Hi, I'm Mike.
I'm a Co-founder of Rejoiner.
I'm also a Product Manager at Grasshopper and have helped build products like Spreadable & Chargify.
I split time between Boston and Newport.
Let's chat. You can email me or follow me on Twitter.
Failcon Talk
Here are my slides from Failcon 2012 in San Francisco, October 22, 2012.
23 Oct 2012 / 0 notes
Product Videos for Bootstrapped Web Startups
Explanatory videos that distill the story, essence and fundamental value of your product can do wonders for helping your potential customers convert.
In the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on explainer videos for two different products – Rejoiner (our current startup) and Spreadable (my last PM role).
For Spreadable, we started the process by setting up meetings with some well-known producers, but realized that we didn’t have the budget to outsource. Across script writing, design, and animation you’ll pay around $20,000 to produce a 2-and-a-half minute video. 50Grove is a great resource if you do have a larger budget. The reality is that working with a professional studio is not an option for most bootstrapped startups.
Using the framework below, we created the Rejoiner explainer for just over $300.
If you pay attention to product launches, you’ll notice that there are a few professional studios that manufacture great videos for startups. Like any good manufacturing process, I knew there had to be an established formula they used behind the scenes.
I found five animated explainers that I liked, transcribed the scripts to text, and spent some time looking for common patterns. Turns out, there was a pretty standard flow across all five video scripts. They also shared a common narration tone and visual style.
Style
Explainer videos come in a few different shapes and sizes. I’ve tried to break down your options across three dimensions: Cost, Tools, and Production Value. I’ve also provided an example of each to get you thinking.
Stop Motion
Cost: Low
Production Value: Medium
Tools: Sketchpad, Printer, Scissors, Camera, Editing Software
Example: Dropbox
Fully Animated
Cost: Medium
Production Value: High
Tools: Artwork, Animation, Editing Software
Example: Spreadable
Kinetic Typography
Cost: Medium
Production Value: High
Tools: Artwork, Animation, Editing Software
Example: Grasshopper
Full Motion
Cost: Very High
Production Value: High
Tools: Camera, Cast, Audio Equipment, Editing/Animation Software
Example: Nosh.me
Screencasts
Cost: Low
Production Value: High
Tools: Screenflow
Example: Mailchimp
Tone
These videos work because they take complex products and distill them into ideas and metaphors that anyone can understand. That being said, I’m a proponent of using a very conversational narration style. Figure out what kind of tone is right for your video early in the process. This decision will affect your script, narrator selection, and storyboards.
Script
The script is the backbone of your project. Before you start writing, make a list of important ideas, features and benefits you want to communicate. In terms of length, my personal opinion is that shorter videos are better. I’d shoot for a script between 200 and 225 words, as this length will equate to roughly 70-90 seconds of video.
I’ve taken the patterns from my initial video analysis and combined it with what’s worked well on some other projects. Hopefully this framework will give you a good starting point when you sit down to write your script:
Rapport
To start, you want to build rapport with the viewer. Show them you understand their pain and the challenges they face on a daily basis. Even better, show them you’ve faced those challenges yourself. Use phrases like “As {Your target market}, we {are trying to accomplish some goal}” or “You just {Reference an experience related to the pain your product solves}.”
Problem
Next, explore the problem that your target audience faces. Give colorful examples and try to bring some humor into the mix. Cakehealth’s explainer does a great job of framing the problem in an engaging way.
Build-up
Show the viewer that up until now, there hasn’t been a solution to the problem. Re-emphasize some of the pain points and explore ways that it makes their life difficult. This is where you want to build up suspense before the big reveal.
Epiphany
If you’ve done your job setting the stage, this is where potential customers associate your brand as the primary means to solve the problem defined above. Pull back the curtain, and show viewers how your product is the solution they’ve dreamt about. Use simple language to tell viewers exactly what your product does.
Reinforce
Reiterate how your product simplifies the viewer’s life. It’s easy to use, easy to sign up for, and makes a daunting task simple. Show them screenshots or illustrations of your application and help them experience what it would be like to be a customer.
Change
Show the viewer what they can do now vs. what wasn’t possible before. How has their life gotten better? Speak to the fact that your product helps them do their job more effectively.
The Ask
You want to close the video with an Ask. Ask them to sign up, to start a free trial, or provide some other call to action to get them to engage with you after watching.
Storyboards
Once your script is finalized, the next step is to storyboard each scene of the video and plan how you’ll communicate your story visually. I’ve used Powerpoint, Word and sketched scenes out by hand. The important thing here is that you’re thinking through how the video will flow and how the visuals will support your story.
