Episode 99: Examining Product-Led Growth with Ezinne Udezue
Melissa Perri welcomes Ezinne Udezue to this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Ezinne is the CPO of WP Engine, a platform that provides solutions to create marketable sites and apps on WordPress, as well as the author of Product Management for Product-Led Growth, coming 2023. Melissa asks Ezinne what she thinks the key is to being a successful product leader, Ezinne shares her definition of product-led growth, and they discuss how product-led growth applies to B2B and Enterprise products, core PLG tactics, what PMs need to understand about marketing and how product collaborates with marketing and sales in a PLG company, and much more.
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Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Ezinne explore:
Her journey into product leadership.
Product leaders are measured on impact, so they should be someone that people look up to. "It comes down to having a method…a way one thinks about product,"
Ezinne says. A key part of becoming a successful product manager is being able to explain your product to people in a way they can understand.
"You're combining all those signals and setting context and creating options, your ideas backlog, your product backlog, and then you're making a choice. That to me is what product strategy is," Ezinne tells Melissa.
Ezinne lists skills and attributes companies and product managers need to hone for successful product growth.
Word of mouth marketing is an important component of product-led growth. People are more likely to come to you if you offer fast and efficient solutions to their problems.
With a product-led growth strategy, sales and marketing are able to focus on upselling instead of bombarding customers. They can focus on individuals who are already interested in the product.
The first step to product-led growth is mapping out the customer journey. Identify market segments to attack and generate value. Since there are so many new companies emerging every day, acquiring a customer is difficult. Ezinne stresses being very intentional, and being creative about virality.
Resources
Transcript:
Melissa:
Hello and welcome to the Product Thinking Podcast. Today we have a great session for you on product leadership and product led growth, and I'm here with Ezinne Udezue, who is the CPO of WP Engine. So welcome, thanks for being here.
Ezinne:
Thanks for having me, Melissa.
Melissa:
Um, it's so good to hear, uh, to have you here. I'm so excited to talk about, um, you know, all these topics. You have had such an illustrious career as a product leader. You've worked at some amazing companies like Time and Procore, um, among many others. Can you tell us a little bit about, uh, how you got into the position that you're in now and what's been your career in product so far?
Ezinne:
Um, it's been really interesting and I've learned a lot along the way. Um, I hate telling people how long I've been in product, cuz it probably ages me, but I, I actually think I was the first product manager at T-Mobile USA in Bellevue, Washington. Um, I think they were product specialists, et cetera, but somehow we negotiated a product manager title then. Um, and I got an opportunity to work on building some of the best experiences, um, for Telco at that time. Um, we had my faves, we built wifi products. Um, so it was pretty early, but it was fun. And actually that was the first time I moved into product management leadership and um, it was fantastic. I was there for about 10 years. Um, and I feel lucky because I don't know how, but somehow I understood that being able to balance business results and customer value was what would move me up the chain.
Just somehow it was, yes, you can listen to the customers discover, but you have to balance that with the impact it's going to have on the business. So that was a very important aspect of my growth there. And then I raised my hand quite a bit. Um, T-Mobile had one of its biggest launches, which was my faves. And uh, it ran into an issue and I raised my hand. So when I think about keys to success, I think that impact focus, that understanding of customer focus, raising your hand and trying your best to be a good person, <laugh>, that often is what I think, um, leads one to an interesting career or successful career. from T-Mobile. I moved on to Discovery Media and built some of some really interesting applications and ran their platform team and then Time Inc. I ran innovation for them. That was fun. Um, eventually moved into e-commerce, ATAR voice and built some new products for them. And then construction platform at Procore. And now I'm at WP Engine. So lots of battle scars, lots of learning, many industries who have tried and, uh, failed and tried and had successes that, so that's my story.
Melissa:
<laugh> <laugh>. That's great. Um, so many amazing companies on there too. Yeah. So when you're going back and looking at, you know, your journey and products so far, what do you believe were the keys to success, um, to succeeding as a product leader, to making that transition into a product leader? What do you go back on and, you know, highlight when you think about your career?
Ezinne:
Let me start with, uh, more recent stuff. As a product leader, I think you're measured on impact and your ability to mobilize the, the team towards that business impact. That's the, that's gen generally the measure of success. Um, in that transition from an individual contributor to, uh, a leader though it, it can be tricky, but I, I will share my point of view. when I look at the competencies that I've built out, cuz we do these leveling guides, et cetera, I've done it at least six times now when I step back and look across the dimensions of the competencies and I ask, how does one move up? Or how does one switch from this ladder to the other? One thing that is consistent is this idea of being exemplar, being the person that people look to, right? So in the world of product management, as one wants to move up the ranks or one wants to switch into leadership, of course there has to be business reason for that switch.
