[post] PLG Supporting Groups (#57)

* initial draft of the PLG Support Functions post

* Finialize PLG Support Functions for publication

* Updating the link to previous article and move tools around

* Fix hardcoded path in buildRss script

Author: joseph-flinn

data/package.json

@@ -4,8 +4,8 @@
   "description": "Static database",
   "type": "module",
   "scripts": {
-    "build:posts": "node tools/buildPosts.js",
-    "build:rss": "node tools/buildRss.js"
+    "build:posts": "node tools/buildPosts/buildPosts.js",
+    "build:rss": "node tools/buildRss/buildRss.js"
   },
   "author": ""
 }

data/posts/0009-plg-product-triad.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-!! title: PLG - The Product Triad
+!! title: Product Led Growth - The Product Triad
 !! slug: plg-product-triad
 !! published: 2023-09-18
 !! description: Examining and defining the roles of the core product triad in a PLG company

data/posts/0010-plg-support-functions.md

@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+!! title: Product Led Growth - Support Functions
+!! slug: plg-support-functions
+!! published: 2023-09-25
+!! description: Examining and defining the roles of the organization groups outside of the core product groups in PLG company
+
+---
+
+In the [last PLG post](https://joseph.flinnlab.com/posts/plg-product-triad), we examined the unique roles and perspectives that each of the core groups
+have: Product, Design, and Engineering Development. This post, we're going to look at how the rest of the organization
+supports the Product Led Growth. 
+
+## Supporting Groups
+
+While a company will not have a product without the core product groups, the company cannot exist without the supporting
+business functions: Customer Success, Finance, Marketing, Sales, and Operations. Every organization can have wildly
+different structure, but each of these functions will exist in some capacity.
+
+### Customer Success
+
+Customer Success is one of the most important functions in a PLG organization. The product gets the customer in the door
+with some value add, and Customer Success keeps them there.
+Research [[1](https://walkerinfo.com/cxleader/customers-2020-a-progress-report/)] has shown that customer experience is
+becoming the main brand differentiator, overtaking pricing and product. So while having a solid product that keeps
+delivering value to the user is important for building the brand, brand longevity relies on the customer experience and
+building an amazing Customer Success group.
+
+This group's role is almost too easily defined in their name: Customer Success. They do everything in their power to
+assist in the customer succeeding. To the customer, they are the face of the company. Customer interactions with
+Customer Success directly affect how people perceive the brand. I purchased a product earlier this year and remember
+Customer Success reaching out to me before I had received the shipment alerting me that the wrong parts were packaged
+and the correct ones were shipped out and on their way. I am customer for life because I see my personal value of
+responsibility being embodied by that organization. While I like the product that I purchased, I love the company and
+brand behind it.
+
+Customer Success is also one of the best avenues for user feedback data and ideas for functionality that the product
+does not yet have. When the user is bought into the organization and the brand, the customer wants to help improve the
+product and they will let the organization know what improvements they would like to see. The Design group can then 
+start building out models and conducting user research on these ideas to see how much value the new capability has to
+offer.
+
+### Marketing
+
+The Marketing group is one of the most impacted group between a PLG organization and an non-PLG organization. The approach
+to marketing is drastically different. PLG marketing uses three key strategies: 1) market through the product, 2) value
+freemium users, and 3) rely on product data [[1](https://www.toplyne.io/blog/plg-marketing)]. 
+
+One of the core ideas of the PLG philosophy is to focus on building a product so well that the users will essentially
+market it with word-of-mouth. The first strategy of marketing in a PLG organization is to market through the app.
+Communication to users about new features and any other announcements come through the app, inviting the user to dive
+deeper into the application. In most cases, users are not fully aware of everything that an application has to offer and
+all of the ways that you can use it. In addition, a user will be using the product a lot more than actively searching
+for new features on the organization website or in a content blog. The best way to reach the user is through the product
+itself. Like all other product capabilities, in-app marketing systems goes through Design, user research and constant
+user feedback to validate that it is adding to the user experience. In-app marketing has to align with making the user
+the center of the experience and making sure that it is delivering value and is not taking it away.
+
+This leads us to the second strategy: value freemium users. One of the main strategies in expanding user base of a
+product is to deliver value for free. This wins the heart of the user and helps promote the product into more lucrative
+markets that those users have an in with where the organization might not already be. More than likely, in a SaaS
+company, there will be a lot more free users than paid. This means that there is a very large base of users that are
+already using the product, and already know the product and the brand. The cost is less to look to convert them to
+paying customers and the easiest way to reach these users is through the product, core strategy number one. 
+
+The third strategy is to use product data for marketing. The user data that Product collects to analyze user behavior,
+looking for optimizations, can also be used by marketing to identify potential power users or advocates to partner with
+to expand brand awareness.
+
+
+### Sales
+
+The Sales group is another highly impacted group in PLG. Organizations are traditionally sales-led: build a product that
+someone is willing to pay for. This mindset does not work with the PLG philosophy. While this is the end goal of a
+company, focusing on building a product that someone is willing to pay for misses the large base of free users that are
+so important. Focusing instead on delivering value across all users to promote the word-of-mouth spread of the product
+is the key focus.
+
+Assuming the company has a B2B business, the primary role of Sales in PLG is to provide hands-on assistance to the
+larger accounts that need to be walked through the sales process and is cannot self-serve. Secondarily, they can also be
+a source for product feedback on why sales went through or did not go through. However, the feedback from the
+unsuccessful sales should be weighted accordingly with all other user feedback. Emotionally, there is a temptation to
+rush to fix the thing that ultimately led to a sale not going through. But this has to be validated with product data
+and user research alongside every other product change. Giving into this temptation breaks the PLG model and starts
+moving towards a Sale-led model.
+
+
+### Operations
+
+Operations are the unsung heroes of value delivery (ok...I might be a little biased since my background is Operations). I
+actually was not sure I wanted to separate Operations from Engineering because of the risk of separate groups. While
+there is many a debate on what the organizational structure should look like, this business function still needs to
+exist. The primary role of the Operations function is to enable the core product groups to consistently deliver value
+and to assist decreasing the risk of failures that forcibly removes value from users (ahem...cloud outages and the
+like). This will look different in every organization since the requirements and processes are different.
+
+
+### Finance
+
+Finance has a very subtle role to play. They control how the organization's money is used and are the very last line of
+defense--if you will--for a PLG company. Most actions that an organization takes that lead toward or away from PLG cost
+money and Finance controls the approvals for the larger ones. They are the last group that can ask "How does this ad
+campaign fit into our overall PLG business model?" before signing off on a marketing campaign budget or on a new role
+that might seem to work against the overall PLG direction.
+
+
+---
+
+Every group in an organization has a unique perspective to contribute to the mission. For an organization that is
+practicing Product Led Growth, the support functions are just as important as the core product group's roles. Marketing
+helps continue to build the product brand by inviting the users to dive even deeper into the product. Sales is there to
+help large companies purchase the product who cannot self-serve.  Operations looks to continuously improve the
+efficiency and stability in value delivery. And finance is the absolute last line of defense in maintaining the PLG
+practices as the company grows.
+
+
+---
+
+## Resources
+
+1. [Walker - Customers 2020](https://walkerinfo.com/cxleader/customers-2020-a-progress-report/)
+2. [Toplyne - PLG Marketing](https://www.toplyne.io/blog/plg-marketing)

data/posts/wip-plg-support-functions.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 import fs from 'fs';
-import posts from '../posts.json' assert {type: "json"};
+import posts from '../../posts.json' assert {type: "json"};
 
 
 const SITE_URL = 'https://joseph.flinnlab.com';