Production
You’ll need to develop the artwork for each scene of the video yourself or work with a designer. Use Photoshop, Illustrator, or whatever design tool you’re comfortable with. To take advantage of HD, create all of your artwork at 1280x720.
When it comes time to animate, there are great tools out there like Screenflow, After Effects, and Final Cut. Personally, I prefer a combination of Screenflow and After Effects. There are entire books written on animation, but with a basic understanding of keyframes you can create something that gets the job done.
For narration, hire a professional voice talent from a service like Voices.com or record the voiceover yourself. If you take the do-it-yourself route, try to use a high quality microphone. Also take some time and look for good sound effects to make your video more engaging. Revostock.com and Audiojungle.net are two great sources.
Great explainers not only drive home your brand, but also force you to distill your product down to its very basic value proposition. It’s a great exercise and I hope it helps you build your business.
So that’s it. Get out there and tell your story! I’m happy to answer any questions you have so either shoot me an email or leave a comment.
17 Nov 2011 / 0 notes
How to Grok Competitive Analysis
If you’re working on a new or existing product, it’s important to assess the competitive landscape for the market you’re entering. It can be a pain in the ass, but it’s a good idea to have an understanding of your market position and what differentiates you from your competition. I like to pull together a 1-pager on every competitor and build a portable deck for the team. This way, any new team members or stakeholders on a product can get up to speed quickly on where our product stands relative to the competition.
First, the tools of the trade:
- Compete – Traffic Comparison
- SpyFu – Paid Search Analysis
- SEOmoz – Paid SEO Tools
- SelfSEO – Free SEO Tools
- Crunchbase – Team members, funding, descriptors, screenshots
Identifying the right set of competitors – If you’re entering a new market, it can be a challenging task to figure out which companies to pay attention to. Here’s a pretty simple system to get you close:
- Competitors buy Adwords for your core keywords
- Competitors show up in the top 30 organic search results for your core keywords
- Competitors self-describe as being in your industry on Crunchbase
Competitive Dimensions to Explore – Now that you’ve got your initial list of companies to look into, what are the important things you should be paying attention to?
SEO/Content Strategy
- Organic Search: Pick 10 keywords that best represent your offering and build a spreadsheet showing where competition ranks organically in Google. Look for opportunities to rank better than them for high volume keywords.
- Meta Information/Title Tags: Meta information and title tags are usually a good indicator of what your competition is trying to rank for organically. Take note of these.
- Paid Search Focus: Use the same 10 organic keywords and take a look at how your competitors are advertising on them. What benefits are they pushing? Take note of ad headlines & copy.
- Paid Search Spend: Subscribe to a service like SpyFu and you can start to estimate what your competitors are spending on paid search. You can also reverse engineer PPC spend by using Google’s Traffic Estimator tool to estimate total spend.
- Paid Ad Content: Use SpyFu to mine your competitor’s ads or do it manually. Watch how their ads change over time and note what terms they bid on consistently. Chances are, they’ve done a lot of the copywriting work for you already.
- Social Presence: What’s does their social presence look like? Are they active on Twitter? Facebook? How are they pushing content through these channels and to whom? Are they aggregators or conversationalists?
- Content Strategy: What kind of posts are they writing? Who are they trying to reach? Is their content being shared? Are they doing infographics? Editorial?
Search Footprint
- # of Indexed Pages: SEOmoz has a great set of research tools for everything related to SEO analysis. There are other free services out there like SelfSEO but are less reliable. Moz will cover pretty much all of your SEO research. Being aware of your competitors’ content footprint in Google will help you gauge what you’re up against to rank for organic keywords.
- # of Inbound Links: Again, this is part of understanding your competitors’ footprint in major search engines.
- Traffic Estimates: Use Compete or Alexa to estimate traffic. Their estimates are usually off, but they are off for everyone so at least it’s consistent. You’ll get a good idea of relative traffic volume.
Marketing/Brand Strategy
- Messaging: What are your competitor’s key selling points? What is the tone of the copywriting on their site?
- Positioning: How do they differentiate themselves from others in the market? What is their unique value proposition?
- Tactics: Keep an eye on what tactics your competition is using to market their product. Potential tactics could be TV (broadcast or cable), radio (satellite or terrestrial), banners (which networks?), PPC, Video, Social, or retargeting.
- Target Market: Who are they selling to? Small business? Enterprise? What verticals do they focus on?
- Sales Strategy: Is their product self serve or does it require an interaction with a salesperson? How is their pricing advertised/not advertised?
- Brand Identity: Start to explore how competitors project themselves visually. Make a slide with all of their logos and take note of color palette, typography, and design language.
