Growth Lab

Every winning GTM strategy I participated in in 2024 had one thing in common: Strong and hands-on product team involvement.  Often in my career, I have had a bitter-sweet experience with product teams.  “Here is the product - now get us 10,000 users & good luck.” So many things can go wrong … Vanilla positioning, unsustainable pricing, underwhelming product, wrong ICP selection … The sooner you join forces with your product team, the better job can you do in:  - Optimal product prioritization - Alignment with business goals  - Generation of the right intelligence  - Pricing and sustainable business model - Positioning and messaging to win customers  - Orchestrate the right channels and GTM Motions Product Marketing is still one of the most undervalued roles in a go-to-market process. Learn how they can support your go-to-market mission from the image below. 💬 Comment: Who is responsible for your go-to-market strategy and execution?  ♻️ Share: To help more companies build GTM strategy  ➕ Connect with Aatir Abdul Rauf if you want to learn more about product marketing.

Strategic work is impossible to do within 30-minute breaks between meetings. You need time and space to focus. Here are five techniques that help me liberate my mind for strategic work: 1. 𝐆𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 (and office) ☕- something super simple such as changing your environment can supercharge your brain. Seek external inspiration and break some routines when you are doing strategy heavy lifting. 2. 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 🖼️- Many people fall into the analysis paralysis trap. At one point, you need to choose the methodology you will be using and stick with it. Reading another HBR article will not do the job for you. Say "enough is enough" when it comes to inputs and do the work. 3. 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐞 🐝 - when you are working in the group, the brain is buzzing - building on other ideas, forming new syntax, coming up with new ideas and solutions. Humans evolved to be tribal creatures. Tap the power of the hive mind. 4. 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 ⏳- While making decisions under pressure works well for some people, strategic decisions require deep thinking. You cannot really "timebox" yourself to have ground-breaking ideas. Be patient and kind to yourself and your team members. 5. 𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 🔬 - Strategy is an intelligent response to circumstances. Your best bet to get the best outcome. To nail this, you need to know what the circumstances are. No blind guesses - DYOR. Even talking with 10 customers unlocks new insights - some might be ground-breaking. What helps you think and focus?  How do you defend your strategic work slots and liberate your brain to think strategically? Let’s exchange best practices in comments while polishing our “Playing to win” strategies for 2025. ✌️

Hey PMMs, save THIS from Maja Voje 👇 I invested $30K+ in learning these best practices of 📈 highly converting landing pages - so you don’t have to. My landing pages convert at 8.5% on warm traffic (LinkedIn and Substack) and 2%+ on cold traffic (Meta ads). What is the secret? Forget standard rules 📐- my landing pages are very long. Our conversion Godzilla 🦖 has 44,351 characters. Here are 5 Conversion Boosters that will turn your landing pages into conversion-making machines: 1️⃣ Crystal Clear Value Proposition - what is in it for them? Pitch a promise immediately. 2️⃣ 360° Social Proof - customers, brands, experts, total numbers, your story. 3️⃣ Straightforward communiation with your ICP Ideal customer profile - for whom it is and for whom it isn’t. You are not Nutella. You cannot make everyone happy. 4️⃣ Detailed product overview - samples, more information, screenshots, videos, etc. 5️⃣ Money-back guarantee - if you believe that your products work, this should be a no-brainer. What makes your landing pages conversion-making machines? Let’s exchange best practices and grow together. ✌ -- 👋 P.S. What would you add? Make sure to give Maja a follow btw!

Tech founders often share their fears about hiring a Product Marketing Manager (PMM): 📛 "it's a fluff role that makes pretty slide decks." 📛 "they sound like expensive armchair strategists." 📛 "they ideate for other teams but don't really execute." Aatir Abdul Rauf debunked that in a guest post for this week's GTM Strategist newsletter. It's a non-fluff deep-dive on what a Product Marketing Manager really does and how they're unique from other roles. Figure out whether your team needs one now and what to look for in the right candidate. You will learn: → What is Product Marketing? → How is it different from other roles in the organization? → What the heck do PMMs do? The tangible outcomes. → What are signs that you need to hire one? → BONUS: What should you ask during interviews to gauge their caliber? What is your experience with Product Marketing roles? Let's discuss in the comments!

✨ Everything I've bought so far on Black Friday as a marketer✨ Consumers every year wait until Black Friday to shop, I also wait patiently... but for courses, programs, and tools to add to my ever-growing collection of marketing resources. I know the benefits of continued education, especially when it comes to marketing, and am a huge fan of buying digital courses from creators that I follow on LinkedIn. Aside from the many substack subscriptions I currently have, this year I picked up: ⭐ Ben's Bites: Funnily enough, I was looking on Gamma's LinkedIn to see if they were offering a deal (they weren't) but saw a discount for Ben Tossell's community instead. Took a look at the ungated content first, loved it, and purchased it. I use AI every single day at work and can't wait to work even faster in 2025. ⭐ The Science-based Playbook of SaaS Optimization: by Thomas McKinlay 🎓. I've actually been a subscriber of his newsletter for more than a year or two. I've only had it for 2 days now, and I've read this 48 page ebook TWICE already and have already used what I learned for my clients. Currently eyeing his membership platform... ⭐ The Ultimate GTM Toolkit: by Maja Voje . I actually opened up an email from Paweł Huryn and saw a callout at the end for Maja's GTM checklist. I wasn't familiar with her work in the past but took a look at her LinkedIn and watched some of her interviews on Youtube, it was clear that she knew what she was talking about. Ended up going from wanting to purchase the checklist to the whole toolkit :) ⭐ Substack subscriptions: I'll be saving this for another day because there are TONS of creators I follow on there. ⭐ A new laptop: I've been using my Macbook since 2015. It's served me well over the years; its been with me through three full-time jobs, my 2 year stay in Spain, and has helped me make more than 100K+ in freelance work.

