3 builders who never spoke to each other

Put customers on your channel, not the product

Featuring what customers do with the tool flatters the accounts you most want to keep and shows new users what it is capable of, and it never reads as advertising. Building the use-case post out of their own public words, or curating a whole audience around their work before your catalogue appears, sells membership rather than features.

The method

1. 01

   Run a blog dedicated to interesting things your customers do with the product: it doubles as customer research, flatters your best accounts, gets them promoting you to their own followers, and teaches newcomers what good use looks like.

2. 02

   Build the use-case post out of screenshots of customers describing your product in their own words, one per audience you serve.

3. 03

   For a product business, curate the work of the customers you want rather than your own catalogue, and the audience arrives before the pitch does

4. 04

   Put your customers in the spotlight, because making them look good reflects onto you and never reads as advertising.

5. 05

   Market membership and inclusion explicitly, because for some customers belonging to the group matters more than the product's quality.

What it returned

• 1.4

  Artisan Born curated custom woodworking and grew to nearly a quarter of a million followers before it was obvious they sell wood slabs; Art of Visuals reached over 1.4 million followers purely by featuring other photographers, then built products and a list on top

• The author names Airtable, Typeform and Fomo as companies doing this well, and notes Case Study Buddy sells it as a service

• Rand Fishkin structures each of the six sections around a named customer's public post, from agency founders to in-house marketers, rather than writing the use case himself.

• Author cites Strava, Gumroad, Square and Product Hunt.

Sources

• The hidden reasons why people are using your softwareJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · The hidden reasons why people are using your software · undated
• My Twitter Inspiration HandbookHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · 14/ Celebrate customers · undated
• How to grow an audience through curating contentNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Promoting your own products · 2018-12-03
• Six Ways SparkToro's Early Customers Use Our Product - SparkToroRand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · Using SparkToro for Digital PR · undated
• Idea Pad: Guest starring customer templates - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · 2019-01-04