Brian Kelly

@dissectpodcast All of the nuggets in the Blond season. 🧡 So many good ones in there. Standouts were pyramids sheet music artwork, the (multiple!) half-ings across Blond, and summertime &color references, and the frission discussion & community playlist.

Working on something and wondering: what were the biggest "holy shit" discoveries you've heard on Dissect?

@_lennart you do realize that is the most hipster auto-drip on the market, yes? I have the same one. 😂👌

I own a goddamn COFFEE MACHINE now. Enough of this hipster stuff

@dissectpodcast At the second or third Bonnaroo, way back in the early aughts, they gave out a compilation disc of tracks from that year’s performers. This is when I first heard MMJ and ‘Mahgeetah.’ Years later I discovered the album, It Still Moves, and really started loving that band. 🎸

It’s always fascinating to me how sometimes an album won’t resonate strongly with you and then, suddenly, it does. Sometimes years later. Has this happened to you? What album?

@paulsingh wrong answers only

If side projects and open source code commits are the “modern resume” for engineering recruits… What’s the equivalent for email & sms experts?

You: What’s the 1️⃣ EdTech story that all should know ? Me: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) You: Why ? Me: Many have heard of it, few know the details of it’s shocking failure & it is a great example of what I call: “The iceberg theory of EdTech” But its start was full of promise…

@karaswisher @nytimes live yet? no video on page w/ my rsvp'd nyt account

@asmartbear …And if you're finding that marketing exercise to be a struggle, it might be time to revisit your product value prop. Clearly stated benefits (solves pain/gives superpower to this very specific, but "large enough" market) should easily map to every product feature.

@asmartbear How about this? If you're going "feature-first" on your home/landing page, only list features that are *clearly linked* to benefits (that your ideal customers care about). That's my read on the spirit of "sell benefits, not features."

We've all heard that you should "sell benefits, not features" on home pages, landing pages, etc.. Is there data showing that benefits actually work better? Or for some types of sale but not others? Personally I skip past benes and look for features, but where's the _data_ ?

@asmartbear Stripe has always been an impressive standout to me in how they weave value through messaging + jump-into-code examples. Twilio, too. Maybe a counter, value-driven example is Snowflake. Can you tell that their *buyer* isn't likely a developer? 🙃

@asmartbear What are some examples of devtools home/landing pages that you did not find compelling? It makes sense to me that, as a category, these sites will be more focused on features/functionality since that's more likely to resonate with their target customers (devs).

@asmartbear The duo/docs reference I made is backed by data. Mktg crunched GA data and tracked pages visited with signups through sales funnel. That uncovered /docs/* led to more sales than any other pages. I like specific studies, but I hesitate to make general advice based on them.

@asmartbear Here's where I was going with [marketing messaging effectiveness is hard to measure]: The data that you're looking for (sizzle v. steak content ROI) is out there, but determining correlation v. causation be hard.

@asmartbear @earthlingworks @hnshah @daverodenbaugh @Patticus @robwalling /docs is the most comprehensive features list on the website (without any of the marketing value fluff—GOOD fluff, mind you). But, BUT: That didn't mean we could just punt on all those other pages. Case studies, for example, was time well-spent. duo.com/solutions/cust…

@resetbrian @earthlingworks @hnshah @daverodenbaugh @Patticus @robwalling Haha, oh wow, yeah I definitely would not have guessed that one correctly! That's really interesting. Content above all else, perhaps.

@asmartbear @earthlingworks @hnshah @daverodenbaugh @Patticus @robwalling So, does that mean good, technical documentation should be the focus of your product's website? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Spend an outsized amount of time in discovery, place a few bets, rinse & repeat. (Oh, and don't forget to choose an underserved market and build a great product, too)

@asmartbear @earthlingworks @hnshah @daverodenbaugh @Patticus @robwalling We learned that clear, friendly documentation was hugely important to the *user* (administrator) who was also the buyer (or had large influence on the buyer). Marketing didn't /docs, but they certainly leveraged it once discovering this connection.

@asmartbear I'm a fan of the "sell benefits, not features" advice bc it helps correct for the mistake that most (technical) product creators make: Listing all the features—often without context—and then wonder why customers aren't lining up… Follow the rule, *then* break it.

@asmartbear The goal: Your ideal potential customer spends 30 seconds reading your site/landing page/ad and says, "Tell me more." Maybe your ICP immediately *gets it* when they read about features. Maybe that happens when you describe the *exact* problem that they have.