Product
- Features: Explore your competitor’s featureset in depth. What is their core offering and how does it compare to others in the market? You’ll usually find a set of core features that are standard across all players. What is the minimum set of features that you need to compete?
- Key Benefits: Identifying the key pain-points that features address is core to your sales offering. What pain points do your competitors say they solve?
- Pricing Model: Having a clear understanding of what your competition is charging will help you position yourself correctly. Are they a subscription service? Flat rate? Tiered? Per user? License? Do they offer a free trial or money back guarantee?
- Customer Count: If the company is public, they may include this number on their form 10-K. If not, go through press releases and company backgrounders as businesses will often reveal this data as social proof.
- Key Customers: What brands do you recognize on their landing page?
- Success Stories: Success stories reveal who a business believes is their ideal customer or use case. Look for presentations where your competitor co-presented with a customer and note case studies that are present on their marketing site.
Company
- Team/Advisors/Key Employees: Take note of the company’s founding team and what relationships they have with advisors. Do they have any key employees that are thought leaders? Follow these guys on Twitter and keep an eye on the content they produce.
- Partners: Look for any notable business development, technology, or marketing partnerships.
- Financing: Have they taken outside funding? How much?
Pick Up the Phone - Some people may feel a little iffy about this one, but I have no problem hopping on a sales call with competitors. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, get a friend who has a business and have them set up the call. You’ll learn a lot about how they position their product, what their compelling selling points are, and how they think about the market. Also, it’s possible that some of your competitors won’t list their pricing publicly; this is an important opportunity to get that data.
Also call customer service and ask them questions about pricing and features. Rate the experience and take note of how it could have been improved upon.
How to Present Your Findings – When you pull your team into a room, there’s nothing worse than slogging through a dense deck of competitors that are not all that differentiated from one another. My experience has been that a couple of competitors will bubble to the surface as the most important and that’s where you should focus.
A 3-slide deck usually does the trick. 1) List your competitors (highlight the 2 or 3 most important) 2) Summarize key differentiators 3) Explore opportunities to win.
Competitive Canvas
To make competitive analysis go faster, I put together an InDesign template that comes in pretty handy. It should be a good framework for you to start analyzing the competition in your market.
Download the canvas:
InDesign (right-click to Save) or PDF
How do you analyze your competition? Did I miss anything?
Check out my new startup that helps online businesses recover abandoned orders & increase conversion » Rejoiner
You should also follow us on Twitter
28 Sep 2011 / 2 notes
/ startups product management
Failcon Talk
Here are my slides from Failcon 2012 in San Francisco, October 22, 2012.
23 Oct 2012 / 0 notes
Product Videos for Bootstrapped Web Startups
Explanatory videos that distill the story, essence and fundamental value of your product can do wonders for helping your potential customers convert.
In the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on explainer videos for two different products – Rejoiner (our current startup) and Spreadable (my last PM role).
For Spreadable, we started the process by setting up meetings with some well-known producers, but realized that we didn’t have the budget to outsource. Across script writing, design, and animation you’ll pay around $20,000 to produce a 2-and-a-half minute video. 50Grove is a great resource if you do have a larger budget. The reality is that working with a professional studio is not an option for most bootstrapped startups.
Using the framework below, we created the Rejoiner explainer for just over $300.
If you pay attention to product launches, you’ll notice that there are a few professional studios that manufacture great videos for startups. Like any good manufacturing process, I knew there had to be an established formula they used behind the scenes.
I found five animated explainers that I liked, transcribed the scripts to text, and spent some time looking for common patterns. Turns out, there was a pretty standard flow across all five video scripts. They also shared a common narration tone and visual style.
Style
Explainer videos come in a few different shapes and sizes. I’ve tried to break down your options across three dimensions: Cost, Tools, and Production Value. I’ve also provided an example of each to get you thinking.
Stop Motion
Cost: Low
Production Value: Medium
Tools: Sketchpad, Printer, Scissors, Camera, Editing Software
Example: Dropbox
Fully Animated
Cost: Medium
Production Value: High
Tools: Artwork, Animation, Editing Software
Example: Spreadable
Kinetic Typography
Cost: Medium
Production Value: High
Tools: Artwork, Animation, Editing Software
Example: Grasshopper
Full Motion
Cost: Very High
Production Value: High
Tools: Camera, Cast, Audio Equipment, Editing/Animation Software
Example: Nosh.me
Screencasts
Cost: Low
Production Value: High
Tools: Screenflow
Example: Mailchimp
Tone
These videos work because they take complex products and distill them into ideas and metaphors that anyone can understand. That being said, I’m a proponent of using a very conversational narration style. Figure out what kind of tone is right for your video early in the process. This decision will affect your script, narrator selection, and storyboards.
