Acting like the CEO of the product.
Anyone can do that.
(2/10)
It’s about:
- Understanding customers' problems, needs, and desires.
- Understanding the market and the business in depth.
- Collaborating closely with engineers and designers.
- Identifying opportunities, finding solutions, and tackling the risks together.
They refer to the metrics related to the organization’s goals, for example:
- profit margin grew by 5%
- churn rate was reduced by 10%
Product teams typically cannot influence them directly, so they need to be translated into product outcomes.
(3/10) 2. Product Outcomes
At the product level, we may decide that a way to decrease the churn rate (impact a business outcome) is to increase customer engagement, measured, e.g., as the total number of hours customers watch videos every month.
5 core GTM principles with free frameworks and templates:
(I couldn't believe it's all free)
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(2/12) 1. The Product-Market Fit Cycle
Getting to the PMF is not "magic." It involves cycles of validating assumptions in the early GTM stages, such as:
- Who should be your ICP?
- How should you charge?
- What price to set?
- How good should the MVP be?
- How will you attract customers to your product?