Marketing and product development should work hand in hand. Marketing efforts should be used as a research tool to support the product development and the product’s development should influence marketing strategies. One of our partners, Wisdom Labs, had created a unique and powerful suite of products to combat loneliness and burnout in employee populations. However, their marketing and product strategies were not always in harmony.

Many companies face a very similar challenge. If you have more than one product, how do you develop a lean marketing strategy that enables product development without overwhelming the customer with options?

Wisdom Labs had four products that addressed the same problem in different ways, providing a holistic, well-rounded solution. Archetype’s expert product development and marketing team worked with Wisdom Labs over 9 months to increase their audience size, create more targeted communications, and capture stronger leads for their employee wellness products.

MEET OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING TEAM

BACK-STORY

“Most solutions focus solely on building skills and awareness, without ongoing support for habit change. Wisdom Labs’ approach takes into account internal and external factors that are the key to lasting impact.” – Wisdom Labs

To solve the issue of burnout, stress, anxiety, and loneliness you need a continuum of support at work and during your personal time. That is at the heart of Wisdom Labs’ products:

• Wise@Work Communities – an employee-led onsite program designed to build connection and increase resilience by weaving mindfulness into the fabric of the organization
• Wise@Work mobile app – meditations focused on work-based situations and learning series with various areas of focus designed to support individual/on-demand practice
• Spaces – dedicated onsite meditation spaces designed to foster a mindfulness routine in the workplace
• Labs – workshops taught by Wisdom Labs faculty designed to respond to acute company situations and needs

The desire to make sure that everyone received a continuum of support resulted in sales and marketing efforts promoting several products and product combinations simultaneously to the same broad audience. Prospects were being asked to consider multiple possible solutions instead of understanding immediately what the right solution was for their situation. Their product value statements for each were very similar. This, along with their lack of target audience personas, did not allow Wisdom Labs to accelerate revenue growth in the way they knew they were capable.

RESEARCH

Mental health and workplace wellness are spaces in which Archetype has had a tremendous amount of experience navigating. We have designed and deployed multiple products and solutions to address mental health, as well as holistic workplace wellness. We also frequently partner with organizations to uncover and invest in innovative health and wellness solutions.

While we were uniquely positioned to accelerate Wisdom Labs’ revenue goals, as a company we believe that due diligence is key. Before ideating on a product, sales, or marketing strategy, our product development and marketing team conducted in-depth competitor analysis across the spectrum of Wisdom Labs’ offerings. They analyzed product features, social media presence, brand imagery and voice, value propositions, customer segments and engagement, and more in order to fully understand where to position Wisdom Labs among their competition.

STRATEGY

At the heart of the strategy our product development and marketing team built for Wisdom Labs was the goal of achieving product clarity — an understanding of which product Wisdom Labs should lead with and how to communicate its value to the right audience.

The team divided Wisdom Labs’ target audience into two broad categories: B2B clients and B2C users. Through the client, individual user, and prospect conversations, they then identified the value proposition and lead offering for each target audience. Based on the results of this analysis, Wisdom Labs officially designated Wise@Work Communities as the flagship product that they offered employers with the additional products to be used as unique modifiers based on each workplace’s needs. For Wisdom Labs’ B2C users it was decided that they should lead with the Wise@Work App, providing free access to its host of expert resources to increase sign-ups and its app store rating. Our product development and marketing team developed criteria alongside our sales development team so that once a user signed up, they could be profiled to uncover more individuals who fit the B2B target audience.

Having divided their audience and product solution into these two broad categories, our product development and marketing team worked with Wisdom Labs to segment each target audience and create user personas to test messaging through organic social, paid ads, and sales development initiatives. They set clearer goals for Wisdom Labs’ social media presence based on newly targeted audiences for both their B2B and B2C products by segmenting the approach of each channel. They also focused on creating the right messaging for each product, including App Store Optimization for their Wise@Work app.

By creating and testing more segmented messaging, the team was able to achieve product clarity allowing them to institute a strong foundational process for sales and marketing to cohesively work together. Additionally, achieving product clarity and setting defined processes, goals, and messaging put Wisdom Labs in the perfect position to expand their audience. One initiative our team focused on implementing to accelerate this was to identify high-value, high-impact partnerships:

• Organizations that offer complementary services but are not direct competitors
• Organizations with audiences that overlap with Wisdom Labs’ newly identified targets

With these strategic partnerships, our team launched webinars focused on subjects they knew were of interest to Wisdom Labs’ target audiences based on their due diligence research and competitive analysis. These webinars, which had high registration rates, exposed many new target audience leads to Wisdom Labs and its products.

Through robust reporting and analysis of marketing and sales efforts our product development and marketing team enabled Wisdom Labs to achieve clarity of language in marketing and sales, build stronger partnerships, and  to engage with and receive feedback from a larger, more targeted audience. This feedback led to our team facilitating the launch of a new B2C initiative, improved product implementation, and a clearer sales funnel.

At the end of our engagement, Wisdom Labs was pushed to embody truly agile innovation during COVID-19. This included converting all Wise@Work Communities to a virtual format. Having undergone this intensive effort to refocus its product, audience, and messaging, Wisdom Labs was able to successfully launch that initiative and quickly mobilized to position its product to offer relief during COVID-19.