A presentation by Sarah Rapp, Manager of Product Marketing, MeetUp Great products are built through experimentation. But how do you navigate Product Marketing amidst betas and split tests and still tell a strong story to your audience? Learn how to have a big impact as your product continued to evolve. Presented to the product marketing community at the Product Marketing Summit New York 2019

1. A PRODUCT MARKETER’S NIGHTMARE
August 3, 2016

2. LINK

3. 2 MONTHS LATER
October 11, 2016

4. LINK

5. No matter how well you
market them, some
products crash and burn.

6. Ford Pinto

7. Cheetos
Lip Balm

8. New Coke
Formula

9. Snapchat
Redesign

10. Don’t be the next
cheetos lip balm.

11. Experiments
Split tests
Betas
Phased rollouts

12. “You simply have to put one
foot in front of the other and
keep going. Put blinders on
and plow right ahead.”
George Lucas

16. What it needs to
looks like from
the outside

17. You can de-risk your
products through
experimentation and
tell a strong story to
your audience.
Here’s how.

18. Find your north star
1
DON’T OPERATE WITHOUT A MAP

21. Set expectations and
ask for feedback 2
LET YOUR USERS BE PART OF THE JOURNEY

24. A little exclusivity
goes a long way 3
SOFT LAUNCHES ARE YOUR FRIEND

26. Depreactions:
We’re all adults here. 4
TRANSPARENCY RULES

27. "Extensive data analysis has
shown that this feature has
very low engagement. The
huge disparity between the
use of the feature and the
manpower required to
maintain it doesn’t merit
keeping it running, so we've
taken the difficult decision
to remove it." - Spotify

28. Turn brand critics
into advocates 5
CHANGE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD

29. Users Product
decisions

30. Users Product
decisions

31. “After I finish this email I’m
canceling my account ONCE AND
FOR ALL. All my background colors
have been REMOVED and my
website looks terrible!”
* Not an exact quote, but you get it.

33. “You cost me a job!!! Couldn’t figure out
how to add a caption before an important
interview because you moved it!!!” *
Moving captions to a more intuitive
location helped 30% more people find the
tool, and reduced questions by 10X.

34. “After I finish this email I’m canceling my
account ONCE AND FOR ALL. All my
background colors have been REMOVED and
my website looks terrible!”
Artist sites with bright backgrounds got 5x
fewer views than those with neutral
backgrounds, so we’re optimizing to help you
get views.

37. It’s possible to transform your
biggest brand critics into your
biggest brand advocates.

39. Celebrate with
your audience 6
GOING BIG

40. “Data is the new voice
of the athlete.”

41. “If you have a body,
you’re an athlete.”

44. What’s the Minimum
Marketable Product? 7
PUSHBACK WHEN PUSHBACK IS DUE

48. linkedin.com/SarahKTRapp
@saralalala
Thank you.