This might be the most important product metric

Conversion rate, churn, retention, sales; all are linked to this one metric.

This idea came up today, so here it is now making its way to you.

The number one metric that matters if you’re in the product business, is one of product usage.

Think about it. If someone buys your product but doesn’t use it, they will not realise value from it. If they don’t realise value from it, they will not deem it worthwhile - so if you’re running a subscription model - lack of product usage will be your main source of churn.

But even outside of a subscription model, if no one is realising value from your products - there’s no story to tell others about.

“Oh yeah I have that product, but I haven’t used it” - is not a great word of mouth story.

vs

“Oh yeah I have that product, I use it all the time and I love it!” Is what you need to work backwards from.

And this ties into one of my rules of thumb from last week’s post:

“How can we solve our customer’s problems and make them more successful?”

When you convince someone to buy your product, it’s not enough that it does what you promise. You must help your customer realise their version of success with your product.

So that might mean educating them on different ways they can use it. Or creating a modified version of the product that suits their needs (like how Toyota have localised versions of their vehicles, such as higher exhausts for countries liable to flooding).

Proof of this point is that all of our efforts in Pip Decks’ post-purchase email marketing is helping people realise value from content on our blog.

To summarise: the name of the game is product activation. And once activated customer will deliver the best form of marketing there is: word of mouth. Retention, loyalty and word of mouth are all by-products of product usage.

So that’s this week’s advice. Maybe it’s useful. Maybe not. Let me know.

Cheerio,
Charles.