Hi there 👋
You all know how much I love talking about strategy (what even is it? what makes a good one or a bad one?), so I really loved diving into this newsletter from Reforge’s Adam Fishman that broke down strategy for a number of cool companies like Patreon, Imperfect Foods, and more. Give it a read and let me know what you think! Hope your strategies are going well so far in 2023.
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
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Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Community + the art of “selling with”
This week, I had the pleasure of being on Peep Laja’s How to Win podcast where we talked about growth channels, I shared Buffer and Oyster stories (did you know I was writing four 2,000-word blog posts every week??), and we had a healthy debate on the role that brand plays in conversion. I was pro-brand, obviously.
You can check out the interview here.
Before the interview, though, we talked about how Peep has grown his three businesses. Peep has an agency, a learning community, and a software product, and he built them one at a time, sequencing from one to the next.
I love this approach, probably because it takes some of the risk out of starting a new thing from scratch — and I am verrrrry risk-averse.
But in addition to being a smart empire-building strategy, I was also inspired by the thought of applying this to my role as a marketer today. I think this sequencing has implications not just for building new businesses from scratch but also scaling our existing businesses. The key takeaway for me: Don’t leave growth all up to you.
Sell with your audience, your community, and your biggest fans.
A brief history of “sell with”
The concept of “sell with” is nothing new. It has been around for many years as part of the three-headed hydra of sales strategies:
Sell with
Sell through
Sell to
Check out this blog post to learn more. The tl;dr is that “sell to” is your traditional sales where a rep sells to someone; “sell through” goes through an external reseller; and “sell with” deals with partnerships typically like API, integrations, referral, etc.
Sell With has become more and more viable due to rapid growth in the number of application programming interfaces (APIs). With APIs, organizations can add new partners, reach new demographics, and expand to new geographies. CoSelling Partners can share insights in ways that were previously impossible.
But for us marketers out there, “sell with” can be waaaaay more powerful than just an API partnership or integration. The idea of “sell with” is the nirvana state for so much of our marketing efforts and brand efforts and channel strategies. Nirvana for us is creating a movement so powerful that our community is championing us, advocating for us, and (whether overtly or not) selling on our behalf.
If you take the software away, what remains?
If you take the software away, do you still have something impactful? Substantial? (gulp) Monetizable?
This is the true litmus test for whether you’ve built something powerful enough for “sell with.”
And this is why community-building must be about more than just the pixels. It must be about a shared connection, a shared purpose. For instance, if the Figma community stopped at just allowing people to share Figma plugins, templates, and frameworks, then you end up with a very transactional, surface-level relationship. You have a user-generated content engine, not a community. And if ever the Figma product goes away — poof! — the community goes away, too.
But instead Figma has built community around designers, helping to elevate the role of design within an organization and to empower design collaboration throughout an org. That won’t go away if Figma goes away!
You see similar community movements with places like HubSpot (inbound marketing), Miro (collaboration), and — if it’s not too presumptive for me to say — Oyster (global teams).
If the Oyster product goes away tomorrow, what’s left? Well, there’s an awesome group of like-minded HR professionals who are hungry to build the very best global teams and a hive of global workers who are keen to unlock opportunities for better and better jobs.
Typically you’ll see this “sell with” happening in the consumer world where brands build communities first and then figure out what to sell to them. And, wouldn’t you know, often times the best B2C strategies make the most unique and differentiated B2B strategies!
Tying it back to the business
It’s not just a touchy-feely vibe we’re after, though. There is real business impact with this type of “sell with” approach.
First off, the “sell with” is measurable.
This can happen a couple of ways. “Sell with” most often shows up as a referral program where you give your audience the mechanics to sell on your behalf and to get rewards for doing so. Check out this referral program from Postscript for an example.
There is also a growing category of community-led growth tools that are able to measure and capture the impact of your community. Common Room and Orbit are two of the best.
And second, the “sell with” is defensible.
Take, for example, the cool folks at Commsor.
Commsor is one of those community-led growth products I mentioned above. The difference with Commsor is that they have a differentiated growth model that includes software, of course, but also strategic services and community. Their service business and learning community are monetized to bring in revenue streams of their own.
What does “sell with” look like for your business?
Not every business has to have a “sell with” motion, but if you’re able to unlock this type of growth motion for your business, then you’re really onto something.
Do you have this working for your business?
Up for sharing your experience?
Email me anytime eat hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I currently lead the marketing team at Oyster. I previously built brands at Buffer, Vox, and Polly. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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