How to design an effective user engagement strategy

THE INTRODUCTION

Hello 👋 Marketing Context Fam!! Welcome to this week’s edition.

In todays edition of product marketing for startup marketing deep dive we unpack a critical startup marketing process of “driving early user engagement”. We will cover:

• Why a user engagement matters for startup marketer

• Unpack the core concepts

• Look at an example

• Role of marketer

• Resources

THE CONTEXT

Why it matter?

Engagement is oxygen for early startup. And why is that? Simple, with just an idea or a MVP to boot, it is difficult to drive growth unless you build a early audience.

And audience building requires that you invest in engagement from the very beginning. This brings us back to where we started- "Engagement is oxygen for early startups"

Why do you need engagement to start with?

Statistics show that that you need a minimum of 5 people to test a product.

(Source: https://maze.co/blog/user-testing-how-many-users/)

If you are an early startup then getting this 5 users itself can be a daunting task. Unless ofcourse you ask your friends and family.

However the challenge is deeper then just testing, you also want to access the market, its size, competitors as well as build the foundation for growth
For founding PMM therefore the approach to driving user engagement becomes critical now, because unless you have a game plan you will be out of the game soon

THE DEEP DIVE

Cracking the core

Imagine being a startup marketing manager in an exciting early staged startup. You have been tasked with the enviable job driving the engagement for your product which is linked with multiple outcomes like, user acquisition, product idea/MVP validation, early growth and awareness building.

Now the big question is- Where do you start?

Before jumping head on, the first step is to define your engagement objective. Typically your engagement strategy should guide your startup toward product user fit and eventually product market fit

What is product user fit?. The role of the product marketing manager in early startup is to ensure that that we find the right user for our product and ensure that the product is made available to the right users.

Therefore the core elements of your engagement strategy should start with finding product user fit leading up to product market fit.

Your early product user fit should be based on the usage and experience of your ECP ( Early User Profile). This is typically should be the starting point in your engagement strategy and for every PMM it is imperative that they identify and engage this set of users at the very beginning.

Eventually your user engagement then should seamlessly progress through the early stage (ECP) to the growth stage ( ICP) by focusing on the motivation and the workflow

Define your ECP ( early customer profile) leading up to your ICP

This is a preliminary sketch of your initial customer base. It identifies the first adopters who are most likely to be drawn to your new product or service because they're comfortable with taking risks and trying out innovative solutions.

How do you identify them: ECPs are often based on informed assumptions and educated guesses due to limited data in the early stages of your startup. You might leverage initial market research, competitor analysis, and the problems you're solving to form this profile.

What purpose does it serve: The ECP helps you validate your product concept, gather initial user feedback, and iterate quickly to achieve product-market fit. Think of it as a stepping stone to reach your ideal customer.

Think of the ECP as a rough sketch of your dream home, capturing the essential features you envision. The customer profile is the detailed blueprint with specific measurements and design details, ensuring your dream home perfectly fits your needs.

For ECP define your user workflow and identify touchpoints to engage. ( Specially during the idea to MVP)

If you have a demo/beta or a working product, the for growth stage design a traffic inflow strategy to drive engagement with your ICP 

Designing your engagement framework.

Once you have designed and framed your user profile, it is now time to design the engagement strategy.

The first step is to map the user journey based on the funnel: Awareness, consideration, intent, action ( onboarding) and retrospective ( experience, growth monetization etc. at risk or drop off)

• Map the value being sought

• Define your engagement elements

• Adding value at each stage

• Give direction with the Meaningful CTA

• Designing a tiered user engagement loop

• Make it benefit led

• CTA

Having designed your engagement roadmap, it is now time to define how and where to engage your target users.

The two core elements for this are your content and platform

Your engagement strategy requires you to design an outreach campaign or create a presence where your audience exists

To define this I like to use the RICE framework to priorities and attribute outcome

STRATEGIES IN ACTION

Robinhood is a online free trading app. It bust into the scene in 2013, shaking up the traditional market of stock investing.

The challenge:

Robinhood entered a very crowed marketed dominated by a plethora of big investment firms.

Its Mission: To make investing accessible to all.

The game plan: ( how was it solved)

Robinhood aggressively invested in building a community around their product even before they launched

They mapped their user journey through awareness, to engage to acquire stage and implemented a gamified user engagement strategy

They leveraged social media extensively, specially twitter to engage their early users and invested in developing a lead list.

Their pre product launch engagement strategy was designed to drive signups and referrals. They gamified the entire process by designing a leaderboard strategy which encouraged their early users to refer.

For the entire campaign, Robinhood adopted a build in public approach, sharing updates and feedback thorough social media and also keeping their users aware of the progress being made with their product.

The outcome:

Robinhood did their app launch of their product in mid 2014 and by this time they had almost half a million signups. By the time the app was launched, Robinhood had surpassed 1 million signups for their app.

The learnings:

Robinhood is a awesome case study on how to engage users using emotional and benefit hook and keeping them excited by adding gratification as an element of engagement throughout the engagement funnel.

MARKETING MINDSET MOMENT

Product marketing manager specially in startups have a big role to play in driving user engagement. Their role is map the user journey and then also define the engagement strategy for each touchoupoint
Startup environment is different, and the one skill that I feel is the most critical to succeed is “Adaptability”

Why is this the most critical skill, 5 reasons below

1. 𝗥𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗱 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲
2. 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶- 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴
3. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝘆
4. 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
4. 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸

RESOURCES ON SPOTLIGHT

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal (https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products-ebook/dp/B00LMGLXTS)

• Engaged: Loyalty in a Hypercompetitive World by Jeanne Liedtka and Karen Margolis (https://advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/building-customer-loyalty)

• Playmaker: How to Win in Innovation with Customer Centricity by Kevin Maney (https://advertising.amazon.com/library/research/growth-tactics-amazon-it)

Resources:

• Startup Metrics for Pirates: A Pirate's Guide to Growth by Dave McClure (https://medium.com/i-want-to-be-a-product-manager-when-i-grow-up/startup-metrics-for-pirates-aarrr-15fe3a38cf2e) (This book also has a great companion website: https://medium.com/i-want-to-be-a-product-manager-when-i-grow-up/startup-metrics-for-pirates-aarrr-15fe3a38cf2e)

• User Onboarding: The Art of Turning New Users into Engaged Customers by Samuel Harris (https://www.useronboard.com/) (This resource also has a great blog: https://www.useronboard.com/)

• GrowthHackers: Actionable Strategies for Growth Hacking Success (https://blog.growthhackers.com/)So, this is it for the week. If you liked this deep dive to share it and leave a comment. Love to hear more from you on how you find these deep dives and what you would like me to focus