Ashley Guttuso’s Post

Every weekday morning at 6:30, my 2 daughters, 11 and 14, stagger to our room and get in the bed. For 15 minutes (until the 6:45 alarm), I’m sandwiched in almost-asleep-almost-awake snuggles. Those 15 minutes, y’all—they’re powerful. They quietly, one deep breath at a time, set a tone of gratitude. They deliver me from sleep to wakefulness with a reminder of what the day is truly about. They give us all the peace of pausing to enjoy a moment together before the chaos and hustle (and sometimes difficult challenge) of making sure the girls walk out the door soon after the school bus tracker app shows it entering our neighborhood. They are the calm I need to draw from when facing the day’s agenda. And they accumulate into hours of togetherness (1.25 a week) that I realize might end any year now. Fleeting. Eventually just a feeling I’ll look back on when I remember these years. But, for now, it’s Friday. And I’ve had my favorite 15 minutes of the day. And I’m ready to conquer it. You?

Little title change, y'all: I'm now Senior Product Marketer, Team Lead at Prompt Therapy Solutions Inc. I'll be overseeing our product marketing, content marketing, and paid media. I'm very excited for the road ahead. Note: It's a marketer's dream to work for a company whose customers go out of their way to recommend us!

How I get the most out of an industry conference as a marketer: LISTEN… …to current customers who can give feedback on the product as a whole, recent releases, how they like to learn, what they’re hoping you’ll build next, etc. They’re happy to share in this atmosphere. Come to the conversation with humility: “what could we do better?” …to prospects who are just learning what your product does. What questions do they ask? What concerns do they have? What will they need to learn/understand to fully assess the value you can deliver? Gong recordings are great, but standing right next to a veteran salesperson who knows the right questions to ask before answering gives you a more immersive experience. Pay attention to how they navigate the tough questions and note which ones your product marketing could help address before a sales conversation occurs. …to everyone attending sessions. What’s exciting and inspiring them? What are they hoping to execute as soon as they get back to the office? Is your brand addressing these highly resonant topics in your content marketing? Should you? …to your sales and CS team members in attendance. In person conversations are more relaxed and less filtered. What do they wish prospects knew before an initial sales call? What recurring product questions do they see coming through? …to raving fans. Book on-location case studies. Give them the chance to create footage they can use in their own marketing. Keep your ears perked for themes that pop up when you ask them about their experience. What about their journey with your brand can you seek to replicate for others? - - - It’s tempting to go in and make noise. But your super power—the thing that can extend the success of event attendance beyond the here and now—is listening.

Austin-bound for my first #APTAPrivatePractice2023 with Prompt Therapy Solutions Inc! Please share your favorite downtown Austin restaurants, hangouts, and things to do.

Show us your welcome series!!!

Agree or disagree: There’s not much need for scene setting or narrative exposition in blog articles about your product. If you’re communicating a new feature or release, it’s ok to jump right in and start with what it does and why that matters. Go too narrative and you risk readers falling off before they understand the value. Examples (all links below in comments): 1. A Branch article about Deepviews begins “Looking to drive additional value from important mobile channels like email, affiliates, and SMS? Branch has you covered. Deepviews increase installs and customer lifetime value (LTV) by creating a branded pathway from external discovery and messaging platforms to your brand’s best-performing platform: your app.” 2. An article about Trello Dark Mode begins “It's finally here! Trello is officially equipped with a dark mode theme so your productivity can now be, ehm, illuminated, in any brightness setting of your choosing. We rolled this out with accessibility considerations at the forefront, so that dark mode could be enjoyed by anyone that prefers it.” 3. A recent Descript release (while playful, still cuts to the chase) “And now we come to the fearful month of July, its skies filled with bottle-fired rockets and lethal lawn darts. But first, let us take a moment to look back on the halcyon days of June — and all the cool stuff Descript released this month.” What say you? Do they need more context setting? Or is that just asking to be skimmed? #productmarketing

B2B marketers: Help your prospects see the air fryer in the room. Huh? Storytime: I went on a cleaning spree last weekend. We’d been gone for almost 2 months spending the summer in Florida and I returned determined to not only tidy our living room / kitchen area, but also to bring some order to some chaos we’d been living with for too long. Beyond decluttering, I had a specific goal: 🎯 Figure out a space for my husband’s beloved air fryer to reside that was not just ALWAYS OUT ON THE KITCHEN COUNTERTOP. ~6 hours, a couple hundred calories, countless Clorox wipes, and a bunch of reorganizing later, I’d made a space for it in our laundry room closet, above a brand new set of plastic drawers that will now be known as the snack pantry. I also did things I’d been meaning to do for a long time, like adding double-sided tape to the layered rugs that constantly curled up and tripped us if we weren’t paying attention as we walked by the sofas. Here’s the thing: We were overdue an overhaul. You know–that moment when you’ve lived in a house for 2 years and realized that the places you thought things should go when you first moved in are either impractical or no longer aligned with your lifestyle? For instance, we didn’t make daily protein smoothies in 2021 so I didn't know that plastic bins would eventually encroach on our snack storage. We also didn’t have an air fryer the size of a smart car. B2B marketing lesson here? There were a bunch of little things I could endure to keep the status quo. It took an eye sore I was no longer willing to look at to propel me to make major changes. If you sell software to a customer sometimes disgruntled but mostly ok with a flawed solution, you may have to help them see the air fryer in the room and realize it’s a problem. Identify what can actually motivate them to make a change.

5 things I learned from building a B2B SaaS guided product tour: 1. It's important to set up the software to show data that mirrors your target customer's business. Seek help from CS and sales to make sure the screens you show are realistic. 2. Context is king. Sure, they're "seeing" your software, but it's your job to create context. For each feature you demo, answer both "what does it do?" and "why should I care?" 3. For "why should I care?", point out the difference between what they're currently experiencing and what they could benefit from. 4. Write for skimmers AND deep readers. Format headers so they can zip through OR slow down. 5. Testing matters. My first tour is currently being tested via email links to prospects. I'll be collecting feedback to understand what's working and what's not. And, it'll never truly be done because we can always, always, always go in and improve it. Have you created one? What did you learn?

Help me out, y'all... What's your favorite tool for recording product videos for social? Preferably one that allows you a customizable selfie recording. #productmarketing