Your product needs a customer/user/people community (maybe)

Talk I gave at the 2024 ProductBC Conference

Transcript

1. Your product needs a customer/user/people community (maybe) Scott Baldwin | ProductBC Conference, October 2024
2. 👋 Hi, I’m Scott
3. A bit about me 👴 20+ years of experience leading product teams in zero-to-one, mid-size, and enterprise B2B & B2C SaaS with 60-25,000 employees and up to $100M in ARR. 👉 HiveMQ, Amplitude, Productboard, Thinkific, Finning, Central 1, nForm User Experience, Critical Mass, Habanero, etc. 󰞵 Product, User experience, Evangelism, and Community roles 🎧 Music “Giants Killed Patrick” 👀 Currently looking for a new role in product
5. Housekeeping
6. Slides available, Q&A after
7. Is this for you? This is probably for you if: You are thinking about building a community or are curious how a community can help your product It’s not for you if: If you already have a community that’s working well, or don’t care about your community, product users, etc.
8. If not for you, check out these other smart people Alan Albert From Product Management to People Management: Thriving as a Manager and Leader (C400) Jen Reiher Pathways to Product Management: How to transition your career into a PM role (C420)
9. Agenda
10. What we’re going to talk about… 1. Do you need a community? 2. The basics of community building 3. How product teams can use community
11. Do you need a community?
12. Maybe
13. If you care about customer feedback and hope to build an avid user base, you need a community
14. But, a few questions you should ask before you decide to create a community…
15. 1⃣ Why do you want to build a community?
16. 2⃣ What mission/values will bring your community together?
17. 3⃣ Who is your community for?
18. 4⃣ What kind of community?
19. Source: https://www.cmxhub.com/blog/the-spaces-model
20. Source: gtmstrategist.com
21. 5⃣ Where will your community come together?
22. Go where your members are
23. Forums Real-time chat All in one • ••• •• Discourse, Higher Logic, Vanilla Forums, Gainsight Slack, Discord, Mattermost, Telegram Facebook Groups, Mighty Networks, Circle In-person •• ••• • ••• • •• •• ••• • •• •• • Executives Developers Consumers Gamers Hobbyists Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE61xzjaqlM
24. Source: My friend Zach who runs Tightknit.ai, a community platform for Slack
25. How to build a community on Slack https:/ /benry.net/how-to-build-a-community-on-slack/
26. Assuming you do need a community…
27. The basics of community building
28. Build with, not for
29. Spark a flame 🔥 Stoke the fire 🪵 Pass the torch 🤝 Source: https://gettogether.world
30. Get together I didn’t invent this, it’s from a really fantastic book called Get Together by by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto which you can buy at https://gettogether.world 1. Find your people 2. Do something together 3. Get people talking 4. Attract new folks 5. Cultivate your identity 6. Pay attention to the folks that keep showing up 7. Create and supercharge the leaders 8. Celebrate wins together 9. Repeat, repeat, repeat
31. Find your people
32. Think: Personas, ICP, early allies
33. Observe where your potential members hang out
35. Productboard’s community: IC product managers who want to get better at their craft
36. Do something together
37. Events Content Connections Source: https://www.commonroom.io/blog/using-the-community-flywheel-to-scale-your-community
38. Content Content = the value your community creates for members • Exclusive resources, eBooks, and guides • Talks and events • Conversations and answers to questions • Access to thought leaders
41. Events Specific time-based experiential moments that allow the community to gather as a group Build excitement and engagement Can be open to everyone or exclusive to your community Virtual, hybrid, or in-person Examples: Office hours, webinars, conferences, one-off gatherings
42. Office hours, roundtables, book clubs, games night, hikes/walks, joint planning, show & tells, 1:1s, career support, etc.
43. Experiment and be ok with changing course
44. Connections 1:1, 1:Few, or 1:Many Conversations, networking, collaboration, knowledge sharing Examples: Mentorship programs, CABs
48. Find gaps that are currently not being filled elsewhere
49. Get people talking
50. Space, prompts, and structure
51. Give, educate, be helpful and good things will come back to you
52. Have some fun 😂
54. Attract new folks
55. Origin story: self, us, now
56. Spread the word, shout from the mountaintops
57. Create a culture of reciprocity
58. Cultivate your identity
61. Pay attention to the folks that keep showing up
62. How many, who, and why
63. Look for hand-raisers
64. Keep and supercharge leaders
66. Celebrate wins together
68. Repeat, repeat, repeat
69. Recap: Get together 1. Find your people 2. Do something together 3. Get people talking 4. Attract new folks 5. Cultivate your identity 6. Pay attention to the folks that keep showing up 7. Create and supercharge the leaders 8. Celebrate wins together 9. Repeat, repeat, repeat
70. How product teams can use community
71. Community will be different at each stage Pre-startup Startup Growth Maturity Talk to potential customers, uncover needs/wants, pains, get to MVP, find initial customers Refine features, find channel/market fit, identify first paying customers, tweak value proposition, and refine customer experience and onboarding Acquire new customers, put your arms around your ICP or target customer, nurture advocates, create a category, establish a competitive moat Discovery, problem/solution fit Product Validation, find product-market fit Scale cost effectively, acquire customers, create a category Deliver consistently at scale, global growth Community Grow globally, run a CAB, leverage community for growth, experimentation, and advocacy, identify acquisition opportunities
73. Acquisition, conversion, and retention
74. Find ideal people for research
75. Continuous discovery
76. Product feedback
77. Issue/bug identification
78. Idea collection
79. Access to non-customers
80. Trust building
81. Alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, thetas…
82. Education
83. Adoption & advocacy
84. Recap 🧢
85. Make sure you actually need a community Ask yourself a few questions: 1. Why do you want to build a community? 2. What mission/values will bring your community together? 3. Who is your community for? 4. What kind of community is it? 5. Where will your community come together?
86. Start with the basics and build from there Build with not for Then: Start a fire, stoke the flame, and pass the torch
87. There are many places where product & community can work together • Acquisition, conversion, retention • Research • Continuous discovery • Product feedback • Issue/bug identification • Idea collection • Access to non-customers • Trust building • Alphas, betas, etc. • Education • Adoption & advocacy
88. Anyone can build community
89. Maybe you should too 😀
90. Thanks Website: https://benry.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benry My music: on all your fave platforms “Giants Killed Patrick”
91. Q&A