Do You Know When a Prospect Says Eureka?

Jen Grant, Looker CMO, talks about finding your company’s “aha” moments. Without knowing “aha” moments, companies become unfocused and move in too many different directions at once, which is ultimately bad for business. Read more about how Jen previously found her customer “aha” moments while working at Box, and how she finds them today working at Looker

In the earlier article titled “Leads aren't Everything. Find the Metrics that Drive your Business”, I mentioned that Chamath Palihapitiya had shared with the Box executive team his story of finding Facebook’s aha moment. And after he shared his own story, he turned his attention to us. He’s a wild, fun character and does not hold back his opinion. He got straight to the point: “It’s shameful! You don’t know what your aha moment is!” And he was right. We didn’t. We were unfocused and moving forward in many different directions at once. Was it uploading that first file? Was it creating a folder and collaborating with a team? Was it earlier in the buying cycle? We hadn’t really thought about it. This was the kick in the pants that we needed to get down to business. I left that offsite inspired to dig in and find the Box aha moment. Here’s what I learned in the process.

THE MODERN CONTENT MARKETER’S BUYER GUIDE

Welcome to the 2019 edition of The Modern Content Marketer’s Buyer Guide. About 10 years ago, marketers realized that content is a critical piece of their pie, and have since been working overtime to generate content to help win the prospect’s attention.

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You’re Not Going to Be Popular

Even as Chamath told his story, it was clear that he was successful because he had the political clout at Facebook to challenge every belief the company already had accepted as truth. He called them myths. And the only way to challenge these myths is with reliable and accurate access to product, sales, and marketing data. While you’ll also need to listen to your prospects and customers, and will find third party research that gets you a more unbiased view of the market, your own businesses data is what will fully convince the non-believers. This is where the first hurdle exists, getting all the data silos across your company into one centralized tool . Because you need to see the entire customer journey from that first click on an ad all the way to their first days or weeks using the product. And while you’ll be challenging every myth the company has, you’ll be doing it with a much deeper view of the customer journey that will inevitably drive the growth and success of your business

It’s the Tiny Things, So Keep Testing

Collect all the hypothesis and start testing. Those first few moments using the product are critical. Are there features you can highlight that will hook someone in? Talk to your sales team: are there moments of realization that gets a prospect to sign a deal? Can you take those words and test them on your website? While many aha moments are found in the product, at Box, we found our aha moment happened when an IT person realized that half their organization was using Dropbox, mixing business files with personal files and syncing potentially business critical files to their personal computers. It was more of an ‘oh crap’ moment rather than an aha moment, but it was the driving force that delivered customer after customer.

No one is an Island in the Enterprise

Even if you have all your data centralized, you’re testing all the myths and your sales team is bringing your anecdotal stories about those ‘Oh!’ moments when prospects realize they need you. B2B is much more difficult than a consumer tool like Facebook and it’s especially difficult when you’re selling to the enterprise.

I had a non-marketing exec once whine to me, “When are we going to find that advertisement that a company clicks on and then buys? Then we can just put all the marketing budget on that ad.” There are so many things wrong with this comment that I’ll have to save some of it for another post. Let’s unpack just one of the eye-rollingly irritating notions that are behind this sentiment. The idea that only one person will read an advertisement and then buy a product for their business is missing the biggest difference between B2B and B2C marketing. In the enterprise, no one person ever buys a product. Which is why finding that aha moment becomes more complex than just “7 friends in 10 days.” There are multiple roles in B2B that have different needs and different views of the how that product will help them.

Take Box for example. While one aha moment was IT realizing how scary it was that their employees were using Dropbox, we experienced a second aha moment when Apple announced the iPad. Suddenly, CEOs everywhere wanted their content on their iPad and Box, as the first secure and business-focused content tool on the iPad, reaped the rewards of that moment. Then, consider the marketing manager that just needs to get a really big file from their creative agency and doesn’t want to wait for the USB drive coming via FedEx?  That was a huge aha moment for a non-IT person that drove much of the initial early growth at Box.

At Looker, we know our aha moment is when an analyst can view their data through Looker and immediately see insights they hadn’t known were there before. So, we have optimized our entire funnel to get that persona to a trial. Of course, we’re not done with our research and we can’t focus all of our energy on that one persona because there are so many more people that need and want access to their data in the same way. It will continue to be a journey for us to discover those moments in time.

Marketing Should Lead

Some of you may be wondering if these types of efforts should come from the product team or from the ‘growth’ person that your CEO just insisted get hired. I would argue that marketing in a B2B company needs to take the lead on finding these aha moments because you must look at the whole funnel. From that message that resonates, to that first joyful moment, to their use of the product, to whether they are advocating for you, you’ll want to look in these four metrics know whether what you are doing is moving the needle. And keep your eyes open, because it’s not always going to happen as a user first starts using the product. Because when you’re selling to businesses, it needs to be something that many people can experience and understand .