How to build a thriving product-led community with AMA sessions
Marketing Powerup #29: Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus, breaks down how AMA sessions fueled their marketing flywheel.
Today's Marketing Powerups include:
- Adobe’s SEO growth strategy.
- Creating content to drive sales.
- The search war: Bing AI Chat vs. Google.
- Using AI to repurpose podcast in less time.
- Sandy Mangat’s AMA product-led community strategy.
Ready? Let's go!
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Today’s Marketing Powerups is brought to you by 42/Agency. Founded by my good friend, Kamil Rextin, 42/Agency is my #1 recommended demand gen agency for SaaS to help you drive demos and signups.
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✨ Mini powerups
Five fun-sized blurbs and links to help boost your marketing.
✨ Adobe’s SEO growth strategy:
Adobe's monthly organic traffic was flat for 9 years. Then, it tripled in 23 months. Kevin Indig reveals the 3 SEO strategies that unlocked this growth. I wrote this post on LinkedIn that got over 100K impressions. (P.S. If we’re not already connected, add me on LinkedIn and leave a note that you’re connecting through this newsletter.)
✨ Using content to drive leads and sales:
Jimmy Daly, Former VP of Growth at Animalz, wrote this insightful article three years ago. But it's still as impactful it is today as it was before. He digs into creating an effective content marketing strategy that drives sales. His hot take is to stop measuring page views and get on more frequent sales calls.
Google has been rolling out A LOT of changes this year across their products, from Analytics, Ads, and Search. The challenge is that what used to work a few months ago may not work today or in the future. It's hard to predict the future value of the investment in SEO over time. Devesh Khanal, Co-Founder of Grow & Convert, provides pointers on estimating the value and ROI of SEO for your business.
✨ The search war: Bing AI Chat vs. Google:
The folks at Growth Design created this interactive case study that walks through Bing's AI Chat and how "Answer" engines might look in the future. It highlights where the UX falls short and how small tweaks would vastly improve the AI search experience.
✨ Using ChatGPT to repurpose podcast 10x in less time:
Your podcast is a goldmine of valuable content you can repurpose on your social channels. But if you're just too swamped to dig out those nuggets yourself, ChatGPT's here to the rescue! Ben Goodey posted a framework for repurposing podcasts into Shorts, Tweets, blogs, and LinkedIn posts using ChatGPT.
📰 Newsletter powerup
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Stacked Marketer is a newsletter that cuts through the daily noise in the marketing world by sharing a 7-minute daily read, jam-packed with the latest news, trends, tech and actionable advice.
I’ve been loving the short daily nuggets of marketing powerups. I learned the last mini powerup about using ChatGPT to repurpose podcast episodes through Stacked Marketer!
Check out Stack Marketer. If you do subscribe, tell them I sent you, will ya? 😄
⭐️ Sandy Mangat’s AMA strategy for community growth
“Community-led growth” is all the hype in the last few years. But if you look at most companies’ communities, what you hear is "crickets." 🦗
But, if you look at Pocus’ Product-Led Sales community, you can see members welcoming each other, responding to each other questions, and lifting everybody up.
The secret?
It’s their AMAs series where experts from Clearbit, OpenView, and Notion have come to answer any questions, which has been central to their marketing flywheel and community growth.
Today, Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus, shares Pocus’s AMA community strategy in detail.
“The AMA community events have been a critical part of Pocus's go-to-market motion from even before the product was launched,” says Mangat.
Here are the four things that make Pocus' Product-Led Sales community thriving:
1. Value-first approach. 🏆
Sandy believes that community is about value first, education, and building a relationship with your audience and customers.
Companies should treat their community like a product, thinking about the value proposition, unique selling points, and what makes them 10x better than their competitors.
By taking this approach with Pocus' community, they can create "a cult following for their brand and product," build an evangelist network, and create a different relationship with their community members.
2. Be a solution to a problem. 🤨
Pocus uses AMAs (Ask Me Anything) as a central part of its community growth and marketing strategy. Sandy discussed how AMAs provide an "informal setting for interesting conversations that lead to the discovery of things that are difficult to find by reading a case study."
The Pocus team hosted AMAs to invite thought leaders and experts to answer questions its community members had about product-led sales. In other words, it was a solution to a problem.
When thinking about starting a community for your company or brand, think through what problems you're solving for your audience.
Is it to answer questions from experts? Or to connect people around a common goal? It could be another way for people to get product support.
3. Repurpose AMAs recordings. 🎥
Sandy and the Pocus team repurposed the AMA recording into other types of content including a podcast called "Unlock Revenue," blog posts with recaps of the AMA, shareable quote images from experts, social media posts, audiograms, and more.
Here’s an example of an AMA Recap with , Operating Partner at OpenView and writer of the newsletter:
The content pieces from AMAs have become fuel for Pocus's marketing strategy, including its content strategy, community growth approach, and brand-building efforts. This approach makes it easy for Pocus to generate content quickly and efficiently.
"The AMAs allow us to connect with our community and provide real value to them while also providing us with a source of content that we can turn into blog posts, social media posts, and other types of content. "
4. Treat members like humans. 🫀
Sandy emphasized the importance of treating community members like humans and building a relationship with them. Companies should engage with their audience whenever possible, either through a quick DM or encouraging them to ask a question and then helping them find the folks that can answer that question by tagging them.
"Engaging with our community members is something we take very seriously. We want to build a relationship with them and make them feel like they are part of something special. We want to be there for them and help them in any way we can. That's why we encourage them to ask us questions and engage with us whenever possible."
The secret sauce to Pocus's community: AMAs
Pocus's success story shows that community is a critical part of a company's growth and marketing strategy. By focusing on value first, education, and building a relationship with your audience and customers, companies can create a cult following for their brand and product, build an evangelist network, and deepen their connection with their community members.
In the latest Marketing Powerups episode, Sandy digs deeper into Pocus’s AMA community straetgy. You’ll learn the following:
- How Pocus’ AMA series fuel its marketing flywheel.
- How building a network of mentors and advisors accelerated Sandy’s career.
- How Sandy repurposes the AMA recordings into articles and podcast episodes.
- How Sandy identifies product evangelists through their community.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.
As an exclusive free perk for Marketing Powerups subscribers, I’ve created a Powerups Cheatsheet you can download, fill in, and Sandy’s AMA community strategy.
You can download and make a copy of it here (a direct link with no email required).
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That’s all for now, friends!
Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John
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