Weekly Notes

I'm standing in as the decision maker while our product manager is out on vacation for 2.5 weeks. Here are the three big concepts I use for product planning.

Product marketers usually want to influence the product roadmap but can't. Here are the three things I do that have enabled me to help shape our product roadmap.

Those who know their customers best win. But many marketers and product people don't know much about their customers. Here are the ways I've found valuable customer insights to share with the team.

This additional step in our product planning process has improved our prioritization and provided more clarity for the team. Most importantly, it prevented us from building features we shouldn't be building.

Nathan Barry built a $15 million ARR company by being his own customer. Tim Soulo helped build the best SEO tool by growing Ahrefs blog with Ahrefs. Here lies the recipe for building great products.

We tried OKRs unsuccessfully at Buffer. But I still believe it's a great system for improving execution. Here are the things I wish I had known back then.

An often overlooked aspect of marketing is packaging. Here's the packaging experiment that grew our trial starts and MRR.

We have three products at Buffer but customers couldn't easily try them together. I spent a few months working on two bundle experiments. Here's the behind-the-scenes for the first one.

For my first year as a product marketer at Buffer, I was mostly reacting to things. I decided to write a job description to create a structure for myself so that I can be more proactive.

Disney's partnership with Verizon, Disney+ as a distribution channel, and going behind Buffer's new homepage

Today, I want to share how we have altered our marketing at Buffer in face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the current situation feels like an opportunity to test and find new distribution channels.

It is hard to discuss many things without mentioning the COVID-19 situation. The pandemic is taking lives and also threatening businesses and livelihoods. The lower foot traffic in many countries has affected many physical stores, which are struggling to even stay afloat now. What can they do?

On Friday, I organized a small meetup to discuss social media marketing with a few marketers from various backgrounds. At one point, an agency owner shared that if a small business has a small fixed budget, he would recommend them to invest in paid social rather than organic social (or both).

This week is a highlight of my time at Buffer. We shipped a strategically important experiment, which I have been leading for about eight months. About 15 people were involved in big and small ways. You can read about it in the next section.