2-min Technical Product Marketing Insights: Apr 2025 Releases
Part 1 Release Date: Apr 12, 2025 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Improve the adoption of every product update by turning your changelog into a guided tour, especially for more technical products.
Nudge Security turns every changelog entry into a step-by-step explanation complete with visuals. It ensures every complex update is easy to understand, increases the likelihood that every user will try it, and makes every update impactful.
[2] Discover unmet demand within your product by focusing on the different ways your users are currently "hacking" your product.
Nextdoor's focus was entirely on neighbor connections at the get-go. However, as they started seeing local businesses attempt to advertise on their platform (initially blocked as spam), the company created a new business line dedicated to connecting these businesses with neighbors.
[3] Integrate into an existing workflow and commit to community-driven product iteration to turn early adopters into vocal advocates.
Cursor is an AI-first code editor that grew past $100MM in ARR within the first 12 months in the market. Part of their appeal is a product built with AI from the ground up and the quick feedback loop from actual developers cultivated across platforms like X, Discord, and GitHub.
[4] Use a short survey (5-7 mins) to compile responses from your preferred audience and discover prospects for deeper (30-min) interviews.
Growth teams in companies like Miro use short surveys at scale to regularly build insights on pricing, onboarding, power users, etc. Adding a question at the end of the survey to gauge interest in a follow-up interview also saves them time pre-selecting interview candidates for an in-depth analysis.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
“Blindspots: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Better Win-Loss Program” by Ryan Sorley
[1] Win-loss interviews can be a boon for new-hire onboarding. Smartly select specific win-loss reports for new hires to read to get them up to speed on buyers, their needs, your sales process, organizational ideas, and best practices.
[2] Don't just look at the most exciting deals for your win-loss interviews. Adopt the concept of a "research cohort." Aim to compile a series of deals that share characteristics like "deal size, location, industry, competitor, or product/service type."
[3] Ask every stakeholder to fill out the following sentence to figure out the information they want and the action they want to take: "If I knew ____________, then I could ___________, which would result in __________."
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] Why Costco Went All In on Kirkland - and How It Paid Off
[2] Urgent needs meet quick solutions: The rise and fall of urgent market needs
[3] The Problem With AI Generated Personas…New Study Sheds Light On Their Limitations
[4] How to Write Blog Posts that Developers Read
[5] 4 Different Ways to Transform a Product Organization
Part 2 Release Date: Apr 25, 2025 (2 min read).
📈 4 MICRO [PRODUCT MARKETING] CASE STUDIES
[1] Offer an interactive product tour for sales-led products that aren't self-serve friendly to personalize pitch and qualify prospects faster.
This example from Carta shows how you can let prospects skip a demo call and a lengthy slide deck to see the product in action. Interactive product tours also have internal company benefits like sales enablement, customer education training, etc.
[2] Consider how the social aspect will affect the adoption of your new feature, i.e., how users feel, evaluate, and talk about it.
LinkedIn introduced the 'Open to Work' badge in 2020 in response to COVID-19 layoffs. While initially positive, the badge gradually garnered a negative public signaling perception, forcing the company to pivot to a 'recruiters only' option.
[3] Add some thoughtful friction to your app to encourage users to reconsider when they follow the downgrade route.
Attio adds a confirmation step when you choose to downgrade to their free plan. It's no different from TikTok adding a simple "Are you sure?" popup that led to misinformation sharing dropping by 24%.
[4] For product marketers: Use the SPACER framework to align with product management on feature releases and prevent rework.
Focus on each of the 6 letters of the abbreviation to align early - "S: backstory and user story of the feature, P: pricing and packaging tier, A: abilities/ how the feature works (+ limitations), C: competitive edge/ how's it better than alternatives, E: end user + primary use case, and R: release timelines.
📚 1 BOOK & TOP 3 INSIGHTS
[1] Stand The F*ck Out (STFO) Marketing Methodology - (i) forage for insights to find what makes customers tick, (ii) uncover your unique positioning on why people should choose you over the rest, (iii) make yourself impossible to forget with a distinctive brand even if they don't want to buy now, and (iv) ensure you're continuously reaching out to keep the right people coming back along with new ones.
[2] Answer these 6 questions to better understand people's stories - "(i) Job: What did they try to accomplish? (ii) Alternatives: What other solutions did they use or consider? (iii) Struggles: What problems were they trying to solve? (iv) Segment: What customer information is relevant to the story? (v) Category: What other things belong to this same group? (vi) Triggers: What specific events compelled them to act?"
[3] Use the RAGE framework to decide if a particular segment is a good fit for your business - "Revenue: Do they spend a good % of their money on the category? Access: Do you have access to this segment? Growth: Is the segment expanding rapidly vs. stagnating or shrinking? Enjoyment: Does this segment make you happy?"
🧠 5 CURATED MARKETING THINK PIECES
[1] Developer Marketing in 2025: What Works, What's Changing, and How to Win
[2] Why AI is the New Social Media
[3] Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work
[4] Product EQ: The skill that can shape your career
[5] Yes, ARR is dead…we need to rethink all traditional software metrics and benchmarks
Sign up for 2-minute Technical Product Marketing Insights. Every 2 weeks, you get 📈 4 micro case studies 📚 1 book & top 3 insights 🧠 5 curated marketing think pieces.