I always believed I was a natural in sales - before I realized that my MeetRecord Score was 2.9/5 🤯 and that I am making some very predictable mistakes. For the past month, I have been testing the AI-powered revenue intelligence tool MeetRecord.  Overall, I recorded 26 meetings and learned that: 🏆 I am an excellent active listener (my average talking time is 53%)  🏆 I set up a nice and friendly tone of conversation 🏆 I ask a lot of questions But I should avoid these mistakes: ⛔ Not stating the agenda of the call at the beginning of the meeting  ⛔ Poor time management of the meetings when I ran out of time for questions ⛔ Set up a clear CTA at the meeting - what is the next step, commitment instead of my previous CTA: “Cool, now you know. Email me if you have any questions.” 🤦 🪄 I learned that with AI Sales Coach by MeetRecord. You can also generate good automated documents such as post-meeting emails or offers. Everything that I demonstrated in the video is accessible during their FREE trial, which lasts for 2 weeks. To fully unlock the potential of the product, consider upgrading to the paid version. This lets you use it for longer, analyze more calls, and get more accurate results to close deals faster. My MeetRecord experience was enjoyable - it was a competition with myself to get to a seller score of 4.0 in a month. I saw a reduction in sales cycles and closed more leads overall. I hope you will enjoy taking it for a spin, too.

Confused about positioning? 🤷 Here is a very helpful framework that will help you find your place to win in <30min. 3 simple but powerful steps: Positioning never happens in isolation. Your customers always compare you with something or someone. According to April Dunford, "something" can also be "do nothing". Here is how to think about positioning in a way that will help you identify your best place to win: 1. 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 - What are your prospects actually comparing you against? Forget desktop research. Ask them directly - answers like "Excel", "hire another person", and "outsourcing to an agency" may redefine your thinking. 2. 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚 - How do your target customers make their decisions? What matters to them? Think broader than price, effort, and savings. Some might hope that they will get promoted for choosing you 🤠 3. 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 - Score from 1 to 5 on how well a specific competitive alternative brings value based on each buying criterion. Be honest. By scoring and summing up the numbers, you will find a vacancy on the market where you can play to win. Do this.  It will open so many new horizons for testing your winning positioning. It is like the Battleships game for positioning. The author of this concept is Andrej Persolja.  April Dunford, Robert Kaminski 🎯, and Anthony Pierri 🎸 also publish great content on positioning. Follow them!

This AI tool got me a FREE ICP-qualified lead 🫨. I did not even have to write my emails. Here is what blew my mind:  → I did not have to write my own copy  → No email database building and enrichment  → No additional costs with email and domain warming tools. Instead:  → I applied at https://lnkd.in/dSP23sRq → I described my ICP in a human language and confirmed the sample  → Had a great call with Kular’s team member, who wrote messages for me 😯 Then I waited and got a free qualified lead. 🔌 This is plug-and-play outbound. For the last month, I have been testing Kular, an AI-powered email sales tool developed by an excellent team from the UK, a Y-Combinator-backed company. Kular’s offer: Only pay $150 per qualified lead. (The first lead is for free.) Take them on this offer while it lasts. This is still the "doing things that do not scale" stage for them. They go the extra mile. What is not to like? I am happy to answer questions in the comments.  I hope I can scale this for my workshops. #sponsored

If I had to close 10 new customers next week, I would prioritize these 3 tactics: 1. 𝐀𝐬𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 🤝. Your customers have positive experiences with you. I bet you will get at least 5 warm intros if you send 50 emails to your existing customers. (+ 📱 phonebook hack: scroll through your contacts and find potential leads) 2. 𝐔𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 🔊. Go where the audience is. Post case studies on social media and communities (groups) relevant to your target audience. You should get at least 3 qualified leads per a great case study. No case studies? Create a no-brainer foot-in-the-door offer or pitch free audits. 3. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 50 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬 📋 and reach out to them. Do not overthink how - do the research, pitch how you can help, attach an analysis or a case study if they are interested in working with you, and sign new clients. This is what I would do. What would you do? Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.  Let’s finish 2024 strong 🎯

Based on an analysis of 100+ Unicorns 🦄, there are 12 ways companies can get their first customers. I call them 𝐆𝐓𝐌 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: 1. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 ↳ Wide appeal without legacy dominance. Example: RB2B 2. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 ↳ Customers actively searching for a solution. Example: Userpilot 3. 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 [𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲] ↳ Integration-heavy or nascent markets. Example: Tella 4. 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 (𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐤 🪝) ↳ Many alternatives and adoption hurdles. Example: lemlist 5. 𝐅𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 ↳ Low lock-in and many alternatives. Example: Convex 6. 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 [𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲] ↳ Niche appeal without legacy domination. Example: Usersnap 7. 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 [& get online buzz] ↳ Self-serve products in legacy-dominated markets. Example: Tally 8. 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥-𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐏𝐑 ↳ Products with a strong social mission. Example: Perplexity 9. 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐬 ↳ Products in new categories. Example: Cello 10. 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐛 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 ↳ Geographically constrained, non-legacy markets. Example: Rows.com 11. 𝐇𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 ↳ Straightforward offerings with high-intent customers. Example: Favikon 12. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫-𝐟𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫-𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 ↳ Customers needing complex, nuanced solutions. Example: Command AI (fka CommandBar) Unicorns didn’t start with massive budgets and large teams. Early GTM actions are scrappy, but they get you in a good fit for scaling. How did you get your first customers?  Share in the comments and ♻ this post to help more companies win.