There has to be a scope available, um, and you have to have the competence. But at the heart of it, I think being a reference is a core part of that. And when I think about what it looks like to be a reference, I think it comes down to having a method, um, at least having a way one thinks about doing product. I often call that product a product system. Can you articulate to someone who is coming to understand what product is, what your steps are, why they are in this order, why you think about things in this way. Um, I think that's critical. And once you're able to begin to establish that you can then coach others or mentor others. And that in my opinion is how you move up the ranks, how you grow, and oftentimes how you get tapped to lead, uh, in product management.
Melissa:
So when you're thinking about your system for product management mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what does that include? What, what's, what's the components of it or the pieces of it?
Ezinne:
So I'm gonna start with what, at least when I started in product management, how I thought about it, then I thought about it, and I'm gonna use some words that may not be common, but I thought about it first as product strategy. And for me, strategy is really about choice. And then I thought about product development, you actually would hear those type of words. Somebody was a product strategy or somebody who was a product product development manager. And then the last part, which I referred to earlier, was the impact piece was product impact and results, that business side of things. And I thought of my job through those three lenses. And from the very beginning, even as an individual contributor, when I think about product strategy, I think about it as ultimately you're trying to make a choice and you are getting signals from the product result part, um, of product management, which is you've launched it, you're getting new results.
Is it working, is it not working? You're editing, you may be getting signals also from your leadership team on a pivot in terms of strategy. And you're combining all those signals and setting context and creating options, your ideas backlog, your product backlog, and then you're making a choice. So that to me is what product strategy is. If you move and elevate it up to the very top, it's the same thing. You're taking market context, you're taking business context. Those are your signals. You're laying it out with your peers, whether it's the ceo, cto, and you're asking yourself with this context, what are my options? Where do I, how do I want to win? And you're then making a choice. That to me is what product strategy really is. Then after you've made your choice, you go into the product development phase, which is now articulating that, bringing others along and allowing them to help you build.
And oftentimes you'll hear the build measure, learn. Now you know why you're building what you're building, you have the strategy, the choice, the reason why you're doing it, and then you can honestly go through the, uh, development site, part of product management and then check on your results and then edit, move, learn, repeat, rinse, and repeat. So that was how I thought about my work, and I think that that helped. I could articulate it, I could speak about it, I could talk about what I was learning in each part of the, the job transparently. That's kind of an old model <laugh>, in my opinion, in this new product led growth. I think it's a little more expansive than those three things. Um, and before you would get a signal from marketing, but now that marketing signal may be in the product. So, um, yeah, I don't, I hope that helps.
Melissa:
Yes, definitely. And you just mentioned, uh, product led growth. I know, uh, you are writing a book on this <laugh> product led growth, um, is one of those buzzwords that floating around out there. I think a lot of people don't exactly know what that means. What does that mean to you?
Ezinne:
Um, so when I think about product led growth, um, it's, I'm often concerned about defining it because it means so many things. Different people are religious about it. But when Oji and I, and Oji is my husband, he's a co-author, also a, a product leader out there. Think about it, it ultimately comes down to finding growth through the product- growth of the company, growth of the business, and uncovering value, holistic value through the product. In many organizations, marketing go to market sits on one side, then p and e, product and technology or product and engineering builds the product, and then another team supports the product. Product led growth is bringing all of that together in order to serve the customer as in terms of delivering them value normally in the way that they want it, and then making sure that it also serves the business. So marketing doesn't have to go acquire customers. The product helps acquire customers. The product is the acquisition channel. Customer success doesn't have to go write these documents that live on another server out there as a customer is going through the experience. They can see how they can be helped through the product. It's all in there. The journey of the customer, um, is brought to life in the product.
Melissa:
I love that. And I haven't heard anybody really describe product blood growth like that before, but I think that's so important. And you're right, so many people just think about it as virality or it means like growth hacking. And I see people try to like hire VPs of growth hacking instead of product. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But, um, the most successful companies I've seen actually do product-led growth. It is exactly how you describe it. It's growing through the product. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So when you are thinking about reorienting, uh, a company and towards product led growth, um, you did mention a couple things that, you know, marketing comes from the product, um, you know, and customer success is not over here just documenting everything. We're, you know, we're walking through the product, we're learning about the product as we go. What other types of things have to change in the company or in the way that you are thinking about, um, you know, bringing that product to market compared to what we used to do before product led growth?