Script
The script is the backbone of your project. Before you start writing, make a list of important ideas, features and benefits you want to communicate. In terms of length, my personal opinion is that shorter videos are better. I’d shoot for a script between 200 and 225 words, as this length will equate to roughly 70-90 seconds of video.
I’ve taken the patterns from my initial video analysis and combined it with what’s worked well on some other projects. Hopefully this framework will give you a good starting point when you sit down to write your script:
Rapport
To start, you want to build rapport with the viewer. Show them you understand their pain and the challenges they face on a daily basis. Even better, show them you’ve faced those challenges yourself. Use phrases like “As {Your target market}, we {are trying to accomplish some goal}” or “You just {Reference an experience related to the pain your product solves}.”
Problem
Next, explore the problem that your target audience faces. Give colorful examples and try to bring some humor into the mix. Cakehealth’s explainer does a great job of framing the problem in an engaging way.
Build-up
Show the viewer that up until now, there hasn’t been a solution to the problem. Re-emphasize some of the pain points and explore ways that it makes their life difficult. This is where you want to build up suspense before the big reveal.
Epiphany
If you’ve done your job setting the stage, this is where potential customers associate your brand as the primary means to solve the problem defined above. Pull back the curtain, and show viewers how your product is the solution they’ve dreamt about. Use simple language to tell viewers exactly what your product does.
Reinforce
Reiterate how your product simplifies the viewer’s life. It’s easy to use, easy to sign up for, and makes a daunting task simple. Show them screenshots or illustrations of your application and help them experience what it would be like to be a customer.
Change
Show the viewer what they can do now vs. what wasn’t possible before. How has their life gotten better? Speak to the fact that your product helps them do their job more effectively.
The Ask
You want to close the video with an Ask. Ask them to sign up, to start a free trial, or provide some other call to action to get them to engage with you after watching.
Storyboards
Once your script is finalized, the next step is to storyboard each scene of the video and plan how you’ll communicate your story visually. I’ve used Powerpoint, Word and sketched scenes out by hand. The important thing here is that you’re thinking through how the video will flow and how the visuals will support your story.
Production
You’ll need to develop the artwork for each scene of the video yourself or work with a designer. Use Photoshop, Illustrator, or whatever design tool you’re comfortable with. To take advantage of HD, create all of your artwork at 1280x720.
When it comes time to animate, there are great tools out there like Screenflow, After Effects, and Final Cut. Personally, I prefer a combination of Screenflow and After Effects. There are entire books written on animation, but with a basic understanding of keyframes you can create something that gets the job done.
For narration, hire a professional voice talent from a service like Voices.com or record the voiceover yourself. If you take the do-it-yourself route, try to use a high quality microphone. Also take some time and look for good sound effects to make your video more engaging. Revostock.com and Audiojungle.net are two great sources.
Great explainers not only drive home your brand, but also force you to distill your product down to its very basic value proposition. It’s a great exercise and I hope it helps you build your business.
So that’s it. Get out there and tell your story! I’m happy to answer any questions you have so either shoot me an email or leave a comment.
17 Nov 2011 / 0 notes
How to Grok Competitive Analysis
If you’re working on a new or existing product, it’s important to assess the competitive landscape for the market you’re entering. It can be a pain in the ass, but it’s a good idea to have an understanding of your market position and what differentiates you from your competition. I like to pull together a 1-pager on every competitor and build a portable deck for the team. This way, any new team members or stakeholders on a product can get up to speed quickly on where our product stands relative to the competition.
First, the tools of the trade:
- Compete – Traffic Comparison
- SpyFu – Paid Search Analysis
- SEOmoz – Paid SEO Tools
- SelfSEO – Free SEO Tools
- Crunchbase – Team members, funding, descriptors, screenshots
Identifying the right set of competitors – If you’re entering a new market, it can be a challenging task to figure out which companies to pay attention to. Here’s a pretty simple system to get you close:
- Competitors buy Adwords for your core keywords
- Competitors show up in the top 30 organic search results for your core keywords
- Competitors self-describe as being in your industry on Crunchbase
Competitive Dimensions to Explore – Now that you’ve got your initial list of companies to look into, what are the important things you should be paying attention to?
SEO/Content Strategy
- Organic Search: Pick 10 keywords that best represent your offering and build a spreadsheet showing where competition ranks organically in Google. Look for opportunities to rank better than them for high volume keywords.
- Meta Information/Title Tags: Meta information and title tags are usually a good indicator of what your competition is trying to rank for organically. Take note of these.
