Product Marketing
Here are a couple case studies from my time in veterinary diagnostics and human wearable technology.
Case 1: New tests not being marketed
Situation: The laboratory, clinical, and pathology teams were churning out new tests at Moichor, an animal diagnostics lab in San Francisco, California. However, these new tests were not being ordered. The Director of Clinical Medicine approached me and asked why customers weren’t buying these new tests.
“Do our clients know we have these tests?” I asked. “They should!” she responded.
Task: I wanted to see if our customers knew these new tests were available, and if they didn’t, I needed to understand where the communication blocks were within the organization and how I could create a scalable product marketing solution for the company.
Action: I created a survey on TypeForm with awareness questions as simple as, “Did you know Moichor offers canine urinalysis?” and sent the survey to our mailing list with a $50 Amazon gift card raffle.
The results were staggering — 90% of current veterinary clinics had no idea we sold certain tests.
I presented the results to the Director of Clinical Medicine and the Sales team as sales was supposed to be working closely with exiting clients.
I found the communication gap — The Director of Sales and Clinical admitted there was no process for updating the sales team when new tests were available.
Consequently, I created an internal email template the Director of Clinical could send Moichor sales members including 1) the name of the new test, 2) what the test does, 3) the price of the test, and 4) important benefits of the test in relation to other products and services we offered.
In addition to the above, I also developed three other awareness mechanisms. The first was an email notification to existing customers, SQLs, and MQLs that a new test was available. I also worked with the CTO to implement a popup on our native platform that appeared when users logged in. Finally, I used our social media channels to let our audience know as well.
Result: Sales in existing tests rose 40% compared to before I implemented new product marketing measures across the company. In addition, this measure opened the door for more departmental cooperation including the development of product source code documentation.
Case 2: Writing a winning tech proposal
Situation: The engineers at Withings, a Paris-based wearable technology company, had invented a bathroom scale called the Body Scan. The scale was slated to be the most accurate bathroom scale due to its handle that would allow for more segmental body composition.
However, the team needed a jumpstart to get notoriety around this new invention. I was brought in to help write the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) award application.
Task: At this point I knew that there would be discrepancies between engineers on certain terms and wording, especially as no concrete product source code had yet been developed, so I asked them to create an outline of the proposal based on CES guidelines. Afterwards, I was to optimize the language around the marketing as much as possible to win as many awards as possible for CES.
Action: The engineers created the document, but as predicted, comments were racking up that contradicted each other. In addition, the Head of Marketing in North America provided the wrong submission date, so time was of the essence.
Drawing on my university teaching experience, I summarized confusing or overly-technical engineering language into one or two clear sentences. I asked the engineers at each level of the project to either confirm or reject the sentence, first starting with the most junior engineers and then working my way up to senior leadership.
In addition to clarifying language, I was responsible for weeding through non-relevant information such as in-depth historical explanations of electrical impedance and other sections that did not conform specifically to the CES guidelines.
I submitted the award application to leadership in Paris and Boston with a day to spare.
Result: Body Scan earned three CES Innovation Awards and was named one of The Best Inventions of 2022 by TIME.