Ezinne:
It's, it's a very subtle thing, but oftentimes we have or have ideas of what the product should be. And the idea is to stuff that product and modify the customer to use the product in a very specific way. I think the core thing, at least with the product team that I I really try to harp on or work with engineers, is doing true customer discovery. Really understanding what the issue is, what workflows and what their pain is, so that you can then orient the product to fit into a mold that helps them solve it, make it intuitive, not get the customer to learn how, particularly for the sharpest of the pains. We talk about this idea of sharp problems, which are basically pain points in our target customers or flow that just eats at them that steals their time, their energy, their focus, once they experience the right solution, right? They just can't live without it. So if you study your customers well and really do discovery, you can watch where that pain is or where that sharp problem is and then ease it, like make it disappear. And that is when things begin to fly within the product, people get to be activation point or the aha moment sooner because you've taken away that core friction or you, you, you've shown that you understand their true intent for the product. So I hope that makes sense in some way, <laugh>.
Melissa:
Yeah. So it sounds like if you are gonna be a good product manager for a company that wants to do plg, product led growth mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, discovery is a core component of it, um, being really good at discovery, really getting into those sharp problems. Uh, what else do you think product managers need to, like, what other attributes or skills do you think they need to hone or have differently than a traditional background, I guess, in product management to really succeed here?
Ezinne:
I think they need to figure out what they mean when they're building their feedback loop. Um, and again, like I said, good product managers have frameworks and systems, et cetera, right? But when you do launch, how are you learning whether it's working or not? You actually have to actively take ownership of that. There are some organizations I may step into. I I consult through product mind sometimes, um, and they're like, oh yeah, it's the UX research team is gonna find that out. Or, you know, customer success knows that issue, but a good PM has to build a, a what we call a customer listening machine, really knowing how to first ask the first layer question, get that down based on that learning, sharpen the question even more now, get another cohort of group of people, then ask a lower level question, then even watch them.
So just having a methodology around how they think about learning and getting feedback loops from the customer. The second part is really taking this idea of mapping out the journey of your customer. Um, I spent quite a bit of time and every organization I'm in at currently at wp, we're really laying out what the customer journey looks like. How do they learn about us, how do they sign up, how do they onboard, how do they become familiar with the product? And looking at every single permutation and trying to figure out where the friction is. So laying it out visually often, like we are in rooms or we're on Figma just laying it out, trying to understand and color coding the friction points and beginning to reduce every single one. And oftentimes we may introduce new ones. So going back and revising this idea of understanding your customer life cycle, your customer journey, and then laying it out the, the the other parts.
So when I think about some product led road tactics, you know, gravity comes to mind, uh, freemium comes to mind, self-service comes to mind. These are just many aspects of what you need to look at if you truly want to grow through the product. And so on the pricing side, asking yourself what aspect of your product can actually allow a customer to fully understand what it is you plan to deliver to them. And then they can choose you, right? Because that ultimately is what you want. So making sure that your product managers understand what the core minimum value is and can talk about that and how they're incrementally adding over time. I always call this layer cake thing, like what is the basic thing and then what will most people want? And beyond that, what will most o o other people want? If you can articulate this layer cake of value, um, you understand your business. That's another thing I look for in product managers, or at least help to teach them as I enter new industries or, you know, enter into a company.
Melissa:
Yeah, I, so a couple things that kind of stood out to me when you were talking about that. It sounds like user experience is wildly important when it comes to product life growth, um mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, you're talking about reducing the friction and really a lot of the user journey mapping, all those things. Um, and I think some people are gonna hear about, you know, I could totally anticipate this just by the questions that get written into the podcast all the time, but some people are gonna listen to this and be like, well, you know, maybe that only works for consumer products. How, how do you think about product led growth when it comes to, um, you know, enterprise products or, or B2B type products too?
Ezinne:
I, I think so. Some, some things I always start off with, what is generally true, um, or what's a general trend? There is a move towards, what we would say at the consumerization of b2b, right? Um, even the buyer is a cut consumer in some way, and they have expectations of how they buy. So it's not, it's not a UX thing, it really is psychological. It's time. It's about time being wasted, it's about just work, darn it, right? Um, so I think that because of the leaps and bounds consumer we've made in consumer products, there now is an expectation of simplicity and intu intuitiveness in B2B products, there's still a tension on who's the buyer of the product. Would you be surprised how much users are beginning to have an influence?