Strategy | Concept

In this essay, I will try to define one of the marketing principles, which can help Fibery build a strong brand, attract more customers, and grow to $5M ARR. Think about it like a concept, not an actual strategy to implement (I need more time and data to form that one). Hope you find it interesting.

When we think about marketing activities, channels, and their metrics, we need to define some framework in the first place, which helps us structure our mind in some way, set up clear goals and metrics, and inspire us with ideas on instruments and activities.

For me, this framework is Customer Journey. The core idea behind this framework is that you split the buying process into steps, define customer needs in every step and in the overall process, and focus on these points to move the customer further on his journey (into your product).

Fibery has different customer segments (software developers, product management teams, digital agencies, startups), which may have different journeys, so I chose one of them to illustrate my ideas—Software Development. Disclaimer: I haven’t conducted in-depth interviews with Fibery customers yet, so I put some hypotheses about the Fibery customer way.

<aside> 👋🏻 So, meet Eric!

Eric is a CTO at MoveMove Inc. and he is trying to find a solution that helps him to run the dev process in his company.

So, to find the right solution he needs to go through four steps:

1. First, he needs to discover the landscape of existing tools. He googles something like “software development tools”, and goes to some hubs like AlternativeTo, G2, ProductHunt, and so on. He also recalls some apps which he saw in the past and wants to try now. At the end of this research Eric has a long list of apps that seems suitable to his need—Let’s call it the Discovery step;
2. Now, time to know each other closer. Eric has some questions and needs which he tried to match while scrolling through app sites: “Can I integrate it with our GitHub? How the dev process is structured here? What’s the core idea behind this tool? What about pricing and support?” Finally, he set aside some apps which don't meet his needs (or he thinks so), and he has a short list—It was an Explore step;
3. Next, he wants to Try these apps by himself to be sure it able to fit his processes. He can start with the template or with the blank space and try to fit some of his processes inside this app. Finally, he has a “candidate”—an app that seems fully suitable for his needs and goals;
4. And now, Eric needs to Engage his team using this app and move their processes because the endpoint is to do the job inside this app together. It may take time, but in the end everyone is happy! </aside>

So, thats how one of customer journeys may look. We define four steps that we should pay attention during Eric's journey, and may ask ourselves specific questions about every step:

• Is it enough Discovery in our marketing? Do the prospects even know about us?

• Do we reflect customer needs in our communication?

• How to engage non-tech users in our product? How to make it easier for them?

  (I suppose this question lies more in the Product field, but I think the marketing and product teams should collaborate and impact each other. For example, the Whiteboard feature totally blow my mind and I want to talk to everybody about it, because I thought nobody still combine structured and unstructured data in one app)

When we split our main goal (i.e. ARR) into specific metrics and steps, it becomes easier to think about these questions and make some hypotheses on how to lift growth metrics.