- Paid Search Focus: Use the same 10 organic keywords and take a look at how your competitors are advertising on them. What benefits are they pushing? Take note of ad headlines & copy.
- Paid Search Spend: Subscribe to a service like SpyFu and you can start to estimate what your competitors are spending on paid search. You can also reverse engineer PPC spend by using Google’s Traffic Estimator tool to estimate total spend.
- Paid Ad Content: Use SpyFu to mine your competitor’s ads or do it manually. Watch how their ads change over time and note what terms they bid on consistently. Chances are, they’ve done a lot of the copywriting work for you already.
- Social Presence: What’s does their social presence look like? Are they active on Twitter? Facebook? How are they pushing content through these channels and to whom? Are they aggregators or conversationalists?
- Content Strategy: What kind of posts are they writing? Who are they trying to reach? Is their content being shared? Are they doing infographics? Editorial?
Search Footprint
- # of Indexed Pages: SEOmoz has a great set of research tools for everything related to SEO analysis. There are other free services out there like SelfSEO but are less reliable. Moz will cover pretty much all of your SEO research. Being aware of your competitors’ content footprint in Google will help you gauge what you’re up against to rank for organic keywords.
- # of Inbound Links: Again, this is part of understanding your competitors’ footprint in major search engines.
- Traffic Estimates: Use Compete or Alexa to estimate traffic. Their estimates are usually off, but they are off for everyone so at least it’s consistent. You’ll get a good idea of relative traffic volume.
Marketing/Brand Strategy
- Messaging: What are your competitor’s key selling points? What is the tone of the copywriting on their site?
- Positioning: How do they differentiate themselves from others in the market? What is their unique value proposition?
- Tactics: Keep an eye on what tactics your competition is using to market their product. Potential tactics could be TV (broadcast or cable), radio (satellite or terrestrial), banners (which networks?), PPC, Video, Social, or retargeting.
- Target Market: Who are they selling to? Small business? Enterprise? What verticals do they focus on?
- Sales Strategy: Is their product self serve or does it require an interaction with a salesperson? How is their pricing advertised/not advertised?
- Brand Identity: Start to explore how competitors project themselves visually. Make a slide with all of their logos and take note of color palette, typography, and design language.
Product
- Features: Explore your competitor’s featureset in depth. What is their core offering and how does it compare to others in the market? You’ll usually find a set of core features that are standard across all players. What is the minimum set of features that you need to compete?
- Key Benefits: Identifying the key pain-points that features address is core to your sales offering. What pain points do your competitors say they solve?
- Pricing Model: Having a clear understanding of what your competition is charging will help you position yourself correctly. Are they a subscription service? Flat rate? Tiered? Per user? License? Do they offer a free trial or money back guarantee?
- Customer Count: If the company is public, they may include this number on their form 10-K. If not, go through press releases and company backgrounders as businesses will often reveal this data as social proof.
- Key Customers: What brands do you recognize on their landing page?
- Success Stories: Success stories reveal who a business believes is their ideal customer or use case. Look for presentations where your competitor co-presented with a customer and note case studies that are present on their marketing site.
Company
- Team/Advisors/Key Employees: Take note of the company’s founding team and what relationships they have with advisors. Do they have any key employees that are thought leaders? Follow these guys on Twitter and keep an eye on the content they produce.
- Partners: Look for any notable business development, technology, or marketing partnerships.
- Financing: Have they taken outside funding? How much?
Pick Up the Phone - Some people may feel a little iffy about this one, but I have no problem hopping on a sales call with competitors. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, get a friend who has a business and have them set up the call. You’ll learn a lot about how they position their product, what their compelling selling points are, and how they think about the market. Also, it’s possible that some of your competitors won’t list their pricing publicly; this is an important opportunity to get that data.
Also call customer service and ask them questions about pricing and features. Rate the experience and take note of how it could have been improved upon.
How to Present Your Findings – When you pull your team into a room, there’s nothing worse than slogging through a dense deck of competitors that are not all that differentiated from one another. My experience has been that a couple of competitors will bubble to the surface as the most important and that’s where you should focus.
A 3-slide deck usually does the trick. 1) List your competitors (highlight the 2 or 3 most important) 2) Summarize key differentiators 3) Explore opportunities to win.
Competitive Canvas
To make competitive analysis go faster, I put together an InDesign template that comes in pretty handy. It should be a good framework for you to start analyzing the competition in your market.
Download the canvas:
InDesign (right-click to Save) or PDF
How do you analyze your competition? Did I miss anything?
Check out my new startup that helps online businesses recover abandoned orders & increase conversion » Rejoiner
You should also follow us on Twitter
28 Sep 2011 / 2 notes / startups product management
