The risk shift has moved away from Product to Distribution.

Key points:

• Historically, the risk of building a good product and successfully bringing it to market has been proportionately high. Today, however, the relative risk of Product and engineering has decreased as a dimension of product risk.
• This is not to say that connecting all the dots is easy, though it is easier than it was.
• This has grown distribution as one of your predominant risks, not that that has actually changed. It is just a relative thing.
  ‍

Product risk and why it has decreased

Having built websites and digital products for over 25 years, the risks associated with development have decreased over those years.

When I started, we had neither the tools nor the experience, and it was an uphill battle.

Indeed, I used to argue that having a vision was fine, but if you couldn’t achieve it, it was all for naught. I’d implore clients to interrogate the process their agency were proposing to test its resilience and practicality.

The vital question I would ask of the process was how does it respond when things go to shit?

Which inevitably they did.

The answer was that an agency process could rarely maturely right the ship. Things would keep worsening, leading to a world of development pain, delay, and often disaster.

There were a couple of fundamental reasons for this.

Most fundamental was that no agency process was designed to mitigate the structural failings in every agency process:

• We undertook development in the world of ‘projects’ rather than ‘Product’.
• Agility and self-righting were not features of projects, and projects could not comfortably adapt to the need for agility.
  ‍

It was good that we finally had access to proven and capable development frameworks that engineers adopted widely. However, this meant little when constrained by project limitations and the broader headwinds they imposed.

The Product concept solved many of these project constraints, and digital businesses now had a framework to exploit successfully.

Product has been and remains a much slower concept in traditional corporate businesses. However, companies that have moved from projects to Products have had much greater success and confidence in landing good products in a reasonable timeframe.

Combined with years of learning and experience, frameworks that have significantly evolved since I started, and refined product concepts, product development risk has decreased.
‍

Which is not to say that connecting all the dots is easy

If I met a client who wanted to start a B2B SaaS business from scratch - even if it was a great idea - though they did not have experience developing, launching and growing such a SaaS business, I would be nervous.

A digital business has so many dots to connect, some of which are not evident early on, though important for scale later on.

I have seen the challenges in eCommerce. I have seen the challenges in subscriptions.

Overall, the risks are there, though Product risk has decreased, as has our ability to bring known business models and products to market.
‍

This means the distribution risk has grown proportionately.

Distributing a product has always been a risk.

You have a real advantage if you are a media company with enormous reach and budgets.

However, for the average business, this isn’t a thing.

Every business and every product is different, so there is no way to predict or prescribe what strategy might work for you.

It is a truism to say that understanding your audience, their needs and where your audiences are should guide your go-to-market (GTM) strategy.

Therefore, it is a truism that you need a strategy, which is often missing and thus substantially increases the distribution risk. Merely choosing channels and tactics is never enough, even for growth marketers.

Channels and tactics get crowded fast, and the costs increase: efficiency and effectiveness dry up. Niches and opportunities always, though you will constantly be changing it up.
‍

Growth marketing

I suspect my age and having four kids considerably reduce my chances of ever being a growth marketer. Not that I can’t and don’t borrow the concept, albeit at a less frenetic pace of growth marketers.

Neither should you as a concept, no matter how big your budgets are.

Growth is finding your marketing/distribution silver bullets through papercuts - endless, relentless micro-experimentation - until one of your papercuts opens, and you have an opening.

It is a science with a somewhat precise methodology that needs to be as systematic as the papercuts.

These papercuts should be part of a broader set of tactics with an end vision (strategy) to build a database, drive traffic, drive referrals, or all.

I am careful here, however. My mates in growth would laugh that the mere mortal can never reach a cadence of experimentation or lateral thinking to pull it off, and they’re probably right.

But the concept is right.

I’ll say no more.
‍

Big bang?

Great ideas and great marketers inspire me, and I love a big idea. Set fire to something, seed social, or run an out-of-home campaign to solicit signups.

Go nuts, though I am a Product guy. This is for the marketers, and if you have the budget, strategy and confidence, I can’t wait to read the case study.
‍

1. Your distribution strategy

What this looks like is up to you, though it should consider where you want your brand to be in the longer term.

Your brand is a long-term investment, driving traffic and customers. Think of your brand as the current pushing your product further.

Your strategy should seek how to make distribution a moat. How can you irreparably separate your competitors from your product? More challenging said than done, though your point of GTM and longer-term dominance, remembering that this needs to be revisited as the market landscape changes.

Find the blue ocean, not the red.

Simply that your product solves an urgent problem very well for its market is not enough of a strategy. Determining whether referral is how to distribute the product and how to do this might be.
‍

2. Distribution channels

Channels are your way to reach these customers.

Growth marketing would probably instruct that you test and try all, though some might seem safer and more immediate than others.

Some will depend on whether there is awareness of your product’s need.

Affiliates, podcasts, display organic and paid social or paid search.

In the longer term, search, email, SMS and referral.

Of course, one channel can lead to another, and it probably should. You want to collect customers and then own them and market to them in the longer term.

Look, if I were to make a point, brand and search are your long-term stayers.

Paid search is expensive, though it can usually keep its head above water. Paid social: depends on the circumstance. Podcasts? Nebulous and I have a bit of experience with them.
‍

3. Distribution tactics

Look, where do I start here?

Is this about scarcity? Is this about a price point? Is this about an incentive?

I could only guess, and every client is different.

The strategy might inform this, though so too will ideas and experiments.

Start small, start early, test, experiment, document and learn.
‍

Product Marketing Managers, Marketers and me

One last point about distributing a new product:

Data should tie everyone.

As a product manager, I want the product to be in a state for shipping and distribution. I also need data to inform my performance.

Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) are after different things.

As are Marketers.

Though they’ll all need data.

Know the roles and how they fit into your product/marketing/distribution lifecycle.

And my last point. Read. Read and read.

I would never have thought to have built an active Discord community for anything I worked on. Though I read a super success story of someone that did that yesterday and hit a $90k MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) in four weeks.

A tweet that goes viral and drags a community with you.

I don’t know. Talk to your marketing people. Talk to your growth marketer (not a marketing person despite the title).

Talk with your SEO person. Make sure your data layer is ready.

And experiment.

‍